In the beginning of the film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, viewers are introduced to the young Native American boy Oyisha, later known as Charles Eastman. After his father made him leave his tribe to go to an Native American boarding school, he is quickly forced to change his cultural identity through assimilation. Assimilation caused by the Dawes Act of 1887 was widely used to erase every bit of culture that Native Americans held so they can conform to “civilized” society. The film accurately portrays assimilation as the viewers see the main character Charles Eastman change from a cultured Native American boy to a man visibly disconnected from is Native American heritage.
After an attack by soldiers on Oyisha’s tribe, his father who has
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been gone to live in society comes back for him to put him into white society. His father is the first instance of an assimilated Native American in the film as he is visibly not dressed in Native American dress and wants Oyisha to change like he has. His father cut his long hair which is worn proudly by Native Americans to fit in with the society he soon was going to be ejected into. Oyisha also is involuntarily made to go to a Native American boarding school where they placed a book of white Christian names for him to pick, wanting him to give up his Native American name for something more “acceptable”. Oyisha initially refuses to change his name but after some time he gives in and picks out the name Charles.. These series of events is the beginning of Eastman’s assimilation. The Dawes Act of 1887 was an act passed by Congress that essentially allowed acres of land that was Native American territory to be sold.
This also led to many Native Americans that lived in the confines of the territories being forced to conformed the “civilized” society. In the Dawes Act it states, “...every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States who has voluntarily taken up, within said limits, his residence separate and apart from any tribe of Indians therein, and has adopted the habits of civilized life…”(1887, Congress). Although they would be considered full citizens of the United States, they were unwillingly taken from tribe. This act would cause the creation of Native American boarding schools which would be filled with young Native Americans learning how to act “civilized” in …show more content…
society. Eastman’s experience with assimilation is very similar to instances many Native Americans went through.
A lot of young Native Americans were assimilated through education as they are still in adolescents and could be easily shaped into the government’s ideal citizen. In a presidential message to Congress, President Chester Arthur reaches out to reform the Indian Policy Reform by saying, “...there is reason to believe that the Indians in large numbers would be persuaded to sever their tribal relations and to engage at once in agricultural pursuits.”(Arthur, 1881) By disconnecting Native Americans from their culture, the government was able to have control over the Native Americans and how they lived their lives. This is comparative to the Eastman’s experience as he was disconnected to his tribal heritage by having his hair cut and leaving his tribe to go to an Native American industrial
school. The portrayal of American history in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is not surprising at all. In all honesty, American history is comprised of hatred of a group of people that is not white. This can be seen with slavery, segregation, Native American removal, and a plethora of other examples. A lot of this tension and hatred is still ingrained in American society. The remainates of these times are still actively present and thriving. Many people like to sugarcoat the horrid events people had to experience in the United States but the film lays out how Native Americans were mistreated and even massacred during these times. The United States is nowhere near to being the “perfect country”. Most likely it will never be until people stop carrying hatred in their hearts for groups of people that are different than themselves.
Dawes Severalty Act (1887). In the past century, with the end of the warfare between the United. States and Indian tribes and nations, the United States of America. continued its efforts to acquire more land for the Indians. About this time the government and the Indian reformers tried to turn Indians.
Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era edited by Frederick E. Hoxie is a book which begins with an introduction into the life of Charles Eastman and a brief overview of the history of Native Americans and their fight for justice and equal rights, it then continues by describing the different ways and avenues of speaking for Indian rights and what the activists did. This leads logically into the primary sources which “talk back” to the society which had overrun their own. The primary sources immerse the reader into another way of thinking and cause them to realize what our societal growth and even foundation has caused to those who were the true natives. The primary sources also expand on the main themes of the book which are outlines in the introduction. They are first and most importantly talking back to the “pale faces”, Indian education, religion, American Indian policy, the image of the Indians presented in America. The other chapters in the book further expanded on these ideas. These themes will be further discussed in the following chapters along with a review of this
The Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 brought about the policy of Cultural Assimilation for the Native American peoples. Headed by Richard Henry Pratt, it founded several Residential Schools for the re-education and civilization of Native Americans. Children from various tribes and several reservations were removed from their families with the goal of being taught how to be c...
In 1887 the federal government launched boarding schools designed to remove young Indians from their homes and families in reservations and Richard Pratt –the leader of Carlisle Indian School –declared, “citizenize” them. Richard Pratt’s “Kill the Indian… and save the man” was a speech to a group of reformers in 1892 describing the vices of reservations and the virtues of schooling that would bring young Native Americans into the mainstream of American society.
People know about the conflict between the Indian's cultures and the settler's cultures during the westward expansion. Many people know the fierce battles and melees between the Indians and the settlers that were born from this cultural conflict. In spite of this, many people may not know about the systematic and deliberate means employed by the U.S. government to permanently rid their new land of the Indians who had lived their own lives peacefully for many years. There are many strong and chilling reasons and causes as to why the settlers started all of this perplexity in the first place. There was also a very strong and threatening impact on the Native Americans through the schooling that stained the past and futures of Native Americans not only with blood but also with emotion. It was all a slow and painful plan of the "white man" to hopefully get rid of the Indian culture, forever. The Native American schools were created in an attempt to destroy the Native American way of life, their culture, beliefs and tradi...
Ohiyesa’s father, Jacob “Many Lightnings” Eastman was instrumental in his assimilation into the white man’s culture, beginning with his education. Unlike many other Native American children in boarding schools, Charles learned to read and write in his native language. This progressive program of learning was often criticized because of the fear felt among American settlers after the Great Sioux Uprising. The settlers, as well as the government agencies, sought only acculturation of the Indians into the w...
The process of assimilation, as it regards to the Native Americans, into European American society took a dreaded and long nearly 300 years. Initially, when the European’s came to the hopeful and promising land of the “New World”, they had no desire or reason anything but minimal contact with the Indians. However, starting in the 1700s the European colonists population skyrocketed. The need for more resources became evident and the colonists knew they could attain these necessities by creating a relationship of mutual benefit with the Native tribes. The Indians, at first skeptical, however became growingly open to the colonists and the relationship they were looking to attain. Indian furs were traded for colonial goods and military alliances were formed.
The Indian Boarding School Experience sanctioned by the U.S government decultralized Native Americans through Anglo Conformity which has led to a cultural smudging of the Native American mores generations later, disrupting centuries of cultural constructions and the norms and values of the Native American people.
When the Dawes Act, a Native American Policy, was enforced in 1887, it focused on breaking up reservations by granting land allotments to individual Native Americans. At that time, people believed that if a person adopted the white man’s clothing, ways and was responsible for his own farm, he would eventually drop his, as stated by the Oxford University Press, “Indian-ness” and become assimilated in American society. The basic idea of this act was the taking away of Native American Culture because they were considered savage and primitive to the incoming settlers. Many historians now agree the Native’s treatment throughout the Dawes Act was completely unfair, unlawful, and unethical. American Society classified them as savages solely on their differences in morals, religion, appearance and overall culture.
Talking Back to Civilization , edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, is a compilation of excerpts from speeches, articles, and texts written by various American Indian authors and scholars from the 1890s to the 1920s. As a whole, the pieces provide a rough testimony of the American Indian during a period when conflict over land and resources, cultural stereotypes, and national policies caused tensions between Native American Indians and Euro-American reformers. This paper will attempt to sum up the plight of the American Indian during this period in American history.
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.
The video “Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee,” tells the story of being pushed onto reservations in the Midwest and Black Hills negotiations. The main characters include Charles Eastman, Red Cloud, and Sitting Bull. These characters each play a significant role in capturing the emotional state of life among the governing agencies and tribal members.
The Indian Termination Policy of 1953 was the government’s answer to fix Indian conditions on the reservations; in 1943, the government surveyed the living conditions of the Indians on reservations and found them to be living in poverty (“The American Indian Movement”). Alison Owings explains to readers that the Indians were living in poverty as a direct and indirect result of previous laws and policies, such as the 1887 Dawes Act where greater than ninety million acres of tribal land was stripped from Indians and sold to non-natives (
We have all heard of broken treaties, but if you take the time to look at a map showing when and where land was taken from the Indians you will be shocked at the extent of it recurring not just a few times here and there, but countless times until the Indians essentially have no land left of value. Add to that the effect of deprivation of culture, character, and religion that their children being imprisoned in Indian Schools had on the Indian race. Here they were forced to abandon their language, culture, religion, clothing and long hair, in fact, anything that was Indian about them was stripped from them supplanted by white ways. Not only in the schools, but for adults on the reservations, it was made illegal for Indians to practice any religious rites or cultural ceremonies. Their white conquerors were so afraid of the Indians, even to see them dancing, that they basically made it illegal to be Indian. Despite all this the Indian Medicine Men, like Lame Deer, held safe their ancient and sacred way of life, by playing along with the white man in western shows like Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Let’s look now beyond this resilience into the depth of Indian culture that Lame Deer has
The Dawes Act was a policy passed on February 18, 1887, by Massachusetts senator Henry Dawes. The act stated that the president (which at the time was Grover Cleaveland), could break up land in Reservations, and organize them into plots. The plots ranged in size from forty to one-hundred sixty acres. The plots were then distributed out to the Indians. From there, they were expected to farm it. That was an attempt to assimilate them. Assimilating the Indians was very important to settlers. They believed that if they could make them “more American”, they could have more control over them.