“I think for me what I found truly inspiration in the book was her drive to keep going forward

and striving to find something new or good in the sea of bad things happening in her life. I just

think even with the bad things that happened in her life with her father, stepfather, the drinking

and trouble she got into at school and everything else that she still managed to pull herself out of

it to get where she is today. As I’ve been reading this, I have to keep reminding myself that it

isn’t fiction and this is all part of her life, and it’s honestly quite hard to fathom how she

managed to keep herself from going down any of the very dark paths that presented themselves

to her and somehow stayed on the right path. It’s just really amazing to me as I feel like in a lot

of cases when people have this kind of a life, where its nothing but bad thing after bad thing that

they in turn go down that same road to doing bad things to others and perpetuating the cycle. The

fact she didn’t is probably one of the most amazing things in the book to me.

For another general point as well, I know I might have mentioned it in class or in the previous

response but the way in which she wrote the story structurally and the way she chose her

phrasing really had an impact on me. The flat tone which is used to describe things in the story as

simply things that happened that no longer have an extreme emotional pull on her, just goes to

show the strength she has found with time, that she is able to write it in a detached sort of way

because she has come to terms with it all now.”

“Right off the bat the imagery of the “cigar store Indian” prop sets in place the idea of just how

stereotyped Native American people have been in our culture. I feel that referring back to it

throughout the video makes a very good impact when comparing the stereotypes to the real

people who are around today that are anything but the mockeries found in older movies or

cartoons and the like. I feel like it’s a really powerful point they’re making here in such a short
video, especially with the point of how the Native American people themselves have been almost

“Americanized” with their point of how “they’ve learned the lessons well” of the people who

took their land. Just the overall tone of the video, while it is slightly sad and regretful seeming,

doesn’t stop the people in it from showing their attitude and defiance against the stereotypes and

system that has perpetuated these ideas about them for decades. The change of tone too at the

end with the comment from the one actor to the other asking her if she wants to get a latte, gives

it a last bit of humor too it that adds to the overall point that Native American people aren’t some

fake “cigar store Indian” like the prop they use throughout, but are real people with unique

personalities and self-identities of their own.”