In The Problem With Old Harjo, Ceremony And The Bird Is Gone

In The Problem with Old Harjo, Ceremony and The Bird is Gone there is a thread that is wound from one to the next, bringing these three text into unity with one another. This thread is concerned with ones identity, causing the reader to question whether identity is dependent upon what you culturally identify with, or whether it is possible to separate yourself from a culture that is imposed upon you due to your skin tone. All three of the stories have an interesting way of looking at identity and culture, as they both are concerned with the development of how one see’s themselves. Within The Problem with Od Harjo, there is an exclusion of Harjo from joining the Protestant church, due to how he has chosen to live his life; causing him to question …show more content…
From not being full Laguna, to working in the army, to returning to life on the reservation. This is significant to explore because it shows the reader that, with Native American’s, respect is often tentatively balanced. Tayo's position of working in the army affords him respect. While employed as such, he feels equal to a white man, as soon as he leaves the position he feels lower than a white man. The Bird is Gone looks at identity within the context of returning to ones roots within the Dakota’s. All of these novels have something to say about leaving the identity imposed upon you, what it means to have an identity, and also the ways in which identity can be an anchor in an either debilitating or comforting way. One could see that, in each book there is representation of a character who in some form or another experiences racism, yet said character never seems to truly fit into the racial stereotype that is being used to judge them. The separation which runs between the Native Americans and the whites is so deep that the authors paint these two people as if they live in separate …show more content…
The idea relating to either conforming to these new European ideologies, or get left behind with the traditional ones. This crisis is depicted in many different forms throughout the The Problem with Old Harjo, however the first sign of Harjo’s personal identity crisis is seen between the two name that Harjo goes by. There’s Harjo, the name that Miss Evans and Mrs. Rowell refer to him as, then there is‘The Creek,’ the name in which he see himself as.
“Harjo” began Miss Evans before following the old man to the covered passageway between the disconnected cabins, “is it true that you have two wives?” […] The Creek had heard that question before, from scandalized missionaries and perplexed registry clerks when he went to Muscogee to enroll himself and his family in one of the many “final” records ordered to be made by the Government preparatory to dividing the Creek lands among the individual citizens.