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The revitalization movement political-religious movements promising deliverance from hardship, the end of outside mastery, and another understanding of the human condition taking into account customary social qualities, basic in social orders experiencing extreme anxiety connected with pilgrim triumph and serious class or racial misuse. A noticeable case is the Ghost Dance of Native Americans, who trusted that their custom would bring about predecessors and buffalo groups to return and white individuals to clear out. In spite of the fact that a peaceful type of challenge, it finished with the slaughter of more than 200 Sioux men, ladies, and youngsters by the U.S. armed force at Wounded Knee , S.Dak., in 1890. Payload cliques are another type
"On September 25, 1990, hearings were conducted in the United States Senate by the Select Committee on Indian Affairs regarding the historical circumstances surrounding the Wounded Knee Massacre" (United States). As a result, Senate Congressional Resolution 153 (1989-1990) was passed. The following are excerpts from that resolution: "Whereas the Sioux people who are descendants of the victims and survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre have been striving to reconcile and, in a culturally appropriate manner, to bring to an end their 100 years of grieving for the tragedy of December 29, 1890 ... which brought to a close an era in the history of this country ... characterized by an official government policy of forcibly removing the Indian tribes and bands from the path of westward expansion and settlement through placement on reservations.... Now therefore be it resolved by the Senate, that, 1) the Congress, on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre of December 29, 1890, hereby acknowledges the historical significance of this event as the last armed conflict of the Indian wars period resulting in the tragic death and injury of approximately 350-375 Indian men, women, and children of Chief Big Foot 's band of Minneconjou Sioux and hereby expresses its deep regret on behalf of the United States to the descendants of the victims
It was a great time of despair for the Native American people as the defeat of their nations by the ever westward expanding United States and subsequent placement onto reservations disrupted their culture and way of life as it had existed for hundreds of years. The decade leading up to 1890, which was a main focal point in the history of Native Americans, saw the passing of the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act which called for the breaking up of reservations and offering the Indians an opportunity to become citizens and giving them an allotment of land to farm or graze livestock on (Murrin 628). This breaking up of the different tribes’ social structure was just one of the many causes which led to the spiritual movement known as the Ghost Dance (or Lakota Ghost Dance) that swept across what remained of the Native American people in their various reservations. Other reasons for the Indian’s dysphoria at this time in their history included: lack of hunting, decease of the buffalo, forced abandonment of their religion, nearly forced conversion to Christianity, westernization, and having to farm for the very first time.
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
Native Americans were not afforded full citizenship in the United States until 1924, therefore they were not afforded the rights of American citizens i.e. religious freedom until then. It wasn’t until 1945, that the Supreme Court held that “Freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country” (Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, 148). In 1890 the Ghost Dance movement gain momentum within the Lakota. This created concern and fear among many whites in the area. A massacre at Wounded Knee on the Lakota Reservation in South Dakota was a direct result of the Euro- American fears of non-Christian people. Tisa Wegner tells us, “in 1906, Congress supported a view, amending the Dawes Act to postpone citizenship for newly allotted Indians for twenty-five-year period or until they had “adopted the habits of civilized life” (Hoxie 1995:211-238). The Native people then developed secular dance ceremonies which allowed them to continue the practice of dancing and not be perceived as a threat, they did this by having these ceremonies coincide with Euro-American
The Indians were being confined to crowed reservations that were poorly run, had scarce game, alcohol was plentiful, the soil was poor, and the ancient religious practices were prohibited. The Indians were not happy that they had been kicked off there land and were now forced to live on a reservation. The Indians then began to Ghost Dance a form of religion it is said that if the Indians were to do this trance like dance the country would be cleansed of white intruders. Also dead ancestors and slaughtered buffalo would return and the old ways would be reborn in a fruitful land. Once the Bureau of Indian affairs noticed what was going on they began to fear this new religion would lead to warfare. The white peoplewere scared that this new dance was a war dance. They called for army protection. Army was called in to try to curbed this new religion before it could start a war.
Throughout our country’s history there have been several groups who have fared less that great. Every minority group was treated unfairly, Indians were uprooted and had no control, I can’t imagine for a second being a soldier in combat, women struggled for basic rights, and many people fell victim to the changing ways of our economy, losing their jobs and fighting to survive. It seems wrong to pick one group over another, as if to say some people who were treated horribly or who faced mounting obstacles didn’t actually have it as bad as another group. But throughout all the years we’ve studied, one group that stood out to me who were dealt a horrible fate were Native Americans living in the west during the 19th century. When Americans began to expand westward, Indians unwillingly had their lives flipped upside down and changed drastically. After years of displacement, they were being forced to live in certain areas and follow certain rules, or risk their lives.
“Film is more than the instrument of a representation; it is also the object of representation. It is not a reflection or a refraction of the ‘real’; instead, it is like a photograph of the mirrored reflection of a painted image.” (Kilpatrick) Although films have found a place in society for about a century, the labels they possess, such as stereotypes which Natives American are recognized for, have their roots from many centuries ago (Kilpatrick). The Searchers, a movie directed by John Ford and starred by John Wayne, tells the story of a veteran of the American Civil War and how after his return home he would go after the maligned Indians who killed his family and kidnapped his younger niece. After struggling for five years to recover his niece back, who is now a young woman, she is rescued by his own hands. Likewise, Dances with Wolves is a Western film directed and starred by Kevin Costner. It is also situated during the American Civil War and tells the story of a soldier named John Dunbar that after a suicide attempt; he involuntarily leads Union troops to a triumph. Then, by his request he is sent to a remote outpost in the Indian frontier “before it’s gone”. There, the contact with the natives is eminent and thus it shows how through those contacts this soldier is transformed into another Indian that belongs with the Sioux to tribe and who is now called Dances With Wolves. While both John Ford and Kevin Costner emphasize a desire to apologize to the indigenous people, they use similar themes such as stereotypes, miscegenation, and the way characters are depicted; conversely, these two movies are different by the way the themes are developed within each film.
Considering historical evidence, the notion: Native –Americans was not the first inhabitant of America is a complete false. For centuries, history kept accurate and vivid accounts of the first set of people who domiciled the western hemisphere. Judging by those records, below are the first set of Native-American people who inhabited America before the arrival of another human race; the Iroquois: The Iroquois of Native Americans was one of the tribes that lived in America before other people came. Based on historical evidence, it is believed that the Native Americans came from Asia way back during the Ice Age through a land bridge of the Bering Strait. When the Europeans first set foot in America, there were about 10 million Native Americans
For the past 50 years, the United States Government has been conducting disinformation campaigns against minority groups such as the Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army and the Palestine Solidarity Committee. The American Indian Movement (AIM) was not an exception. Propaganda was only one of the many tactics adopted by the government that AIM encountered. Others include assassinations, unprovoked armed confrontations and "fabrication of evidence in criminal cases" (Churchill 219). I will be evaluating Ward Churchill's article "Renegades, Terrorists, And Revolutionaries" on the government's propaganda war against AIM and will also be analyzing his claims as well as some of his rhetorical strategies within his writing. Were the U.S. government and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) really guilty of oppressing AIM as Churchill claims?
In the 30 years after the Civil War, although government policy towards Native Americans intended to shift from forced separation to integration into American society, attempts to "Americanize" Indians only hastened the death of their culture and presence in the America. The intent in the policy, after the end of aggression, was to integrate Native Americans into American society. Many attempts at this were made, ranging from offering citizenship to granting lands to Indians. All of these attempts were in vain, however, because the result of this policies is much the same as would be the result of continued agression.
Native Americans have felt distress from societal and governmental interactions for hundreds of years. American Indian protests against these pressures date back to the colonial period. Broken treaties, removal policies, acculturation, and assimilation have scarred the indigenous societies of the United States. These policies and the continued oppression of the native communities produced an atmosphere of heightened tension. Governmental pressure for assimilation and their apparent aim to destroy cultures, communities, and identities through policies gave the native people a reason to fight. The unanticipated consequence was the subsequent creation of a pan-American Indian identity of the 1960s. These factors combined with poverty, racism, and prolonged discrimination fueled a resentment that had been present in Indian communities for many years. In 1968, the formation of the American Indian Movement took place to tackle the situation and position of Native Americans in society. This movement gave way to a series of radical protests, which were designed to draw awareness to the concerns of American Indians and to compel the federal government to act on their behalf. The movement’s major events were the occupation of Alcatraz, Mount Rushmore, The Trail of Broken Treaties, and Wounded Knee II. These AIM efforts in the 1960s and 1970s era of protest contained many sociological theories that helped and hindered the Native Americans success. The Governments continued repression of the Native Americans assisted in the more radicalized approach of the American Indian Movement. Radical tactics combined with media attention stained the AIM and their effectiveness. Native militancy became a repertoire of action along with adopted strategies from the Civil Rights Movement. In this essay, I will explain the formation of AIM and their major events, while revealing that this identity based social movement’s radical approach led to a harsher governmentally repressive counter movement that ultimately influenced the movements decline.
Pages one to sixty- nine in Indian From The Inside: Native American Philosophy and Cultural Renewal by Dennis McPherson and J. Douglas Rabb, provides the beginning of an in-depth analysis of Native American cultural philosophy. It also states the ways in which western perspective has played a role in our understanding of Native American culture and similarities between Western culture and Native American culture. The section of reading can be divided into three lenses. The first section focus is on the theoretical understanding of self in respect to the space around us. The second section provides a historical background into the relationship between Native Americans and British colonial power. The last section focus is on the affiliation of otherworldliness that exist between
By 1870, most of the Native American population had been subdued onto even smaller reservations. Due to the expansion of the ...
The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. Neihardt, John G. “The Sun Dance.” 28 Jan 2002 http://www.wayne.esu1.k12.ne.us/neihardt/sun.html> Voget, Fred W. The Shoshoni-Crown Sun Dance. New York: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984.
...ed along with many soldiers of the U.S. 7th cavalry at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890. As the years went on, many of the Indian tribes began to die away due to the lack of food, and the harsh winter conditions.