Indigenous Identities

1374 Words3 Pages

Each individual makes up the society as it is, and various characteristics and beliefs makes up an individual. Although, individual lives together with a variety of personal ideologies, emotions, cultures, and rituals, they all differentiate one person from the other making up one’s own identity. This identity makes up who one is inside and out, their behaviour, actions, and words comes from their own practices and values. However, the profound history of Indigenous people raises question in the present about their identities. Who are they really? Do we as the non-native people judge them from the outside or the inside? Regardless of whether the society or the government were involved in their lives, they faced discrimination in every shape and form. They faced discrimination and left their values at residential school, outside in the general population, and faced gender discrimination. Many non-native government policies took place in their lives and shaped their new-unwanted identity, which was followed by the indigenous, however was it followed by them deep inside? One cannot agree on taking actions verbally and follow it physically, and if it was verbally and physically the results would have been different. However, in this case the results were awful as only physical forced was used by non-native peoples to get the native peoples to follow the Euro-Canadian way of lifestyle.

Through “enfranchisement policies” (Warry 103), the natives were to abandon their identity-status and culture-to achieve particular human rights that were made for other Canadians (Warry 103). Government policies played major role in reshaping their identity, taking away what they had been born and raised with to learn something new, and not just learn ...

... middle of paper ...

... and kept among them. In order to understand another person, one must live the life they live and in order to do that the teachers if not the government should educate and develop activities which will help the native students and non-native students to experience a new identity and add on a new piece of knowledge to the ones already gained. Their stories should be hidden in old text books under the dust or inside these individuals, but it should be brought out to the general public.

Works Cited

Cannon, Martin John, and Lina Sunseri. “Revisiting Histories of legal Assimilation, Racialized Injustice, and the Future of Indian Status in Canada.” Racism, Colonialism, and Indigeneity in Canada: a Reader. Don Mills, Ont.: OUP, 2011

Warry, Wayne. "Being Aboriginal: Identity." Ending Denial: Understanding Aboriginal Issues. Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto, 2009.

Open Document