Livestock inflicted onto the Navajo people back in the early 1930’s was a result of the reorganization of the Dine people’s government. I understand the means of a livestock reduction because I am looking at it from a geological point of view. The earth’s soil needs to be packed whereas when you have tons of animal grazing you are ruining all the nutrients to sustain the soil. However, to not be arrogant and selfish I need to look at the livestock reduction from all points of view. I need to look at it from the Dine peoples point and the governments point. I ask myself could it be the government was trying to get rid of Navajos in particular or to get their reservation they granted them?
There was as much as a million sheep grazing to 12 million acres of land, and what the government should have done was given the Navajos more land. Ever since the Navajos were first introduced to sheep they knew it was going to be a necessary part of life. The sheep in general provided food, wool to weave, and you could even sleep on the wool or sit on in traditional ceremonies. The sheep not only provided food for an entire family but feasting together was part of what the sheep could do. Indeed, sheep is life.
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There is nothing sadder than having something that is part of your everyday life taken from you.
Taken back to a geological point of view, they are many things the Navajos did not understand. Maybe the Dine people did not know the results of overgrazing and they did not have anyone to explain to them correctly what was taking place. Although, the Dine people encouraged to give up their livestock in order for land to be added but there is a downside. If the people were to say no to the livestock reduction the government was still going to carry the act out. Can you imagine the type of government the Navajos had to deal with and what we still deal with even
today? Up to this point I wouldn’t even trust the government and the ways that it acted. The Navajos did what was needed to be done and they formed their own government within the reservation. The Navajos once again did what they had to do to keep everyone safe. They truly did not take into consideration on what the Navajo people wanted or did the Navajos not understand what overgrazing was doing to the environment. William Zeh insisted on an increase in the land and that is what the Navajos were aiming at as well. They needed land to live because it can support all their lifeways. Now there are a millions of ways the Dine could have dealt with this issue that was hurting the reservation. They could have pushed John Collier out of commissioner of Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) and taken the matters into their own hands. The Navajos should have put up a fight to keep their ways of life and it was a necessary part of their culture. Now they should have just given more land to the Navajos. There is so much problem they have yet to face with the government and their own government.
Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country gives readers a look into the federal government’s failed policy to preserve grazing lands by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of livestock with a particular focus on women. Centering around women because they are the primary owners and caretakers of livestock in Navajo reservations.
As Din4 people (Navajo people) our community is known as “The home Chief Manuelito’s Wife”. Chief Manuelito was a head Dine chief during the Long Walk period in 1864. In the year of 1868 Manuelito and other leaders signed a treaty act to end the period of imprisonment. Also, during this time the Navajo reservations were established. Tohatchi was one of the many communities that were established on the Navajo reservation. The Navajo reservation spreads across New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. The Navajo Nation is known for being the largest tribe (Discovernavajo 2015). Tohatchi is located in McKinley County.
Cronon raises the question of the belief or disbelief of the Indian’s rights to the land. The Europeans believed the way Indians used the land was unacceptable seeing as how the Indians wasted the natural resources the land had. However, Indians didn’t waste the natural resources and wealth of the land but instead used it differently, which the Europeans failed to see. The political and economical life of the Indians needed to be known to grasp the use of the land, “Personal good could be replaced, and their accumulation made little sense for ecological reasons of mobility,” (Cronon, 62).
In the introduction, Hämäläinen introduces how Plains Indians horse culture is so often romanticized in the image of the “mounted warrior,” and how this romanticized image is frequently juxtaposed with the hardships of disease, death, and destruction brought on by the Europeans. It is also mentioned that many historians depict Plains Indians equestrianism as a typical success story, usually because such a depiction is an appealing story to use in textbooks. However, Plains Indians equestrianism is far from a basic story of success. Plains equestrianism was a double-edged sword: it both helped tribes complete their quotidian tasks more efficiently, but also gave rise to social issues, weakened the customary political system, created problems between other tribes, and was detrimental to the environment.
In the 1830's the Plains Indians were sent to the Great American Deserts in the west because the white men did not think they deserved the land. Afterwards, they were able to live peacefully, and to follow their traditions and customs, but when the white men found out the land they were on were still good for agricultural, or even for railroad land they took it back. Thus, the white man movement westward quickly begun. This prospect to expand westward caused the government to become thoroughly involved in the lives of the Plains Indians. These intrusions by the white men had caused spoilage of the Plains Indians buffalo hunting styles, damaged their social and cultural lives, and hurt their overall lives. The lives of the Plains Indians in the second half of the nineteenth century were greatly affected by the technological development and government actions.
The Allotment and Assimilation Era of the 1880’s to the 1930’s had a widespread and devastating impact on the Native American population in the United States. These two policies were attempts by the U.S. Federal Government to separate tribes, and indoctrinate the Native American youth to further assimilate the Native American population into the western body of culture. These policies were allotment, which broke apart the tribal land of the Native American people, and boarding schools, which attempted to teach the Native American youth about western culture and ways.
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
Since the beginning of European colonization whites have taken Native American’s lands in order to expand their own settlements. Throughout the years there have been many disputes and up rises because Indians have refused to give up or sell their lands. With an escalating white population, Native American communities have been disintegrated, killed in conflicts, or forced to move into Indian Territories. The year of 1828 would again demonstrate how white settlers would obtain Native American’s lands with the Cherokee Indian Removal. Known as the Trail of Tears, the Cherokees would start their tragic journey to Indian Territory in which thousands of Indians would die along the way and soon after their arrival due to illnesses or violent encounters. The Cherokee Indian Removal was not only cruel but injustice, the Cherokees shouldn’t have ceded their lands because before the removal they attempted to be “civilized” by the Americans giving up their cultural and religious beliefs and the federal government by treaty had to protect Indians from any state oppressions.
The mission of the act, stated in the first section, is to “provide in severalty to Indians on the various reservations and to extend the protection of the laws of the United States” (Dawes Severalty). Motives of providing “protection of the laws,” compelled the Indians Rights Association to support the effort, labelling it a “humanitarian reform” (Sendrow). Despite this label, the Dawes Act did not fully represent reparations because its measures ultimately benefitted whites just as much as Indians. For example, in Section 5, Dawes adds that “if in the opinion of the President it shall be for the best interests of said tribe, it shall be lawful for the Secretary of Interior to negotiate with such Indian tribe for the purchase and release” (Dawes Severalty). Although Dawes takes into account the Indians’ “best interest,” the President makes this dubious assessment that leaves room to justify seizure of land for white economic gain. Later in the section, Dawes details that the land will be doled out “in tracts not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres to any one person” (Dawes Act). While Congress appears to be granting properly sized homesteads, they conveniently equivocate that their generosity carries little burden because, as detailed later, the land granted was
The colonist didn't respect the fact that the Natives had already claimed that land. By claiming the land that the natives had, we worsened relations with them. In document G, it states, "These soldiers cut down our timber; they kill my buffalo"(page 5). This shows that the American colonist are taking away from the natives. They were taking their food and cutting down buffaloes. In document F, it states that “a couple of years before it was nothing to see 5,000, 10,000 buff (shortened word for buffalo) in a day’s ride. Now if I saw 50 I was lucky"(page 5). This proves that the colonist were taking away from the natives and were killing their food. The colonist were killing too many buffaloes which was taking away from natives and ruined any relations with
The Dawes Act was a policy passed on February 18, 1887, by Massachusetts senator Henry Dawes. The act stated that the president (which at the time was Grover Cleaveland), could break up land in Reservations, and organize them into plots. The plots ranged in size from forty to one-hundred sixty acres. The plots were then distributed out to the Indians. From there, they were expected to farm it. That was an attempt to assimilate them. Assimilating the Indians was very important to settlers. They believed that if they could make them “more American”, they could have more control over them.
Kidwell, C. S. (2003, September). The Effects of Removal on American Indian Tribes. Retrieved April 11, 2014, from National Humanities Center: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nattrans/ntecoindian/essays/indianremoval.htm
It had shredded the fabric of the Indians' lives. Spouses, children, and parents were dead. Tribes were separated; families split into factions. Their property and wealth were gone.” The move made the Indian’s very mad. They couldn’t bring everything with them because they didn’t have enough wagons and animals to carry their stuff. The government did not give them what their land was worth. And some tribes didn’t receive anything valuable for their land. The Indian’s lived off their land and no longer had anything to trade. They no longer had the sacred ground where they would go to pray. Settlers tried to get the Indian’s to be
This along with the difficulty in transporting goods from the most northern points of the road where soil conditions for annual crops was better resulted in the abandonment of areas that were being settled. The resulting deforestation also had a large impact on the native Indians of the region resulting in many conflicts with settlers. With an agricultural education plan in place prior to providing land lots many of these issues could have been
Domesticated Cattle belong to the family Bovidae and sub family Bovinae, which appeared in the Miocene approximately 20 million years ago. There are more than 800 different cattle breeds recognized worldwide. Cattle are considered the most important and significant domesticated economic animal (Loftus et al. 1994). In addition to milk, cattle contribute other important commodities including meat, hides, traction and dung. The taurine and zebu cattle were probably domesticated and kept around for easy access to food, including meat, milk & their products and for their use as load-bearers and plows. The many archaeological records for domestication of wild forms of cattle (Bos primigenius) indicated that the process