Solar Storm by Linda Hogan: The Clash of Perception

Europeans had different ideologies than indigenous peoples when it came to land in terms of who could own the land. As a result of European entitlement, they assumed that the land was available to be taken. The process of removing indigenous people from their land began, and the settlers were justifying it by suggesting that is was not necessarily “stealing” land, but rather it was “saving” the land from being misused by the savages that lived there previously (Sahlins 19). Mindsets such as these finalized the traumatic process of Native American invisibility as they were forced out of their land and their homes.

The Europeans had became greedy and selfish. They had become reliant on the native Americans to do everything for them. They had made them do necessary tasks that they could have done themselves, but chose not too. They had made them carry them when they didn’t want to walk, feed them, fan them,carry their hammocks,etc. They had become conceited, thinking they were too “royal” to do anything for themselves. They had made the Native Americans slaves and servants to their every bidding no matter the circumstance. They had become puppets to the Europeans and they controlled the Natives and forced them to do whatever they wanted. They had made the Natives lose their dignity and sink so low by making them complete their every request. The Natives had been worn down and degraded to be known as nothing to the Europeans but servants and people who they could call to do something for them. Countless Natives had died because of what the Europeans had brought to them

At first, it came as a surprise to me that there are still many tribes who are trying to become federally recognized and colonize land again just like before to continue their culture and identity. By now, I would had imagined that the Native Americans are at peace and can continue their traditions. However, I have come to discover that Natives Americans are still fighting for social justice when they have existed here way before Christopher Columbus discovered their land and called them, Indians. The impact that these social justice issues has on me is that the issues in which Native Americans face cannot be entirely solved. It is an impossible action to fix.

As the natives are forced to adapt to the colonizer’s more civilized lifestyle, the rich and

As a rule, the Native Americans are perhaps the most overlooked sector of the population of the colonies. This war completely varied their knowledge of their land and its value. “We know our lands have now become more valuable,” (Document B). No more would they be fooled by

Instead of the government respecting the right of the Indians to maintain their religious places, it invokes its power as the custodian of the public land by claiming that it has the mandate of utilizing any piece of public land for the benefit of the entire

In the early 1800’s, The United States and Spain had continuously argued with the Native people. The Louisiana Territory was purchased from France in the year 1803, Americans continued to push farther west for fertile land that could be used for farming. Due to overcrowding of eastern cities like New York City and Boston many settlers moved out west for a new start. It allowed for colonists to spread out and own untouched fertile land. When white settlers arrived they had realized that most of the land acquired from the territory was occupied by Native Americans for thousands of years. For decades Americans had thought that the land west of the Appalachian Mountains were unoccupied, but they were wrong. There were many tribes that had occupied this land. This included tribes like, The Choctaw, Cherokee, and The Chickasaw. In a sense, Americans had violent outbreaks with the Natives the minute the colonists’ had arrived in the United State. As the colonists’ tried to establish complete dominance and superiority over the Indians, ongoing heated debates over land ownership, and demanding requests to satisfy greed made forceful attacks between the groups unavoidable.

The decimation of a Community is an important aspect of how stability and control are lost in both Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) and Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (2012). In these culturally unique texts, both protagonists experience the transition from being a part of a community to being unwillingly pushed away from it and seeing it slowly being destroyed. The result of both protagonists being forced out of their beloved communities causes them to go down a spiral path thereby losing control and stability in their lives. The progression in which stability and control are possessed and then lost in both novels forces the characters to adapt to the changes at hand.

When the british first came to america, they realised they were not the only ones there. Native americans have been here from the beginning. Once the british started colonising, Native Americans realised that they had to defend their land. Years later, during the building of the transcontinental railroad, Native Americans were again forced to defend their land. During the building of the railroad, the government made a treaty to Native Americans saying that railroad surveyor would not go onto Native AMerican land. After this treaty was put into place, one company in charge of building the railroad sent a surveyor to plan the railroad. This person went throught the unceded Native American land (Doc 2) to find a path to

There have been many instances throughout history in which indigenous people have unwillingly suffered the consequences of foreigners’ interaction with their culture. In the case of the Huaorani two foreign groups, the oil companies and the missionaries, invaded their land and gravely affected the life they led in the Ecuadorian amazon. In the book Savages Joe Kane gives a firsthand account at how the Huaorani fight to preserve their land and traditional way of life.

It is also this depressing lost of Native Americans’ culture that has motivated them to never stop trying to return home. However, in the memory of the speaker’s dad, these Native Americans were just “swollen bellies of salmon coming back to a river that wasn’t there” (CR 123). Salmon have the nature of returning back to the place, where they were born in, to reproduce. Comparing the Native Americans to salmon, the author identifies the importance of their land to their nature. That is, losing the land is the same as losing their reproduction. Therefore, taking the land away for the modern developments, the western culture has ultimately become the nightmare for the Native Americans.

After years of unjustified colonization, and aggression, Natives were displaced and reduced to life on reservations. Pateman recounts that once the association between “savagery” and the Natives was created “lacking all the attributes of a civil condition” as perceived by the English “savages cannot undertake the transformation of their lands” (55). By constructing this binary, colonizers were able to disqualify Natives from owning their own land or entering into a contract. First the binary supported the removal of natives and then incited other brutalities to be committed against them. The association of nature with Natives fueled their subordination allowing for justification of the atrocities committed against them to be based on the idea of their “uncivilized”

About ninety percent of Native American land had been taken by the US government since by 1894, the US government took more than 90 million acres from the tribes without compensation and sold it to settlers. It’s terrible to think that it was so easy to take land from my Native people and sell it for dirt cheap. They thought that it was just a free for all, taking as much land as they could, not caring about the fact

Ever since then we have grown to believe natives are second class citizens and do not deserve our respect, establishing dominant ideology. In more recent events, these norms and beliefs have lead to situations like the Oka crisis as seen in The film “Kanehsatake: 270 years of resistance”. The Natives protested relatively peacefully against the government for building on their land. The police officers were the first ones to use violence. The government claimed it was a peaceful resolution yet they used tear gas, sent in helicopters, tanks, a thousand police officers, and assaulted them with batons even though the Mohawks showed no signs of violence.

Storms in space could have a devastating effect on our society. Solar storms are a result of solar flares and are electromagnetic in nature. They are capable of causing power outages and halting all types of communication, including; electronic pagers; radio and television broadcasts; credit card transactions; military communications; etc.