• 영미문화
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• 제9권1호
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• pp.163-184
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• 2009

Sherman Alexie deals with reservation realism in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Smoke Signals. By reservation realism he means American Indian traditions and its problems like alcoholism, violence, unemployment, depression, and poverty on the reservation. It cannot be denied that the traditional ceremonies have played significant roles in making it possible for American Indians to keep their own ethnic identities. It is, however, also true that the same traditions have prevented them from embracing modernity. Alexie believes that it is high time that Indians living on the reservation discarded the old tradition of racial exclusiveness for a gradual crossing of cultural borders. What is seriously needed on today's reservation is not the historic figure of Crazy Horse, a stoic and masculine warrior in the late 19th century, but Sacagawea, a Shoshoni Indian who helped Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the American West in the early 19th century. When asked to be more specific about cross cultural examples, Alexie proposes successful Indian doctors and lawyers as role models on the reservation.