Americans have a well-established tradition of imposing themselves onto other, less powerful peoples. The United States government has perfectly exemplified this when it comes to their treatment of Native Americans. Since their arrival in the fifteenth century, Europeans have exterminated Indian tribes, relocated them, and attacked their cultures. These strategies compounded and advanced well into the modern era, coming into fruition in the American government’s policies of termination in the 1950s, The Dawes Act of 1887, and Richard Pratt’s boarding schools in the late nineteenth century. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Louise Erdrich’s The Roundhouse attempt to dissect the modern Native American reservation
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Ojibwes were originally not allowed to practice their religion until 1978. They would practice their religion and hold their ceremonies secretly in the round house if there were no priests or Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendents presents. When they were present, the Ojibwes would hide their ceremonial belongings like eagle feathers and pull out their Ecclesiastes verses. They also withstood physical mistreatment around the creations o of their reservation. They “died before they could be recorded and in such painful numbers,” that they believe, “the white man appeared and drove them down into the earth.” The combination of white people imposing Christianity and unlivable conditions onto these indigenous people precipitated new generations of Ojibwes, where it was rare for them to speak their own native language and routine for them to practice a religion other than their …show more content…
Two-thousand people, native and not, gathered at the high school football field to celebrate the death of Junior’s grandmother. And wakes in Indian culture were just that- a celebration. “When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.” Indian culture also prevails in Spokane gatherings called powwows, where the entire tribe comes together to gamble, drink, and tell stories. These two events are presented as anomalies; American culture has permeated through the Spokane tribe to the extent where only a few cultural differences remained between themselves and their white
Ojibwes were originally not allowed to practice their religion until 1978. They would practice their religion and hold their ceremonies secretly in the round house if there were no priests or Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendents presents. When they were present, the Ojibwes would hide their ceremonial belongings like eagle feathers and pull out their Ecclesiastes verses. They also withstood physical mistreatment around the creations o of their reservation. They “died before they could be recorded and in such painful numbers,” that they believe, “the white man appeared and drove them down into the earth.” The combination of white people imposing Christianity and unlivable conditions onto these indigenous people precipitated new generations of Ojibwes, where it was rare for them to speak their own native language and routine for them to practice a religion other than their …show more content…
Two-thousand people, native and not, gathered at the high school football field to celebrate the death of Junior’s grandmother. And wakes in Indian culture were just that- a celebration. “When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.” Indian culture also prevails in Spokane gatherings called powwows, where the entire tribe comes together to gamble, drink, and tell stories. These two events are presented as anomalies; American culture has permeated through the Spokane tribe to the extent where only a few cultural differences remained between themselves and their white