Summary Of One Stick Song By Sherman Alexie

Native American humor is dynamic. It has to be, in order to accurately reflect its source. To say that Native Americans are adaptable is an understatement. After years of marginalization, genocide, and silencing, they are still here, creating, living, and thriving. All Native comedy is not just about jokes, it’s about representation. Native American comedians making jokes is political, because their very existence is a political statement. Comedy is a medium that gives Native Americans the opportunity to control representation of themselves in an especially accessible way. In the age of YouTube, Vine, Twitter, and Facebook, it is increasingly easy to share homemade videos, and many Natives are using these mediums to spread their message.
One Stick Song is filled with the bittersweet, a boy struggling with his identity as an Indian, who has to leave his home, who was not set up from birth to be a success. When reading One Stick Song, you get the sense that the author is a person who has a sense of humor. Yet, not one of his poems or vignettes made me laugh, and I think that is a product of how well Alexie infuses his writing with the past. Many of his writings are extremely clever, with little twists in them to catch the reader. This is Alexie’s way of showing the reader what their expectations were, and then refusing to fulfill them. One in particular I liked a lot was “Evolution”. In it, Natives give everything they own, including their hearts, to a pawnshop owned by Buffalo Bill. When they have nothing left to give, “[Buffalo Bill] closes up the pawn shop… calls his venture The Museum of Native American Cultures charges the Indians five bucks a head to enter” (Alexie 1992). Again, this isn’t exactly a piece that makes you giggle, but it does make you
I watched an excerpt from her routine called “Half Breed Age”, in which she does a couple of bits about what it’s like to be half Native and half white. She also does a small bit about turning the tables and exotifying white people, although briefly, when she talks about being a “half-breed” and says “[my mother] comes from a very rich heritage as well. She’s white, so I’m trying to get to know her language and her culture as well.” The reason this is funny is because she is talking in English when she says this, wearing contemporary ‘American’ clothing, and it also subverts the audience’s expectations. Her statement exotifies white culture the way that white culture exotifies Native culture. In the same routine, she again has this juxtaposition of white culture and indigenous culture, but this time she compares parenting styles. In it, she said that when her son misbehaves, that the “white part” of her brain wanted to give him a time out and be patient. At this point she did an imitation of what I suppose she considers a “white” parenting style. Then, she said that the “Native part” of her brain just wanted to beat him. She then did an imitation of beating her child, implying that it was a much quicker, more effective way of disciplining a child. She clarifies that “[she] can’t do that though… in public”. My first reaction to this bit was that I thought it might have crossed a line. I don’t