Why Does A Couple Place At A Native American Burial Site?

At some point in our lives, we all come to realize that death is a part of life. Cultural diversity provides a wide variety of lifestyles and traditions for each of the unique groups of people in our world. Within these different cultures, the rituals associated with death and burial can also be uniquely diverse. Many consider ritualistic traditions that differ from their own to be somewhat strange and often perceive them as unnatural. A prime example would be the burial rituals of the Native American people.

The death and burials of the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears, will determine if the forced relocation can be considered an act of genocide. However, determining the number of how many people lost their lives on the Trail of Tears is difficult to calculate. An exact death toll of the round-up alone cannot be verified by historians. Most modern historians and other professionals agree on the number 4,000 deaths or one-fourth of the Cherokee Nation (Thornton, 1984). 4,000 deaths, is an estimate determined from the 1835 Census that tallied roughly 16,000 Cherokee in Georgia. Only 12,000 made it to Oklahoma, so the death estimate is 4,000 (Wilkins, 1986). A missionary by the name of Dr. Butler, who traveled with the Cherokee, estimated the death toll using eyewitness accounts and his personal observations along the journey. One traveler from Maine described an encounter of one of the detachments stating, “…we learned from the inhabitants on the road where the Indians passed that they buried fourteen or fifteen at every stopping place, and they make a journey of ten miles per day only on an average,” (Wilkins, 1986). Observations like the traveler’s, were the kind Dr. Butler would use to determine his estimate. Later he did bump his estimate up to 4,600 Cherokee deaths when presented with more evidence. However, the 4,600 is still an estimate and the exact number of lost lives is still unknown.

We have all heard the story of how America came to be, and how Native Americans were pushed out because of this. In regards to the west coast, the history is a bit different. There is evidence of natives living in California since from at least 17,000 BCE. Prior to contact with Europeans, the California region contained the highest native American population north of what is now Mexico. Because of the temperate climate and easy access to food sources, approximately one-third of all Native Americans in the United States were living in California.

In this paper, we will discuss the different death rituals performed in different cultures. We view death rituals from Native Americans, Africans, those of the Chinese decent, and endocannibalism from the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. Death is universal to all people in every culture. Responses to how one deals with death and dying differ greatly. Death rituals are usually based on beliefs. This can come from religion, history, language, and art.

The relationships between Native Americans and Archeologist has been difficult to say the least. In the past archeologists have never been seen in a positive light by Native Americans. The relationship between us has improved with the passing of NAGPRA. However, there are a lot if things that need to be done to make a permeant change. The way to change the relationship between us and them is a simple idea but a difficult undertaking. First we need to make all the laws that involve native American antiquity have more effect. This laws, if broken, should have a real punishment to the people that broke them. If we can show Native American that we are trying to make a change at the governmental level that could translate to a change in community relationships. Additionally, there needs to be more community involvement, whether that is inviting native people work on sites, or having more indigenous archeologist. Overall if we want to continue to learn about the past, archeologists must make a change for the future.

Culture, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is stated as “The integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior that dpends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. The customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of a racial, religious or social group. The set shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes an institution or organization. The set of values, conventions or social practices associated with a particular field, activity or societal characteristic.” Of these four definitions, I shall be focusing on the second one to discuss what makes up the culture of American Indians.The culture of the various tribes that made up the Native Americans is one of close knit families, highlyspiritual peoples and living together as one with the land they lived on. They believed in spirits, worshiping and honoring them. Some settled into single locations while others were nomadic, but all had a focus on working with the land around them. Because there are so many varying tribes that make up Native

Human beings, desire to maintain a connection with the past is achieved through the languages spoken, the various cultures practiced, and sadly through acquiring of cultural property by the means of grave robbing. Native Americans wanted justice for these past mistreatments and control over their history. According to Chip Colwell, campaigning, repatriation of indigenous artifacts began in the 1960s by indigenous activism. Finally, on November 16, 1990, The United States Government passed The Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act. NAGPRA summarizes that museums must conduct an inventory of all native American cultural artifacts and remains. (Native) In addition, Museums send the inventories to federally recognized tribes, in

Native Americans, possibly some of the most intelligent people there are, played a major roll in the survival, and death, of the settlers. The Native Americans are so smart that many of their century old ideas and practices, are still used today, such as farming, fishing, and hunting. Some Native American tribes would battle with the settlers killing them but other tribes, like the one in Roanoke, would instead engage in trade with the settlers. The Native Americans and the settlers would trade goods, and skills to each other that would help them to live good, healthy lives. “Whatsoever commodities we receive by the steelyard merchants or by our own merchants flaxe, hemp, pitche and tarre.”

At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. President Jackson and the government had plans to drive the Native Americans out of the south. The southerners appealed Jackson because they wanted him to remove the Indians that were living in the region. Jackson was part of the democratic party. The national politics were becoming more democratic.

Over the course of the expedition, Lewis and Clark developed a ritual that they used when meeting a tribe for the first time. The captains would explain to the tribal leaders that the their land now belonged to the United States, and that a man far in the east – President Thomas Jefferson – was their new “great father.” They would also give the Indians a peace medal with Jefferson on one side and two hands clasping on the other, as well as some form of presents (often trade goods). Moreover, the Corps members would perform a kind of parade, marching in uniform and shooting their guns. Fifty years before Lewis and Clark, the Blackfeet Indians had a reputation of being hospitable to Europeans, who occasionally even

The Indians are finally presented in the movie by the screen scanning across a wide-open desert very peaceful and deserted. In the middle of all this silence the camera fell upon a skeleton of a human that we assume the Indians killed. This is how the movie sets the tone for how we are going to think about the Indians. They play with the stereotype that all us Americans think are true about the Indians. At first we think that we were right, but the story does not end there.

Bart Layton built this doc not from one perspective, but from a collection of them. Some stories, like “The Imposter” need a panoptic approach to connect the audience to the film. The themes of manipulation, identity and love are the main themes conveyed by Layton. These themes are communicated through sounds and visual imagery.

In this movie, one may observe the different attitudes that Americans had towards Indians. The Indians were those unconquered people to the west and the almighty brave, Mountain Man went there, “forgetting all the troubles he knew,” and away from civilization. The mountain man is going in search of adventure but as this “adventure” starts he finds that his survival skills are not helping him since he cant even fish and as he is seen by an Indian, who watches him at his attempt to fish, he start respecting them. The view that civilization had given him of the west changes and so does he. Civilization soon becomes just something that exists “down there.”

This movie is mainly about a narrators search for meaning and the fight to find freedom from a meaningless way of life. It setting is in suburbia, an abandoned house located in a major large city. Ed Norton, plays the nameless narrator, Brad Pitt, is Tyler Dunden, and Helena Boaham Carter is Marla Singer, the three main characters. David Fincher directs this film in 1999, which adapted it from the novel written by Chuck Palahnuik.

Based on Stephen King’s horror novel of the same name, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining features hallways filled with butchered daughters, and their guts and blood splashed down the hall. Horror and realism fuel Kubrick’s notoriously disturbing films and The Shining stands clear-cut amongst them. Although in the case of this movie, Kubrick shifts emphasis from visual horror to psychological fear and instills mounting dread from the sequence of disturbing events. Kubrick states, “one of the things that horror stories can do is show us the archetypes of the unconscious; we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly.” Never falling flat, The Shining provides a psychological horror masterpiece complete with brilliant acting, tight camera angles, haunting score, and unanswered questions.