Essay Questions

Expound the allusion which Velma Wallis utilizes when recounting her birth.

Velma Wallis writes, “ I was born in Fort Yukon, Alaska, in 1960.It was a time when John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were making big waves whose effects would ripple far into the future; a time when young Native men , educated in places like Mount Edgecumbe in Sitka, were beginning to rally for Native rights in Alaska.” Here, Wallis employs Historical Allusion which updates a reader about the prevalent political settings at her birth. Both “Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy” are noteworthy figures in positively shaping the American character. Mentioning them reinforces Wallis’ autobiography by accommodating the realism of the 1960’s.

Why does Velma Wallis undercut White civilization?

Wallis expounds, “Piece by piece, the Giwch’in way of life was being destroyed. Religion - the thing closest to the human soul - was trod upon and redesigned; the culture was set aside; routines of daily life were obliterated. The preachers called shamanism a tool of the Devil. The missionaries frowned upon every habit the Gwich’in had that made him who he was. They spent many hours preaching, spanking, teaching, spanking, until the villagers learned that being Gwich’in was not a good thing.” The evolution elicits the abolition of the Native ethos by conditioning the Gwich’in folks to detest themselves and their Native conducts. Through conditioning, the whites intend to assert the dominance of the white philosophy and Christianity. Ultimately, the Gwich’in values are devastated leaving them without a material culture to guide them. Evidently, advancement adulterates the Natives’ cherished culture, which is regarded as gratuitous.