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Impact of colonization on native people
Native Americans and white culture
Impact of colonization on native people
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The Native Americans suffered depression and intoxication and this was all due to a collection of horrible things done to their ancestors, starting with colonial domination, genocide, de-culturalization, and pure hatred towards these Native American Indians from the people that came and took their land from them. Starting with the Spanish who first came to the land that is now the United States, they burned and mutilated these Indians, and even fed them to their animals. The Dominican Priest, Bartolome de Las Casas, believed that burning Indians was “in honor of Christ”. When Columbus arrived to the land that is now the United States, there were approximately 15 million Indians, that number soon decreased to just under 250,000 by the 1890s.
Inventing the Savage: The Social Construct of Native American Criminality. Luana Ross. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1998.
In the fourth chapter titled “Native Reactions to the invasion of America” in the book, “Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America, the author James Axtell shares with us an essay he wrote and shared at a conference at Vanderbilt University. Historical accounts are followed beginning at the arrival of explorers and settlers until the 1700’s with various Native tribes in North America. Axtell’s goal is to educate us on the multitude of ways Native Americas reacted during various periods of colonization, and the various methods that the Native Americans perished. Axtell also educates us in his essay on the ways that Native Americans tried to ultimately prevent their extinction at any cost.
From as early as the time of the early European settlers, Native Americans have suffered
suffering the Native Americans are plagued with as a result of the lack of acceptance towards
People have been living in America for countless years, even before Europeans had discovered and populated it. These people, named Native Americans or American Indians, have a unique and singular culture and lifestyle unlike any other. Native Americans were divided into several groups or tribes. Each one tribe developed an own language, housing, clothing, and other cultural aspects. As we take a look into their society’s customs we can learn additional information about the lives of these indigenous people of the United States.
Native Americans have had a long history of resistance to the social and cultural assimilation into white culture. By employing various creative strategies, Native Americans have attempted to cope with the changes stemming from the European colonial movement into the Americas. There are fundamental differences in world views and cultural and social orders between Indians and Europeans, which contributed to conservatism in Native American cultures. In this paper, two aspects of such cultural and institutional differences of Native American societies will be examined: holistic Native American beliefs versus dualistic world views and harmony versus domination. These two aspects are important in terms of explaining changes (or lack thereof) in Native American societies because they suggest that the Native American world view is more cyclical and its components are interlinked, while Western societies have a clear demarcation between cultural elements, such as religion, kinship, and morality. However, there are certain limitations to the theoretical frameworks that explain conservatism in Indian cultures because these theories are oriented around the Western world view and were developed based on the Western terms; therefore, indigenous population was not taken into account when these theories were developed.
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.
American Indians have had health disparities as result of unmet needs and historical traumatic experiences that have lasted over 500 hundred years.1(p99) Since first contact American Indians have been exposed to infectious disease and death2(p19), more importantly, a legacy of genocide, legislated forcible removal, reservation, termination, allotment, and assimilation3. This catastrophic history had led to generational historical traumas and contributes to the worst health in the United States.2 American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) represent 0.9 percent of the United States population4(p3) or 1.9 million AI/AN of 566 federally recognized tribes/nations.5 American Indians/Alaska Natives have significantly higher mortality rates of intentional and unintentional injuries, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease and chronic lower respiratory disease than other American.6
After the European started immigration, they stated the Native American"genocide The population of the Native American decreased to less than 250,000, which means the 98% of them were gone by 1890. The U.S. government tried to eliminate them by women's birth control, genocide, and forcing them to study English. Two-thirds of them were killed for Americans to sell Native American's scalp,women sterilized, and their children were taken to the Indian Boarding program where their families had to break up. The government reported that at least 500 students died at school due to the loneliness.The tragic factors are still going on. After the U.S. government made the reservations, they still had a serious problem especially about the rate of unemployment, which causes their health issue such as diabetes and alcoholism. When President Clinton visited the reservation, the rate of unemployment was 73 %, while it raised to 85 % today. Even thought they try to get a job outside the reservation, it was almost impossible and ended to going back to the reservation.
Europeans, Spanish and the French. American Indians had thrived on American soil for thousands of
Native-Americans make up one of the smallest portions of our population, but are still victims of mass incarceration and police brutality Many Native-American reservations have high unemployment rates. Poverty in these areas is also common. Reserved, sacred land for Native-Americans is also disappearing as more and more land is being taken away by United States government. The government also disobeys treaty rights by exploiting their land for natural resources to gain profit. Low graduation rates are common in Native school districts. Suicide is much more prevalent among Native-American youth when compared to the rest of the nation. They also generally receive poor healthcare. Violence and abuse of children and women is more common in Native-American communities as well.
The power to be able to fall into a trance where reality and emotions are destroyed seems attractive to minority communities. Substances such as alcohol and drugs are a popular tool abuse by young teens and adults since these materials are easy to possess. However, using a substance to fall into the trance will only be harmful to the individual and their community. Sherman Alexie, a Native American writer, experiences numerous sorrows from alcohol in his life on the reservation and outside of the reservation. He illuminates the sufferings he experience through his fiction character Junior in his novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian and interviews. In addition, reporter Diane Sawyer discovers that alcohol abuse is prevalent on a Native American reservation in her television segment A Hidden America: The Children of the Plains. Even though alcoholism is portrayed as an enemy to the Native American communities, alcohol matures Sherman Alexie to become a representative for his community since he is educating the world about Native Americans’ alcoholic problem. As a result, society can promote better habits for young individuals to adopt which will better their own and community lives.
Native Americans had inherited the land now called America and eventually their lives were destroyed due to European Colonization. When the Europeans arrived and settled, they changed the Native American way of life for the worst. These changes were caused by a number of factors including disease, loss of land, attempts to export religion, and laws, which violated Native American culture.
Many people believe that Native Americans are a disadvantaged group of individuals in many ways. Culturally, in that many of the cultures of the various tribes across the Americas were taken from them by Europeans and their descendants. Socially, in that they are unlike other minorities in the United States because of their extra-constitutional status; and even medically, stemming from the general belief that Natives are at a higher risk for disease than other ethnicities due to tobacco and alcohol use, especially when used together (Falk, Hiller-Sturmhöfel, & Yi, 2006).
The Native Americans or American Indians, once occupied all of the entire region of the United States. They were composed of many different groups, who speaked hundreds of languages and dialects. The Indians from the Southwest used to live in large built terraced communities and their way of sustain was from the agriculture where they planted squash, pumpkins, beans and corn crops. Trades between neighboring tribes were common, this brought in additional goods and also some raw materials such as gems, cooper. seashells and soapstone.To this day, movies and television continue the stereotype of Indians wearing feathered headdresses killing innocent white settlers. As they encountered the Europeans, automatically their material world was changed. The American Indians were amazed by the physical looks of the white settlers, their way of dressing and also by their language. The first Indian-White encounter was very peaceful and trade was their principal interaction. Tension and disputes were sometimes resolved by force but more often by negotiation or treaties. On the other hand, the Natives were described as strong and very innocent creatures awaiting for the first opportunity to be christianized. The Indians were called the “Noble Savages” by the settlers because they were cooperative people but sometimes, after having a few conflicts with them, they seem to behaved like animals. We should apprehend that the encounter with the settlers really amazed the natives, they were only used to interact with people from their own race and surroundings and all of this was like a new discovery for them as well as for the white immigrants. The relations between the English and the Virginian Indians was somewhat strong in a few ways. They were having marriages among them. For example, when Pocahontas married John Rolfe, many said it has a political implication to unite more settlers with the Indians to have a better relation between both groups. As for the Indians, their attitude was always friendly and full of curiosity when they saw the strange and light-skinned creatures from beyond the ocean. The colonists only survived with the help of the Indians when they first settler in Jamestown and Plymouth. In this areas, the Indians showed the colonists how to cultivate crops and gather seafood.The Indians changed their attitude from welcome to hostility when the strangers increased and encroached more and more on hunting and planting in the Natives’ grounds.