As an American, one could ashamed of the actions and policies of the US government; unfortunately, much of America’s history has followed the trend of oppression and imperialism started by those first European settlers, who colonized the Americas and supplanted the Native Americans. Hidden in the great American success story, lies a darker history of those who didn’t win, those who never got to write the history books.
The descendants of the European settlers, who eventually founded the United States of America and its government, have not only taken land from Native Americans, but they have repeatedly violated their basic human rights over hundreds of years. Similarly, the U.S. has subjugated, oppressed, or killed people of other nationalities
…show more content…
Since then, the population of Native Americans has declined consistently (either steadily or sharply), mostly due to violence and disease perpetuated by the European settlers and their descendants; before the arrival of Europeans, populations were likely increasing steadily over the span of at least 12,000 years. Settlers were known to give blankets infested with small pox to Native Americans, contributing to massive declines in population. Estimates of the Native American population before the arrival of Europeans range from about 2 million to 18 million (Johansen, 2006); much of their population and a majority of their tribes have now …show more content…
In fact, many Native Americans worked side by side with the African slaves and their descendants, as many people from both groups were forced to work on the plantations that helped build America’s wealth.
One current example of a misunderstanding both that groups face is related to the way they are identified by mainstream American culture; people tend to identify Africans and Native Americans as individual groups. In reality, Natives Americans were comprised of over 500 groups, each with distinctive cultures and languages; similarly, the Africans that were brought to the Americas as slaves originated from at least 60 unique groups (Handle, p.5). This wide generalization could be compared to grouping Norwegians with Italians and referring to them both as “White