In the poem \u201cSavage Eloquence,\u201d Chrystos writes about the importance of land to Native Americans. Chrystos begins and ends the poem directly speaking to a mountain by saying \u201cBig mountain\/ you big story you big\/ thing\u201d (1-3). By starting the poem off like this, speaking to a landmass as if it is a living being, she is establishing the Native American belief that spirits inhabit everything around us. This sets the groundwork for the poem being all about Native American beliefs and customs and how white America views Indigenous peoples.<\/p>\n
Chrystos writes, \u201cwalls more walls jails more jails agencies thieves rapists &\/ drunken refuge\/ from lives with nothing left\u201d (18-20). This is succinctly saying that non-natives in America view the Native Americans as walled in drunken convicts that have nothing to live for. However, Chrystos doesn\u2019t care that this is how white people view Natives because at the end of the day, the Native Americans are holding onto their culture as tightly as possible and will not let it go just because a bunch of white people try to take it from them. Instead, she says, \u201cEverything we have left is in our hearts\/ deeply hidden No photograph or tape recorder or drawing can\/ touch\/ the mountain of our spirits\u201d (29-33). She is saying that Native Americans remember their history and will not succumb to white people in power trying to erase their culture and customs. She writes, \u201cVanishing is no metaphor Big mountain you are no news our\/ savage\/ eloquence is dust between their walls their thousand deaths\u201d (25-27). This is saying that Indigenous voices are meaningless in the eyes of white people. They don\u2019t care what Natives have to say because whites believe Native Americans are inferior to them and not worth listening to. But Chrystos doesn\u2019t care because by writing \u201cBig mountain you are too big you are too small you are such an\/ old\/ old story\u201d (57-59), she proves that Native American stories and culture will not be forgotten as long as they remember it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the poem \u201cSavage Eloquence,\u201d Chrystos writes about the importance of land to Native Americans. Chrystos begins and ends the poem directly speaking to a mountain by saying \u201cBig mountain\/ you big story you big\/ thing\u201d (1-3). By starting the poem off like this, speaking to a landmass as if it is a living being, … Continue reading Native American Resilience<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4637,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4637"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}