Assertion Analysis #5: Seeker of Visions

     Every Native American tribe in America is on the verge of dying because their cultures are all language based, many Native American people are not able to speak their language therefore the culture can't survive. Although their native culture won't survive, the white culture will take over in its place. John Lame Deer, a Lakota holy man, uses satire to criticize the white peoples' culture.
     Lame Deer starts it off with, "Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison" implying that without the white people coming over to America and giving them prisons, the Natives would be uncivilized. However, with the introduction of prisons, that brought along delinquents, he says, "Because of this, we had no delinquents." After that he tells us other things that white people have introduced to the natives, and without those things, the natives would still be a culture that respects and trusts each other. In the last paragraph, he uses satire to poke at the fact that the white men didn't make them "civilized" because having prisons, having locks and keys, having money and private property, as well as written laws, transformed their culture of community into one where one person cares only about themselves.
     Just because they didn't have prisons, they were uncivilized even though that introduced delinquents; because they didn't use locks or keys, they were uncivilized even though they all shared with one another; because they didn't have money, "their value of a human being was not determined by his wealth." He presents all these ideas just to bring it to his point that before the white men arrived, they were a civilized society and they survived without all those things.