Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee Summary

Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.

The usual Western way of coping with some concept or ritual that seems 'other' or strange, is to search for an equivalent that will familiarise and anaesthetise the shock that there are other ways to exist and interact. The myth of the “vanishing Indian” is thoroughly brought out in Source 2 of Morgan’s Ancient Society, where the author’s superior, keen tone to the description of Native Americans and how they were all “savages” and were incapable of adapting the concepts of modern American civilization. As a result, Morgan’s thoughts were that Americans would pervade Native American territories, expecting American Indians to fail to subside to their way of life and thus result in war between the two, eventually leading to the decimation of Native

Petalesharo’s writing reflected the treatment of Native Americans during the 1800s. Being a Native American himself, Petalesharo was able to give perspective on a point in history typically viewed from a white man’s opinion. The excerpt “Petalesharo” explains how the Native American was able “to prevent young women captured by other tribes from being sacrificed”, making Petalesharo well liked by the Americans (588). Petalesharo gave the “Speech of the Pawnee Chief” infront of Americans to convey the differences between Native Americans and Americans through emotion, logic, and credibility, which showed how the two groups will never be the same, but still can coexist in the world together.

Native American culture and history has been used for the enjoyment of audiences over many years in film, literature, television, and other forms of media. Not surprisingly, directors and writers hardly ever portray Native Americans accurately. In the play, “Foghorn” by Hanay Geiogamah, and in Mary Tallmoutain’s poem The Last Wolf, reader scan trace their influence into modern day media, even though almost none of it is accurate.

Merrell’s article proves the point that the lives of the Native Americans drastically changed just as the Europeans had. In order to survive, the Native Americans and Europeans had to work for the greater good. Throughout the article, these ideas are explained in more detail and uncover that the Indians were put into a new world just as the Europeans were, whether they wanted change or

Once European men stepped foot onto what is now known as North America, the lives of the Native Americans were forever changed. The Indians suffered centuries of torment and ridicule from the settlers in America. Despite the reservations made for the Natives, there are still cultural issues occurring within America. In Sherman Alexie’s, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the tragic lives of Native Americans in modern society are depicted in a collection of short stories taking place in the Spokane Reservation in Washington state. Throughout the collection, a prominent and reoccurring melancholic theme of racism against Native Americans and their struggle to cope with such behavior from their counterpart in this modern day and age is shown.

“Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress”, chapter one of “A People’s History of the United States”, written by professor and historian Howard Zinn, concentrates on a different perspective of major events in American history. It begins with the native Bahamian tribe of Arawaks welcoming the Spanish to their shores with gifts and kindness, only then for the reader to be disturbed by a log from Columbus himself – “They willingly traded everything they owned… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” (Zinn pg.1) In the work, Zinn continues explaining the unnecessary evils Columbus and his men committed unto the unsuspecting natives.

Wilderness as a settler-colonial construct that embodies prejudice--racism and sexism--and that continues to shape and engrave settler-colonial ideologies in our society’s mindset, it should be questioned as to how it has been so powerful a cultural enterprise. Stories are what empower cultural persistence and cultural identity. In particular, the United States has implemented the use of story to shape and construct its cultural ideologies and to marginalize and disempower women and Indigenous people so that white men can assume a position of supremacy. Within these stories, the heroes are often depicted as innocent--similar to anti-conquest in which the colonizer naturalizes his own presence while establishing his power over native peoples

He will invariably have a thin sexy wife with stringy hair, an IQ of 191, and a vocabulary in which even the prepositions have eleven syllables” (79). In this text, Deloria argues how anthropologists purposely contrast themselves from Indians on reservations with how they dress to show their overwhelming wealth and intelligence over Indians while also crudely mocking how anthropologists pretend to be hierarchical snobs. High school students would be intrigued with the sass Deloria uses in his writing. Another appropriate type of reading would be Native Americans’ personal narratives of their own experiences on colonization, American politics, cultural appropriation, and more. Dawnland Voices edited by Siobhan Senier, for instance, would be a spectacular reading for this proposed class since it includes intimate indigenous short stories, poems, and writings from the New England region.

White vs. Native Americans Knowing the fact that Native Americans were pushed toward the Middle West and had to settle down against their wills are depressing. When the first Europeans came to this remote land and decided to make it their home, I was not sure whether they could imagine that the whole land is dominated by “invaders” called by the Native Americans, including the native Hawaii. “From a Native Daughter” by Haunani-Kay Trask showed us how these Natives’ feelings are being overlooked and silenced by white historians who do not know their language and culture. The author questioned Western historians were “looking at them with Western eyes, thinking about them within Western philosophical contexts, categorizing them by Western indices,

The relationship between the United States and the Native American tribes has never been a supportive one, challenging at best. In the past 200 years the relationship between the two has put pressure on Congress’ claim of a world power over tribes and tribal nation’s natural sovereignty, one that is even older than that of the United States of America. This tension, which comes from a sense of where the status of the Tribe fits into the United States Constitution, is creating a slippery slope for the Native American people. But in the book, the biggest question Pommersheim raises in the introduction is: can the modern Indian people escape their federally forced dependence, to become truly self-defining?

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee- Charles Eastman Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a novel the describes the history of the struggles between the Native Americans and the Europeans in the late 19th century written by Dee Brown. In 2007, a movie was produce based on the novel. The storyline of the movie is centered around four main characters: Charles Eastman, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud and Henry L. Dawes. Through different perspectives, the film wish to accurately depict the struggle of the Native Americans in their resettlements and the history of the massacre of the Natives at a place called the Wounded Knee.

Before the 1860’s the native americans were living in peace until the Colonists attacked. The Western Expansion of 1860-90 greatly affected the lives of Native Americans, due to the powerful role

In the book A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki, he argues that the “Master Narrative of American History” does not accurately reflect the meaning behind what it means to be an American, because this country is populated by immigrants from around the world. Therefore, Takaki wrote this book to make us look into a different mirror and showing us a more inclusive outlook by reflecting us the true history of America that includes Native Americans. Many also lack information about the history of several other ethnicities and for that reason, society created a construction through a separation between the minorities and whites. By conveying the history of the original settlers who have been inhabiting America, Takaki is able to exclude many people’s mentality that the history of whites are more superior than other racial minorities, in which have made them feel unimportant because of their lifestyle, when America is a country of all people, and not only

Losing one’s cultural knowledge, and therefore the reality of their culture, allows others to have control over their collective and individual consciousness as well as their destiny. In this case, it is clear that the United States government has had the dominant relationship over the Native