a summary.

Other Voices

Paula Gunn Allen tells the story of the discovery of America from a rather different perspective to that we are used to hearing of.

First of all, Paula doesn’t attempt to ignore the presence of the earlier inhabitants in America before the Europeans arrived. On the contrary, she tries to recount the lives of the earlier inhabitants and to analyze the reasons as to why their history has been swept under the carpet as though it never actually existed.

She shows that the history of Native American Indians is closely tied to the American nation we have nowadays. For example, she gives tidbits of facts about American history that go to show the importance that Indians had in the shaping of the country, such as the fact that the Chickasaw platoons were the reason for the victory of the United States over England in the war of 1812. She shows a great deal of frustration in the fact that most Americans are oblivious of such facts, or “amnesiac” as she describes them. Having killed off thousands of Indians, she states that it is somehow reasonable that America should want to forget its past.

At one point she refers to the beginning of the colonization process in America the “American Adam”, criticizing the fact that it denies the existence of any father or mother to it, as it were.

In this parallel that she draws, the mother is the Indians, earth and Nature, which, according to her, “were submerged into the ‘infinite pool’ of the unconscious, hopefully never to be recovered.”

She also points out that such isolation and self-reliance have become the theme for American civilization. Moreover, she states that the Indians were called savages not because they committed atrocities but because they valued the community as opposed to the individual. She even says that “belonging is most important to the Indians, while belongings are most important to the Whites.”

In this story, Paula also shows how strong Native Americans actually are as opposed to the preconceived notions we usually have of their apparent weakness and insignificance. There were also many interesting bits of history that she uncovered that deserve special attention in the teaching of American history, such as the fact that English has become the official language of the United States purely by accident.

Overall, what I believe we can learn from Paula’s text is that truth is but a matter of point of view, with each person defending whatever “truth” best suits their interests. As Jane Austen once said, we must “not allow books to prove anything.”