Quinn Mattison

Ms. Steinmann
Advanced American Literature
11 May 2017
Cultural Difference
Annotation A.
Danielle Endres (Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2009) explains that when people wish to
change Native Americans, they are viewed as assimilated members of our public, which leads to
colonization and homogenization. Instead of specifically labeling natives as “savages”, the strategy names
native nations as a piece of the public; denying negotiation, describing all opponents as public critics and
forcing participation in the comment event. This strategy is key to the perpetuation of colonialism upon
because it allows the government to national interest to justification unclear policies affecting the natives.
The intended audience is the American public, aimed to inform the public of the negative consequences
of socially accepting criticism of Native American people, and how the social bias affects them not only
socially but also politically. This article correctly points out the flaws in social perception of native
American people but the author fails to provide a solution to the communication with Native American
people, not proposing an alternative method to communication at the level of culture.
I learned:
1. The government justified stealing native American land with nuclear testing.
2. People used cultural studies against the natives, using their ideology of not “owning land” as a
justification to take it away.
3. Native Americans were generally rejected reparations for their losses due to social stigma.
Connections to Ceremony:
1. Both the article and Ceremony relate social stigmas to how white Americans treated the natives,
with a dehumanizing sense of superiority.
2. Both pieces of literature tie to the struggles of assimilation, and the abandonment of a lot of
culture the natives faced.
3. The writings connect by the covering of the openness of racism, people did not directly call
natives “savages”, but the way white communicated with natives was different than with other
white people.
Ceremony is a great novel because it points out what problems to escape in order to achieve happiness,
the key ideal of the American Dream.
Annotation B.
Gayatri Spivak (Outside the Teaching Machine, 1993) states that the criticism of the colonialist thinking
of native Americans is key to opening a space in the system of value-coding. By challenging our
perspectives of native Americans, we open ourselves up to a new form of respect for native culture,
moving away from the unequal treatments from indentitarianism. This articles was written as an
alternative to our current social biases against native Americans by questioning our moral values through
social intervention. Spivak establishes a relationship with the reader by creating a new ground of ontology
to prevent the patterns of marginalization of native Americans. Unlike Annotation A, this article takes the
step to provide a solution to current communication with the native American people by imagining a
world of the interrogation of social racism against native Americans, giving Annotation B more leverage
for potentially understanding the situations that natives go through, but Spivak’s alternative “ways of
thinking” are very vague and do not specifically point out what to interrogate, leaving room for social
injustices to continue.
I learned:
1. Biases toward groups of people is triggered by indentitarianism.
2. Coloniality, or the establishment of moral values, shapes how people approach others.
3. Social progress is often done through social intervention.
Connections to Ceremony:
1. Both pieces relate to the effects of identity, such as how Tayo feels uncomfortable with falling
outside of traditional racial labels.
2. The post-coloniality mentioned in the article relates to the Texans’ representations of the native
Americans as being “odd beings”.
3. People’s perspectives of Native Americans shapes how a lot of natives live and how they view
themselves, commonly having negative consequences such as how multiple characters in
Ceremony abuse alcohol usage.
In the perspective of Annotation B, Ceremony is a great American novel because it marks where
prejudices exist with natives and how to target them tying to the American Dream of progress, wanting to
make life better.
Annotation C.
Makau Mutua (Terrorism and Human Rights: Power Culture, and Subordination, 2002) explains that
people’s ideas of human rights is a product of cultural bias that spreads the savior-victim dichotomy and
universalizes American norms. The decider of who is and is not a victim is all in the hands of the elite, to
toy with people’s experiences determining how important people’s issues are. The author wrote the article
in order to inform the reader of this type of thinking because this is what stimulates misrepresentation of
groups of people, by the poor evaluation of their conflict without a sense of urgency. The intended
audience is Americans, with the intention of opening up their minds of more closely analyzing native
American history. This Annotation well expands upon the analysis of articles A and B, analyzing the root
cause of the misrepresentation of human issues, but fails to provide what issues are important to the native
American people, the reader of this article does not learn of the abuses natives take to heart that white
Americans tend to forget.
I learned:
1. The concept of “human rights” is socially structured by western normatives.
2. Cultural bias still oppresses natives with the misrepresentation of racial and ethnical
discriminations.
3. Discrimination shapes the ontology behind the concept of “human rights”, racism makes it
socially acceptable to not feel a need for advocacy.
Connections to Ceremony:
 1. This article relates to the dysmorphia Tayo faces for being mixed race, since people do not
declare Tayo to be truly native American or white,
2. This article ties to the abuse of alcoholism native Americans enacted, since there was little
concept of human rights for natives, no-one revisioned their right to happiness
3. This article ties to the concept of hostility, in the novel the Texans were very disrespectful of the
natives and therefore did not care for their vision of human rights.
The book Ceremony is a Great American novel because it shapes the ideals of the American Dream, by
advocating for a change to the status quo of human rights abuse through knowledge.
Citation
Endres, Danielle. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. Routledge, 2009
Spivak, Gayatri. Outside the Teaching Machine. Routledge, 1993
Mutua, Makau. Terrorism and Human Rights: Power Culture, and Subordination. Buffalo Human Rights
Law Review, 2002