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Racism And Discrimination In 'Alternatives' By Drew Hayden Taylor

703 Words3 Pages

During this English class, we learned about past and present traumas faced by Indigenous people in order to reconcile and learn from our mistakes. To reconcile and learn about past traumas we have to be able to see how discrimination still happens today and how racism is still present in our world today. Both the texts AlterNatives by Drew Hayden Taylor and The Summer of Bitter and Sweet by Jen Ferguson are appropriate for NBE3U-E because they teach students about the underlying stereotypes and discrimination towards Indigenous people as well as the violence that still happens today. Discrimination and stereotypes towards Indigenous people is shown when Colleen makes assumptions about Angel and when Michelle makes discriminatory comments towards …show more content…

It is impossible to reconcile and learn about Indigenous identity when stereotypes and discrimination are still present today. In AlterNatives, it is clear that many people, especially white, make assumptions about Indigenous people. For example, Colleen makes many assumptions about Angel: “You automatically expected me to know how to cook a moose. Assumptions Colleen.” (page 132). Colleen instinctually assumed that Angel knew how to cook moose, even though she was Angel's partner. Not only are assumptions made towards Angel, but many discriminatory comments are made. This is seen when Michelle makes a racist comment: “If you take the t out of native, you get naive. What a co-inky-dink, huh?” (page 90). This is Michelle's way of calling all Indigenous people naive. This is very discriminatory because she says this towards all Indigenous people, and says they lack wisdom. I think that both of these quotes prove that AlterNatives is a great representation of underlying stereotypes, and discrimination towards Indigenous people, thus making it practically impossible to reconcile and learn about Indigenous …show more content…

The Summer of Bitter and Sweet shows how violence is still present today, and we must teach about it in order to stop it and fix these issues. Lou tells a short summarized story of what happened to her mother: “When she woke up with underwear missing, her jaw was broken, she was alone - covered in bites from mosquitos and black flies, bruised, unable to do much more than crawl to the road.” (Ferguson 64). This is how Lou explained what her father did to her mother. This line broke my heart because it made me realize and think of all the Indigenous women and girls who still experience this, and how no one talks about it or tries to stop it. Not only did The Summer of Bitter and Sweet talk about the sexual assault Indigenous women go through, it also talked about physical abuse and assault all Indigenous people experience. Lou and her friends attended a party, and there ended up being a fight. Lou was attacked with racist comments and attacked by people: “He's holding a clump of my hair in his closed fist.” (Ferguson 89). At the party a group of boys started to attack Lou and her friends, they pulled Lous hair, beat them up, and also almost urinated on them. This is extremely important to mention and to teach students about because we are unaware of so many people who go through violence and trauma, and we must figure out ways to bring it to an end and help those who

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