I Lost My Talk Poem

Junípero Serra has been decapitated, defaced, and became a saint all within a month’s time. He is surrounded by controversy. Many celebrated for he was the first Latino to become canonized. Rubén Mendoza of California State University of Monterey Bay explains, “Father Serra was not only a man of his time, he was a man ahead of his time in his advocacy for native people on the frontier.” However, Valentin Lopez who is the chair of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band explains that “Serra’s and the Church’s failure to learn form the teaching of Christ or from the life of St. Francis resulted in the complete extinction of many, many California tribes and great devastation for many others.”

The prescribed question that I have chosen is Power and Privilege: “How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?”

In the third grade, I was asked to draw a picture related to Thanksgiving for a drawing contest to win a Toys R Us coupon. I remember the only knowledge I had of Thanksgiving was what my grade school teachers had taught me: the Pilgrims, people who wore tall, black hats shared a joyous meal with Indians, who were known as wild people who wore togas around their waist and feathers on their heads. Being a ignorant little boy, I drew what I thought Indians had to do to catch the turkeys as my picture; I drew an Indian man with a bow shooting an arrow right through the body of a turkey. With that picture, I won the contest. This thought of Indians in togas stayed with me until 9th grade when my world history teacher taught the class about the effects

In the final account with Anne Wampy William Apess uses “quotes” from her to show that even Native Americans late in age can become devoted Christians. Throughout The Experience of Five Christian Indians William Apess uses intellectual and rhetorical sovereignty as well as characterization to show that Native Americans are people who can think for themselves and represent themselves anyway they see fit.

In this chapter of the book James W. Loewen talks about how the Native American's history has been misunderstood because of the how the textbook company has either disregarded it or it just went off of popular myths. Loewen's major concern is how their civilization, how syncretism played in Native peoples, and how the Europeans culturally imperialized them into European culture.

Native americans were not able to adapt to western customs and integrate themselves into US societies. Although it is true that American Indians had little influence on modern technology and they have their own history and beliefs, their adaptation in modern US society has not flourished as much. In some cases like shown in Source 4, an American Indian woman is seen smoking from a cigarette. This could be evidence of American Indians adapting to the western world, but it is merely a photograph taken for a photographer's album.

Expectations often impose an inescapable reality. In the short story “Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie, Victor often struggles with Indian and American expectations during school. Alexie utilizes parallelism in the construction of each vignette, introducing a memoir of tension and concluding with a statement about Victor’s difficulties, to explore the conflict between cultures’ expectations and realities.

When it comes to determining the identity of an individual, there are a few simple things that typically influence that assumption. The way one may speak or where they’re from, the types of things they like to do or hear or eat. While grander choices and decisions play into this identity, it is truly who one chooses to be on an average day that forms this mold. Gertrude Bonnin’s memoir The School Days of an Indian Girl focuses on her changing sense of self after being placed in a boarding school. No longer was she allowed to keep all of the little things that created her identity, the simple day-to-day habits that made her who she was up to that point. The schools fundamentally changed many Native American youths and anything that would have

Brave Heart, Maria Yellow Horse, et al. “Historical Trauma Among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: Concepts, Research, and Clinical Considerations.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, vol. 43, no. 4, 2011, pp. 282-290.

In the novel, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, nine distinct stories are told that depict families or people of Indian descent who experience different situations and circumstances that affect their lives. Many themes arise throughout the stories, but one that is prevalent through two specific stories, Mrs.Sen’s and Interpreter of Maladies, is the idea of cultural assimilation. Mrs.Sen’s and Interpreter of Maladies both portray the idea of cultural assimilation, but in different ways. Mrs.Sen’s is an example of a woman who resisted cultural assimilation in order to preserve her Indian heritage, while Interpreter of Maladies is a story that depicts a family who have fallen victim to cultural assimilation, thus losing a sense of connection to their Indian roots and being conformed into American culture. Lahiri uses the recurring motif of physical objects and actions to illustrate the various effects cultural assimilation has on certain people. Ultimately, Lahiri suggests the idea that American culture plays an influential role in shaping one’s physical and cultural beliefs, but it is possible to avoid being assimilated through self-determination and resistance.

"Mother Tongue" was written by Amy Tan, who is famous for her writings of her experiences as a Chinese immigrant growing up in American culture. Her primary purpose is to inform the reader about the prejudices her mother faced because her mother could not speak perfect English. In her essay, Tan shares stories of her mother's broken English and how people took advantage of her mother. Tan's intended audience are those who are unaware of people like her mother whose limited English is taken advantage of in everyday life. The experiences Tan shares with the readers is an emotion inducing strategy which Tan uses throughout her writing and it is proved to be very effective.

Native Americans’ social structure was very different from the way Anglo-American’s believed was the correct way for men and women to live. This created a major conflict as the Anglo’s begin to press on the Natives’ land. Anglo-American’s believed that the best thing for the Natives’ was to be assimilated and transformed into their way of life. The Anglo’s intervened into the Natives’ life with a Civilization Program, removal and reservations, and boarding schools. The ramifications had lasting negative effects on the Natives’ gender roles.

Throughout assimilation, there was a cultural barrier between the Indians and the teachers. At the core of this barrier was the idea that one culture was more civilized than the other. This idea can be seen in both Native American boarding schools and at St. Lucy’s. As stated in Sarah E. Stone’s dissertation, the teachers at Native American boarding schools were not “culturally familiar” (57) with the students and, as a result, treated them differently. Similarly, at St. Lucy’s the nuns saw the wolf girls as barbaric people and treated them accordingly. The teachers and nuns believed that since they were the civilized culture, they must assimilate the more savage people into their way of life and help them become as stated in Karen Russell’s

In Chapter eight of Byron Williston’s Environmental Ethics for Canadians First Nation’s perspectives are explored. The case study titled “Language, Land and the Residential Schools” begins by speaking of a public apology from former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He apologizes for the treatment of “Indians” in “Indian Residential Schools”. He highlights the initial agenda of these schools as he says that the “school system [was] to remove and isolate [Aboriginal] children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them[…]” (Williston 244). By doing this, colonial Canadians assumed that aboriginal cultural and spiritual beliefs were invalid in relation to European beliefs (244). The problem with ridding the First Nations Peoples of their languages, as Williston points out is to “deprive them of the sense of place that has defined them for thousands of years” (245). The private schooling system was an attack on First Nations identities, and their identity is rooted in “a respect for nature and its processes” (245).

In Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown delivers the reader with a Native American history of the west. Providing the narrative with historical accounts and primary sources, Brown offers a unique view into the past. Brown’s book offers several fascinating accounts of Native American culture during the nineteenth century. The reader should analyze the aspects offered by Brown to understand how the author’s book provides a unique history of the Native American West.