American Indians’ Self-identification In Reservation Blues

As an experimental novelist, poet, filmmaker and screenwriter, Sherman Alexie (1966-) has become a major spokesman of American Indians. After several generations’ dislocation and alienation, American Indians are confronted with unprecedented identity crisis. In his first novel Reservation Blues (1995), Alexie explores American Indians’ impoverished, uncertain and marginalized condition of life as well as their continual effort to identify themselves with modern society. Filled with miserable episodes, displaced figures, and ambivalent feelings, Reservation Blues is a great novel worth careful study.Based on modern theories of identity, the present thesis endeavours to explore American Indians’ tough self-identification process in Reservation Blues. After a painful identity crisis and a reconciliation process of identity negotiation, American Indians are struggling to adapt themselves to modern society. However, with the failure of the blues band Coyote Springs, Alexie reveals the harshness for modern American Indians to survive.Chapter one attempts to study the causes and manifestations of identity crisis in the novel. Rooted in colonialism, American Indians have lost their lands they used to rely for existence. Under the further assimilation of mass media, they have even lost all their measures and features of being Indians. The direct manifestations of identity crisis are disintegrated communities and dislocated individuals. With no sense of belonging and security on the reservation, American Indians are puzzled and tortured by their uncertain identity.Chapter two explores the reconciliation process of identity negotiation. Three levels of negotiation will be under discussion. Firstly, in order to eliminate the pop culture’s misleading influence on American Indians, Alexie wisely subverts lots of misrepresentations and stereotypes of American Indians and reveals what true Indians are. The second level negotiation happens between the native spirituality and Christian religion. The two different beliefs are not necessarily exclusive to each other, and only a combination of the two can serve the reservation best. The last level negotiation is how to cope with the relationship with other races and tribes, including the Euro-Americans, the African Americans as well as other Indian tribes on the reservation.Chapter three is an attempt to analyse how American Indians identify themselves with modern society. In the first place, Alexie uses stories and dreams to retell the tribe’s miserable past and history, for making peace with the past is crucial in the process of building one’s identity. Moreover, as blues function as a way of curing as well as a platform for cultural intersection, Alexie successfully creates possibilities to build a hybrid identity. However, with the final failure of Coyote Springs, Alexie highlights the image of crossroads to reveal the risk of surviving in a white world.Within the framework of modern theories of identity, the present thesis explores American Indians’ tough self-identification process and their constant struggle to adapt themselves to modern society. At the same time, this thesis also reveals the dilemma and plight faced by American Indians and the harshness for them to survive in this world.