...Hans. The Conquest of America: How the Indian Nations Lost Their Continent. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993. In this text, Mr. Koning discusses how the natives of what is now the United States of America lost their land, culture, and livelihoods due to our manifest destiny. Our lifestyles and ultimate waste and hoarding of resources have been established on the premise that our American way is the better way. As we proceed to attain and use more, America spreads its hand and control even further through the uses of its corporations and other services. Koning (1993) has revealed that in 1845, author John L. O’Sullivan coined the term Manifest Destiny. At that time, America was growing at a staggering rate with the independence of Mexico and some Native American nations. People like O’Sullivan felt even larger expansions were inevitable. This phrase justified our divine right to expand westward and to exercise hegemony over our neighbors and ultimately is a defense of what we now call Imperialism. This was a complex set of ideas encompassing opinions of race, religion, culture, and economic necessity. Throughout the nation, settlers traveled in search of land to further expand their wealth and prominence. In Texas and Florida, they found oil. In California, Nevada, and Arizona, they found gold. All the while, settling into these “uncivilized” regions spreading what they felt was progress and democracy. The fact that the lands were already occupied was of...
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...of the Native American Indians The foundation of the United States is based on the belief of peace, freedom and equality, which is enjoyed and practiced by most of the people in this “Country of Liberty.” However, the idea of equality and freedom does not apply to every person living in the U.S. Luis Valdez, an American writer, once said: “No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country. We did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us.” Growing up, children in the U.S. learn little of what has truly happened to the vast population of the Indigenous people on the continent? What has led to such a drastic decease of their culture and tradition? The answer lies in a dark part of the...
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...Historically, the United States of America and Native American Nations was full of tumultuous occurrences of ecocide, ethnocide and genocide. One of the most prevalent situations of their interactions was the Trail of Tears, which resulted in lasting effects on the Cherokee and Choctaw Nations. It was an act of genocide against the Cherokee and Choctaw Nations by the United States of America. Today, these Nations still feel the impact of this atrocious event and continue to tell stories of the horrific experiences that their people endured. The event stemmed out of the white settler expansion into the South during the early 19th century. White settlers wanted to acquire high yield land from Native American Nations for growing cotton. Native American people were standing in the way of progress for white settlers and the United States did not uphold their agreement with these nations. Thus these communities were forcefully removed to a distant and foreign land that resulted in the death of many of their...
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...European cultures on Native Americans. It discusses what they were like prior to the late nineteenth century and how they changed as a result of European expansion. Last but not least, you will know how this change representative of what Sayre calls a “loss of centeredness. The term “Western Civilization” in this context means European civilization, mainly for the countries known for their exploratory expeditions which include Spain, Portugal, France, and England. Cultures such as the Native Americans, West Africans, Indians, Chinese, and so many others were invaded and occupied by these European nations. They were killed, had to change their religion to Christianity, and were sent away from their homelands. The leaders were replaced by Europeans. They looked at these conquered lands as “satellites” of their home country and encouraged the people to act as much like them as they could, or at least seem as though they were in the same culture and work for them, go to their church, and learn their place as second class citizens. After all, they were looked upon as savages and uncivilized people who needed guidance. The people inhabiting the areas of North America were the Native Americans. The Native Americans did not fare well with the early colonies and later the United States came in contact with them and began pushing them all away from the northeast to the west and south. During the 19th century, Americans wanted to live peacefully with the Native Americans, but the...
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...Oklahoma State University Tribal Homelands of the Chickasaw and Choctaw This paper describes the primary geographic characteristics of the ancestral homelands of the indigenous Chickasaw and Choctaw people in North America, prior to first contact with European nations and continuing into the settlement timeframe of early colonists. These homelands originally included a significant portion of Louisiana and Mississippi, although the most closely held region was near the ancestral Nanih Waiya mound, which according to oral traditions held the origins of these tribal people. Prior to the surge of Western settlement, Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes were similar to other Native American nations in occupying the expanse of their territory not by personal land ownership, but instead through a series of communal villages governed by cultural leaders. Their occupation of the land was driven by natural resources and trade routes, and the prime positioning of these homelands proved to be too valuable to escape aggressive dispossession by colonial settlement. Early Chickasaw and Choctaw homelands occupied a large territory east of the Mississippi River in an extremely favorable location, especially related to waterways, trade routes, fertile land, and climate conditions. According to the research of St. Jean (2003), the centralized location of these tribes was advantageous, due to the relative proximity of four waterways which bordered all sides of the...
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...Andrés Reséndez's A Land So Strange is a historical tale of conquest that ends up disastrous and mission gone terribly wrong. Reséndez’s story works toward providing more information in which the Narrative published by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1542 leaves out. The story is about the journey of a castaway Spaniard who was in turn enslaved and befriended by the Native Americans. He gets enslaved for years by the indigenous Texas Tribe and eventually escapes with two other Spaniards and a native slave, Estebanico. Reséndez story engages powerful written/ spoken language in its ordinary form by including maps, footnotes, and a Further Reading section. This conquest portrays the inversion of power dynamics and dependence on survival upon firm...
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...own lands. Instead they began focusing on what lay beyond the vast oceans. With the discovery of a new world, the distant shores soon to be known as America provided both refuge for those seeking religious freedom as well as the potential of a better life. However, this new land was not without its own challenges as is detailed in the Session 1, Discussion 2. Despite the foreign terrain, brutal weather and lack of preparation on the settler's part, the indigenous people took it upon themselves to aid the newcomers through many setbacks. Even with their help, early Native Americans were too trusting of the European settlers and were cheated out of their own valuable possessions, land and way of life. America was a land just waiting to be claimed and taken. This was the belief at the forefront of every explorer that set foot and planted the flag of their homeland into the soil. Captain Verrazzano of France, was one such explorer who wrote the letter "Verrazzano's Voyage: 1524" found in The American Tradition in Literature by George and Barbara Perkins. With details of the land and the native people he encountered, it is...
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...today’s youth does not understand that the Native American people were often stripped of their rights in the past in order to gain these advantages. Two main incidents were established in the Aboriginal history, the first was the treaties that spread across Canada and the second incident was the Indian Act of 1876. The main difference between the Indian Act and treaties were the aboriginal’s role in the decision-making. Treaties allowed for a compromise between the Natives and the government that allowed for benefits on both ends whereas the Indian act was imposed on the Native culture by the Canadian government without any arrangement with the aboriginals. This paper will first describe the history of treaties and what they entail for both parties and also look at the formation of the Indian Act. Then, this paper will look at how each had affected the Aboriginal people in similar and different ways. Finally this paper will look at the relation in today’s society that the treaties have in Canada and what life would be like if the Indian Act was still a large part of how First Nations people would have been treated if the Act was not changed following World War II. After these points, a reader should have a better understanding of a topic that they may know little about. By looking at both the Indian Act and Canadian treaties, it is easy to distinguish that the treaties were more effective for establishing rights for Canada’s indigenous people. The first Treaty in Canada was know...
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...Tiange Zou English 100 Dr.Backman May 14, 2012 The Origin of Native Americans When the famous Spanish explorer, Christopher Columbus, first landed on the continent of America in 1492, he thought he had just arrived in East India , therefore, he called the indigenous people living there “Indians”. Columbus never knew that he had discovered the continent of America, later known as the “New World.” Later explorers continued to adventure America and got interested in the Indians. These explorers were curious about Indian’s culture, religion and its origin. Unfortunately, Indians lived in isolated lives and did not want to expose themselves to outsiders. Indians gradually became a mystery to other people. Nowadays, Indians prefer other people to refer to them as Native Americans. The reason is that they claim to be the original inhabitants ofAmerica; according to their tribe’s legends, they did not travel from other parts of the world to reside in America. On the contrary, many scientists and scholars have agreed on the Bering Land Bridge theory that the majority of Native Americans migrated to America from Asia via a land bridge between Alaska and Eastern Siberia around 20,000 years ago. There have been other theories involving the origins of the Native Americans. One theory suggests they were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel while another says that they were an ancient Chinese people who migrated to America a long time ago. After comparing and...
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...Portfolio 3: Native American Mascot Controversies within Sports Throughout the history of sports, Native American Indian mascots, symbols, and names have been incorporated nationwide. The propriety of using Native American mascots and images in sports has been a topic of debate in the United States and Canada since the 1960s. Americans have had a history of drawing inspiration from native peoples and "playing Indian" that dates back at least to the 18th century. “The controversy surrounding the use of Indian mascots, symbols, and names in American sports has origins that run deep throughout the history of Indian and non-Indian relations (American Indian Issues 1).” Today, the use of Indian mascots is at the center of an argument that touches the emotional hearts and souls of both proponents and opponents. Therefore, (I believe) sport team owners and the franchises themselves have, metaphorically, progressed imperialism upon the Native American philosophy. Native Americans were exploited almost from the moment Europeans arrived on this continent, pushed and shoved off their land for centuries until they were confined to the reservations that are now common across the south and midwestern parts of the United States. Nick Dewitt of the Bleacher Report responded to the issue stating: “It's been a prickly topic for years, even decades. It spans not just every professional sport, but collegiate sports as well. Depending on who you talk to, it's a stain on the organizations it affects...
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...–Europeans broke away from the area they confined themselves in for the almost a millennium in search for these. Although the Europeans never really lost touch which the outside world, their contact with non-European civilization stayed limited. Europeans soon embarked on many overseas journeys and found what was known as the “New World.” Many explorers such as Christopher Columbus found native people in the “New World.” Despite the differences from Europeans, the natives flourished in their own way; however, that all changed when Europeans flooded the land. The exploration and colonization on the native peoples in the fifteenth century by explorers such as Columbus and Cortés killed much of the population due to foreign...
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...Paragraph 1 Intro---A Land As God Made It, Jamestown and the Birth of America, is a book written by James Horn, who is president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, and is an author of numerous books about the colonization of North America, including works such as A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke (2010). The work, A Land As God Made It, is written to show a detailed, and insightful perspective of looking at the purpose of Jamestown. The book is about showing a time line, and how the settlement of Jamestown was very much a business opportunity for profit by the Virginia Company, as well as investors, in another attempt of creating a successful settlement for the expansion and growth of England...
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...Human Services for the Indigenous Populations of the State of Washington is a local need that is growing in scope every year. The evidence of the need for these services is obvious when one travels through these geographical areas and witness the lack of services provided to the people there. There is also a growing need for human services workers in these geographical areas. It is very sad to visit the community grave sites and see the devastating losses families face due to mental illness, violence and drug and alcohol abuse. Michael E. Bird, (2002) notes the following observation: Wherever there has been dispossession, we see in the dispossessed populations significant damage in health, in educational levels, and in social well-being....
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...When we think about American history, we often think about the tragedy that claimed the land, lives, culture, and heritage of the indigenous people of North America. European intrusion consequently prompts a long arrangement of land usurpation that continuously displaced the natives into confined reservations. It is against this background that Erdrich, in her novel 'Tracks' explicitly illustrates the political and historical experiences of the Native American as shown by the troubles of Chippewa Tribe. The novel ‘Tracks’ dramatically presents the struggle and survival of the Native Americans due to historical injustice, dispossession, and deprivation through colonization. In her novel, Tracks, Erdrich deals not only with individual American...
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...David Casani November 17, 2014 Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in the US and Contemporary Issues The United States is the melting pot of many different ethnicities and indigenous tribes attempting to harmoniously coexist. One of the major ethnic groups is the Indigenous Peoples of America. Who are they? Jose R. Martinez Cobo was a diplomat and politician who elaborated a definition for Indigenous Peoples, although the UN officially never adopted his definition, which is the commonly accepted understanding of the concept of Indigenous Peoples, stating: “Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system” (NCIV). Currently, there are 4.1 million indigenous peoples living in the US, which contributes to 1.5 of the US population (Nelson 1-19). The majority of these individuals are members of one of the five greatest tribes that forms the Confederacy of the Five Nations: Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Iroquois, and Lakota. The main...
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