Displacement and dispossession have been part of United States history since the birth of the nation. After the Native Americans were thought to have souls, they were no longer physically exterminated, but rather culturally exterminated (Smith 37). The land of the natives was taken and they were reduced to small and inadequate reservations. Native Americans were forced to attend boarding schools and were culturally dispossessed, women especially faced challenges because they faced discrimination based on their gender as well as their ethnicity, we continue to see similar dispossession in modern day society. Andrea Smith’s writing about the struggle of Native Americans in the boarding school system and Gloria Anzaldua’s mestiza consciousness demonstrate the dispossession of non-white people in the United States. Allies of the Native Americans advocated to “kill the Indian and save the man (Smith 36).” It was far more cost effective to commit “cultural rather than physical genocide (Smith 37).” Native Americans were denied the right to their culture, children were forced to attend boarding schools that would rid them of their cultural practices and “civilize them.” Native Americans were to be civilized in theses boarding schools and taught American culture, with the supposed goal to assimilate to mainstream society but “because of racism in the U.S., Native Peoples could never really assimilate into the dominant society (Smith 37).” Native Americans were dispossessed from their own culture, one door being closed without the other door ever being opened. Andrea Smith quotes Native American writer K. Tsianina Lomawaima saying “[an] ideological rationale more fully accounts for domesticity training: it was training in dispossession u... ... middle of paper ... ...tted. Native Americans were treated like soulless animals. Native children in schools had their face rubbed in their own excrements (Smith 39) the same way we rub a puppy’s face in his own urine when we are house breaking him. Once it was apparent that it was more cost effective to educate and butcher the Native’s culture instead of killing them, the boarding school system was swiftly implemented. People of color continue to deal with the butchering of their culture; Native Americans have social issues present in their communities that are the legacies of the dispossession they suffered long and not so long ago. Other people of color today in the U.S. also continue to suffer from racist and discriminatory practices, Spanish speaking immigrants are just one example of a similar dispossession caused by the state intervening in the passing down of language and culture.
In the words of Ross, her focus and goal for writing this book was to write “…about the racialized and gendered experiences of incarceration, with a focus on Native American women and the loss of sovereignty as it is implicitly tied to Native criminality…” because there was little information on this subject. This means that Ross studied wo...
American Indians shaped their critique of modern America through their exposure to and experience with “civilized,” non-Indian American people. Because these Euro-Americans considered traditional Indian lifestyle savage, they sought to assimilate the Indians into their civilized culture. With the increase in industrialization, transportation systems, and the desire for valuable resources (such as coal, gold, etc.) on Indian-occupied land, modern Americans had an excuse for “the advancement of the human race” (9). Euro-Americans moved Indians onto reservations, controlled their education and practice of religion, depleted their land, and erased many of their freedoms. The national result of this “conquest of Indian communities” was a steady decrease of Indian populations and drastic increase in non-Indian populations during the nineteenth century (9). It is natural that many American Indians felt fearful that their culture and people were slowly vanishing. Modern America to American Indians meant the destruction of their cultural pride and demise of their way of life.
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
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.
Firstly, many tribes lost sacred land during forced migrations. Land is important to Native Americans because it provides a place to pray and visit their ancestors. When they lost those places they not only lost the tangible land but it separated these indigenous people from their church. If individuals weren’t forced from their homes, they were put into concentrating camps or boarding schools. Boarding schools solved the Indian problem of how to eliminate Natives while being cost efficient. At these schools, Indians couldn’t speak their first language or practice their faith. They had to completely assimilate into western culture. This was one part of the presentation I was well informed on and had learned about boarding schools and the transformation of Indian children from high school. Another reason why tribes lost their sovereignty is because after an Indian chief murdered another chief, the US federal government intervened and declared their right to arbitrate any major crime that Indians committed. Although the federal government has taken some of the tribes sovereignty, the Indians can’t persecute any other race but their own. Dr. Speed explained that the federal government often won’t work with Indian women on rape cases because they are expensive and far away from the reservation. This means Indian victims are not getting justice for their tragedies. This
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.
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.
The Native American Reservation system was a complete failure. This paper focuses on the topics of relocation, Native American boarding schools, current conditions on today’s reservations, and what effects these have had on the Native American way of life.
Native American children were physically and sexually abused at a school they were forced to attend after being stripped from their homes in America’s attempt to eliminate Native peoples culture. Many children were caught running away, and many children never understood what home really meant. Poet Louise Erdich is part Native American and wrote the poem “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways” to uncover the issues of self-identity and home by letting a student who suffered in these schools speak. The poem follows Native American kids that were forced to attend Indian boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries. By using imagery, allusion, and symbolism in “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways”, Louise Erdrich displays how repulsive Indian
In this paper, I will argue that the act of genocide as here defined, has been committed by the United States of America, upon the tribes and cultures of Native Americans, through mass indoctrination of its youths. Primary support will be drawn from Jorge Noriega's work, "American Indian Education in the United States." The paper will then culminate with my personal views on the subject, with ideas of if and how the United States might make reparations to its victims.
All men are created equal (Declaration of Independence). Yet, the Native Americans continue their fight for decades since colonization. There is a constant struggle to urge for equality from William Apess in his 1833 essay, An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man. In modern day, the fight continues after his lifetime. Equality and freedom is the goal for most Native Americans. Although securing the rights of the Native Americans are progressing, it is slow. Therefore, the inequality continues at a faster pace, as opposed to major changes that would impact the Native Americans positively. Throughout history, they are exploited for their land and natural resources and severely underfunded. As a matter of fact, the common theme seems to be that the Native Americans are continuously suppressed by the “superior race”, which showcases the prevalent thoughts in America. William Apess and
You simply cannot justify ripping a child from a loving home and stripping them of their culture and placing them in prison like dormitories where you attempt to “civilize” them. Deculturaliztion will never be a right or just act. Decades later the Native Americans are still picking up the pieces from the wrecking ball that was the Indian Boarding School experience.
The purpose of this paper is to bring attention to the negative impact that White Supremacy has had and continues to have on Native Americans.
The English tried to assimilate the Native Americans into the English society. The English made an executive decision for the Native Americans that were “Native American children need to be educated by the Europeans in some aspects of subjects,” from this document alone it shows that the Europeans were trying to assimilate them into their own culture and society. Native Americans regularly went to the English settlers homes to trade and exchange goods. In document B, it shows how the English settlers were welcoming the Native Americans into their homes and feasted. This peace didn’t last forever when conflict arose each side truly believed that they weren’t the ones to blame. The Chieftain was believed to be the one to start the conflict between the Native Americans and English
In this particular quote, Smith uses the term "dispossession" to mean the act of taking away the power of a group/or individual through indoctrination of their norms and committing "cultural genocide". In this example he illustrates that Indian women are being taught not for their own economic prosperity, but to domesticize and mold them into a patriarchal society in order to take away their position of leadership through education (Smith, 37). This dispossession can be further enforced by the institutions lack of accountability towards authorities, lack of resources to help them achieve, and through the teaching that their culture is "uneducated/barbaric" (Willinsky, 97-99).