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Traditional beliefs of American Indians
Native Americans the story of their culture
Native Americans the story of their culture
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Recommended: Traditional beliefs of American Indians
In the film, Dreamkeeper, I felt that I learned a lot of interesting stories that the Grandfather Pete Chasing Horse told his troubled young grandson, Shane. The movie started off with the grandfather talking with kids and telling them the story of Eagle boy until Shane was thrown out of a car from the people he owed money to. Shane got in trouble because he pawned a ring for his girlfriend rather than a boom box for the gangster he worked for. The Eagle Boy was alone on the hill with just the buffalo robe and sacred pipe as well as himself, he desired a vision. However, we later find out why he was being denied a vision over and over again. His path to redemption somehow coincides with the destiny of Shane. The Grandfather Pete Chasing Horse …show more content…
The main questions are how to measure it and who really has it? (Native 27). An interesting difference that I saw between the movie and the reading during Week one was how Shane was able to recognize the Pawnee tribal woman at the Powwow and how he related the horse tale of the poor grandson and grandmother to her. However, in the reading during Week one it states how, ““The Big Game”- basketball tournament amongst Native Americans led to controversy over the lack of identity. Some did not have government cards; some did not look the part. However, the whole Navajo could recite their clan affiliation and introduce themselves in the Navajo language. In the end the championship game got canceled; there was no champion (Native 29). Throughout the film, it talks about specific tribes in these tales and often times they had some noticeable differences such as location and environment. In the week one reading, it states how the people matrix can be seen through their differences in language, sacred history, ceremonial cycle, and place/territory (Native 36). However, in this film, Dreamkeeper, I felt that the environment of the Powwow in the end was so peaceful and was a combination of many Native American cultures. It was great to see people dancing in circles and listening to stories about different tribes and tales. The indigenous identity today seems to revolve around the elders as well as the Powwows, as it did for Shane, it helps confused young Native American men and women to learn where they come from and the beliefs their people had about the white man who helped them, animals spirituality, and its’ own Native American
A lot of people have tribes, and almost every tribe is different. In rules, looks, and meanings. There are two specific tribes to learn about today. That is the Apache tribe and the Lakota tribe. There are many similarities and differences.
It is not out of line to expect Native Americans to live like their ancestors, and I agree with the way that O'Nell made the government look like the wrongdoers. She talks like "indians" are just part of stories or like they have not kept up with the times. This book points out many of the problems for native americans by bringing out problems in identity, culture, and depression dealing with the Flathead Tribe in Montana. The book is divided into three parts to accomplish this. Part 1 is about the American government's policies that were put on the reservations and how it affected the culture of the Flathead Tribe attached to that reservation. This is the base for is to come in the next two parts, which talk about how lonliness an pity tie into the identity and depression.
The systematic racism and discrimination in America has long lasting effects that began back when Europeans first stepped foot on American soil is still visible today but only not written into the law. This racism has lead to very specific consequences on the Native people in today’s modern world, and while the racism is maybe not as obvious it is still very present. These modern Native peoples fight against the feeling of community as a Native person, and feeling entirely alone and not a part of it. The poem “The Reservation” by Susan Cloud and “The Real Indian Leans Against” by Chrystos examine the different effects and different settings of how their cultures survived but also how so much was lost for them within their own identity.
Duane Champagne in Social Change and Cultural Continuity Among Native Nations explains that there has never been one definitive world view that comprises any one Native American culture, as there is no such thing as one “Native community” (2007:10). However, there are certain commonalities in the ways of seeing and experiencing the world that many Native communities and their religions seem to share.
As a result, both films represent Native Americans from the point of view of non-Native directors. Despite the fact that they made use of the fabricated stereotypes in their illustrations of the indigenous people, their portrayal was revolutionary in its own times. Each of the films adds in their own way a new approach to the representation of indigenous people, their stories unfolding in a different way. These differences make one look at the indigenous not only as one dimensional beings but as multifaceted beings, as Dunbar says, “they are just like us.” This is finally a sense of fairness and respect by the non-native populations to the Native Indians.
The underlying theme is that throughout the hardships and adversity forced onto the Indians, they find a way trough the triumph of human spirit and it's own agency to emerge with their tribal identities intact, but one that is revered as an inspiration to all people striving through injustices and discrimination to endure and push forward for equality. I believe that so much can be learned from the history of the Indians and can serve as a template for the future of ow people of different cultures should be treated, because we can now look at the injustices that were committed against this group of people, and how we as people of the world can avoid repeating these kinds of practices from happening.
Like many Americans I initially grouped all Native Americans into one melting pot. During the Haskell Indian Nations cultural day, on June 21,st 2010, the speakers talked about how different tribes are not the same; they have different beliefs...
The right to remain independent and to have control over the tribe’s assets is an essential part of every Native tribe, big or small. After many hardships the tribes have suffered at the hand of western expansion, cultural sovereignty created a border of control that only the Native Americans can alter themselves. To me “Cultural Sovereignty” is having the ability to maintain a self-regulating government within a specific culture, which not only protects the people under it but also the values in which the society believes in, while being free of the influence and interference that comes from outside sources. Throughout history, it has been a major role in the survival and expansion of many cultures, not only in America but worldwide. When
The author, Gloria Ladson-Billings, discusses in her book, "The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children," how African American students perform at lower academic levels in part due to teacher approaches and attitudes. She performed a study on eight teachers of different races and backgrounds and their approaches to teaching African American students. The purpose of the study was to identify what approaches or techniques have been most successful in helping African American students to achieve academic success. She also focuses on the idea of "culturally relevant teaching" and how it can positively impact students when teachers are aware and incorporate a student's culture and backgrounds into the classroom. Throughout the book, the
Have you ever studied the Native American beliefs and heritages? Some stories told by the Indians are “The Origin of The Buffalo and The Corn,” “The First False Face,” and “The Coyote.” How are these stories similar? How are they different? We will organize them in three sections: characters, climaxes, and endings/resolutions.
Nevertheless, in the author’s note, Dunbar-Ortiz promises to provide a unique perspective that she did not gain from secondary texts, sources, or even her own formal education but rather from outside the academy. Furthermore, in her introduction, she claims her work to “be a history of the United States from an Indigenous peoples’ perspective but there is no such thing as a collective Indigenous peoples’ perspective (13).” She states in the next paragraph that her focus is to discuss the colonist settler state, but the previous statement raises flags for how and why she attempts to write it through an Indigenous perspective. Dunbar-Ortiz appears to anchor herself in this Indian identity but at the same time raises question about Indigenous perspective. Dunbar-Ortiz must be careful not to assume that just because her mother was “most likely Cherokee,” her voice automatically resonates and serves as an Indigenous perspective. These confusing and contradictory statements do raise interesting questions about Indigenous identity that Dunbar-Ortiz should have further examined. Are
The movie starts by showing the Indians as “bad” when Johnson finds a note of another mountain man who has “savagely” been killed by the Indians. This view changes as the movie points out tribes instead of Indians as just one group. Some of the tribes are shown dangerous and not to be messed with while others are friendly, still each tribe treats Johnson as “outsider.” Indians are not portrayed as greater than “...
Throughout life you encounter a numerous amount of obstacles. These obstacles don’t define you, how you handle them does. In the book “The Running Dream” by Wendelin Van Draanen, Jessica encounters the biggest obstacle that life could throw at her. Jessica has had to learn to adjust her life from what it was. Her life is changing and she has to decide if this accident defines who she is going to be while being surrounded by the love and comfort of her family.
Matthew Power’s text, Ghosts of Wounded Knee, glances into the lives of Native Americans who live on the Pine Ridge and White Clay reservations. The reader immediately senses a loss of identity while being introduced to the families that live on the reservations. Marty Red Cloud is a young man who lives on the Pine Ridge reservation, he is also a member of a gang called Wild Boyz. His lifestyle seems to describe the life of a poverty-stricken, inner city young man, not the life of the great, great, great grandson of Red Cloud who was one of the last Lakota chiefs. Marty portrays The Wild Boyz as a group that has embraced the African American gang style, “-- a gang that takes its cultural cues more from Tupac Shakur than Crazy Horse” (Power 65). Marty Red Cloud shows his loss of identity in many different way, modern day Native American are branching further and further away from the
The Nightmare begins with Saidi pitting his protagonist, Ben Chadiza, against his antagonist, the witchdoctor. A group of seven witchdoctors, is described as they encircle Chadiza: “It was a macabre scene, which in other circumstances the sophisticated Mr. Benjamin Chadiza would have carelessly attributed to his rather flamboyant imagination” (Saidi 421). The definitions of the specific words in this quote speak volumes as to its underlying meaning. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary macabre means: “comprising or including a personalized representation of death”. Mr. Chadiza is described as sophisticated: “having a refined knowledge of the ways of the world cultivated especially through wide experience.” In using these words Saidi gives Chadiza the identity of personified worldly knowledge and foreshadows the character’s courtship with death that continues through the story in the person of the witchdoctor. Saidi further identifies Chadiza and his wife as the “children” in this allegory by saying that Chadiza had “Cried like a small child” during his nightmare and upon awakening, was comforted by his wife in a way that resembles a mother comforting her child: “His wife put her arms around him and soothed him with her warmth, pressing her breasts to his chest and whispering comfort close to his ear” (422). The witchdoctor also refers to Chadiza as “my son” in paragraph 39 (425). Toward the end of the story it is revealed that Chadiza’s wife, Maria, is the biological granddaughter of the witchdoctor and that her mother had forsaken the witchdoctor “because of his sorcery” (427). Mr. Chadiza and his wife are therefore identified as the children of this sorcerer in figurative and literal ways. But they are more than that. The...