• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.569-592
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• 2013

In Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie examines how Indians can survive successfully in contemporary America, overcoming the tragic history of colonialists' violence and the resultant traumata. For Alexie, both reassembling the parts of the colonialist history through remembrance and testifying its unjustness play important roles not only in the decolonization process which probes the remnants and the negative effects of the colonialism deeply rooted in the lives of Indians but in the procedure of healing the political, cultural, and religious traumata. However, it should be noted that the ultimate aim of Alexie's decolonization does not lie in erasing every trace of the colonialism but in transforming its legacy into a story of survivance. The recovery of the tribal voices and the preservation of Indian traditions, blood, and cultures are essential in the survivance of Indians. Yet, Alexie's tribalism should not be viewed as an exclusive one. He knows well that it is neither possible nor desirable to maintain an exclusive tribalism based on blind adherence to a mythic or "pure" past. Exclusive tribalism is a cause for alarm in the contemporary world, a dynamic place where diverse cultures consistently change through collision, exchange, and negotiation. In Reservation Blues, Alexie stresses a spiritual and cultural flexibility that makes the cultural interpenetration possible as a key element of the meaningful survivance of contemporary American Indians.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.163-184
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• 2009

Sherman Alexie deals with reservation realism in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Smoke Signals. By reservation realism he means American Indian traditions and its problems like alcoholism, violence, unemployment, depression, and poverty on the reservation. It cannot be denied that the traditional ceremonies have played significant roles in making it possible for American Indians to keep their own ethnic identities. It is, however, also true that the same traditions have prevented them from embracing modernity. Alexie believes that it is high time that Indians living on the reservation discarded the old tradition of racial exclusiveness for a gradual crossing of cultural borders. What is seriously needed on today's reservation is not the historic figure of Crazy Horse, a stoic and masculine warrior in the late 19th century, but Sacagawea, a Shoshoni Indian who helped Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the American West in the early 19th century. When asked to be more specific about cross cultural examples, Alexie proposes successful Indian doctors and lawyers as role models on the reservation.