Native American Education

It wasn 't fair to the Indians that they were always getting the short end of the stick and never being accepted for who they were. The Native

This paper will review the first five chapters in J.R. Miller’s book Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools. These chapters examine the events that took place before residential schools were made, as well as looking into the historical context of Canada during this time period. The first chapter of the book explains the way in which indigenous communities educated their children before contact by the European settlers. The educational systems from these indigenous communities were much different than the European educational systems, in the sense of a formal, rigid, institution.

The Native Americans were taught the white people's culture and language. The goal of the white man's school was to teach the Native Americans their ways so that they would forget their own culture. They were taught to be responsible for yourself and not to help the group. They were taught that if you work in solidarity then you get to the top at the expense of others. 4.

When you think of the typical Native American, also known as Indigenous, a stereotypical image probably comes to mind. You think of a sulky, half-naked male dressed in animal skin and a tall feathery hat, dancing around a fire. You might picture a slim, attractive female with smooth red skin and long black hair. These are the images fed to us by the media. The media created this generic version of an indigenous person and everyone has been running with it ever since.

B. Ronald’s topic interests me greatly and is relevant to the plights of the modern Native American education system. His topic expresses that he wants to analyze how Sherman put his own life experiences into the story, and how the education affected him. I think Ronald could be more descriptive with his topic and dive deeper to explain the relevance a bit better. C. The topic of this rhetorical analysis to my understanding was that Sherman was trying to express himself and to show that Native American schools fail to educate children. Unfortunately, I don’t think Ronald expressed this throughout the essay.

The main purpose of the American Indian Center is to “respond to the self-defined educational needs and goals of the current American Indian student. To this end, the American Indian Center, utilizing both internal and external resources, empowers indigenous people through quality educational programming. Additionally, the center 's outreach activities promote awareness, better understanding, and sensitivity to American Indian

The American Indian Movement is one of the most pivotal periods of time in American history, but for some reason it is not taught in most primary education institutions. “In recent decades, AIM has been known primarily for cultural advocacy and for its work on behalf of Indigenous rights on a global scale” (“American Indian Movement(AIM) 6). It is very important for us to realize that, although small, the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 sparked the inspiration for other movements across the world to push for new legislation aimed at providing equal civil rights for all people, especially Indigenous. The Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 was successful because it provided a legal framework for protecting the civil rights of Indigenous people, established an important precedent for recognizing the sovereignty and autonomy of Indigenous nations, and helped to address long standing injustices faced by Indigenous

“Native American children have the highest drop-out rates of any ethnic group in the US” (Youth). The real issue at hand is trying to identifying the things that cause natives to drop out. Much of this has to do with the earlier governmental approach that the government took to educating Native children. These schools were later labeled as corrupt, with abusive teachers that beat and starved native children for speaking their native language or practicing their spiritual beliefs. The horrible conditions that Native American children had to endure at these schools had ruined Native Americans view "public" education.

Native American education has a low quality rate, is decreasing at a rapid rate, and have some of the lowest performing schools in the country . Native Americans are not getting the amount of school that other students get. There is a poor graduation rate and it has not has much progress in the last few years. The graduation rate has increased in the last few years, but lately, it has been at a stationary rate. Students of this ethnicity are getting poor educations and have a bad chance of getting chances of having a good life when they grow up, The number of native american graduates is very low and is pretty stationary.

Students will look at text from multiple perspectives regarding Native American and non- native interaction in the past. In doing so, students evaluate how history changes based on who tells you it by analyzing different accounts in history. Procedure: Day 1: The lesson will begin by having a class discussion and completing a word web. On the board there will be the phrase “Settlers thoughts on Native Americans” and then as a class we will brainstorm the different words that go with this.

Jonathan’s family is from the Table Mountain Rancheria of California located in Fresno County, California. The Table Mountain Rancheria is a federally recognized tribe of Native American people from the Chukchansi band of Yokuts and the Monache tribe. Jonathan did not live on the reservation nor did his parents but his great-great grandparents did. Jonathan’s family composition consists of his parents, his siblings and his grandparents. Native American traditional family composition consists of extended family members made up of blood and non-blood relatives.

As mentioned above, the loss of their culture terribly affected the young children’s relationships with their families. In an interview, a Native American that had been affected by these schools, Bill Wright, shared that his loss of his language led to his grandmother feeling as if he had lost his identity, as he had lost his ability to communicate with her and others he had associated with. Though this was clearly deleterious to the indigenous tribes, Americans still felt as if they were assisting them with their opportunities for the future. Officially, they made it seem as if they thought this was polite, beneficial, and in the best interests of both parties. From the inverse perspective, though, this was not the case.

Since the dawn of time, society has always had a major issue in cultural believes. Less and less people find the need to know and understand other people’s customs, which lead to the misunderstanding of people’s lifestyle. The Carlisle Indian School was a horrible attempt to place children of Native American tribes into US culture by placing them in boarding school. The school was used to educate and civilize Indians, “kill the Indian, save the man” (Bear). Edward Thorp was one of those student at the Carlisle school.

In Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, Alexie’s father’s love for books grew to make his self-love books ending up in Alexie teaching himself how to read. Alexie describes the stereotypes and what is expected of Indian children and how Indian children were expected to basically have no knowledge Many lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but invalidated them on the outside. While other children were doing this, Alexie’s father was one of the few Indians on the reservation who went to Catholic School on purpose and was also an devoted reader. Alexie grew up around books. His father had a strong love for books as he bought them by the pound from pawn shops, goodwill and the salvation army.

With the dominant part of U.S. culture consisting of independent white middle class, overcoming discrimination towards all groups and in all forms is a hard obstacle to overcome. Nonetheless, it is not impossible, it simply takes time and diligence. One of these ways to accomplish this would include incorporating more studies and accounts of Indigenous religion that come from Indigenous perspectives. Additionally, would be to accommodate more school systems to other religious events of students. Another way to facilitate this movement from the 19th century into the 21st would have more culturally appropriated classes and more classes in general that encompass different objectives than that of the dominant culture.