The Legacy Of The Native Americans

Identity in Native America is directly associated with culture and language. As a result, some of the issues today which are important in shaping the identity of modern Native Americans include: representations of native people by the media in sports and popular culture; how indigenous languages are being revitalized and maintained; and identity reclamation. The Native American lifestyle has changed significantly during the last half of the 20th century and that is because views on the Native people have drastically changed over time. They have had many hardships that have greatly impacted their culture over the past few centuries leading up to today.

People know about the conflict between the Indian's cultures and the settler's cultures during the westward expansion. Many people know the fierce battles and melees between the Indians and the settlers that were born from this cultural conflict. In spite of this, many people may not know about the systematic and deliberate means employed by the U.S. government to permanently rid their new land of the Indians who had lived their own lives peacefully for many years. There are many strong and chilling reasons and causes as to why the settlers started all of this perplexity in the first place. There was also a very strong and threatening impact on the Native Americans

Some wanted to fight to keep the land that their family has lived on forever.

A big part of history in all places around the world has been persecution of a certain race or group of people. Sometimes genocide or great discrimination are part of this persecution. Throughout all of American history the Native Americans have been persecuted and segregated from the rest of society. These events played a major part in the making of our country and shaped our history.

The unjust history of America contains the many Native American genocides executed throughout the 1790s-1920s over

Army and the forceful action used to confine the natives, the construction on Indian land, and the massive slaughter of the buffalo which the Indians relied on in every aspect of life. The mistreatment of the Native Americans has been going on for hundreds of years, way before the Gold Rush began. The American government has taken land that they are unable to return to this day. They have deprived the plains Indians of their culture and freedom. Immigration from other countries was at its peak, but America still wasn’t able to call people, that had resided in the United States for many years, citizens. Even the Native American’s, that had lived on the continent before it was even discovered, were denied citizenship unless they were Anglo-Saxon Protestant. To this day, many look at the Indians as a joke; The Seminoles as “The Tribe that Purchased A Billion Dollar Business.” Children are being taught about friendship between the American Settlers and the Natives, they are being lied to. The upcoming generations won’t understand the horrors of unnecessary warfare against innocent people, and they will only know to take what they want, even if it isn’t rightfully theirs. America as a nation has to be stopped from draping curtains over the defeat of the plains Indians: their wiping out of an entire people, just as they did to the

Since the very first contact, the Native Americans have been treated as subordinates, being mistreated, shamed, embarrassed, and oppressed by white settlers. After the Revolutionary War in the late 1700’s, matters only got worse for the Native Americans. Population was skyrocketing due to a great deal of immigration of white settlers in the early to mid 1800’s, and there wasn’t enough space for everyone. With this came expansion, and to reach the goals they had set out for it, the Native Americans had to go. A prime example of this is shown in Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” where in chapter seven he talks about the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands, carelessness and failure by the American government to protect, and multiple slaughters carried out by the American military on the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, Sac and Fox, and the Seminole tribes. Closely related is “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee,” written by Dee Brown, his writings from chapter thirteen focus on the Nez Perces tribe that resided in Oregon, and their attempt at a journey in Canada, and other western Indian tribes’ affairs. To go along with Zinn and Brown, is Alan Brinkley’s “American History,” which posed an unbiased view of what modern day textbooks are informing students across the nation about what happened to the Native Americans. An article titled “The North American Indian Holocaust,” written by

Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. ...From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its Indigenous population. (King 119-120)

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.

Having a tumultuous background, the Native American history in itself should be respected, but there seems to be a nuisance doing so. In the 1830’s, after removal policy failed to prevail, “not only did individual Indians remain, but native communities also struggled over the next century and a half to carve out a place for themselves in the South"(Perdue 3). Native American’s were challenged to find a place in the idealistic society, but their ritualistic culture was not fit for the United States. Further on, they dealt with poverty, discrimination, and violence against their community.

Since the beginning of time mankind has fought with itself, whether it be through disagreements, disrespect, feuds, or even over the smallest of matters. For example, one of the biggest feuds in American history that just ended recently was between the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s. This just shows you how petty, ignorant, and uncivilized we as a people can become. However, the greatest and most crucial feud of all was between the entire Native American Nation and the United States of America. This war of hate and disrespect towards tribes of people and their culture is uncalled for and has left a stain that will last forever in time. We choose not to realize the great impact it had on the Native American Nation, and most of what really happened is not mentioned in the text books that we have today. Instead we focus more on the three main academics which are reading, writing, and arithmetic. Doing so has left many people clueless about the events that have occurred in the past, and I think the main reason for this is caused by the American government being embarrassed about what they did to a people who meant no harm, a culture that only lashed out due to the European American settlers drawing first blood. This is why I decided to do my essay on this topic. The truth needs to be heard, and the reasoning for all the massacres, the violation of countless treaties, and how we impacted the way of life for the Native Americans needs to be told. Why did we do this to a culture? The

United States history is taught in public schools from the time we are able to understand its importance. Teachings of honorable plights by our forefathers to establish this great nation are common. However, specific details of this establishment seem to slip through the cracks of our educational curriculum. Genocide by definition is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group. The Chiricahua Indian Tribe of the American southwest and northern Mexico suffered almost complete annihilation at the hands of the American policy makers of the late nineteenth century, policy makers that chose to justify their means by ignoring their own tyrannical ways.

Our earliest memories of America begin when the country was born. However, what about the people who inhabited this land before it was our home? Native Americans have not always been treated fairly in this country, and maybe that is because they were never given a chance. Christopher Columbus first began his voyage in 1492, which is what we learn in history class. What we do not learn, is the ways of life before Columbus came. Native Americans had a plethora of tribes that all specialized in different trades. Unfortunately, the European greed and need for power upset the Native Americans ways of life.

Compilation of these above these words historians will no doubt learned, it is impossible to not remember 13 states of North America is in September 1774 the start of the War of Independence; in July 1776, by the declaration of independence. On September 3, 1783, the Paris agreement signed, with the official Confederate beauty in loose form; 1789 "constitution" through to Federal Republic. How can you enumerate some American did not exist when the "American crime"? This is obviously a need to invent history, however, what have no reason to put before the independence of the United States

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people”. This quote resonates with me because it explains how normal it has become in our society to dismiss history or the various forms of oppression and dominations. Prior to reading An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, I had very limited knowledge of the massacres, enslavement and tragedies that the Native Americans tribes endured because of colonization. As an immigrant to the United States, I did not know a lot about Native Americans nor were they part of the larger academic conversation. In school the most we were taught about Native Americans were that Columbus sailed the oceans in 1492, looking for India but instead he discovered