Assertion Analysis Seeker of Visions

When learning about Native American culture, you instantly know they are collaborative, communal, and family oriented. They endeavor to conserve their traditions and rituals and maintain their culture pristine. They highly respect, cherish, and value their ancestors and sight them superior and as an authority figure. This implies to both the youth and mature individuals within the tribe. As for modern and contemporary Euro-centeric culture, altogether is administered, edified, and dominated. Laws are written to guide and inform us what we can do and what we can’t when as Native Americans who aid, lift, and support each other. John Lame Deer, author of Seeker of Visions discusses on whence the two cultures are amalgamated along with how the European colonists asserted that Native Americans are uncivilized in a mordant, sardonic, and satirical manner. Yet in actuality, the European colonists are the uncivilized, vulgar, and uncultured individuals.

Author, John Lame Deer mockingly indicates how Europeans civilized and polished Native Americans. Deer divulges how they were given a prison, locks and keys, and supportive interpretations for those in need. This results to the reality where nothing from the Europeans were ever really needed. Before the Europeans arrived, there were no such thing as delinquents, prisons, and poverty. Therefore, Deer then states how he doesn’t “know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things...” Deer covets us to reckon the thought of what life for the Native Americans was like, being dominated over by the Europeans. They were wholly stable and valued and considerate of other people instead of property, meaning there was no tolerance for stealing. They were collective and always provided for each other when one was in need, meaning there was no such thing as poverty. They were most definitely not uncivilized, on the contrary they were magnificent.

Furthermore, Deer assembles satirical and sardonic assertions that tease and scorn the Europeans. He arguably mentions the element that Europeans need to create laws and retain delinquents in prisons. Naturally, Native Americans don’t need to create or enforce any laws, locks and keys, prisons, or these “civilized” Europeans. Whenever they are afflicted they resolve everything as a tribe, as a family. They take care and tend each other. He utilized them as non-examples and displays the Europeans as injudicious and vacuous people because the Native Americans didn’t need any of the Europeans fundamentals. Using Anaphora, Deer expresses with the term “we” along with using a non-example exhibiting the opposite side to present his part.

To that end, Deer’s satirical assertion lays out the true actuality of what life for the Native Americans was like before the Europeans established on Native ground. Although Native Americans handled things differently, that most certainly means does not mean they were uncivilized. This proves that modern and contemporary cultures are afraid of differences and manage a dull and lifeless culture.