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History of Indigenous education
Essays on native americans education
Essays on native americans education
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Poverty is a huge issue for Native Americans, an everyday trip to school is walking in the freezing cold with only a T-shirt and a ripped pair of jeans. Walking down the road you see nothing but rundown houses and a group of punks beating up a kid. Looking to the side of the road you see a man, about thirty-two years old, lying on the sidewalk surrounded by about eight empty liquor bottles. You get to school, and in the hallway there is a kid leaning up against a cold brick wall, he is pale, skinny, and he looks really sick. He is so hungry and so skinny that you can see under his rib cage. You also notice that half the teachers chose not to go to school and all the hallways are empty from lack of kids actually going to school. In my essay, …show more content…
The differences between whites and Indians are mentioned many of times throughout the book. For instance, when Junior went to the dentist to get his wisdom teeth removed the dentist gave him less novocaine just because he is a Native American, how messed up is that?? What kind of person would do that?? That dentist probably would have given a white person more just so that the pain wasn’t noticeable. Another example of the differences between whites and Indians is, when Junior goes into Geometry class and he gets his textbook for the first time, he looks on the inside cover and his mother's name is written in it. That means that the same textbook he has his mother had thirty years ago! That is just one example of how poor Indian reservations are, white schools can afford new textbooks every few years at the most. Furthermore, Junior ends up transferring schools to a school right off the reservation, Rearden, it's where all the white kids go who want futures for themselves. Most days Junior couldn't get a ride to and from school from his dad, so he would end up walking to school or he got lucky enough to hitch-hike. A huge difference between Native Americans and whites is, the amounts of deaths Indian culture as a whole endure. Junior had experienced a copious amount of deaths in his fourteen years of being alive, he attended 5 funerals in his life; His grandmother, sister, his dad's friend, his dog, and his sister’s husband. That is a lot of funerals to attend for a fourteen year old kid, and the average white person doesn't usually attend that many funerals in a lifetime. As an overall statement, the main effect on Junior's life is the poverty and the deaths on the
The Essay, I have chosen to read from is ReReading America was An Indian Story by Roger Jack. The topic of this narrative explores the life of an Indian boy who grows up away from his father in the Pacific Northwest. Roger Jack describes the growing up of a young Indian boy to a man, who lives away from his father. Roger demonstrates values of the Indian culture and their morals through exploration of family ties and change in these specific ties. He also demonstrates that growing up away from one’s father doesn’t mean one can’t be successful in life, it only takes a proper role model, such as the author provides for the young boy.
In the book Bad Indians, Miranda talks about the many issues Indigenous People go through. Miranda talks about the struggles Indigenous people go through; however, she talks about them in the perspective of Native Americans. Many people learn about Indigenous People through classrooms and textbooks, in the perspective of White people. In Bad Indians, Miranda uses different literary devices to show her perspective of the way Indigenous People were treated, the issues that arose from missionization, as well as the violence that followed through such issues. Bad Indians is an excellent example that shows how different history is told in different perspectives.
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
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.
The removal of Indian tribes was one of the tragic times in America’s history. Native Americans endured hard times when immigrants came to the New World. Their land was stolen, people were treated poorly, tricked, harassed, bullied, and much more. The mistreatment was caused mostly by the white settlers, who wanted the Indians land. The Indians removal was pushed to benefit the settlers, which in turn, caused the Indians to be treated as less than a person and pushed off of their lands. MOREEE
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.
I can relate to this, not as far as race, but in a different way. At my school, there were stereotypes about the “volleyball girls”, and I was part of the volleyball team. At one point people thought this group of girls was all about partying and not school. Although, I was only focused on school and ended my high school career with only two B’s. Although this is not as an extreme case as Junior, I can still relate. In more of an extreme case, after Junior finally overcame his fear of leaving the reservation for a new and more positive life, he was not treated fairly. In the beginning of his experience at Reardan he writes, “After all, I was a reservation Indian, and no matter how geeky or weak I appeared to be, I was still a potential killer” (Alexie 2007:63). This is a perfect example of how easily people believe things they hear. Junior was literally a weak fifteen year old that could never hurt a fly, yet people looked at him as a killer because that was a stereotype about Indians. This idea goes along with Johnson’s thoughts of symbols, “symbols go far beyond labeling things” and “Symbols are also what we use to feel connected to a reality outside ourselves” (Johnson 2008: 36).
Two-hundred years ago, there was a scientific study on the brains of Native Americans called the craniology and phrenology. The Europeans examined only indigenous people’s heads and were forbidden to use any European’s brains. The Europeans did three experiments, such as decapitating the tops of the heads and filling them with sand to see if their brains were smaller than blacks. The Europeans also looked at the bones and said that if the bones were in a certain way (such as natives cheek bones being up higher) the person was thought to be stupid. The last experiment the Europeans did to American Indians was that they had a small devise that they would put on the head and it would slice the brain open. There would be an award for retrieving a male’s brain that was five cents. By retrieving a woman’s brain the price would be three cents, and lastly a child’s brain which would be two cents. This is when the term redskin was invented (Poupart, 2014).
The United States Government was founded on the basis that it would protect the rights and liberties of every American citizen. The Equal Protection Clause, a part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, provides that “no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”. Yet for hundreds of years, the US government and society have distressed the Native American people through broken treaties, removal policies, and attempts of assimilation. From the Trail of Tears in the 1830s to the Termination Policy in 1953, the continued oppression of American Indian communities produced an atmosphere of heightened tension and gave the native peoples a reason to fight back. In 1968, Clyde Bellecourt, Dennis Banks, and Russell Means founded the American Indian Movement to address issues concerning the Native American community and tackle the situation and position of Native Americans in society. Over the next few decades, the movement led to a series of radical protests, which were designed to raise awareness to the American Indians’ issues and to pressure the federal government to act on their behalf. After all of the unfair and unjust policies enacted by the U.S. government and society, all of the American Indian Movement’s actions can be justified as legitimate reactions to the United States’ democratic society that had promised to respect and protect their people and had failed to do so.
In most American families parents are overjoyed as a result of the happiness and success of their teenage children. Across America teenager are enjoying their “rite of passage”, such as friends, after school activities, sports, vacations with their families and their first car. At the same time, little is known of the extreme poverty and despondency existing within the reservations of the Native American communities. Many Native American families are still struggling with the pain and anguish their ancestors suffered during the ethnic cleansing and forced relocation of the 1800’s such as the Trail of Tears.
As a White American, I have been virtually unaware of the harsh living conditions that Native Americans have been enduring. This past summer I was fishing and camping at a resort in northwestern Minnesota with my family. I realized that this resort was located on the White Earth Indian Reservation. As I drove around the towns that the resort was near, I saw that the Native Americans were terribly poverty-stricken. Besides the resort that my family and I were staying at and a small casino that was nearby, most of the buildings and houses were in poor condition. The majority of the houses were trailers and not something that I would call “livable.” This raised a few questions in my mind: Why are people on Indian reservations living this way and what other things besides housing are Native Americans lacking? As I began research on these questions, I found three major issues. Poverty, health, and education are three tribulations that, at this point, remain broken on American Indian reservations.
...that can show how Native Americans were mistreated by English settlers. With help from the National Museum of the American Indian, I was able to get a clearer understanding of how these specific concepts affected Native Americans. Though it was challenging to connect these concepts to the displays in the museum, I was able to grasp how they could relate to what I have read and learned this semester. By analyzing what I learned in class to what I learned in the museum, this essay became less demanding. Native Americans struggled throughout history and this struggle was caused by settlers and their control. The settlers did everything possible to downgrade the Native Americans. By going to this museum, not only did I learn about the conflict between the settlers and Native Americans, but I was able to get a great understanding of how Native Americans felt emotionally.
Indian men, women, and children. This kind of neglect is what led to the Battle of Little Bighorn Creek, a battle that is talked about in The Great Plains, the book I chose my topic from. The reason this subject touched me personally is because almost everyone who presently lives on the Great Plains has a certain percentage Indian blood running through their veins, including myself. The neglect of the Native American Indian in America has been a problem for generations, but it is a part of our history as Americans and therefore worth studying.
The circumstances the Native American people endured clarify their current issues. American Indians have poor education and a high percent are unemployed when equated to “U.S. all races” (Spector, 2009, p. 205). Many American Indians still live on reservations and work as a
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