Race, feminine power, and the vietnam war in Philip Red Eagle's Red Earth

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Volumn 28, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 93-105

  Andrews, Scott ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77449110951     PISSN: 01616463     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17953/aicr.28.4.f40611m2j3q45687     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. Since I am discussing a Dakota character created by a Dakota author but am using texts that draw primarily upon Lakota sources, I will use the umbrella term Sioux.
2. William Broyles Jr., "Why Men Love War," in The Vietnam Reader, ed. Walter Capps (New York: Routledge, 1991), 73.
3. William Broyles Jr., Brothers in Arms: A Journey from War to Peace (New York: Knopf, 1986), 275.
4. Susan Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1989), 65.
5. William Turner Huggett, Body Count (New York: Dell, 1974).
6. Jeffords, Remasculinization of America, 65.
7. Ibid., 66.
8. Dwight Birdwell and Keith William Nolan, A Hundred Miles of Bad Road: An Armored Cavalryman in Vietnam, 1967-68 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1997), 126.
9. Philip K. Jason, "Sexism and Racism in Vietnam War Fiction," Mosaic 23, 3 (September 1990): 126.
10. Ibid.
11. Philip H. Red Eagle, Red Earth: Two Novellas (Duluth, MN: Holy Cow! Press, 1997). Future citations will appear as page numbers in parentheses in the text.
12. A Vietnamese friend assured me that this name should be spelled "Phuong" and that its pronunciation is closer to "Fung" than to "Fong," but I will use the spelling that appears in the novella.
13. Jeffords, Remasculinization of America, 66.
14. Jason, "Sexism and Racism," 126.
15. James R. Walker, The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1917), 83.
16. James R. Walker, Lakota Myth (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 183.
17. D. M. Dooling, Sons of the Wind: The Sacred Stories of the Lakota (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 45.
18. Walker, The Sun Dance, 83.
19. Dooling, Sons of the Wind, 8.
20. Walker, The Sun Dance, 83.
21. One element of Red Eagle's story that I could not find rooted in Lakota/Dakota culture was time travel. It is easy to see the appeal to a veteran, or anyone who has survived traumatic events, of the ability to travel back in time and correct grievous events or past deeds. In a conversation at the Native American Literature Symposium in 2003, however, Red Eagle said he had been told a version of the White Buffalo Calf Woman story that varies from the frequently printed version. In the version Black Elk tells Neihardt, for instance, two men see White Buffalo Calf Woman as she approaches for the first time. One of the men lusts after her and approaches her with sexual rather than reverential thoughts. He is instantly consumed by a white cloud and left as only a "skeleton covered with worms." His bones are deposited at her feet. Red Eagle relayed a version to me that countered this notion of the man being punished for lusting after White Buffalo Calf Woman. The young man who reached for her was taken up in a cloud, and his bones were deposited moments later in the place where he had stood, but White Buffalo Calf Woman reassures the other young man that his friend was not killed. He needed something from her that she could not provide in that situation, so she transported him to another dimension where they spent a long and happy life together; when his life had ended, she brought his bones back to his family. Consistent with the females in Red Earth, White Buffalo Calf Woman functions here as a transforming power, a power that realizes the potential within beings, a bringer of harmony. The misogynistic potential can also be seen in this version: A woman's function is to fulfill a man's wishes, whatever they may be. Such an interpretation would depend upon the teller and the audience. I feel that Red Earth docs not convey that negative potential.
22. Dooling, Sons of the Wind, 10.
23. G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 3.
24. Raymond J. DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 283.
25. Maria N. Powers, Oglala Women: Myth, Ritual, and Reality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 43.
26. Richard Erdoes and Alfonzo Ortiz, American Indian Myths and Legends (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 48.
27. Raymond J. DeMallie and Douglas R. Parks, Sioux Indian Religion: Tradition and Innovation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 82.
28. Ibid.