Ethnic Studies 112A / History 108A

Ross Frank

A 6-10 double-spaced page essay is due Monday of Week 10, March 10, at the beginning of class.

Over the next weeks, think about how the history and issues that we encounter in the course about the Indian past and present resonate with the material chosen for your essay. Further instructions about the assignment will be given out later.

Pick one of the following novels upon which you will base your essay.

• Ella Cara Deloria. [Yankton Lakota] Waterlily. The novel describes the lives of a Sioux (Yankton Lakota) family and their extended kin in the later 19th century. The lifeway of the tribe is seen through the life cycle of Waterlily in tremendous detail. Deloria weaves information about the customs, beliefs, and aspirations of the Lakota just before the period of the reservation.
  
  
• Louis Owens [Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish]  Bone Game.  Set in part in and around U.C. Santa Cruz, the novel is in part a mystery about a series of strange and horrible murders.  Cole McCurtain, an American Indian faculty member at UCSC and the protagonist, works to understand forces that the past exert on the world’s present.
  
  
• Leslie Marmon Silko.  [Laguna Pueblo]  Garden in the Dunes.  A young Native American girl, her sister and grandmother live in a small town in the American Southwest around the turn of 19th century. They yearn to return to the home of their people and tend their desert gardens in the dunes.  The novel follows the globalized currents of Western European domination, linked to the culture of the United States, through the travels of Indigo and others through the old and new worlds.
  
  
• James Welch.   [Blackfeet-Gros Ventre]  Fools Crow.  The novel is set on the northern plains in Blackfeet territory during the 2nd half of the 19th century.  Blackfeet life and early contact with non-Indians from the Indian point of view structures the story and weaves in historical moments important to the tribe, such as the massacre of the Blackfeet on the Marias River.
  
  

NOTE: If the novel you choose is not available at Groundworks choose another or locate the book at another bookstore.

Please talk to Professor Frank if you would like to do an alternative written assignment.