preview

The Colonization Of Regions All Over The World

Better Essays
Open Document
Colonization of regions all over the world is a part of history that has affected many indigenous populations from African Americans, Native Americans, and Jewish alike. For the purpose of this essay, I will focus on the Native American culture. Indigenous women have suffered the most from injustices placed upon them. Issues such as lack of land rights, financial capabilities to care for their family, sexual abuse and mutilation, forced values, and violence only covers a few. Not only were they faced with discrimination from being an indigenous person, they also were faced with discrimination from being a woman. Mary Crow Dog said it best in her statement: If you plan to be born, make sure you are born white and male. It is not the…show more content…
Her father was white while her mother a full-blooded Indian. Mary had even wished she could purge the white from her body (Crow Dog 9). She felt like she didn’t fit in anywhere, facing race discrimination among her own people. This contributed to her rebel ways and longing desire to prove to the Sioux that she was a full-blood at heart. Many acts of violence and injustice were brought upon the Native Americans, especially towards women. Mary explains how most white people hated the Indian people, thinking of them as pests like “lice” (Crow Dog 9). The government even went as far as sterilizing her sister Barbara and mother against their will when they went to the hospital to have babies (Crow Dog 4). Being a woman and mother, I cannot imagine having something this precious taken away from me. No woman should be robbed of the joy of motherhood. These women were treated inhumanely in this manor, victims of a dysfunctional system. Author Jane Lawrence spoke on the sterilization of Native American women: What happened was a common occurrence during the 1960s and 1970s. Native Americans accused the Indian Health Service of sterilizing at least 25 percent of Native American women who were between the ages of fifteen and forty-four during the 1970s (Lawrence 400). At a
Get Access
Related
Get Access