Assimilation Of Native Americans

Improved Essays
Assimilation: When members of one society become a politically or economically subordinated part another, the subordinate group may lose its original culture as it members adopt the customs of the larger society.

The children were loaded them in box cars and took them off to boarding school. It was said that when the children were taken away their mothers were heard singing the death song, because if the child ever came home they would never be the same as when they left. They were treated very badly and beaten if they did anything out of line. Indian children were not taught to me parents; they learned how to be servants, bankers, farmers and bakers. These children were raised in uncaring intuitions until certain ages, not in loving, caring homes surrounded by those that felt they was important to them.
…show more content…
I believe they also wanted land rights and did not want to have to fight generations of Native American’s in order to gain those rights. What was surprising to hear in the video was how these children were treated and that this process went on for generations. I have heard a little about what happened back then but did not realize the extent of it. I have children and could not imagine mine being taken away and sent to some unknown place, never knowing if they would

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    For many people culture has influenced them in one way or another, as a result culture informs and affects how people view others and the world around them. Despite arguments others may have against it, it all depends on their upbringing. In the stories "An Indian Father's Plea", "Everyday Use" and "Two Kinds", there are copious examples that can be drawn supporting this claim. Not only are these from authors real experiences, they also showcase the extent to which one's culture affects their perspective on others.…

    • 1073 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Analysis Of Rez Life

    • 1162 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “Assimilation is the process through which newcomers adjust to a situation by deciding how much of their old culture and habits they want to give up”(600) defined by Holtzman and Sharpe. The government believed in the process of “Americanization”. This scenario would entail that the Native Americans would transfer beliefs, lifestyles, languages and all other cultural aspects to those of non-indigenous heritage. The main source of Americanization and forced assimilation came from the boarding schools. Many Native American children were forced to attend these boarding schools, where they were forced to cut their hair, change their names, permitted from speaking their native languages and stopped from practicing American Indian customs(658).…

    • 1162 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From the 1700-1938, the public arena for the debate of assimilation helped get information out into the public eye. Whether the debates were formed through non-Native Americans or Native, the final outcomes were put into essays, letters, pamphlets, speeches, drawings, and other forms of media, pertaining to the different time periods. Without the different public communications platforms, there wouldn’t have been any room for debating assimilation, and the outcome of history would have been drastically changed. With that being said, different people realized the potential of this power, and used it to their advantage. With documents taken from “The Cherokee Removal” and “Talking Back to Civilization”, it is shown that the methods used to…

    • 1381 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Discussion 1 The turn of the century in 1900’s, most remaining Native Americans had been forced, to leave their ancestral lands; it was truly a time of cultural assimilation (Assimilation through Education). Some chose to live on the reservations that were created by the U.S. government starting in the 1890s, while others spent their lives hiding from whites whom they feared would kill or capture them. Native Americans world as they new it naturally died out, from progression (Assimilation through Education), they needed to become a part of white society. There Indian language, religion, and art, would become something from the past to be studied or viewed in a museum, but would not be the products of living cultures.…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the 1800’s there was controversy over the land in the United States. There was an act put into place by President Andrew Jackson called the “Indian Removal Act”. The act stated the Native Americans who lived east of the Mississippi River had to relocate west of the Mississippi, regardless if the land was foreign to the natives. Oklahoma was then called “Indian Country”. Some Pacific Northwest tribes were taken to Oklahoma, but were like rubber bands, shot back.…

    • 1271 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Parents were not allowed to visit the schools and children were not allowed to leave, even during the summer. The government believed that since the children were removed from their families at an early age, they would not remember any of their old traditions and that they would be immersed in the “right” culture (Brainwashing and Boarding Schools). By doing this, the children would be immersed in the culture of the dominant society the white people society. Students were taught that the Indian way of life was inferior to the white way. They were taught that they were being raised for a better…

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Assimilation means multiple groups become mixed by obtaining each other’s social and psychological characteristics, such as how waves of immigrants have been assimilated into the American culture. Richard Rodriguez, the writer of “Blaxican’s and Other Reinvented Americans” is telling the readers about mixing race in America and belongings of immigration. Cultural assimilation in Rodriguez’s view is the processes by groups of cultures that comes from different countries and speak different languages. Rodriguez points out that assimilation happened naturally over time.…

    • 1419 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    After demanding both political and military action on removing native American Indians from the southern states of America in 1829 President Andrew Jackson sign this into law on May 28, 1830 although it only gave the right to negotiate for their withdrawal from areas to the east of the Mississippi River and that relocation was supposed to be voluntary, all of the pressure was there to make this all but inevitable. All the tribal leaders agreed after Jackson's landslide victory in 1832. It is generally acknowledged that this act spell the end of Indian rights to live in those states under their own traditional laws they were forced to assimilate and concede to US law or leave their homeland. The Indian nations themselves were forced to move and ended up in Oklahoma.…

    • 303 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Now, my brother Mike and I kid about pork grease and potatoes....” (299). This clearly underlies the contradictions of Indian boarding schools that have been seen as dispossession places, but also as places to “preserve” Indian children during historical crisis times. As a result, boarding schools became for a time institutions where vital resources were provided and may have saved some children from greater deprivations.…

    • 1124 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The concept of assimilation is the main idea in the story of the author Gustavo Arellano’s book Orange County: A Personal History. A definition of assimilation based on dictionary.com would be the absorption and integration of people, ideas, or culture into a wider society or culture. The type of culture mainly discussed on the idea of assimilation would be Mexicans because of the Arellano’s cultural background. Throughout the book he gives many examples of how he and his family have assimilated and struggled to assimilate in their lives living in Orange County, California.…

    • 968 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In the countries of immigrants like the united States, people from different cultural backgrounds bring their own cultures and traditions to live and work together and in the normal situation, one kind of culture will hold a dominant position. It is good for the people who have the dominant cultural background. However, that makes people from other cultural backgrounds confuse, especially for second or third generations. For these people, cultural assimilation and retroculturation are two necessary processes. They will influence non-dominant culture of people and their next generations.…

    • 1393 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    However, this “opposed the basic Indian belief of communal ownership” (History and Culture: Boarding Schools). Students were also ripped from the community at age 5 and isolated until age 18 when they were thrown back into a society they no longer knew. This left no time for them to create the necessary ties for a successful Indian life. Students were also told that their parents were not coming for them because they did not love them (O’Connell) when the truth was that parents could not legally rescue their children. This raised distrust among the children when they were allowed to return home after age 18.…

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Native American Sociology

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Touring the Smithsonian Museums with the Sociology class was fascinating. Some scholars observed in wonder of the various Native American clothing and toys that were displayed. Others gasped at the astonishing display of the John Bull locomotive that peaks ones interest in the railroad bridge. A lot of the scholars did not notice the significance of the Civil War Union Draft Wheel until after they read the markers explaining the power that these types of wheels possessed. Each exhibit was remarkable in its own way as it presented multiple aspects in relation to sociology.…

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Assimilation is a process that many immigrants go through when they move to a new society that has a culture that differs from their original one. When one assimilates they not only adopt new cultural beliefs and practices, but, more importantly, they lose the ones that they already had. Assimilation is a double-edged sword that helps enhance a person’s perspective and mixes cultures together so that eventually the one main culture of a society is a conglomeration of many other different cultures. At the same time, culture is a significant part of a person, to lose a culture is a tragedy that mirrors that of losing a part of one’s soul. The decision, whether conscious or unconscious, of assimilating or even refusing to assimilate can forever change a person and how they view the world around them.…

    • 1049 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Overview of the Film The film Real Women Have Curves directed by Patricia Cardoso tells the coming of age story of Ana Garcia. Ana is a Mexican American teenager that is discovering her womanhood, and struggles with pursuing the life she wants to live versus her parents. The relationship between Ana and her mother unfolds because they have different values, interest and expectations of women. As a first generation Mexican American, Ana distances herself from the traditional Latino culture, and assimilates into the American culture (Cardoso 2002).…

    • 1053 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays