Conclusion
A Diverse People
Although often aggregated into a collective, many individual cultures are included in the term "American Indian."
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"Indians are very diverse; they represent hundreds of cultures vastly different one from another. More than two hundred mutually unintelligible languages are spoken in the United States" (Stevens).
Reduced to Stereotypes
American Indians have been simplified and stereotyped.
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"We do not know our Indians – not we modern whites. We are apt to think of them, if at all, as feathered, fringed and half-naked savages howling about some beleagured little pioneer group. . . . It is the impression most of us hold – if we have any impression at all."
- R. G. Stillman
All in the Name of Progress
"What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization and religion?"
- President Andrew Jackson
Perception of American Indians varied greatly. The government's assimilation policy, another method of dealing with the "Indian Problem," was mistakenly powered by the belief that acculturating children benefited them. In reality, they lost a right made inherent by their sovereignty as tribes. As the government worked to eradicate American Indian culture, the tribes' rights as sovereign dependent domestic nations were undermined.
Culture as a Right
Starting in the late 1920s, people began to recognize the wrongs of boarding schools and the importance of culture. Tribal sovereignty should provide every tribe's right to their own cultures, and legislation started to secure that.
Preservation as a Responsibility
"But why do I have to be teaching it at a school? Why isn't it taught in our families, all our families? You know, because of boarding schools, because kids were taken from their homes and those traditional things weren't always taught."
- Lorene Sisquoc, teacher at Sherman Indian High School
The doubts concerning boarding schools caused the teachings to slowly change, and culture became an integral part of American Indian education. By respecting their tribal sovereignty, the government was finally able to fulfill its true responsibility by helping to maintain American Indian culture.
"We as a human race need to look at the bigger picture. Culture can never be made. Culture can never be sold, or bought. It is in us. . . . It is important to understand culture is not a past tense, it is who we are here and now."
-George Swanaset Jr.
-George Swanaset Jr.