Native Americans : Past And Present Essay

I took the Native American IAT and the Age IAT tests. I thought my results would be that I would have some association with Native Americans because I have Native American in my ancestry. My results were that I had little or no association between Native American and American with Foreign and American. I am not sure if I agree with them or not and that maybe from family history. I have no ideal if this method is truly effective and I would try to make sure that I am being considerate about other people's culture when teaching students and interacting with their families. I took away from this test that I learned new things about my thought process.

One might not understand what makes one keep moving forward day after day. Nobody gets it unless they have lived in the footsteps of another. Ask any Native American. They have lived a life of others judging and misunderstanding and if they haven't their ancestors have. The Native Americans pass stories down generation by generation so surely they have heard what it was like to be misunderstood. They believe differently than other cultures, yet not one is alike. They have a very complicated and hard to understand system when it comes to their views. The way they view, believe and run their system is never fully understood unless one has grown up with the Native American culture. The religious culture of these people is what holds their

An Indigenous People 's’ History of the United States. A history book claimed to go above and beyond what has been stated in text before it. Every page is packed with details and references to other accredited historians, or examples of the mindset that has been historically infused. At first glance you think you already know about the history of the Native Americans. How we saw it fit to take their land, put them on ever shrinking “gifted” lands that would never allow them to strive again. How they are simply a conquered people who fought back and lost. Alas this book takes what you thought you knew and makes it more real, focusing on the unnecessary genocide. Admittedly this book was very difficult for me to read, I found myself trailing off, being confused with the connections. There were however quite a few spots that stuck out to me, especially those we have covered in our race lectures.

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.

From as early as the time of the early European settlers, Native Americans have suffered tremendously. Native Americans during the time of the early settlers where treated very badly. Europeans did what they wanted with the Native Americans, and when a group of Native Americans would stand up for themselves, the European would quickly put them down. The Native Americans bow and arrows where no match for the Europeans guns and cannon balls. When the Europeans guns didn’t work for the Europeans, the disease they bought killed the Native Americans even more effectively.

What if everyday in America there was not an action someone could take because someone of an opposite race sexually assaulted or domestically abused that person? Often news outlets only focus on major even in cities or towns, but never the reservations. With the lack of awareness of the number of rapes and domestic abuse victims on reservations, at large society is saying America doesn’t care due to reservations having sovereignty. Even with new laws signed into place by President Obama to deal with the rape and abuse problems to Native American women, that come from non Native Americans, the problem with this is it’s a pilot only on three tribes (Culp-Ressler,1).It is said it will expand soon, but how soon? America is not known for being

Andrew Jackson, The United States seventh president, was possibly one of the worst human beings to be president and treated the Native Indians horribly. He, was a bully and used his position to get acts and petitions like the Indian Removal Act passed, to help push Native Indians around so he could get his own way. The Indian Removal Act in and of itself seemingly doesn’t contain that much power, however it was all the power Jackson needed. The circumstances of Jackson’s character and the debates surrounding the Act also lend and interesting lens to examine what Jackson intentions were. When looking at Jackson and how he managed to relocate the Native it becomes substantially more integral to examine all the documents with a wide scope to see how he even managed the relocation of Natives.

The fascination with Native Americans has been a constant with outsiders since explorers first “discovered” the New World. The biggest surge in this fascination came in the mid-19th century when the Indian Wars were starting to come to an end and the belief that Native Americans were disappearing, walking into the sunset never to be seen again. This led to an increase in the collecting of anything Native American, from artifacts to stories to portraits. The inevitable outcome of this was that Native Americans, who were never considered very highly to begin with, where now moved into a category of scientific interest to be study. This scientific interest in Native Americans is what many museums and other institutions based their collections and exhibits on and is one of the issues that many Native Americans have with how both their people and their culture were, and to some extent still are, represented in these places.

People have been living in the Americas for thousands of years. Only fairly recently, the past few hundred years, have foreigners begun to arrive and drastically disrupt the way of life of the aboriginal population. The situation has become so severe that a population that was one believed to be numbered in the millions, was at one point reduced to as few as 220,000 in 1910, and entire tribes have been either irretrievably warped or have disappeared altogether. While Native American Indians have almost completely recovered population-wise, they will never catch up to the rest of the world, and their culture can never fully recuperate. At the time the United States was settled by Europeans, it was abundantly populated by dozens of

THESIS STATEMENT: The Native Americans were historically doomed because of the Europeans inability to accept elements of Native American culture that they felt were savage, the natives inability to acknowledge the Europeans threat to their lifestyle and land, and the far superior European army used to defeat Indian tribes.

Andrew Jackson presidency should not be admired because he was inhumane to Indians. In the 1800s the US was just starting it expansion toward the west and to be continental. During this time Indians were still living east of the Mississippi. While the American population and economy grew Indian land was in higher demand causing conflict. The Tribes believed they had the right to the land but President Jackson felt different. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act which allowed him to exchange land with the indians to move them west so the Americans could have the land on the east. What was even worse about this was, congress said they were fine where they were but President Jackson opposed and did it anyways. Most of the indians were peaceful but some resisted. The ones that resisted

Even preceding his fame from presidency, Andrew Jackson was known for his opposition to American Indians. And although this connotation is assigned to Jackson’s attitude towards the Natives during the decades before he became President, his dominant goal was to maintain the security of the United States. As a military man, he was depicted as a zealous supporter of the removal of the Indians. Once he was in Office, the story goes, he utilized his newly acquired power to extract the Natives from their ancestral homes. One the contrary, during his terms, Jackson proved that upheld the rights of the Natives. However, what is considered to be the most controversial action of his presidency, the removal of the “Five Civilized Tribes” resulted in an abundance of criticism toward Jackson. Although alternatives to this removal were present, some being executed before, the American mindset was simply Natives could nither be assimilated to the “white” society nor requisite protection was possible. The removal, as Jackson concluded, seemed the only possible answer.

The Indian Removal Act stands as one of the greatest mistreatments of the Native population in American history. Jackson supported the Indian Removal Act because he wanted to see Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi settled by white Southerners. He thought they would make better use of the land and help strengthen the Southern border of the United States with large plantations.for example “In 1830, just a year after taking office, Jackson pushed a new piece of legislation called the "Indian Removal Act" through both houses of Congress. It gave the president power to negotiate removal treaties with Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi. Under these treaties, the Indians were to give up their lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for lands to the west”. moreover, Jackson even ignored a Supreme Court decision which had been made on the side of Indians against the state of Georgia. By passing and affecting The Indian Removal Act the homelands of many Native-American tribes were swiftly and brutally vacated. In Particular, the eviction of the Cherokee tribe to “Indian territory” was so vicious, it earned the nickname “trail of tears.” This single congressional act destroyed the lives of many people, an uncommon consequence for an act of the American government.

Andrew Jackson, the democratic, seventh president of the United States, would propose an act, that would become infamous among future generations, as the genocide of the indigenous people of the Americas. Jackson was elected in 1828, two years before the passage of his Indian Removal Act, that would determine the fate of the Natives Americans in Georgia. Andrew Jackson, countering George WAshingtons views and past acts on the vatives will fight for a bill in 1830 that would forever change our stance with Native Americans (Jason Meyers 54).The reasons for such an act, was simple in the mind of Andrew Jackson. It was a matter of the notion “Manifest Destiny”, or the widely accepted belief that the settlers of the United States were to be the ones to settle the land all across the continent. Upon handling the Native Americans, Andrew Jackson showed early on, that he would have little tolerance to their reactions. Andrew Jackson, in favor of a more agressive route to depart the Natives farther West, rather than Congress’s treaty to negotiate with the Indians concerning land decided to take the matters into his own jurdiction (Alfred Cave 1333). Going past the legal realm that the Indian Removal Act provided, Jackson was often threatening the Native Tribes by saying he would revoked their rights (Alfred Cave 1390). When Jackson was trying to get this act passed, he was often met with differential views from the people. Congressmen in favor of Jackson often had to reassure the

Jackson strongly hated the Native Americans; just seeing what he did to the two Seminole chiefs in Florida defies his hatred towards this group of people. Jackson claimed that they were in America’s way, causing him to move various tribes of the East Coast. One of them was the well-known Cherokee tribe, who strongly opposed the decision, because they already adapted the American culture. Their opposition was taken to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that the Cherokees can stay. Andrew Jackson showed no sympathy and ignored the court’s decision and exterminated them from the East Coast to the West Coast on a winter season; the journey that we call today the Trail of Tears, because of the death of many during the travel.