Native American History Book Report

Anyone can read a history textbook assigned in class and understand the events in their minds, but understanding the emotion of the people who were there at the events are lost in blank monotone text. Being able to recite events dryly from your textbook is not knowing one’s history. In order to fully understand history, you have to be able to understand every aspect of the events. Every emotion, thought, and desire of the people who were there as the history was made. In order to tell history, you need to attach emotion to the words being expressed so that the reader can fully understand what happened. In this context, with the help of Dr. Herbert T. Hoover, Joseph Cash gathered fifty-eight oral stories from Native Americans who had faced oppression

The 1930s were the turning point of Native American life. Due to segregation against Native Americans and other non-white ethnic groups, unemployment for native americans was already very high, but as the stock market crashed and as many jobs instantly disappeared, the work opportunities for the Natives Americans were utterly eradicated. Unemployment rates for the Natives rose so high that most were left jobless and stranded in poverty. Reservations, most already in horrible conditions, began to deteriorate to even lower levels. The crisis for the United States was arguably even more devastating on the other ethnic groups. As things continued to get worst, the government and Natives tried to help stabilize the Native American society and stop the attacks on their Native culture. So in 1934, as a part of President’s Roosevelt’s New Deal, the united states signed the Indian Reorganization Act. The act gave tribes the option of establishing democratic forms of government. By following the modeled government described in the Act, tribes would be eligible for federal funds to purchase land, start business ventures, and receive various social services. But this all came at a hidden price that was unseen as the act was created. In his interview, Ramon Roubideaux said that, “The Indian Reorganization Act is possibly one of the best intentioned but unfortunate happenings that could have possibly taken place as far as the Indian people are concerned”(Cash and Hoover 188). This can turned out to be more obvious as , though the Act was rather effective in the beginning, as the decrease of native land slowed rapidly and the tribes were given a steady income source, the power of the Act turned to be a double edged sword. As the IRA set up democratic governments in the many of the tribes, it ironically had