First off I would like to say that after reading about the American holocaust I became very frustrated and disgusted with the government officials that represent America. To be honest I was not that educated on the history of the native people but I guess you can blame it on the school system that blinded me with the “greatness” of Christopher Columbus. To read about all the gruesome things that were done to the Native people sadden me tremendously. Having your limbs chopped off, burned alive, and hunted for game is the highest level of disrespect if there is one. What really frustrates me is the fact that we as Americans are basically celebrating these horrible acts on Columbus Day.
I know that we can not teach our children this in elementary but there has to be a time other then college were this needs to be learned. This goes to show how corrupted this nation is because everyone does not get a chance to go to college nor do they get a chance to learn about many other horrible things this nation has done. It is also sad that we have to take a test like the SAT to go to college and find out the truth. We are basically paying the government to learn the truth. Another thing that frustrated me was how all these government officials and politics had the nerve to over look the situation as if it never happen. Native Americans had there land raped from them for nothing basically.
The book stated that some of Native American land was used to dump “toxic waste”. So basically (It sickens me to say we) we killed million for land to dump toxic waste and greed. J.H Elliott had the nerve to say that the use of the word genocide to describe what happen to the Native Americans was basically inappropriate. Just to read what he said frustrated me because I could not believe he could say something like that. I honestly want to know what other word you could possibly use to describe what happen to the Native American but the word holocaust.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Hi Benny,
Thank you for your detailed response.
I'm curious about:
"Another thing that frustrated me was how all these government officials and politics had the nerve to over look the situation as if it never happen. Native Americans had there land raped from them for nothing basically."
How do nations, and nation builders construct specific histories that villify oppressed groups and valorize oppressors?
What media techniques are used (methods) to disseminate these ideologies of 'savages, heathens, beasts' which strike specific chords to controlled groups (poor ethnic European immigrants) who've been socialized into thought patterns of 'good v. evil', 'Christian v. heathen', 'approved v. disapproved', 'white v. dark', 'male v. female', 'master v. slave/indentured/laborer', etc.?
In what ways did the nation builders, throughout several key stages of building the capitalist Nation-State, construct specific narratives of Native Americans/indigenous/aboriginal Americans to villainize them as nonroductive and 'waste'.
thanks,
Margo Tamez
I liked the idea of educational reform. It might not be appropriate for children to learn about the violence in detail but the knowledge that it occured could lead discuss and further understandings later on before college. There really is no excuse for not presenting accurate history to a student in high school.
I agreed with your analogy of the article especially about how the government and society sugar-coated history. The tradition of sugar coating history makes it hard for some Americans,even the ones who are attending college (like at wsu), to accept a different point of view of what happened in the past.
Post a Comment