An Indian Father's Plea: Poem Analysis

The way one sees the world is vastly different from person to person. An art student walking down the street sees in jewel-bright colors through a kaleidoscope, and greets a total stranger like he’s an old friend. A journalist looks out the window of the train and sees the world whizz by in the greyscale regularity of the newspapers he writes, on his way to interview a man he knows like the back of his hand thanks to wikipedia. A veteran returning home gets off the plane and sees the city in muted blues and purples and splashes of terrible red- she flinches when the metal detector in the airport shrieks at the steel pins in her leg. But the art student was raised by her hippie grandmother, who painted her house rainbow and taught the student
He was raised in the warm reds and burnt oranges of autumn, the vibrant green of spring and summer, the cold white of winter. He knows the world entirely as he discovered it for himself. “Shapes, sizes, colors, texture, sound, smell, feeling, taste, and the learning process are therefore functionally integrated- the physical and spiritual, matter and energy, conscious and unconscious, individual and social.” (pg 76) Wind-Wolf is accustomed to learning by himself, on his own terms and at his own pace. The way he experienced the world was entirely shaped by the way he encounters experiences, and he the way he is being taught in the American public school system doesn’t mesh well with the way he was raised. “While you are trying to teach him your new methods, helping him learn new tools for self-discover and adapt to his new learning environment, he may be looking out the window as is daydreaming.” (pg 78) Everything Wind-Wolf was taught at home, every last ancestral memory and instinct is pushing Wind-Wolf to be with his people and not learning the difference between things that he has no previous experience with. He knows that he is supposed to be gathering and preparing food for the coming winter, knows that he needs to be elsewhere. But Wind-Wolf soon takes matters into his own hands after his explosive introduction into a new world. “He said he doesn’t have any friends at school because they make fun of his long hair.” (pg 78) After seeing that he didn’t fit in with the rest of the children, Wind-Wolf’s new environment pushed him to cut his hair- an integral sign of masculinity to his tribe, but unacceptable for a boy in a predominantly white environment- in order to fit in