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Dakota 38 & ENGL 352

I had never read much Native American literature until I enrolled in ENGL 352 this semester.

Throughout the course, we have read, studied, and discussed several pieces of Native American literature ranging from poems to stories. The first several stories we read in class were typical stories one might expect to hear from an indigenous person: the oral traditions of how the world came to be and made up stories meant to teach the reader a lesson. These were interesting to me, but none of them caught my attention quite like "38" by Layli Long Soldier.

"38" is a story (not a poem, as Long Soldier clearly states within her story) that is meant to take the reader back in time to the Dakota 38.

The Dakota 38 was a historical event in which 38 Dakota men were hanged under the order of President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. The Dakota 38 was the result of the Sioux Uprising against the US government. Many people have never heard of the Dakota 38 because it is a piece of history that everyone wants to forget. It is not taught in school, and it isn't even mentioned in the movie Lincoln that focuses on the life of Abraham Lincoln. It is a shameful time in American history. But as a Native American, it proves as evidence for the belief that there has been a Native American genocide in North America.

This was not the first (or the last) attempt at Native American genocide in America though.

More recently, there were the Native American boarding schools (also known as Indian residential schools) like Carlisle. Carlisle is always the one that is mentioned because it was the most horrific of all of the schools in the US. In these schools, Native children were taught English, forced to take an English name, forbidden to speak in their native tongue, beaten, raped, and sometimes even killed.

Prior to the Dakota 38, there were the Native American removals due to the Indian Removal Act under the presidency of Andrew Jackson. My ancestors were removed on the 1838 Trail of Death from Twin Lakes, IN, to Sugar Creek, KS. They took nothing with them but the clothes on their backs and whatever they could manage to carry. Many didn't even have shoes to wear on the dusty dirt roads that quickly turned into snow-covered roads.

But let's get back to "38."

When introducing the topic of the Dakota 38 at the start of her poem, Layli Long Soldier acknowledges that it is not meant to be an “interesting read.” It is not meant to entertain anyone through the use of exaggerations or emotional events. She tells it like a history lesson. Long Soldier is telling history as she knows it, not as an embellished, half-true story. The goal of this is to stir something deep within the reader. Polished, emotional stories invoke surface-level feelings. Whereas true, unpolished stories invoke deep, thought-provoking feelings.

The lack of emotional words and phrases in Long Soldier’s poem serves as proof that this event really occurred just as she stated it had. The restraint used in her word choices shows that this was not a fictional, beautified account. She shows no emotion so that her readers can decide their own emotions to feel while reading the poem. For me, it evoked feelings of anger and sorrow but also resilience. I know the atrocities that my ancestors endured so that I could be here and live in the world that I live in today. My ancestors put up a fight so that I could thrive and represent them as a strong Native woman.

This class brought forth a renewed feeling of resilience for me.

Reading these stories and poems reminded me of the ways that we have grown and learned from our ancestors' experiences. They also reminded me of my culture and heritage and just how integrated they are in my life. A lot of my beliefs have arisen because of my knowledge of my heritage. This class also reminded me that even though there is still Native American oppression, we are still fighting, and we are still here.

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