Native American Indian Literature Summary

Since the authors who explored cultural decimation through colonization mainly analyzed the situations of native Americans, native Hawaiians, and the Maori natives of New Zealand, these case studies are incorporated in this literature review to contextualize the authorsʻ arguments. Upon collecting literature on the methods that colonizers employed to acculturate the native peoples they came into contact with, each of the authors assert that these actions were initiated by the colonizersʻ intention to improve the lifestyles of the natives. Each of the authors discuss that the colonizersʻ condemned native practices and traditions, and believed that the natives would willingly abandon their state of destitution to adopt their superior western …show more content…
Smith also explains that Maori educators are currently in the process of revitalizing their language and culture through education, which entails extensive reform due to the imperialist agenda that continues to permeate the New Zealand education system. Another pivotal strategy of extinguishing native identity and cultures that the European colonizers used was religious conversion. According to Dr. Lilikala Kameʻeleihiwa, a native Hawaiian historian and the director of the University of Hawaiʻiʻs Center for Native Hawaiian Studies, the colonizers failed to recognize that the natives had their own religion and spiritual rituals because they condemned it as paganism. In Native Land and Foreign Desires, she describes the native Hawaiian religion as a familial relationship between the native Hawaiians and the land, in which Hawaiians cultivated and nurtured the land with a sense of kinship (Kameʻeleihiwa, 194). This religious affiliation contrasted the western religious views of Christianity that the colonizers thrusted upon the native Hawaiians, which allowed them to not only convert the natives, but also to acquire their lands. All of the authors who investigated the interaction of colonization and acculturation held that the colonizers were able to convince many of the natives that their beliefs and customs were inferior to that of the Western culture, which enabled the colonizers to form a sense of leadership and supremacy over them. These authors also argue that the techniques involved with acculturation are successful because they have persisted over time and continue to disadvantage native Americans, native Hawaiians, Maori natives, as well as many other indigenous