The Purpose Of Unit V: American Indians

Unit V: American Indians

The movie Smoke Signals was very humorous, although it was very entertaining it was also an insight on the oppression and the resentment that the culture obtains.The movie explained the therapeutic and uneasy choices made to cope with past trauma. I learned that alcohol, violence and abandonment play a big role when trying to figure out your cultural identity; especially when you have been assimilated and abused into thinking that your culture is not important. I learned from the speakers that despite the past and the false accusations of an American Indians personality, Natives are really down to earth people and so forgiving. I’ve learned that even today the American Indians are divided into groups by the Blood

The purpose of the boarding schools were to strip the Indians of their culture, to punish them until they believed and practiced English ways. Boarding schools were made to isolate the children and break the patterns of their backgrounds. The adolescents at were treated horribly at the school, their hair had been cut, they had been abused for speaking the only language they knew and they were locked in closets for crying. The children of the boarding schools were neglected, they returned with the language of the English and some knowledge of christianity but they did not return with the basic skills to work in the white society. The children could no longer relate to their families and the impact was huge negativity. Returning home children were neglected because they could not decipher the language used at home, parents were depressed and started using alcohol which caused them to be so sloppy that they abandoned children, suicide rates had risen with the rates of crimes, gangs, and violence. Because of the anger and oppression the American Indian community fell apart, with nothing to really unite them because of the absence of culture and