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Mfischhoff · Joined: 14 Sep 2009 Posts: 51

Please post in response to pp. 306-323

afenn · Joined: 31 Mar 2010 Posts: 17

Hi everybody, my internet is working again! woooo! thank god for the apple help line Smile

So a lot of things in this reading really bothered me or stood out to me: The Navajo men who were no longer able to hunt and provide for their families (the first hand account was particularly striking), the fact that natives were not allowed to become citizens even after blacks had begun to be allowed citizenship, but most of all the boarding schools that children were sent to.

The children sent to the residential schools were forced to assimilate to European ideals and cultures, for example cut their hair, wear non traditional clothing, and speak english. Some of the schools were even run by military personal who had worked at Indian prisoner camps.

Children who were sent to the schools were taught to be ashamed of their culture and in some cases didn't ever return home. Over the summer they would be sent to homes of white families and after graduation they were encouraged to find jobs off of reservations. (usually farming or other blue collar jobs) If they did return to reservations they would either have trouble because they had forgotten their native language or were too ashamed of their heritage to admit that they hadn't.

By far the most disturbing thing to be about the "education programs" for Indian children was the loss of their own traditions and the gain of new terrible ones. Physical punishment was the form of punishment used in the school, (which makes sense seeing as it was run by war camp officers) Parents who visited the schools were particularly alarmed because physical punishment of children had never been a part of any Indian culture. After the children had been abused themselves in schools, they often grew up and abused the children in their lives which started a self perpetuating cycle of abuse originally learned in a so called "education system"

One thing that I wondered was if children who did return to their reservations were so ashamed that they would even pretend to not know their own language, why did they return in the first place? My guess is that it was easier to return to their reservations than to face racism in a predominately white society, but I was wondering what other people think?

mmcgowan18 · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 27

So basically Alex just wrote about everything I was going to write about. So I guess will try to answer her question. When they say children went back to their reservations I think they mean little kids, like 8 or 9. And I don’t think they had a choice. It said some kids went to live in white homes for the summer but I don’t think everyone had that option. But Alex’s guess was probably right for the older kids. Another thing about the schools, I thought it was horrible they forced Native Americans to send their kids there. n

Throughout the reading I was asking myself why the government would do this or that and I think it was because they wanted control. Like why did they want the Native Americans not to be their own independent nation, because they wanted to be able to have control if necessary.

One thing Page touched on was that Americans goal for Native Americans was assimilation, but it was the complete opposite with blacks at that time. And this confused me. I don’t understand how they could go so many years thinking Native Americans weren’t even human, to wanting them to be part of their society, but not wanting the same for blacks. I guess it could be that because they aren’t fully human they can mold them into the people they want them to be, but didn’t they also think blacks weren’t human either? So I guess that’s my question, why do you think Americans treated blacks and Native Americans differently?

asteward · Joined: 14 Oct 2009 Posts: 27

This reading brought up a point that I thought was very interesting. The new American settlers were trying to take over the Native American's land, and because they could not kill them all off, they had to take them over by attacking their culture. There is no better way to kill a culture then by stopping the traditions at the upcoming generations. By enforcing European culture on the younger ones of the Native American tribes, the traditions of the Native American people would soon die off.

I also thought it was interesting reading about the transgendered woman, We'wha, and how sexual orientation was not very important in Native American tribes. It was something that I had never really thought of before, but I liked that it was brought up to contrast the Native American's culture with our own.

What do you guys think are some other cultural things like this from Native American societies that differ from our own?

Pipe · Joined: 31 Mar 2010 Posts: 14

This reading confirmed all of the things I had imagined reservations to be like. Alex Fenn (don't know why I am using full name) was on point in mentioning the different forms of assimilating the Native Americans had, and the most disturbing part was the educational aspect. The Americans consciously were brain washing these people from ground up (youth and then generation after generation).
On another topic to answer Maggie's question. Slavery did not start out as a race thing, simply practicality. It became a race issue after generation and generation when slavery was associated with being black. Native Americans were never slaves so that confusion was never made.
And finally on to my own question...Native Americans were assimilated into white culture, and they received some sort of respect that blacks did not....why did they help them make their own nation/ reservation? why keep them if they were to hopefully (in their mind) eventually adopt "American" culture?
_________________
Melipe Fatho

rbennett · Joined: 14 Oct 2009 Posts: 39

Like both Alex and Maggie I noticed that Jake Page talked a lot about assimilation. I thought it was interesting when Page writes “They simply wanted what seemed at the time to be right, which was that the Indians would melt into the general population” (309). I thought it was interesting that the white people thought that by forcing the Native Americans to abandon their own culture for the white culture, and to live like whites, they were doing the “right” thing for Native Americans. The white people thought they were doing this for the Native American’s own good, but really it was disrespectful and destructive to them as people.

I think the U.S. helped the Native Americans create their own nations and reservations because like Jake Page has mentioned before, some whites ignored the fact that there was an “Indian problem.” By separating the Native Americans from the rest of society, and making them live in isolated, concentrated communities on reservations, the whites could generally ignore the fact that Native Americans even existed in the U.S. They could use the existence of Native Americans to their advantage when they needed to, like in trading and economical circumstances, but other than that they could go on expanding the U.S. without the bothersome presence of the Native Americans. This idea goes slightly against the idea of assimilation, but I think the whites mostly wanted the Native Americans to assimilate so they could control them more, and make it so the Native Americans were dependent on U.S. products etc.

My question is, why do you think it was easier for Native Americans than for the black people to assimilate into white society?

mholmes · Joined: 01 Apr 2010 Posts: 15

The idea of the reservations seemed very fake and misleading. The idea of giving these people their own Nation must have seemed like a huge plus at the time when many Natives were in camps. They weren’t necessarily promised a happy life, but at least freedom, which they could not find in the camps.

While they were technically given this freedom, they were still often dependent of Americans for food and other recourses. Many of the Natives in the 1880’s went hungry because of a lack of food supplied by Americans. They were essentially told they were free, and given pieces of land that could not produce sufficient means to help them survive.

Is there anything the Natives could have done to make their early reservation life better? Or were they completely stuck in their ways without the help of the American government.

esimpson · Joined: 31 Mar 2010 Posts: 10

I had a similar reaction to everyone else.

I'd like to touch on Felipe's post. Actually Native Americans were sold into slavery, but they weren't as popular to the slave owners as blacks were, so the Native Americans aren't remembered as much for being slaves.

To bring in Maggie's question about the comparison of blacks to Native Americans, I think they were both thought of as subhuman to the whites, but in different ways. The blacks were more of a money source and now were trying to fight for power. The Native Americans were thought of as more of an obstacle to the whites, a nuisance. The Native Americans were to be snubbed out like a stain, while the blacks were to be segregated. (These are just my thoughts.)

The question I pose is about the seemingly lucky Navajo tribe, being granted a relatively large amount of land compared to other tribes. Why is it that only the Navajo came out culturally rich and having land and avoiding the white schools?

eeschneider · Joined: 16 Oct 2009 Posts: 30

sooo i just received the e-mail that artha sent me with the actual reading on it.

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