Tasha's 6th Blog

I've finished reading pages 108-139! One of the themes I felt was rather prominent in this section was that of disliking and blaming white people for Native American troubles. In a historic sense, yes, Caucasians have done numerous terrible things towards Native Americans (The Indian Removal Act, the Dawes Severalty Act, the list goes on and on). However, I don't see why white people are being blamed for all of their problems, and that is the general feeling that I am getting from the book. I have not seen many Native Americans in the book taking their lives into their own hands and doing something with it, instead they are sitting in bars, complaining that the “white devils” ruined them by introducing alcohol. Sorry. Rant over.
Something I think that is important to mention are the circumstances that people are living in Gallup. The people generally seem impoverished. There seems to be a lot of drunks, the book mentions prostitutes, and I wonder what Silko is trying to say about both the new white influence on Native American culture and on the level of protection and aid these people are getting. It's terrible.
As others have said, we have been introduced to Betonie, a medicine man. He seems very calm, natural, and down to earth – then again, what else would you expect? I think I like him as a character because of this. Is he going to cure Tayo? I hope so!
A quote that I found very interesting was this: “'They sent me to this place after the war. It was white... Maybe I belong back in that place.'...'That's true,' the old man said, 'you could go back to that white place... But if you were going to do that you might as well go down there, with the rest of them, sleeping in the mud, vomiting cheap wine, rolling over women. Die that way and get it over with.'... 'In that hospital they don't bury the dead, they keep them in rooms and talk to them.'” (pg 123) I found this an intriguing contrast between culture. It is also an example of Tayo, who is in a constant identity crisis, being pulling one way and then another in terms of where he belongs.