In reading “Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation” and watching the film “Crash” there are some similarities when reviewing Fredrickson’s four models of ethnic relations in “Models of American Ethnic Relations: A Historical Perspective.” The models that I can relate in these texts are the “One-Way Assimilation and “Cultural Pluralism.”
One-way assimilation is about finding equality in one culture; putting your cultural differences aside and adjusting to the cultures and traditions of that society, therefore destroying diversity. In Rez Life by David Treuer, the narrator says
If the language dies, we will lose something personal, a degree of understanding that resides, for most fluent speakers, on an unconscious level. We will lose our sense of ourselves and our culture…..When we lose cultures, we lose American plurality – the productive …show more content…
“People are unwilling to talk about the most important stuff that affects us. No one talks about acculturation.” (Treuer) I felt this fell within Cultural Pluralism meaning that the smaller society’s cultural identities and values are accepted by the larger, more dominant society. In teaching their language they are keeping their cultures. And like Fredrickson points out, “Native American’s have authentic historical and legal claims to a high degree of autonomy but generally recognize that total independence on their current land base is impossible and would worsen rather than improve their circumstances.” I believe like the Native Americans; most cultural groups conform to a cultural pluralistic society and are happy in their own. The film “Crash” depicted a lot of diversity and although it was a strong racist movie it still exhibited the diverse nation we live in. Although the movie did not show exactly how the cultural groups were accepted by society the setting and characters were very diverse leading to believe that it was