Native American Voices Reflection Paper
Angela Fields
Native American Voices Reflection Paper
11/14/2016
The research papers have done in Native American Voices has greatly broadened my understanding of many Native American peoples. I have learned of their cultures from ritual practices such as the ghost dance and sun dance, to the creation of some of their impressive innovations of construction such as Pueblo Bonito, Great Serpent Mound, Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde, and the Cahokia Mounds which were believed to be constructed nearly 1000 years before the pyramids were constructed in Egypt. I have also learned of their social culture, that I and many others believe, to be in some cases, better than those of American and other worldly cultures today. Many Native cultures were accepting of strangers and people other than themselves, such as the Navajo with their acceptance of Two-spirited people or the Nez Perces who accepted Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the Pacific and back, as well as Massasoit who took in and cared for the Pilgrims who landed in Plymouth.
The difficulties I learned of Native peoples are vast and numerous. As soon as Europeans first landed on the shores of the Americas they sought to settle every inch of the continent, regardless of a great many people already inhabiting it. The Native struggled against foreign diseases, foreign goods that normally affected their culture negatively, and the introduction of invasive plant and animal species. The whole of the European’s way of life and thinking put heavy pressures on many Native people, some to the point of breaking. Homelands were taken, heritage eradicated, culture dismissed or assimilated into what was deemed fit by the white man. Innate human rights ignored, ignorant discrimination and lack of understanding were a primary theme throughout the history book after European people began to settle here. Hardships from broken promises and treaties, removal from home and heart to lands unknown, and complete disregard of anything that was not considered “civilized” blackens the underside of my once proud understanding of how my nation was founded via what was done to these “first people.” I am ashamed of my heritage now and feel very strongly after the lessons of this class that we should do everything we can to right this wrong and facilitate any current interests of those once great people to remove the shame we now bear from their mistreatment.
The topics we learned in this course can be related to, and strengthen by the work in other classes such as English, Languages, Social Studies, Math/Science and of course, other History classes. In English, the uses of rhetorical methods like Patios, Logos, and Ethos add to the lessons we had in Native American Voices with the many contrasting causes for the loss of Native heritage, and which were considered topics up for argument. An example is when we compared and contrasted the introduction of horses, guns and trade to the plain Natives. We had to use those English principles to come up with persuasive arguments on why one would have a more negative impact, over the other two. In languages, the lessons we had of the Navajo code talkers could be a viable topic for another course in Languages. In Social Studies, as mentioned before, some major differences of many of the Native cultures acceptance and practices when compared to other cultures, both before the discovery of the Natives, and during that same time period are the examples mentioned like the Two-spirited people, but also their acceptance of women within their social circles. Science and Math have examples, from the mathematically accurate architecture the Natives built, to the astronomy use in Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Mayans, as well as evidence of astronomy understanding in construction of some of those archaeological accomplishments which have been found in Chaco Canyon. Lastly, the vast majority of the knowledge gained from this course, can be used within other history courses. From the comparison of structures like the mounds and pueblos, to political structures we can see major similarities of our own foundation of government. Any American history course can benefit in many ways from the lessons of this course, and should not be discussed without it, since they very much go hand in hand.