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Essays on assimilation by native american students
Essays on assimilation by native american students
Essays on assimilation by native american students
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As a prominent philosopher once said, “Kill the Indian and save the man”(Pratt). This quotation substantiates that during the mid 1850s when the US government commenced a movement to repose the Indians from their ancestral lands the overall objective was clearly to “humanize” them. In other words, the displacement was made in order to acculturate the Indians to an American idiosyncrasy, and for the Europeans to secure the lands they yearned for without collision. This justification that the Indians can be segregated from their homeland, and later assimilate the dominant race customs for instance, farming is exceptionally unethical. One can’t be content being constrained to transcend into another culture. The deficiencies of these reservations …show more content…
In other words, to civilize the Indians by teaching them English, a new religion, and new laws. These new rules will lead Indians to be determined to abscond from their boarding schools. To make matters worse several were successful in escaping, even having lines of generations that had ventured to break out of these schools. An example of the insufficiency of security in the reservations is seen in the novel Lakota Woman by Mary Crowdog which is a memoir about Crowdog’s experiences being a Lakota women in the United States during the reservations period. She is segregated from her family, and is placed in a boarding school. One day Crowdog reaches her limit of the times she has to go to pray, the harassment, and mistreatment she had to coped with in while in her school, so she plans an escape. Not only does she describe her own escape she defines her grandmother’s, her mother’s, and her sister’s getaway. Crowdog validates their departure by stating, “The mission school at St. Francis was a curse for our family for generations. My grandmother went there, then my mother, then my sisters and I. At one time or other every one of us tried to run away¨(Crowdog 31). This quotation endorses how from generation to generation these …show more content…
Unfortunately, this was not achievable to the extent anticipated for. A substantial amount of tribes were willing to speak against clearing out from their homeland, but the aftermath of such events were pure bloodshed. For an exemplar, a Hunkpapa Lakota leader, Sitting Bull, refuted to be inserted into reservations by opening gunfire. When conveying an image of the after-effects of Sitting Bull’s movement it states, “Sitting Bull, the Sioux resisted efforts of the U.S. government to annex their lands and force them to settle on reservations. Between June 25 and June 26, 1876, a punitive expedition commanded by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was annihilated by the Sioux, with the aid of other tribes, in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.”(Wagnalls). Moreover, this quote sanctions how these wars affected multifarious amounts of soldiers, and families on both sides just because of a disagreement in terms of these reservations. This battle even became known as Custer's Last Stand, simply because Custer, and his whole 7th cavalry were completely obliterated by the Lakota tribe illustrating the revolt of these reservations. In addition, when lecturing about this armed conflict it's been cited, “However Crazy horse and his men appear in the rear and Custer's cavalry are overcome by their charge. Custer's troops faced overwhelming numbers. Some of
In the Lakota Way, Marshall teaches many different virtues that all are important to being a good person, but respect shines above them all. It is at the cornerstone of every virtue the author puts forth. It is clear in every story told by Marshall and in every lesson taught in The Lakota Way. Without at least a modicum of respect, the virtues taught by the Lakota would be less valuable to us as a society.
It had previously been the policy of the American government to remove and relocate Indians further and further west as the American population grew, but there was only so much...
In order to understand the lack of morality on the part of the United States, the actions taken by the group in favor of removing the Indians and their opponents needs examining. The seeds of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 are rooted in colonial times and continued to grow during the early years of the American republic. To comprehend this momentous tragedy we must first examine the historical background of the Indian '"'problem'"' and seek rationale for the American government"'"s actions. This includes looking at the men who politically justified the expulsion of the Cherokee nation and those who argued against it.
When the Dawes Act, a Native American Policy, was enforced in 1887, it focused on breaking up reservations by granting land allotments to individual Native Americans. At that time, people believed that if a person adopted the white man’s clothing, ways and was responsible for his own farm, he would eventually drop his, as stated by the Oxford University Press, “Indian-ness” and become assimilated in American society. The basic idea of this act was the taking away of Native American Culture because they were considered savage and primitive to the incoming settlers. Many historians now agree the Native’s treatment throughout the Dawes Act was completely unfair, unlawful, and unethical. American Society classified them as savages solely on their differences in morals, religion, appearance and overall culture.
Lakota Woman Essay In Lakota Woman, Mary Crow Dog argues that in the 1970’s, the American Indian Movement used protests and militancy to improve their visibility in mainstream Anglo American society in an effort to secure sovereignty for all "full blood" American Indians in spite of generational gender, power, and financial conflicts on the reservations. When reading this book, one can see that this is indeed the case. The struggles these people underwent in their daily lives on the reservation eventually became too much, and the American Indian Movement was born. AIM, as we will see through several examples, made their case known to the people of the United States, and militancy ultimately became necessary in order to do so.
The governmental leaders of the United States of America began implementing Indian policies from its inception. As Euro-Americans they expected all non-whites in the U.S. to assimilate into a Euro-American (Christian) lifestyle, without reciprocation or sympathy to the traditions and history of our native people. Our founding fathers and subsequent leaders of the United States at varying times have used suppression, segregation, aggression, and assimilation to manage what they perceived as an Indian problem, and civilize them. The native peoples of North America have responded to these actions by, at times, complying with the U.S. government and allowing themselves to be relocated to other areas of the country leaving behind their ancestral
together for the better of the shared children. The women had a say in how they would help
The American Indians were promised change with the American Indian policy, but as time went on no change was seen. “Indian reform” was easy to promise, but it was not an easy promise to keep as many white people were threatened by Indians being given these rights. The Indian people wanted freedom and it was not being given to them. Arthur C. Parker even went as far as to indict the government for its actions. He brought the charges of: robbing a race of men of their intellectual life, of social organization, of native freedom, of economic independence, of moral standards and racial ideals, of his good name, and of definite civic status (Hoxie 97). These are essentially what the American peoples did to the natives, their whole lives and way of life was taken away,
In the 30 years after the Civil War, although government policy towards Native Americans intended to shift from forced separation to integration into American society, attempts to "Americanize" Indians only hastened the death of their culture and presence in the America. The intent in the policy, after the end of aggression, was to integrate Native Americans into American society. Many attempts at this were made, ranging from offering citizenship to granting lands to Indians. All of these attempts were in vain, however, because the result of this policies is much the same as would be the result of continued agression.
In the colonization of Turtle Island (North America), the United States government policy set out to eliminate the Indigenous populations; in essence to “destroy all things Indian”.2 Indigenous Nations were to relocate to unknown lands and forced into an assimilation of the white man 's view of the world. The early American settlers were detrimental, and their process became exterminatory.3 Colonization exemplified by violent confrontations, deliberate massacres, and in some cases, total annihilations of a People.4 The culture of conquest was developed and practiced by Europeans well before they landed on Turtle Island and was perfected well before the fifteenth century.5 Taking land and imposing values and ways of life on the social landscape
What should the Indian become?” For over a century at this point, the Americans are still trying to ponder the question and control the life of the different Native American tribe. Interestingly, the board does not call out specific tribes, rather, generalizing all the tribes at the time into one category. As mentioned in class, the United States recognized five tribes as “civilized”. The tribes that the United States specially mentioned were: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and the Seminole. Again, the United States government contradicts itself in regards to Indian policy. Since the colonial period, Americans tried to “civilize” all different types of Indian tribes. Fast forward a hundred years, after recognizing these five tribes as civilized, the American government is still trying to control the “destiny” of Indian tribes. The “destiny” that the Board of Indain Commissioners decides is that the Indians should become a citizen of the United States. It seems that the American government could never be satisfied with the policy in which was set before
In 1887 the federal government launched boarding schools designed to remove young Indians from their homes and families in reservations and Richard Pratt –the leader of Carlisle Indian School –declared, “citizenize” them. Richard Pratt’s “Kill the Indian… and save the man” was a speech to a group of reformers in 1892 describing the vices of reservations and the virtues of schooling that would bring young Native Americans into the mainstream of American society.
Native American children were physically and sexually abused at a school they were forced to attend after being stripped from their homes in America’s attempt to eliminate Native peoples culture. Many children were caught running away, and many children never understood what home really meant. Poet Louise Erdich is part Native American and wrote the poem “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways” to uncover the issues of self-identity and home by letting a student who suffered in these schools speak. The poem follows Native American kids that were forced to attend Indian boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries. By using imagery, allusion, and symbolism in “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways”, Louise Erdrich displays how repulsive Indian
The Indian Termination Policy of 1953 was the government’s answer to fix Indian conditions on the reservations; in 1943, the government surveyed the living conditions of the Indians on reservations and found them to be living in poverty (“The American Indian Movement”). Alison Owings explains to readers that the Indians were living in poverty as a direct and indirect result of previous laws and policies, such as the 1887 Dawes Act where greater than ninety million acres of tribal land was stripped from Indians and sold to non-natives (
Similarly, in 1851, the Indians relinquished one more tremendous territory in exchange with an annual payment, furnished schools, and other promises, yet the government, again, did not keep its word (86). The simple lifestyle and humanitarian creed of the indigenous taught them to trust other fellow humans, regardless of color, religion and ethnicity. Therefore, when the Americans told them that they would pay ten cents per acre, or they would bring civilization to the savage Indians, the indigenous immediately agreed. However, this betrayal resulted in distrust and aversion toward the ‘white man,’ which, consequently, led to many wars, such as the “Minnesota massacre,” whose casualties were mostly Indians, and those who survived, including the author, were exiled.