The Culture and History of Native Americans

Native American, or American Indians, have a rich culture comprised of struggle, strife and success. For this paper, i will discuss the Native American Culture and it's history.
History
Spotted Tail, Lakota Sioux Chief stated: "This war did not spring up on our land, this war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land without a price, and who, in our land, do a great many evil things....This war has come from robbery from the stealing of our land. (Lazarus 1991). To me, this statement sums up the significant affect white settlers had on the Native American's world. It all started in 1492 when Christopher Columbus first discovered the Native people with the idea that they may be able to "adopt to their ways." Shortly thereafter, many white settlers from England, Spain, France, Russia, Sweden and other countries began to impose a change on Native Indians. For example, Spanish explorers began to expose their values and culture to the Native Indians; Christianity being one thing introduced as missionaries would accompany Spanish Explorers. The idea was for both cultures to "learn" from one another, but in all reality it was the white settlers idea to move in and create The New World. Europeans presence also brought many diseases, all of which American Indians were not immune against and because of that suffered many deaths. Unfortunately, only a small percentage survived those deadly disease and wars fought to keep their land.
Cultural Factors
Tsai and Alanis. (2004), The family structure varies from tribe to tribe including gender roles (pg. 2). Even though Native American culture is extremely diverse their core values and beliefs are tradition across many different tribal groups and...

... middle of paper ...

...ject to federal laws as citizens of the U.S. they are still able to retain some rights to govern their own people; That can be a good catalyst for macro practice. I recently visited my best friend whose husband is native american and their family lives on a reservation on Long Island. We were discussing how she and her mother-in-law were planning on having community improvement meetings in order to gather everyone from the reservation to discuss how they could make their community better.

In conclusion, Native American, or American Indians, have a rich culture comprised of struggle, strife and success. For this paper, I discussed the Native American Culture and it's history. The articles I read reminded me of the oppression and violation of Human Rights the Native Indians had to endure for years and it also helped me realize how spiritual they were as a culture.