Native Americans- Minority Role

Thesis

Since the arrival of the Europeans in 1492 the Native American has systematically been dehumanized, decivilized and redefined into terms that typify a subordinate or minority role, restricted life opportunities persist today as a result.

I. Introduction-Majority/Minority group relations- the role of power

II. Historical Overview

A. Native American life before contact with the White man.

B. Early contact, efforts at peaceful co-existence.

C. Conflict and its consequences for Native Americans

III. The continuing role of power

A. Control techniques used by the majority group

B. Native American life today, SES, housing, education, etc.

Power and Minority Group Position: The Case of Native Americans

Majority/Minority group relations can be illustrated by studying the role of power and how it is distributed between groups. The majority, or group that wields the most power, directly affects the circumstances for the minority. In most cases power struggle leads to racial and ethnic inequality. This scenario describes the case of the Native Americans. Since the arrival of the Europeans in 1492 the Native American has systematically been dehumanized, decivilized and redefined into terms that typify a subordinate or minority role, restricted life opportunities persist today as a result (Farley, 2000).

When European settlers arrived on American shores to settle a New World, around 7 million Native Americans had been settled in the wilderness north of present-day Mexico for some time. It is believed that the first Native Americans arrived during the last Ice Age, approximately 20,000 - 30,000 years ago, by crossing the Bering Strait from northeastern Siberia into Alaska. Over thousands of years, “spiritual kin-based communities” had survived by living off the land and bartering goods. Their diversity was reflected by their societies, which ranged from small, mobile bands of hunter-gatherers in the Great Basin to temple-mound builders in the Southeast (DiBacco, 1995).

The encounter of early explorers with the people of the Americas would ultimately set in motion the destruction of long existing Native American life and culture. Engrained into the minds of the Europeans were prejudiced images and stereotypes of the Native Americans, which we struggle still today to eradica...

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...ypes. Even still, today’s 2.1 million Native Americans have proved their resilience by surviving oppression in a world dominated by other races and cultures. Unlike other minorities who have fought for equal rights in American society, Native Americans have fought to retain their land and cultures and have avoided assimilation, at a hefty cost.

Works Cited

Bataille, Gretchen. The Pretend Indians: Images of Native Americans in the Movies. Iowa State University, Ames: 1980

Berkhofer, Robert F. The White Man's Indian. Alfred A. Knopf Publishers, New York, 1978.

DiBacco, Thomas V., Lorna C. Mason, and Christian G. Appy. History of The United States. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995.

Keohane, Sonja. “The Reservation Boarding School System in the United States, 1870-1928.” http://www.twofrog.com. 3/19/2005

Jordan,Winthrop D. and Leon F. Litwack. The United States. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1991.

Todd, Lewis Paul and Merta Curti. Triumph of the American Nation. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Joranovich, Inc., 1986.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper-Collins, 1980.

Farley, John. Majority-Minority Relations. New Jersey: Prentice Hall,2000.