Reservations of Unequal Opportunities If you are a hunter you have jealousy towards the tribes and reservations because of their countless benefits to hunting and fishing. Growing up in Idaho being an outdoors man I have heard them all. People say how unfair it is how Indian tribes are able to hunt and fish anytime anywhere on their reservations. In fact only if you are native you are allowed to hunt or fish on reservations. However what these people do not see is the life style of the Indian tribes. For a sociological individual a reservation is a gold mine. What is better to study than an own sovereign nation within a nation? At first they were used to keep the Indian nations away from white civilizations, now they are seen as Indian land. …show more content…
Inez Hilger, an anthropologist, visited White Earth Reservations in Minnesota and what she found was astonishing. She found that roughly two hundred and fifty households consisted of tar paper shacks (Treuer). That means that only tar paper covered rough stud walls. From all of the houses she saw only eight of the shacks had wood for shingles. That means that the rest of the houses she saw only had tar paper for a roof. From all of these houses only one of the houses actually had a foundation (Treuer). As a result to the life style of this reservations Indian households are experiencing unequal condition. Outside the reservations only the poorest of households live in trailer parks. A trailer may not be much but at least it is a warm place to live. When you live in a house that consist mostly of tar paper then it cannot hold any type of heat. When a child is born into a house consisting of tar it has many disadvantages compared to other children born into a real home. The child will experience many health problems from not having a house to keep them warm. Many children will be sick their entire life until they move or it could even result into death. As a result you could state that this is equality of condition according to Dalton Conley. In Conley’s book he gives the definition of equality of condition is, “The idea that everyone should have an equal starting point.” (Conley). When someone is born on a reservation you do not have all of the same resource as normal …show more content…
In the reservations, school is not a main priority and often many Native Americans drop out. In fact less than 50% of Native Americans graduate high school. Followed by that is college degrees with an astonishing 5% (Treuer). It is proven when a society does not have good schooling it will not be prosperous. When a kid has free time on their hands they will likely get in trouble. That is why we have the Boys & Girls club. The Club benefits kids by filling up their free time when parents are gone from work. This way kids do not get bored and get into trouble. Now on the reservation when less than 50% of the kids graduate you have a lot of teenagers with free time. This leads them to finding a job or a hobby. This is a perfect example of unequal condition when reservations do not have clubs and programs to keep kids busy. Outside the reservations you can find multiple institutions to keep kids in the right direction so they may thrive. If more opportunities are opened up in the reservation then schooling will thrive. However, if you do not have a home to come back to then your schooling cannot thrive. It all comes back to unequal condition, because they do not have a stable house they can’t thrive in
At these boarding schools, Native American children were able to leave their Indian reservations to attend schools that were often run by wealthy white males. These individuals often did not create these schools with the purest of intentions for they often believed that land occupied by Native American Tribes should be taken from them and put to use; it is this belief that brought about the purpose of the boarding schools which was to attempt to bring the Native American community into mainstream society (Bloom, 1996). These boarding schools are described to have been similar to a military institution or a private religious school. The students were to wear uniforms and obey strict rules that included not speaking one’s native tongue but rather only speaking English. Punishments for not obeying such rules often included doing laborious chores or being physically reprimanded (Bloom, 1996). Even with hars...
The history of Indian Child Welfare Act derived from the need to address the problems with the removal of Indian children from their communities. Native American tribes identified the problem of Native American children being raised by non-native families when there were alarming numbers of children being removed from their h...
Jonathan Kozol is an American writer from Boston, Massachusetts, and a graduate of Harvard University. He began his career as a teacher in the Boston school system and also became involved in the study of social psychology. This lead to his involvement as an activist for low income and poverty destined children who are not provided the means for a proper education.
...rtwine between education and politics. Unlike public schools during the same period which were separate and disconnected from federal power, Indian schools were a site where U.S. policy directly influenced the students. Under rule by the B.I.A., Indian schools were alike in architecture and landscaping, and all structured military-style regime (Student Body Assembled). They all also had a common curriculum which involved English, farming and manual trades for men and domestic work for women. The goal of the boarding schools thus went far beyond industrial training, gender role socialization and even the creation of capitalist desires. Re-socialization of Native Americans was to be accomplished by institutions: removal of personal possessions, loss of control over their own schedule, uniforms, haircuts and the inability to escape from organizational rules and policy.
Pine Ridge reservation currently experiences a 90% unemployment rate, along with an alcoholism rate of 85% that mirrors the unemployment rate. Approximately 92% of its residents live below the poverty line which leads to a series of social problems. The effect of this poverty level allows for a pathway to gangs, drugs, and dropping out of school. The dropout rate is over 70%, as eighth grade graduates have to travel as far as 20 to 30 miles to get to a high school. The teacher turnover rate is 800% the national U.S. average because the reservation cannot recruit teachers due to the lack of housing. The reservation estimates that they need about 1...
Before the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed, Congress discovered a startling statistic. 25-30% of all American-Indian children were taken from their families custody and placed with non-Indian families (Fletcher). It is impractical to believe that that many American-Indian families were inadequate to have children in their care. Even after they were taken away, the government took no interest in the child’s cultural identity and placed them with families outside the tribe, where they were never exposed to their native culture. After the ICWA was passed and Indian families were kept together, many long-term benefits appeared: Security, pride in heritage, and participation in the use of cultural norms (Cross). When the Indian children were being placed within their tribes instead of with people of other ethnic backgrounds, the children grew up immersed in their families culture and grew up to practice it themselves. They learned where their
The history of Indian Child Welfare Act derived from the need to address the problems with the removal of Indian children from their communities. Native American tribes identified the problem of Native American children being raised by non-native families when there were alarming numbers of children being removed from their h...
Although “Indian Education” is a fictional writing it expresses in a stark clarity the difficulties that Native American people face every day. The author , Sherman Alexie, paints the picture of what being of Native American lineage entailed in the 1950’s. With boarding schools designed to assimilate them to “civilization”, and racial stereotypes thrown at the Native Americans. This was not, nor is now, a new concept for Native Americans. Recently the North Dakota-based Standing Rock Sioux has been trying to stop the construction of an oil pipeline. They argue that it could pollute their water reservations, but with the US Army Corps of Engineers having already passed the plan it seems as though that isn’t a concern of the government (Trump’s Decades Of Insults Against Native Americans Send Tribal Leaders Toward Clinton). Obama has pushed to postpone this in attempts to prevent it and has bought the Native Americans more time, but with Trump as a possible president, few Native Americans have faith that this will be prevented, making them turn to Clinton’s campaign. Many fear that whatever ground they’ve obtained in the past few years through Obama’s numerous White House Tribal Nations Conference will be lost with the outcome of the
For many years Native American people have been discriminated against in the United States as well as in the Public School system. Beginning with the common-school movement of the 1830s and 1840s, which attempted to stop the flow toward a more diverse society, the school systems have continued to be geared exclusively toward WASPS (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). Native Americans have been forced to abandon their culture and conform to our “American” ways (Rothenberg, 1998, pp. 258-259.)
Sandefur, G. (n.d.). American Indian reservations: The first underclass areas? Retrieved April 28, 2014, from http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc121f.pdf
Other than relocating them to reservations, they were also ways to guarantee education for the children. Through the education, the Christians use them for evangelism. Boarding schools were created as a tool to separate the children from families, so they could influence them to assimilate with out interference from the parents. New treaties made it so they were not allowed to speak in their native tongue. In cases where they did, corporal punishment was implemented. In current public schools, the students have a difficulty maintaining the expectations from both groups. The Native Americans expect them to maintain values, viewpoints and practices while the mainstream culture expected assimilation. Due to this difficulty, many Indian Youth find themselves involved in truancy, school dropouts, arrest, substance abuse, and suicide. Sen has the opportunity to travel down this path. He is struggling with this very sense himself. As a teacher, one should notice this (Boxer,
Despite the claims of education being a priority, these schools often provided Indigenous students with an inferior education, “often only up to grade five” (Kohn 2006). The students that attended these schools had no idea that their education was lower than the public schools. In fact, the many students who came out of these school hardly knew anything, as they were primarily taught about God. As Melvin Jack stated during an interview, “they taught us well about their higher power” (Melvin). “When I finally got out of there they sent me to public school and I didn’t know nothing and I felt so stupid” (Page). Today when you ask someone about their typical day at school, you don’t expect to hear that their scared or have no friends. However, when it comes to the case of residential school it is a completely different story. When interviewed, Velma Page, a survivor of a residential school stated that she feared both the Nuns and Priests. These were people who served God and were supposed to make them feel safe and yet students were terrified of them. When you hear something like this it makes you wonder about the horrific acts that took place. Well, the students were given specific rules that they had to follow or they would have to face the consequences. When stated like that it makes it seem like nothing is wrong. However, these students were told not to look around and talk to the other students. If for any reason, they did break the rule, they would “get strapped or get their ears and hair pulled” (Page). This of course made it difficult for students to make friends or even find their siblings that they were separated from. Despite the horrible education system, Indigenous students also had to endure an enormous amount of abuse while attending these
Indigenous women particularly were influenced by European culture when they became involved with men of a European background. Many times, when an Indigenous woman became involved with the man of said background their children would be sent back to Europe for schooling because that is where the better schools were, especially, around the time of confederation and before. As schools in North America became better known, children would be educated in the schools in North America. Education would be one of the most intrusive ways, in which, the government implemented European lifestyles on Indigenous people. That being said, these institutions would include day schools and Residential schools. Residential schools being the more intrusive because the children were removed from their families. Girls and boys would be separated from each other at the schools, (in both cases, day schools and Residential schools). However, Residential schools were more likely to implement this strategy because it was easier for them to succeed at this practice where the children were removed from their homes and lived at these
Residential schooling has been used in both Canada and America. It was said to be a solution for the “Indian problem”. For many others who attended, it was a time of abuse and desecration of culture. In 1920, under the Indian Act, it became mandatory for every Indian child between the ages of 4 and 16 to attend a residential school and it is illegal for them to attend any other educational institution. There are two objective views that the government wanted to establish with residential schooling. The first one is to isolate the children from their families, so they can be converted and educated into the “white” culture. The second view is to blend the Aboriginal children into the dominant culture. The objectives assume that Aboriginal culture
Many Indigenous children feel they are unsuccessful in school and as a result are not achieving academic success in the current school environment. Their language is not accepted and is not valued nor is their culture or culture differences. Differences are more often viewed by teachers as challenges and reasons Indigenous students’ lack of success. While Indigenous students would benefit greatly from teachers with heightened skill with developed understanding