Culture Shock

Culture Shock

The way two storms clash together to create a monster more powerful than either, so is the way with culture. Two cultures can never come together without some type of conflict. In Tom Whitecloud’s story “Blue Winds Dancing,” he tells of the internal struggles of a young Indian on his way home from the city. “Blue Winds Dancing” is a story of about the clash of advanced and Native American cultures. An advanced culture will always be in conflict with a less advanced one because each culture has specific ways and beliefs. The more advanced culture will try to swallow up the less advanced, and each culture believes that it is better off than the other.

Each culture has specific ways and beliefs that inevitably conflict with the other. In a more advanced culture there is an anxiety about each person’s place in society (144). There is no way to put one culture into another without a sense of shock and yearning for home. This is the case in “Blue Winds Dancing,” the main character Tom, longs to hear the beat of drums and the whisper of blue winds (145). The Advanced culture of the city was loud and full of people talking all the time. Once Tom returned to his home, he was met with happiness and greeted by smiles that did not need words (148).

More advanced cultures will try to swallow up less advanced ones. On his way home, Tom passes through the land where great Indian nations once stood. In one area, he sees Indian women selling pottery and sees it as “the stone age offering its art to the twentieth century” (145). Advanced cultures believe that their ways are best. In the story “these civilized white men want . . . ‘everyone’ . . . to be like them” (144). Advanced cultures also try to make other cultures feel that their own way of life is wrong or poor in an effort to swallow them up. Tom hears that his people are inferior and they worship sticks and false gods (145).

Both cultures believe that they are better