O71350 – Ümitcan TURHAN Electrical & Electronic Engineering

GEED 162: The Power of Language and Persuasion

The Semester Project Topic : The USA should pay claim to the Indians

“White Man Came, Freedom Gone”

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the regions of North America now encompassed by thecontinental United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as intact political communities. There has been a wide range of terms used to describe them and no consensus has been reached among indigenous members as to what they collectively prefer to be called. Native Americans have also been known as American Indians, Amerindians, Amerinds, First Nations, Aboriginal Americans, Indians, Indigenous, Original Americans, First Americans, Red Indians, or Red Men.

American Indians lived life in love with nature. Their wisdom showed in everything - their capacity for harmony with the environment, what they wore, what they created, what they ate and how it was prepared, in their home life and importance of family and in their philosophies and beliefs. It would be impossible to tell the whole story of Native Americans, or even one people within the whole. Not only because there is so much to know, but because "historical" information is often incomplete, inaccurate or totally nonexistent. These offerings provide a brief and basic look into a few of literally hundreds of American Indian tribes and bands that existed in North America before the arrival of European influence. The brief and basic looks are intended to spark interest and serve as a jumping off point for your pursuit of those people, traditions and beliefs which most interest you.

For generation after generation, the American Indians who inhabited the North American continent were different in many ways, and the same in others. While not alike in tradition, ceremony, language or lifestyle, they did seem to share a reverence for the earth and all things in nature. Three centuries ago, however, Europeans who arrived in the Americas saw things differently. While American Indians sought to be part of the beauty and wild around them, European cultures saw these same gifts as things to conquer, tame and ultimately own. As Western civilization reflects on the ways of the world, it has finally come to a realization that perhaps the American Indian way of thinking might have been the better path. For thousands of years Native Americans maintained an ecological and social balance undone in a fraction of the time. For many years their philosophies and common sense beliefs were not heard because no one was listening. 

Native American tribes have lived and thrived upon the North American landscape for thousands of years—long before there was a United States. Historically, there were 2000 Native clan and about 500 distinct Native languages were spoken in North America.

When the Europeans first came to North America in the 16th- and 17th-century, there were approximately ten million Indians populating this country. It is believed that the first Native Americans arrived during the last ice-age, approximately 20,000 - 30,000 years ago and that they came through a land-bridge across the Bering Sound, from northeastern Siberia into Alaska . The oldest documented Indian tribes or cultures in North America are Sandia (15000 BC), Clovis (12000 BC) and Folsom (8000 BC)  The name "Indian" was first applied by Christopher Columbus who believed mistakenly that the mainland and islands of America were part of the Indies, in Asia.

When the Indians –the real owners of America- were living in a harmony and peace, some Europeans found gold on the north of the Lacota lake. That was the starting of the Indians end. All new founders tried to get all those golds and also many good areas without any permission. They started to kill all Indians with some inequable wars where their super-heroes -like Calamity Jane and Wild Wild Hitchcoch- born from. In these wars all Europeans were fighted with their technological guns against primary weapons.

One of the chef of Indians has a speech about situation; “White man used his mother land and his brother sky with a bad way… Land will give him desert. When the last tree of the world will be cut, last water will be polluted, last fish will be hunted he will understand that money is not eatable.”

Europeans used so many heartless way to beat Indians. One of them was the biggest massacre in the world. There were 55 millions of buffalo in 19th century in America but now there are just 5 thousands. Because at that time Europeans thought like “one buffalo means one Indian” and killed them all. And also one of them was the first biological war. Europeans gave Indians old blankets -to say “we are helping them to all world” which were death soldiers who died because of tuberculosis.

A chef says that; “White man gave us so many promises but he made just one of them. He was always saying us to take all of our lands from our hands. Yes, he kept that promise.”

In the late eighteenth century, reformers starting with Washington and Knox, supported educating native children, in efforts to "civilize" or otherwise assimilate Native Americans to the larger society (as opposed to relegating them to reservations). The Civilization Fund Act of 1819 promoted this civilization policy by providing funding to societies (mostly religious) who worked on Native American improvement.

Photos dates from 1868 to 1924

Assimilation

The boarding school experience often proved traumatic to Native American children, who were forbidden to speak their native languages, taught Christianity and denied the right to practice their native religions, and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Native American identities and adopt European-American culture. There were documented cases of sexual, physical and mental abuse occurring at these schools.

Through the years, Indians became US citizens by:1. Treaty provision (as with the Mississippi Choctaw)2. Registration and land allotment under the Dawes Act of February 8, 18873. Issuance of Patent in Fee Simple4. Adopting Habits of Civilized Life5. Minor Children6. Citizenship by Birth7. Becoming Soldiers and Sailors in the U.S. Armed Forces8. Marriage to a US citizen9. Special Act of Congress.

Native Americans today

There are 562 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States. These tribes possess the right to form their own government, to enforce laws (both civil and criminal), to tax, to establish requirements for membership, to license and regulate activities, to zone and to exclude persons from tribal territories. Limitations on tribal powers of self-government include the same limitations applicable to states; for example, neither tribes nor states have the power to make war, engage in foreign relations, or coin money (this includes paper currency).

“The Indians presented a reverse image of European civilization which helped America establish a national identity that was neither savage nor civilized.”—- Charles Sanford, The Quest for Paradise

“Natural freedom is the only object of the policy of the [Native Americans]; with this freedom do nature and climate rule alone amongst them ... [Native Americans] maintain their freedom and find abundant nourishment . . . [and are] people who live without laws, without police, without religion.”—- Jean Jacques Rousseau, Jesuit and Savage in New France