The Importance Of Indian Americans Special Status In The United States

The American Indian Movement is an organization in the United States that attempts to bring attention to the injustice and unfair treatment of American Indians. Aside from that, the AIM works for better protection and care for the American Indians and their families. They have been changing the American perception of Indians since the late 1960’s, as well as aiding our awareness of their existence.

American Indians have been discriminated against since the Europeans came to North America. They were driven from their homes and forced to surrender their land. They tried to build an alliance with France during the Revolutionary war, but ultimately they were defeated by the English. From then on, they were referred to as “savages”. The Proclamation of 1763 tried to separate the Native American land from the American colonial land. In the end, the American Indians lost their land and were forced to occupy smaller land areas, referred to as reservations, which were given to them through treaties. In 1979, a report from America’s Compliance with Human Rights Accords stated that

Since the arrival of the Europeans in 1492 the Native American has systematically been dehumanized, decivilized and redefined into terms that typify a subordinate or minority role, restricted life opportunities persist today as a result.

In the seventeenth century, European people begin to settle in the North America. They started to invest in the natural resources in the eastern America using the best resource they found in the land, captured Native Indians. Many poor European people migrated to North America for opportunity to earn money and rise of their social status. They came to the America as indentured or contracted servants because the passage aboard was too expensive for them. By the time many Native Indians and indentured servants die from the hard labor and low morality rate, masters of the plantation purchased more slaves from Africa to profit themselves. The “Virginia Servant and Slave Laws” reveal the dominant efforts of masters to profit from their servants and slaves by passing laws to treat slaves as their properties and to control servants and slaves by suppressing the rebellion using brutal force. Masters and rich planters sought to earn more profit from mercantilism, or trade, economic system by violating the civil rights of Native Indian, African, and poor European people and this thought and practice still exist today as a form of racism and segregation in America.

Martin Luther King Jr. best addresses the discrimination and oppression of Native Americans (NAs) in his book, Why We Can’t Wait (1964):

Ever since white men came to the New World, they were never at peace with the native peoples. One of the first white men to come to North America was Sir Walter Raleigh, who took the Indians he met as slaves as early as 1584. In the years that followed, settlers forced the Native Americans further and further west. By the year 1850, there had been many attempts at peaceful negotiations and uprisings on both sides, but the government eventually decided that reservations were the only way to contain the Indians and have peace. These reservations took away their pride, freedom, and way of life. Native Americans in reservations today are still plagued by lack of food and shelter, health and

Over the course of time in our country, many groups in our society have experienced being set apart from sustainable communities. Among them are the immigrants, the homeless, the African Americans, those with physical or mental disabilities and the Native Americans. According to McIntosh (1988), “Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us’ “ (p. 1). Unquestionably, this was the case back in the nineteenth century when the “White” people thought it

If one thing is to be respected and understood about the American Indians, it would be that their history and culture goes much further back than contemporary American history. Consequently, the relationship developed between American Indians and the United States is as unique as it is complicated. This unique relationship started because the American Indians were the first faces seen by fresh colonials from Europe. Despite this fact, the American Indians have faced cultural appropriation on a level that cannot be compared to any other ethnic group or minority. Any American who has been through kindergarten can associate Indians and Pilgrims with Thanksgiving, but how many of those Americans can tell about the Battle of Little Bighorn or the Alcatraz Proclamation? The unique relationship between the United States and American Indians has grown over time to allow for the level of appropriation that can be observed today. It is this unique relationship that has allowed the American Indian culture to be exploited because

It is clear that throughout many years there has been an exemption of treatment when talking about the Native Americans in the United States. Supposedly every individual is endowed with the right of freedom, equality, and of seeking for happiness, but Native Americans were treated irrationally. From the discovery of America, to the founding fathers and settlers, the treatment and attitude towards Native Americans has been unsettling at best. The colonial policies toward the Native Americans affected the Indians in ways that changed their relationship between their tribes and the new nation. Cabeza de Vaca, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, and Benjamin

The existence of the Indian nations as distinct independent communities within the limits of the United States seems to be drawing to a close.... You are aware that our Brethren, the Choctaws, Chickasaws and Creeks of the South have severally disposed of their country to the United States and that a portion of our own Tribe have also emigrated West of the Mississippi--but that the largest portion of our Nation still remain firmly upon our ancient domain....Our position there may be compared to a solitary tree in an open space, where all the forest trees around have been prostrated by a furious

and their effects are still occurring today and need to be made known to spare the

Despite all the double standard they have faced all their lives, Indians survived and fought strong for their rights. Even though prejudice

The United States Supreme Court ruled all Native American tribes had full legal rights to internally govern themselves, manage their affairs, as well as to engage in political and legal relationships with the federal government in the 1830s. Currently the United States Constitution Article I, Section 8, guarantees sovereign rights to the 566 federally recognized Indian nations and federal government laws require that the individual states that have Native Tribes living

Calloway’s book is widely regarded as a respected first source for American Indian History. He recounts the historical events as they happened in a way that allows the reader to transport themselves into the narrative and have a true sense of what it must have been like for the Native American people during this time. He remains objective throughout the book while providing a comprehensive understanding of American Indian History.

What were the significant treaties, policies, and events that defined US Government and Native American Relations? How did the Native American respond to these treaties, polices, and events historically? How did these treaties, policies, and events affect the subsistence, religion, political, and social structures of the Native American people? I will answer these questions through the examination of two centuries of US history in six time periods that define clear changes in the relationship between the Native American and the US Government.