To a great extent my writing has a natural political-cultural bent simply because I was nurtured intellectually and emotionally within an atmosphere of Native American resistance. The Acoma Pueblo, despite losing much of their land and surrounded by a foreign civilization, have not lost sight of their native heritage. At times, in the past, it was outright armed struggle; currently, it is often in the legal arena, and it is in the field of literature.
In 1981, when I was invited to the White House for an event celebrating American poets and poetry, I did not immediately accept the invitation. I questioned myself about the possibility that I was merely being exploited as an Indian, and I hedged against accepting. But then I recalled the elders going among our people in the poor days of the 1950s, asking for donations in order to finance a trip to the nation's capital. They were to make another countless appeal on behalf of our people, to demand justice, to reclaim lost land even though there was only spare hope they would be successful. I went to the White House realizing that I was to do no less than they and those who had fought in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and I read my poems and sang songs that were later described as "guttural" by a Washington, D.C. newspaper. I suppose it is more or less understandable why such a view of Native American literature is held by many, and it is also clear why there should be a political stand taken in my writing and those of my sister and brother Native American writers.
The 1960s and afterward have been an invigorating and liberating period for Native American people. It has been only a little more than twenty years since Native American writers began to write and publish extensively, but we are writing and publishing more and more; we can only go forward. We come from an ageless, continuing oral tradition that informs us of our values, concepts, and notions as native people, and it is amazing how much of this tradition is ingrained so deeply in our contemporary writing, considering the brutal efforts of cultural repression that was not long ago outright U.S. policy. In spite of the fact that there is to some extent the same repression today, we persist and insist in living, believing, hoping, loving, speaking, and writing as Native Americans.
Which of the following statements best expresses the main idea of Paragraph 1 of this selection?
A. The artful nature of Native American life compels the author to explore and write about that heritage.
B. Art is an important part of Native American life and should be a part of everyone's existence.
C. The author remembers his childhood, especially his parents and the elders in his community, in a very positive way.
D. A desire to return to traditional Native American values led the author to write about Native American issues.
The local ethnic communities get the funds from ______ .
A. the government
B. the public
C. some organizations
D. the passage does not say
The purpose of this passage seems most likely to ______ .
A. show that a human is little better than a dog when communicating with it
B. illustrate how intelligent dogs can be when they have had special training
C. hint that dog owners would be better off without forcing dogs to behave like a human
D. disprove all the possible reasons for humans to keep dogs with them for company
Polychronic people may often delay their appointments because ______ .
A. being late is a custom to show importance
B. things are often changing until the last minute
C. they don't have plans for the future at all
D. they are too busy to be punctual