From Rez Life David Treuer Analysis

Roger Williams’s journal “From a key into the language of America” was an interning piece to read. Williams work has gave people for centuries, an better understanding of what life was for the Indians, the language the Indians use and the one he has created, and the values of the natives themselves. This piece of work by William gives an historical context and real life because without his journal, no one would know the language he has created, the information about the natives, and the philosophy that has been passed on for people today to read.

For the purpose of this project, our group has decided to focus on Native American culture and their non-verbal communication patterns. We chose to focus on Native American culture due to their unique methods of communication. What makes this culture so distinct is the way in which they encompass their values into their communication methods. Their communication methods are unlike most cultures and are even utilized within Western culture in modern day.

Popular culture has shaped our understanding and perception of Native American culture. From Disney to literature has given the picture of the “blood thirsty savage” of the beginning colonialism in the new world to the “Noble Savage,” a trait painted by non-native the West (Landsman and Lewis 184) and this has influenced many non native perceptions. What many outsiders do not see is the struggle Native American have on day to day bases. Each generation of Native American is on a struggle to keep their traditions alive, but to function in school and ultimately graduate.

In American Indian life, they believe their life is interconnected with the world, nature, and other people. The idea of a peoplehood matrix runs deep in Indian culture, in this essay the Cherokee, which is the holistic view of sacred history, language, ceremony, and homeland together. This holistic model shapes the life of the American Indians and how their sense of being and relationship to their history is strong and extremely valuable to them. This essay will try to explain how each aspect of the peoplehood matrix is important and interconnected to each other and the life of the Native Americans.

We have learned that Columbus and his team discovered Indians hundred years ago; we know that the Pilgrims started Thanksgiving tradition because Indians helped them survived their first brutal winter; we know most of Americans worship Jesus, but how many people know what god does native Americans worship? A lot of people can speak English but how many people can speak in Indian language? In the lecture, “Museum Indians” by Susan Power, talks about the blue experience of her mother as a traditional Dakota woman moved into urban city, Chicago. We have less and less Indian people, at the same time, we are losing a significant culture that we should remember, called Indian.

In conclusion the oppression of Native Americans is an often overlooked subject. It's important to learn about this and be aware of it because many Native Americans still live on reservations. Their oppression has not yet dissipated completely and not until recently, as recently as 1962, were they allowed to vote in every state. So we must be well informed in order to continue to dissipate Native American oppression and try to correct the mistakes of the

The first category presents the Indians way of culture before the Spanish influence. The book goes into the mindset of the natives, letting the reader see the Indians in a different angle than what other presents them. Usually, the Indians are portrayed as unintelligent, uncivilized Indians without a structured society in biased books, however this book gives a more unbiased view. The beginning several pages of the first section reveals how their religion came about and how the Acoma Indians

In this paper the main focus is on the language of the Cherokee. Is the language of the Cherokee, or as they also call it Tsalagi, still alive? Is it still spoken among the members of the tribes, including the younger generations or do they have lost the language of their ancestors? Is there something to be done until it is irretrievably lost? In order to come to a solution on this matter, I will be taking a look at why Native American languages in general have become extinct in the first place. On the example of the Cherokee language a look will be taken at the initiatives set to revive and preserve it in order to prove it is still alive and will continue to be.

A Native Americans identity is deeply rooted in his culture, “it’s a particular way one feels about oneself and one’s experiences as an American Indian or tribal person” (Horse 65). Without his Native American culture, a person can feel lost in the world, disconnected from everything. Throughout history, there have been moments where Native Americans were forced to lose part or all of their culture, of their identity. There was the termination era in the 1950’s and Indian boarding schools that both were ways to strip Native Americans of their culture. In Joy Harjo’s poem, The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window, the woman hanging experiences the termination era. In Sherman Alexie’s book, Reservation Blues, Junior Polatkin experiences the lasting effect boarding schools have on Indians. In LeAnne Howe’s book, Miko Kings, Lena learns that you can always come back from to your Native identity.

Across Canada and the United States there are many First Nations languages which are a part of the Algonquian language family, all of which with varying states of health. Although these languages share many characteristics of the Algonquian language family, the cultures, systems of beliefs, and geographic location of their respective Nations differentiate them. In being shaped by the landscape, cultures, and spirituality of the First Nations, the language brings the speakers closer to their land and traditions while reaffirming their identity as First Peoples. Using the Blackfoot Nation to further explore this concept, this paper will show that while language threads together First Nations culture, spirituality,

Not until now did I realized that Native American Reservations have been suffering the side effects of poverty and unemployment. It is impossible to describe the many factors that have contributed to the challenges that American Indians face today, but many of the statistics and fact show how life is for many in reservations. The poverty in Native American Reservation can be described in no other form than third world. It is common to find people living under horrible living conditions and many vagabonds. Tribes have reported as high as 85% of Native Americans in reservations are unemployed.

Jessie Little Doe Baird is an incredible linguist whose groundbreaking work at MIT helped to bring back the said to be death language of the Wampanoag indians of Massachusetts. She is working to bring the language more into the light and the ancient culture as well by teaching classes, creating programs, and even a dictionary for the words of the language. This work can help us to understand an article previously discussed in class by James clifford, on the Mashpee indian tribe. This article was about the disagreement over whether or not the Mashpee indians were considered to be an official tribe. They had been told that since they had been so integrated into modern society, by marriage, migration, language, and religion, that they no longer held a tribal culture nor legal tribal status. The proclaimed Mashpee tribe attempted to fight this, with arguments that their land was stipped from them in the past and that their culture was still alive. In the end, the verdict was that since the Mashpee had lost their tribal status years ago, they could no longer be considered a tribe.

Native Americans and their unique languages were widespread across the United States for most of its existence. However, as time went on, and as history took its course, Native Americans have been mostly removed, and a whole arsenal of their languages have gone with them. Elyse Ashburn has studied the amount of languages that are left. Written in 2007, “A Race to Rescue Native Tongues” uses the strategy of logos to persuade the reader by reason. Many Native languages are disappearing, and people must make an effort to save them.

Talking Back to Civilization , edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, is a compilation of excerpts from speeches, articles, and texts written by various American Indian authors and scholars from the 1890s to the 1920s. As a whole, the pieces provide a rough testimony of the American Indian during a period when conflict over land and resources, cultural stereotypes, and national policies caused tensions between Native American Indians and Euro-American reformers. This paper will attempt to sum up the plight of the American Indian during this period in American history.

Over centuries we have seen the amount and complexity of languages all across the globe reduced. If this trend continues, we could see the number of world languages potentially reduced from 6,000 to 600 in the future. Colonization and urbanization has led to the abolishment of languages spoke by smaller and less dominant civilizations. McWhorter uses the Native Americans in North America and the Aboriginal