Essay on The American Indian Movement

In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will

Native Americans, or Indians, as they were mistakenly called, have been the “pathetic footnotes to the main course of American history” (Axtell 981). But James Axtell, the author of Colonial America without the Indians: Counterfactual Reflections, would beg to differ. He says that instead, Indians played a key role in making America great. James Murray gives another term to describe America’s greatness: America’s “exceptionalism.” Throughout his article Axtell makes many points as to why Indians played a vital role in “American Exceptionalism”. He even says that America wouldn’t have been colonized nearly as soon if the Indians were gone, because Columbus would know he was not in the Indies and move on. So because they simply existed in the first place, Axtell says they were significant in the history of our country. Furthermore, he says Indians specifically played a vital role in the exceptionality of America’s early economy, culture, and historical events and places.

The 1960’s and 70’s were a turbulent time in the United States, as many minority groups took to the streets to voice their displeasure with policies that affected them. During this time period a large movement for civil rights, including Native American’s, would seek to find their voices, as largely urbanized groups sought ways in which they could reconnect with their tribe and their cultural history. In their book, Like A Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee, Paul Chaat Smith, and Robert Allen Warrior take an extensive look at the events leading up to the three of the largest civil rights movements carried out by Native Americans. Beginning with the takeover of Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay by Indians of All Tribes in 1969; the authors tell in a vivid fashion of the Bay Area activism and Clyde Warrior 's National Indian Youth Council, Vine Deloria Jr.’s leadership of the National Congress of Indians, the Trail of Broken Treaties and the Bureau of Indian Affairs takeover, the Wounded Knee Occupation and the rise of the American Indian Movement.

One of the most celebrated protests happened February 1973 at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. This was the site of the 1890 massacre of the Sioux Indians murdered in cold blood by American federal troops. AIM occupied and seized the town of Wounded Knee for about two months, demanding changes in their administration and asking the government to honor their treaty obligations that were said to be forgotten. Only one Indian was killed during this protest and another one wounded. The Indian civil rights movement, like most other civil rights movements of their times did not win full justice and equality for their people. The principal goal to some Native Americans was to defend, and protect their rights as Native Americans. As to other Native Americans it was equality. Native Americans wanted to win a place in society as an equal to all groups that made up Americans. However, there is no single Indian culture or tradition in America, so the movement to unite all Native American tribes failed. The Indian civil rights movement, for all the limitations it had endured, did accomplish winning a series of brand new legal rights and protections, which gave them a much stronger position in the twentieth century. (Brinkley, 2012 page

Conception, is the way something is perceived. The conception of american indians changed over time, in many different way. So many different people thought very different of these Indians. This is a topic that is widely debated between many historians. Some historians thought that the indians lived in an unchanging state. Other historians saw the American Indians as pure and noble people. Although some though they were ruined by the contact with the European culture. Many of the historians have made misconceptions about these Indians. These are important to study because it allows us to understand how they make their assumptions.

and their effects are still occurring today and need to be made known to spare the

The Bill of Rights contains all of the basic rights endowed to all American citizens. For the purpose of our argument we will consider the Indians of the 19th century as American citizens. After reviewing the Bill of Rights it became extremely apparent that as American citizens many Indians civil rights were not only withheld, but also flat out denied and violated. Under the direction of anti-Indian president Andrew Jackson, the Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and within five years the Treaty of New Echota was formed and thus began the saddest series of events, which became known as the Trail of Tears. These events and more added to the delinquency of the

The American Indian Movement is an organizated started to help Indians that are treated unfairly and to help Impove there lifestyles. It was founded in 1968, in Minneapolis, Mn by George Mitchell, Dennis Banks, and Clyde Bellecourt. The American Indian MOvement has changed the way American Indians are treated and how they live and continues today to impove every aspect of American Indian's lives.

Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalism, Superiority… these are the ideas that supposedly justified the inhumanity of Americans during the colonization period. These ill-conceived and dangerous notions led early settlers to believe that they held the right and duty to claim and cross the new world. Any measures required to achieve this process were seen as necessary and just, even if it meant taking the lives and land of American Indians. America, the nation that prides itself on “liberty and justice for all,” began its history with the genocide of the American Indian culture and population, through the means of American Indian Boarding Schools. These schools were established with the goal to eliminate the “Indian problem” in America by assimilating

Although Clicktivism significantly changed Indigenous struggles over land and resources through protest and activism it is not responsible for introducing new concepts of the self and identity. The first true Native American nationalist movement was led by American Indian Movement in the 1960s and struck a different cord to the National Congress of American Indians. The first successful pan-Indian movement was the Society of American Indians (SAI) which stressed unity ignoring tribal affiliation as a factor causing division among Native Americans. Ironically this organization set up by and for Native Americans was in part caused by the education of Indian children in government run boarding schools to assimilate them. It had the reverse effect causing members of disparate tribes to become friends and allies and many of the leaders of the SAI came from these boarding schools.

American Indians have been discriminated against since the Europeans came to North America. They were driven from their homes and forced to surrender their land. They tried to build an alliance with France during the Revolutionary war, but ultimately they were defeated by the English. From then on, they were referred to as “savages”. The Proclamation of 1763 tried to separate the Native American land from the American colonial land. In the end, the American Indians lost their land and were forced to occupy smaller land areas, referred to as reservations, which were given to them through treaties. In 1979, a report from America’s Compliance with Human Rights Accords stated that

Native Americans have felt distress from societal and governmental interactions for hundreds of years. American Indian protests against these pressures date back to the colonial period. Broken treaties, removal policies, acculturation, and assimilation have scarred the indigenous societies of the United States. These policies and the continued oppression of the native communities produced an atmosphere of heightened tension. Governmental pressure for assimilation and their apparent aim to destroy cultures, communities, and identities through policies gave the native people a reason to fight. The unanticipated consequence was the subsequent creation of a pan-American Indian identity

The of the Indian American struggles against discrimination was at the heist of its objectives , when the leaders of the movement formed a coup group to stage defense that was evidence in killings and later the drafting of a commission to consider the grievances of their Indians. The non-Americans were the gainers of the commission as it spelt out their traditional and cultural rights, equal rights on resources like water, land ownership and appreciation of the religious customs. In respect, to the struggles out of discrimination, the Indians can be identified as their own failure towards equal treatment in America due to their own perception as being the weaker citizen thus lacking enough courage to stage out their overall demands. Also the

The American Indian Movement was started by Americans Indians who were frustrated with being controlled by Americans on the land that was once theirs. The American Indian protesters did not want to give up their land, lose their language, or their ability to live their lives as American Indians. As a result, the Oglala Lakota tribal group took control over the town of Wounded Knee to protest elected tribal head Dick Wilson. The people of the Pine Ridge Reservation wanted to get rid of Dick Wilson, due to the high levels of poverty and poor living conditions. The American Indian Movement also consisted of American Indians who were frustrated with being harassed by the police. In addition, American Indian Movement also acted on a racial incident

2. From a range of Native American perspectives that we have studied in these last four weeks of class, how did Indians respond to the government’s agenda to solve “the Indian Problem”? Where did they cooperate—and why—and where did they resist—and why?