preview

Indigenous People Research Paper

Better Essays

Over the course of history, indigenous people have been the target of discrimination, racism, and systematic oppression. Beginning as early as 1492 when Columbus reached the Caribbean, indigenous people were either attacked, enslaved, or forced to move back to make way for European expansion, which ultimately led to the destruction of Native American livelihood. Multiple wars broke out between the Europeans and indigenous groups, like the Pequot War in 1637 and King Philip’s War in 1675. Many indigenous people were forced to assimilate into white culture or otherwise, risk execution. Then in the 1800s, when President Andrew Jackson enacted the Indian Removal Policy, the Trail of Tears occurred (over 4,000 of the 15,000 Cherokees died on the …show more content…

The Standing Rock Reservation was given to the Native Americans to because of the significance and weight that the land held for the Standing Rock Tribe. For instance, the High Arctic Relocation, which was the forced relocation of 19 Inuit families from Quebec to the Arctic Region in the 1950s. Apihtawikosisân, a Métis woman from the Plains Cree speaking community of Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta, says that the relocations of indigenous people occurred as a way to reinforce sovereignty of a race or a group of people. In doing so, the effects of these relocations reverberated for generations, such as the weakening of cultural bonds, loss of economic sufficiency, decline in standards of health, changes in social and political structures, was a damaging experience for many indigenous people. While the company nor the government is telling or forcing the Standing Rock Tribe to move, the Pipeline does endanger the Native American’s way of life. The North Dakota Pipeline is essentially forcing the Standing Rock Tribe to conform so that the structure can be built under the Missouri River and near the Tribe’s Reservation and sacred areas. More instances of denying human rights or forcing indigenous people to submit, would include the human rights abuses against indigenous people in Southeast Asia. Between the Cham, the Montagnard, and the Jumma, there were rights issues regarding way of life, religious beliefs, assimilating into another culture, imprisonment, and land dispossession (Scholten). These sorts of issues are not directly tied to the Dakota Pipeline, but are related in a way that guaranteed rights were taken away or ignored when a certain group of people began to deny the human needs of the indigenous. Establishing a Pipeline under sacred grounds and near Indian Reservations can be

Get Access