Thomas mixes elements of the traditional with elements of the modern in order to make his stories all that much more relevant, and all the more urgent. ... (The reserved Victor, impatient with Thomas's chatter, accuses him of having learned most of what he knows about Indians by watching ``Dances With Wolves,'' and advises him to spend more time ``looking stoic.'') ... ``Smoke Signals'' is, in a way, a continuation of a 1989 movie named ``Powwow Highway,'' in which Farmer starred as a huge, gentle, insightful man, and A Martinez as more ``modern...

• Word Count: 2533
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

One of the most precise ritual expressions of this centrality is found in one of the rites of the Avapaho Sun Dance. In this dance their sacred wheel is placed against each of the four sides of a man's body. ... This particular symbol may be found among the crew in the three things they often paint around the sacred cottonwood tree at the center of their circular Sun Dance lodge. ... Some Indians tried something new and they surprised everybody by taking over the "modern weste...

• Word Count: 3640
• Approx Pages: 15
• Grade Level: High School

The opening line emphasizes (assuming that in accordance with Blues musical lyrics, 'dancing' often was a euphemism for sex) the loneliness as felt by Native Americans as a result of fractured family and community life on the Reservations (not one of the main characters has grown up through functional happy childhoods, Victor being abandoned by both his parents, Junior losing his parents, and as an indirect consequence his immediate family of younger siblings, to drink driving, whilst Thomas and Chess/Checkers both live through alcoholic abuse by their fathers). ... He has to dance...

• Word Count: 2551
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate