The educational exposure to Native Americans that I experienced in my early schooling was minimal at best. I grew up with a Cowboys and Indians perspective of native peoples. They were portrayed as unintelligent, primitive, violent and backwards. Our history of methodically working to try to eliminate these people is skewed because “traditionally, U.S. History textbooks leave out anything that might reflect badly upon our national character”. (5) (EIC p. 73)
As young children, we are taught a very homogenized version of what the experiences of “Indians” and Europeans were. Our idealized Thanksgiving, for example is, a fraud, for the most part. Thanksgiving for Native Americans marks a day of “somber remembrance”, of a short-lived (10 yr.) peace with early settlers, who’s arrival brought plague, decimating approximately half of the indigenous people’s populations. (3) It is a deceptive portrait of “sunny relations, masking a long and bloody history of conflict”. Since 1970, many protestors have gathered at Cole’s Hill, overlooking Plymouth Rock to commemorate “A National Day of Mourning” on Thanksgiving Day, while the majority of Americans celebrate a day of gluttony that has no meaningful connection to its origin. (4)
Native Americans have a tradition of knowing where they come from, who their ancestors are. These days, this is …show more content…
It is hard to imagine such a shallow mindset, but the Europeans only viewed the Native Americans in a very superficial way. They were not invested in learning about them, so they largely misunderstood them, believing them to be godless, without government and lacking any meaningful past. There were a few who acknowledged the sovereignty of Native Americans, which was pivotal in understanding the need for making treaties with
As young children, we are taught a very homogenized version of what the experiences of “Indians” and Europeans were. Our idealized Thanksgiving, for example is, a fraud, for the most part. Thanksgiving for Native Americans marks a day of “somber remembrance”, of a short-lived (10 yr.) peace with early settlers, who’s arrival brought plague, decimating approximately half of the indigenous people’s populations. (3) It is a deceptive portrait of “sunny relations, masking a long and bloody history of conflict”. Since 1970, many protestors have gathered at Cole’s Hill, overlooking Plymouth Rock to commemorate “A National Day of Mourning” on Thanksgiving Day, while the majority of Americans celebrate a day of gluttony that has no meaningful connection to its origin. (4)
Native Americans have a tradition of knowing where they come from, who their ancestors are. These days, this is …show more content…
It is hard to imagine such a shallow mindset, but the Europeans only viewed the Native Americans in a very superficial way. They were not invested in learning about them, so they largely misunderstood them, believing them to be godless, without government and lacking any meaningful past. There were a few who acknowledged the sovereignty of Native Americans, which was pivotal in understanding the need for making treaties with