Within Indian wars and the Wounded Knee massacre

Ristan Taufiq Syukrianto

doi:10.15294/rainbow.v10i1.45169

Abstract

Besides recorded in textbooks, historical events sometimes are adopted into literary works. Rebecca Wiles’ Bury Me at Wounded Knee is one of which since it portrays the Indian Wars and the Wounded Knee Massacre on 29 December 1890. The clause Bury Me at Wounded Knee in the poem is a form of self-determination of Native Americans. This paper aims at mapping the causal relation of historical events found in the poem to examine the Native Americans’’ self-determination inside it. As the basis, the paper employs the Historicism theory and Self-Determination theory (SDT) about autonomous and controlled motivations. The results found that the Native Americans’ self-determination in the poem is an undermined one. It is built by their internal autonomous motivation of deeply rooted culture and beliefs. However, the encroachments of the U.S. government who seized their rights, acted as controlled extrinsic motivations, internalized and thwarted the intrinsic motivation so that the self-determination is undermined. It decreases in the degree from an eagerness to act and resist to merely a wish of being buried in the location where they die and think of extinction.

Highlights

Indian Wars are a set of notorious historical events in the United States of America
They are the conflicts between White Americans or the U.S government and Native Americans caused by the White Americans’ intention to pursue benefits and interests in the Native Americans’ territorial lands
All battles were won by the U.S government and the Native Americans must receive the offers

Summary

Introduction

Indian Wars are a set of notorious historical events in the United States of America. American lands and diminishing Native American’s politics, army, and cultures (Roscigno & Cantzler, 2015) These events are recorded in textbooks on history and academic papers or reports. Sometimes, historical events are reflected in literary works This is according to Abrams’ (1971) mimetic theory that literary works, like other forms of arts, are the imitations of aspects of the universe. The literary works’ imitations are not the exact correspondence of the real world as they are fictive works Aristotle theorized that these imitations do not work on their own, but they were altered by the personal visions of the artists to form different criteria. Though similarities appear between them, differences are visible and need to be examined

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