The American Indians are still fighting for more benefits and rights. To get a realistic impression of the Native Indians, it is absolutely necessary to look at them from all the sides and to realize their problems. Though the reservations in the USA, in fact, are on a different level of development. The problems of the Native Americans are varying and of different graveness. But one problem produces the next, in many cases. So there is no shortage of the worrying aspects among the American Indians definitely in the reservations as well as outside. There are only 52 million acres left today from the original American Indian homeland of about 6.1 billion acres which form North America. This land is mostly of inferior quality. The Bureau of Indian Affairs took an investigation on the erosion of American Indian tribes land and considered that the state of 12 million acres as crucial, 17 million as grave and 24 million as gently affected as to that. Many Native Americans have no possibility to earn a living by farming. In some reservations the commercial hunting and fishing are also prohibited. Poor infrastructure The lack of infrastructure such as no electricity, telephones or Internet connectivity etc. makes their life difficult in the reservations. These drawbacks and the insufficient links to the traffic system often keep most of the foreign industries from installing sites in the reservations. These bad conditions complicate the foundation of the American Indian businesses like the casinos and tourism for some tribes. It is because they are not within an easy reach from the big cities nearby and the potential customers. It is not surprising, after considering these circumstances that the rates of the unemployment are between 50 a... ... middle of paper ... ... Religions in the Modern World: Traditions and Transformations. New York: Routledge, 2002. p. 242. Green, Leslie C. and Plive Patricia Dickason. The Law of Nations and the New World. pg. 173 Ronda, James P. and Axtell, James. Indian Missions. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978. p.29 Duthu, N. Bruce. American Indians and the Law. New York: Viking, 2008. p. 18. Hoxie, Frederick E., ed. Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era. Boston: Bedford. 2001. p. 66. Duthu, N. Bruce. ibid. p. 17. Hoxie, Frederick E. ibid. p. 20 Young, William A. Quest for Harmony. Seven Bridges P, LLC, 2001. p. 313 Bell, Catherine M. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford University Press: New York, 1997. p. 113. Young, William A. Quest for Harmony. Seven Bridges P, LLC, 2001. p. 302 Young, William A. Quest for Harmony. Seven Bridges P, LLC, 2001. p. 324
The land of the Native Indians had been encroached upon by American settlers. By the
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,
American Indians shaped their critique of modern America through their exposure to and experience with “civilized,” non-Indian American people. Because these Euro-Americans considered traditional Indian lifestyle savage, they sought to assimilate the Indians into their civilized culture. With the increase in industrialization, transportation systems, and the desire for valuable resources (such as coal, gold, etc.) on Indian-occupied land, modern Americans had an excuse for “the advancement of the human race” (9). Euro-Americans moved Indians onto reservations, controlled their education and practice of religion, depleted their land, and erased many of their freedoms. The national result of this “conquest of Indian communities” was a steady decrease of Indian populations and drastic increase in non-Indian populations during the nineteenth century (9). It is natural that many American Indians felt fearful that their culture and people were slowly vanishing. Modern America to American Indians meant the destruction of their cultural pride and demise of their way of life.
Molloy, Michael. Experiencing the World's Religions. 5th Edition. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2010. 320-322. Print.
Finally, modern issues show that even till today. insults to the Native Americans are happening because of the power the government holds. Modern issues that the Natives Americans face today, are the poor conditions that the reservations they live. There is lack of easy access supply of water and there is hardly and jobs to make and earn money from. Lack of jobs cause some of the Natives to leave the reservations and seek work in other states to be able to provide enough living for their families. Their houses are really run down and small, many insects infest their
Historical trauma has brought psychological effects on the Native American community. Many suffer from alcohol and drug abuse, depression, and poverty. I wondered why they do not get help from the government and after watching the documentary California’s “Lost” Tribes I began to understand that in any reservation the tribe is the government, so they do not have the same rights as a city outside the reservation. Many of the the reservations were placed in areas where they could not do any form of agriculture, so they did not have a source of income. Many of this reservations have to find ways to get themselves out of poverty and many of the reservations within California have found a way to get out of their poverty by creating casinos
In the early 1830s, “nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Florida” . These were areas of land that the American Indian people and their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. However, to many White Americ...
...ribal Indians had to face yet once time passed, all was forgotten and now American Indians continue to be oppressed yet they are not speaking or activating on their struggles as they once did.
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.
In the end the Native Americans wanted to survive by any means by either defending their lands, leaving there given lands, and trying to pass on their language to the next generation. With all of these sources you could say either way that they were vanished in some ways or not. A similar thing happens in history too, and that was the Germans arresting Polish Jews in 1939 and putting them into ghettos, in this ghettos it was all corrupt and disorganized. Also with this reservation , there was some resistance of Jews trying to leave, the Gestapo-brutal police force, shot them and thought their kids' state run education. In conclusion the Indians wanted to survive and not to be a puppet for
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...
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
The Indians believed that the land was for harvesting and hunting, therefore they didn't have to own the land to be able to use it and share it with the other members of their tribes. Although the Europeans believed the Indians to be savages, the Indians were very civilized people. According to Give Me Liberty by Eric Foner, the Indians had roads, cities, trade networks, and other structures that indicated that they had complex societies. However complex their societies might have been, they firmly believed that the land could not be something that is owned by man. They had many policies on owning the right to use the land for hunting or harvesting. The harvests and the meat of the kills were for all the members of the tribes. Many believe that this communal or shared ownership of the land was the foundation of the economic life amongst the Indian tribes. "Few if any Indian societies were familiar with the idea of a fenced-off piece of land belonging forever to a single individual or family."1
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
Eastman, Roger. The Ways of Religion: An Introduction to the Major Traditions. Third Edition. Oxford University Press. N.Y. 1999