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Summary Of A War Of Words By Coleman

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Native Americans have been thrown under the buss many a times by the United States. A lot of that comes from the way we our knowledge of them was framed to fit our needs rather than theirs. Cynthia-Lou Coleman’s piece “A War of Words” talks about how news stories frame their information to help or hurt one side or the other. The “Conflict Frames” section, is the best put together, and has strong evidence and examples to support the reasoning. The “Progress Frames” section was very one sided, and didn’t offer much information about the Native American side to the story. Another really strong part of her article would be her conclusion. The way she set it up, and the information she used made her argument very strong. In the “Conflict Frames” …show more content…

That is where the “Progress Frames” section comes into play. Since this section is very one sided, it doesn’t show a lot of evidence towards the Native Americans’ side of the story. "As long as Indians live in villages they will retain many of their old and injurious habits (but once removed to) individual lands or farms . .. (they) will begin their real and permanent progress" (Coleman, 1998, p.186). This statement really has nothing to do with Americans. The person that said this is trying to say that we need to get them out of their old ways to help them move forward. Like we learned in lecture, Indian societies have already made a lot of progress towards the technologies of today. Technologies like guns for hunting, snowmobiles for transportation, bows and arrows, and many more. For an American to say that the Removal Act was necessary for progress is plain ignorant. “Progress, for example, has been used to justify the forced removal of indigenous peoples from their homelands” (Coleman, 1998, p.186). This statement just shows that our government only wanted to increase the size of their land, even if that meant removing the indians from theirs. That is section needs to put information about how indians have already progressed in society, and how we as Americans are pushing them away from wanting to …show more content…

“Such battle images reflect longstanding stereotypes of United States-Native American interaction) in which battles over land and cultural values historically favored the more powerful invader” (Coleman, 1998, p.190). This statement directly relates to the last paper we had to write. The last paper we talked about the stereotypes and generalization of Native Americans. As of today, we still use stereotypes for the native populations. Nobody will ever truly be able to understand the indian people completely, and by generalizing and stereotyping them, it will just make it harder. Colonialism is what helped and hurt the Native Americans at the same time. It helped them because the colonists were able to teach them how to do new things like farm wheat, and many other things. What hurt them though, was the selfishness the colonists had, and how they cared more about expanding, then they did for entire societies. “I argue that dominant views that embrace progress, democracy, and technological solutions are accepted as normative and rational. Views that are considered cultural, such as cyclical relationships, are framed in the news as less legitimate than technorational views” (Coleman, 1998, p.190). Americans care more about progression than they do about relationships with other cultures and societies. This is happening all over the world with many countries, and it happened in the past with

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