Sydney Eads

Professor Tran
English 104
Tunkashila, Mitakuye Oyasin?
God, We Are All Related?
The elimination of Native American history from our text books is nothing new,
but has gotten to the point of cultural extinction. Students are learning less and less each
year about Native Americans, their culture, language, heritage, and also how they are
today. Due to the fact that the US Government is allowing these stories to be cut from
school curriculum, shows not only students and teachers, but the rest of the world just
how shallow the government has become.
Rebecca Klein, a writer for The Huffington Post wrote an article titled Most
Students Have No Clue What Accurate Native American History Looks Like which
talks about the saddening truth behind who really suffers when history is taken away
from students. All children have a right to understand and learn what the US Government
really did to the Native Americans, and in reality, those students have no say in what they
get to learn until they reach a collegiate or university education level, and by then the
Natives are so long forgotten that the students really dont care or want to learn about
them or their history. The government should want students to learn about what happened
to ensure that history doesnt repeat itself with another tragic event like the migration of

natives, or the removal of native children from their homes and tribes. Julian Brave
NoiseCat, another writer for The Huffington Post, published an article in 2015 that talked
about the Canadian Government finally admitting to its cultural genocide of Native
Americans, and why the US should follow suit. He mentions the fact that the US wants to
forget their mistakes rather than own up to them. Canada admitted not to have made a
mistake, but took fault for a genocide of natives that should have never happened in the
first place. The main question a lot of historians is, why cant the US just admit to what
they have done? which is a main argument in this essay. Although the United States has
said that they made a mistake, they wont actually come out and say it to the public, what
they did, and why then did it. Maybe they forgot after all these years what it was for, but
the natives havent.
Probably one of the most troubling parts about the loss of history for the Native
Americans is how and why they lost it. In an article by Clara Sue Kidwell, she talks about
the natural reason natives were killed off and many of their traditions were lost. Due to
new diseases brought to the new world by Europeans, many Native Americans died
because their bodies were not immune to these new viruses. Being forced to migrate to
new lands that they couldnt adapt to due to change in temperature or change in
agricultural conditions, killed off a good portion of natives. The article not only mentions
why the natives changed, but also how the Europeans changed culturally. Unnaturally
however, Native history was lost in one of the most barbaric ways possible. Children
were taken from their homes and their tribes without permission, and forced into catholic

schools. They were forced to cut their hair, which in their culture they only do when
someone close to them dies, so most of them thought after they had been taken that
people they loved were dying, which scarred them to no end to not know what was going
on at home. They were also forced to learn English and forbidden to speak their native
languages, which is why so much of the language is gone now. Lastly, they were made to
pick English names right from the bible. They were no longer allowed to go by the names
their parents had given them. This made it almost impossible for the kids to remember
anything about their culture, and since most Native American history back then was
conveyed orally, there was no one left to pass down their legacies and stories to, which
killed their spirit and hope that one day they would soon be able to live like they had
done before the white men came and flipped their whole world around.
Another main problem with the depletion of history other than the involvement of
the US Government is the reduction of interest and education with students. If kids were
taught at an earlier age about events such as Wounded Knee or Little Big Horn, they
would form an earlier appreciation for Native American culture before it was drilled out
of their heads. The National Park service writes about General Custer and the Black Hills.
Kids can go to the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore to learn about history, which could
seem more interesting than just reading about it. Having a more interactive experience
with history could up the chances of kids being more adamant about Native American
History. US students have a hard time recollecting history when asked about it. 100% of
the students (4/4) that I interviewed couldnt answer basic questions about Native

American history, leaders, or influential events that impacted the natives and why they
live the way they do today. Also, they had a hard time naming leaders, monuments, and
sacred symbols when given a list. When compared to American history, which is taught
adamantly in schools, most students could pick out George Washington, Mount
Rushmore, the holy Cross, and Jesus Christ. All are important symbols in America, but
being able to just name those in a line up is troubling.
Its not only US students that are losing touch with Native American history. Even
students who are Indian are having a hard time remembering and practicing their ancient
traditions. On my mission trips to Rosebud, South Dakota, the kids I was with and I got
hands on experience with Native History by learning traditions like dream catcher
making, Indian hand games, and Native speakers that really fueled my want to learn
about Native history. If more kids were encouraged to go on trips to reservations, they
could start to expand their knowledge and keep history alive and prevent history from
being erased completely. Shane and Noella Redhawk, who I met on my mission trip,
spend every weekend taking native children out and showing them rituals and sacred
ceremonies as they wouldve been done bad 200 years ago. Its more important now
than ever that we try to keep these kids aware of where they came from. Shane says.
These kids are our tribes future, and we need to make sure they know the true ways of
the Lakota people. They take the kids out on vision quests, bareback horse riding, and
powwows. Not only does this keep traditions alive with the teens, but also with the adults
who have to teach them.

When we take history out of our books, the government thinks they are making
things better by taking out the negative, but in reality, they are doing more damage than
good. They are destroying the entire being of a group of people. They are discouraging
the growth of a nation, and the prevention of such an outrageous event from happening
again. Schools arent being forced into at least offering the option to learn in-depth about
our countrys past. Even if children arent made to learn about natives just like they have
to learn about the holocaust, or Hiroshima, doesnt mean they shouldnt at least be able to
decide for themselves if they want to learn about Native Americans. But, the schools and
the Government, while they play the biggest role in the loss of culture, isnt the only
problem. Natural causes and oral story telling can also be blamed for the loss. Disease,
famine, dehydration, and the wear and tear the natives put on their bodies while moving
across the country to their reservations are also another reason so much history has been
lost in the past 200 years. Hopefully, with more early education, more and more students,
American and Native, will want to learn more about our countrys past, and help to
regrow the Native spirit.
A main concern of mine is not only will the culture be lost, but going with the
theme of identity, the children of the tribes will lose who they are. Most traditions are
passed on through word of mouth, and with fewer and fewer kids learning about their
heritage, the risk is higher than ever that these traditions and rituals will be lost forever.
Many websites offer help to find out your family tree, and it makes it easy for people of
European decent to find out their history, but with so many members not known now a

days by the government, there arent a lot of alternative ways for these people to find out
where they came from.
Wayne E. Lee, a professor at the University of North Carolina, writes an article
titled Peace Chiefs and Blood Revenge: The Patterns of Restraint in Native American
Warfare, and talks about the way Natives fought for their land and their rights. He
describes how natives thought in their times of war. To put it into perspective, many kids
know about American wars, for example, Vietnam, and why we were there and why we
thought, as a country, it was okay. The same thing happened with Native Americans.
They wanted to keep their land and what they thought was theirs. The main idea with
natives is that nothing is owned. They borrow from the earth and they own nothing, they
cant claim the land they live on, the animals they kill, or people. They differ from
Americans in that way because when the Europeans came over to the new world, they
wanted to take everything for themselves and own the new land. One of the top reasons
natives fought the way they did, as hard as they did, was because it was completely
against their nature to try to claim the land. With the taking of land that natives once
stayed on, and forcing them to move to reservations, the new explorers of the US started
taking their culture away from them long before they realized.
I used an article I found online called Native American Indian Chiefs on the
History net, to look up names of historical Native American leaders that even I didnt
know about. Names like Crazy Horse, who led a fierce campaign against the Europeans,
and Tecumseh, who formed the Tecumseh Confederacy. This was a vision to unite the

tribes east of the Mississippi as an independent nation. These names are remembered to
as some of the most influential leaders in history. Their lives were given up for their
peoples so that they could attempt to carry on their native ways. Unfortunately, their
efforts were futile, and the natives lost everything anyway.
Not only is the loss of information devastating educationally, but physically,
mentally, and economically as well. For example, the Rosebud Reservation, located in
Rosebud, South Dakota, is economically lacking and ranks second in per capita income
on Plains Reservations. Unemployment has been known to reaches over 80%, and the
fact that there arent enough jobs on the reservations for the people leaves a devastating
mark on Rosebud families. Many heads of the family are forced to leave the reservation
to seek work. They are known to have old, broken down cars in their front yards, and use
them to house their guests, usually more family members, when they come to visit or can
no longer afford housing. It is said that one in three people are homeless, and three out of
five people live in inadequate housing on the reservations. Gangs and violence have also
played a huge part in the lives of Native Americans. Their influence on the community is
devastating, and a curfew has been implemented for 10 pm on the reservation to ensure
the safety of children and volunteers who go to try to fix the living conditions.
Those who are educated go to the reservations to try to make amends. And while
this is seen by the natives as helpful, and you can see their gratitude, there are still some
grudges that need to be worked through between the whites and the natives. When I was
there, on the Rosebud, I worked at a kids club. We in no way wanted to spread

Christianity to the members of the reservation, which is a huge mistake a lot of volunteers
make when they first go, but instead try to get them back to their roots. We teach them
how to play drums, how to garden, and how to sew. We teach them skills that they can
take with them wherever they go and that they can find useful. But, as stated previously, a
large mistake people make is trying to teach the natives their own religion instead of
helping them to find their old ones. Many natives are looking to get back into their own
ways with ceremonies like the sweat lodge, where you go and pray to Tunkoshila, or
grandfather, or the vision quest, where you fast for days and see visions of God and how
you should live your life. Those traditions were almost lost when the Europeans came to
America and tried to force Catholicism and Christianity on the people.
Another fact that has influenced the education of native culture with Americans, is
the fact that we took their land, even the land that we promised them in treaties that, to
us, really meant nothing. If you go to the Dakotas, you will find many reservations, with
land that is unsuitable for farming, and therefore, highly unsuitable for living. Also, if you
drive up to Keystone, South Dakota, in the middle of the Black Hills, you will find
Mount Rushmore. The Black Hills are considered sacred land for the Native Americans,
and has been fought over for years by the Lakota and the US Government. NPR wrote an
article about the Black Hills, and the Crazy Horse monument that talks about how
destructive what we did was. The US took Native land and built a monument that is seen
by millions with faces of the American presidents, but in the heartland of Native history.
The Black Hills was once a sacred place to worship and where the Sioux thought the

world was created, and were extremely upset with the fact that the government took part
of their sacred, holy land to build a monument for the people who took their land away.
Not too far from Mount Rushmore, is a work in progress monument commemorating
Crazy Horse, a well-known Native leader. The natives wanted something they could
claim as their own, so they agreed to build the statue of their great leader using only
money they raised from the Lakota, and surrounding tribes. As stated before, the
unemployment rate is usually in the high 70s and ranges into the 80s percent wise, so it
has been a real challenge for the people to celebrate their leader and have a place they can
go and look at the man who tried so hard to give his people their freedom, when there is
no money going into the project. The monument began construction in 1948, and still has
yet to be even half way completed.
The destruction of their land, the removal of history from books, the taking of their
heritage has left the natives to almost nothing. They are considered second class citizens
and if the US isnt careful, they could lose the history of an entire nation. The Lakota
people want so badly to have their ways and traditions brought back to life, and even
teach non-natives how to play their games and how to put up teepees, but it just isnt
enough. People need to get more in touch with what is happening in our own country.
They are so worried about the under privileged kids in Africa or China that they dont
realize that people are starving, homeless, and have no idea who they really are, and that
those people are in their own backyards. Its time for the US to go back a few hundred
years, and admit their wrong doings towards the native peoples before everything is lost

for good. We need to educate our children on the wars, massacres, and famines that we
caused the native peoples so that it doesnt happen again, if we ignore it, we could be
responsible for the cultural genocide of an entire nation of people. While I dont think
its the fault of just one generation, and that it has taken years to destroy all the culture of
native tribes, I do believe its time for a change. We need to get these people back to their
roots, and let them discover who they are before everything is lost for good.
In schools, the teachers need to have a larger portion of the books dedicated to the
study of natives. We need to make sure that kids are just as aware of Native Americans as
they are of the French or the British peoples. There needs to be a change. There needs to
be a way that the kids of these native families can trace their lineage back and find out
who they were related to. Knowing who your family is has a huge part in finding
yourself, and we need to be there for them. The US has done enough in the past few
centuries to destroy these people, and now we need to try to be there for them as much as
possible to at least try to show them that they are people. More jobs need to be created,
possibly in museums that can not only provide a lower homelessness and unemployment
rate, but the men and women who take those jobs can have a chance to learn about where
they came from, how their traditions work, and then pass it along to younger generations,
not just native, but people of all cultures. Its important for the US to know its true
history, and if we keep destroying it, whats to keep it from happening again. Its more
imperative now than ever to help these people find themselves, before everything that
made them who they are, or who they were, is lost forever. We need to stop taking away

the chance to learn about something different, and start encouraging the education of
different cultures, Native American and more.

Works Cited
http://www.nrcprograms.org/site/PageServer?pagename=airc_res_sd_rosebud
http://www.historynet.com/native-american-indian-chiefs
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/01/167988928/the-slow-carving-of-the-crazy-horsemonument
https://www.nps.gov/wica/learn/historyculture/history-of-the-black-hills.htm
Kidwell, Clara Sue. "New Frontiers in Native American History." Frontiers: A Journal
of Women Studies 17.3 (1996): 29. Web.
Klein, Rebecca. "Most Students Have No Clue What Accurate Native American
History Looks Like." Huffinton Post. The Huffington Post, 25 Nov. 2015. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.
Lee, Wayne E. "Peace Chiefs and Blood Revenge: Patterns of Restraint in Native
American Warfare, 15001800." The Journal of Military History 71.3 (2007): 701-41. Web.
NoiseCat, Julian Brave. "Canada Just Confronted Its 'Cultural Genocide' Of Native
People. Why Can't The U.S. Do The Same?" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com,
05 June 2015. Web. 09 Feb. 2016.
Mark, Joan. Harvard Review 13 (1997): 220221. Web...
Crum, Steven. Rare Exceptions: Some University Professors and the Teaching of
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