Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Indians living the "white mans" lifestyle
It saddens me that Native Americans are pretty much forced to live the "white mans" lifestyles in order to live in the world today. Because of this their traditional culture is becoming hard for them to remember. Most of the native people now speak our language and live in houses like ours. I can not imagine the emptiness that the native people must feel, especially the elders who actually remember their traditional Indian life. Nabokov's book really opened my eyes to the burden that they were faced when the whites first came to North America.
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This is true, but you are reflecting only one interpretation of assimilation. Here is an interesting article about viewing assimilation as a two-way street...what do you think?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/challenges/identity.html
After reading your article, it still seems to me that the Europeans had far more control over everything and were not forced to make too many changes. It still seems to me that most Indians were forced into changing everything. "Assimilation quickly became colonial and U.S. government policy. That had a huge negative impact on the lives of Native Americans. Indians were expected to give up their Native identities and become Americans, but they were never fully accepted by the Americans."
DeleteReference:
Identity and Assimilation. PBS. Retrieved on October 11, 2013 from http://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/challenges/identity.html.