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
Throughout the development and colonization of America, there were a lot of changes that affected Native American, Africans, and women. Within this paper, I will attempt to provide some insight and bring to light some of the changes and how they affected the folks involved. As the New World grew and colonized the rights of all were not equal or fair. Native Americans were focused on their homes to provide the New World. While Africans were kidnapped and focused into slave labor to provide economic growth for the New World. During this time women were always seen as a lower class citizen, not allowed any say in the way the colony was governed or grew. All of these minorities fought from the beginning of
From its birth, America was a place of inequality and privilege. Since Columbus 's arrival and up until present day, Native American tribes have been victim of white men 's persecution and tyranny. This was first expressed in the 1800’s, when Native Americans were driven off their land and forced to embark on the Trail of Tears, and again during the Western American- Indian War where white Americans massacred millions of Native Americans in hatred. Today, much of the Indian Territory that was once a refuge for Native Americans has since been taken over by white men, and the major tribes that once called these reservations home are all but gone. These events show the discrimination and oppression the Native Americans faced. They were, and continue to be, pushed onto reservations,
The Scythe and the Scalpel: Dissecting the Sterilizations of Native American Women in the 1970's
In the article Colonialism and First Nations Women in Canada by Winona Stevenson, the author explains the struggle First Nations women had keeping their culture alive. Upon arriving in America the Europeans suffocated the natives with their rationalisation of female subjugation. Reluctant to give up their traditions and honour the native-American women put up a fight, but their efforts would not be strong enough to triumph over the European missionaries. Stevenson chronologically explains their contact with the colonial agencies'.
This process resulted in many of Indigenous women losing their status, power, and ties to their culture. Not only was this process damaging to one’s sense of self, it created divisions within the community and introduced a system of racial hierarchy among Indigenous peoples. The Indian Act was a colonial process intended to to conduct cultural genocide through gender discrimination. The effects of the Indian Act have resulted in significant social, political and economic disadvantages that continue to affect Indigenous women today.
The discovery and colonization of the “New World” was one of the most significant and influential events in the known history of mankind. It has shaped our present by changing the course of our past and is a time of such great significance that it would be all but impossible to understand today without at least some comprehension of the why 's of yesterday. What was it that drove such a myriad of people to risk so much to tame the wild and vast lands we now know as and call the Americas. What were the reasons, motivations, causes, events, and possibilities that captured the minds and hearts of so many different peoples from such divers backgrounds? What led them to leave their friends, families, and
Consequently, at the community level with the traumatic impact that has resulted in alcoholism, sexual abuse and the fracture of the American Indian family system, we have lost the benefits of a wholesome community and all they have to offer in cultural diversity and preservation of nature. The side effect of these traumas is; broken homes, dysfunctions and moral decay in communities. In this case, the alarming rate of sexual abuse of children in Native American communities. Whenever, a child is sexually abused, the entire society is affected by the
I am writing you today as a young woman concerning the lack of attention towards the violence against women in retrospect to the Native American population. The fear of being a victim of assault as a young women is prominent within the society in which we live today. However, there is some relief in the fact that there are resources available at my disposal if I was to experience assault. Yet, there is a large portion of women that do not have that reassurance, and the likelihood of them experiencing assault is even greater than my own. This portion of the women population is Native American women. I will admit that the severity of the issue in concerns with the native population is something that I just recently became aware of. et I have
Since the beginning of the colonial process, Indigenous bodies have been seen as disposable. The dehumanization of the Indigenous body and the creation of the other, has allowed for the destruction of Indigenous Femininity. A system rooted in epistemic violence created by the colonial era. Continues to affect how Indigenous women are treated in modern societies. The demotion from “Indian Queen”, an exotic and powerful presence in colonial societies, to the “Dirty Squaw”, a figure depicted as lazy, and troublesome. Indigenous women have struggled to be seen as human people, rather than sexual object in the minds of the white settlers. A systematic dehumanization though through the process of epistemic violence. Which continues to affect how Indigenous women are treated today.
Native Americans, the true founders of America, are best known for having a tight grip on tradition throughout the years. Tradition is a way that Native Americans have been able to coexist for so long, and is also a way that natives have found stability from tribe to tribe. As Native Americans graciously welcomed colonists into the new world years ago, they did not receive equal respect in return. The colonists invading America gave natives a harsh ultimatum, to either leave America, or conform to the new society that would soon destroy the teepees and farmlands the natives considered home. The oppression from the colonists, gave natives the incentive that being any race other than white was not something to be proud of. Through the use of narrative writing done by Native Americans, readers are given an opportunity to see history through the lens of the oppressed. This further gives an opportunity for readers understand the very situation that many people who may even look like them once had to deal with. This allows us to not only draw specific conclusions about this period of oppression, but it displays how easy it can be for people to fall into very specific standards, and conform to societies that do not protect their values, and lives.
The book “Lakota Woman,” is an autobiography that depicts Mary Crow Dog and Indians’ Lives. Because I only had a limited knowledge on Indians, the book was full of surprising incidents. Moreover, she starts out her story by describing how her Indian friends died in miserable and unjustifiable ways. After reading first few pages, I was able to tell that Indians were mistreated in the same manners as African-Americans by whites. The only facts that make it look worse are, Indians got their land stolen and prejudice and inequality for them still exists.
Every ethnic group, in addition to possessing their own individual identity, holds the sense of who they are in relation to a larger spectrum, the world. But post colonialism strips away that traditional perspective and examines the dynamic between the aristocratic superpower and the subdued and dejected local inhabitants. This dynamic not only includes the effects of direct colonialism from the colonizers, but the post occupational ramifications on the colonized. (Dobie 208-209) The relationship between the colonizers and the colonized is mainly formed from a forced encounter of violence. The colonizer and pre colonized face off in numerous conflicts and skirmishes to decide the fate of the destiny. After which the victor (superpower) enforces strict laws and culture onto the thwarted colonized.The colonizers reign usually last for a long time, giving partial sovereignty to the colonized, who become the subaltern and accept their position by adopt the colonizer’s culture and laws to survive. This type of dynamic can be seen in Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, where the effects of post colonialism take a toll on the former colonized, causing “ideal justice” and the “best-we-can-do justice”to fall short on their principles when a Native American woman is raped by a white man.
1. What fundamental factors drew the Europeans to the exploration, conquest, and colonization of the New World? What was the impact on the Indians, Europeans, and Africans when each of their previously separate worlds “collided” with one another? What caused the shift from indentured servant to African slaves as the dominant labor force in the southern colonies?
Second Slide: The ways in which Indigenous Women tried to resist, but were ultimately victims of colonization, and how heteropatriarchy has affected them.
In Jeannette Armstrong’s poem, History Lesson, she writes in perspective of Indigenous people reacting to the first encounters with European settlers. Historically, Indigenous people did not have a positive encounter with the first settlers due to their clash of beliefs and values of how communities and structures should run. Instead, they had many disagreements which caused the partial destruction of their whole culture. It is clear that Armstrong uses the theme of history to portray the destruction that the first European settlers had on the Indigenous way of life through various points in history. Armstrong imbeds the theme of history throughout her poem to further emphasize her stance on the assimilation of the Indigenous people with the restricting and destructive effects the early settlers had on them throughout history.