Blog Post 9

In the first youtube video by Trudell, he talks about guilt, blame and intelligence. These are very heavy topics, he believes. He uses guilt to say that it is about life experiences and that most people will be guilty about something, and not try to learn from the mistake they made. They keep on doing things that make them guilty. This can relate to ceremony in the way that Tayo is very guilty about Rocky and his death. He holds onto that and believes that it was all his fault and that he should be the one who is dead instead of Rocky. This really gets to Tayo and he stays guilty but proceeds to do things that result with him feeling guilty or him taking the blame.

In the second youtube video, Modern Humans are Walking Dead, Trudell points out his thoughts on what he would say to someone who just came to this world and how the people are and how they act. He believes that everyone has ditched the idea of any spiritual relationship to their ancestors. “Nobody remembers anything of their ancestry,” which kind of relates to the idea of stories in Ceremony (Trudell). I believe this relates because the stories are from the people before and the Native Americans really care about the stories and history of the past because it means so much to them, but then the white people come in and completely destroy that idea and tell the Natives that these stories are not real and to leave them behind. This relates to Trudell because he is saying everyone isn't caring about the past and how their ancestors came about. He believes that this leaves a huge impact on the society as a whole.

Trudell also wrote a poem about his thoughts and ideas. In this poem he states the idea that Native Americans were looked at as not “human” (trudell). People would come from Europe and say that the Natives were not human they were savages, people who lived in the wild and who were deprived. He talks about the idea of keeping the identity of the Indians alive even though when we all learn the history of them it comes off as they were savage and just being killed by the so called “humans”. This can relate to ceremony in the way that the white people are like witches taking away the identity of the actual Indian.