Wilma Mankiller

In my last research of Native People I have listened and watched video of Wilma Mankiller who was a leader among San Francisco Bay area Indians of Cherokee tribe. The topic of her discussion was: Context is everything.

Her believe is that in today world, even after so many years too few Americans know about Indians history, culture or contemporary believes. She thinks that it is almost impossible for white people to understand how much trouble Indians went through, and how much their culture changed over few hundreds of years. Changes in Native Peoples life were closely involving reduction in the land they once owned. She showed her concern about amount of land that Indians received as their reservations. Some of them are as small as 25 acres and have number of Indians living there.

Mankiller presented that many of their ways have changed but there are still things that indigenous people do the same traditional way as they were done by their ancestors before white people arrived on this continent. Because of their contact with white people many tribes changed in different ways. One of the examples might be election of their own tribal government. In some cases Native People have organized elections through which their government is being picked, and some have only woman to decide who will take that place. Of course over many years government of Indigenous people changed. Some tribes went ahead and created their own passports which are recognized for international traveling, which is a very big step to be recognized as a separate nation.

There are also many women among Indians that are seeking leadership roles in government and among their own communities. Wilma Mankiller during her life time put lots of pressure on leaders so they will understand Indian history because she thought this is the best way to start working with them and other people.

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I decided to review website of US Department Of The Interior Indian Affairs. This website is very easy to search through and contains much basic information that may be helpful to everyone who is interested in Native Americans living among us. This is official web site of US Department of the Interior, so all information is accurate and reliable. Indian Affairs is the oldest bureau of the United States Department of the Interior established in 1824. It is source of all information regarding Americans Indians and its relationship with US government. Indian Affairs provides services to about 1.9 million Native People among which 42,000 of Indian students. [I] Its mission is to: “…enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives.”

It is a government website and it was created to inform all interested in topic people about current affairs among both governments, changes in the law as well as answer many questions people may have. Once I started this course I have more questions and many of them could be found there. Website also provides library which also works as a historical review of Indians Affairs as well as most recently added documents.

I honestly believe that these web resources where selected because they are very informative. They help us understand the situation that Native Americans are in, and also their current relationship with US government. Very interesting information was that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is almost as old as the United States, which makes lots of sense. [II] From the beginning its mission was to help Native people.

As time goes by and I learn more about Native Americans my view of their communities and them changed dramatically. Information from these websites only confirmed all that I learned so far. All new information is proof that Native people are moving towards new and better life.  

 

Work Cited:

[I]  http://www.bia.gov/WhoWeAre/index.htm (accessed Nov. 25, 2013)

[II] lbid

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This time I research Federal Indian Policy because it seems to be right on the topic of our module and I also think that it is very educational and interesting to see how they structured their politics, culture, and economics long before white men came to America.

Many of us still refer to Indians as “savages” people who were uncivilized and very primitive in every aspect of their lives. In the first new dictionary author Noah Webster in 1828 included definition for the word savage:

            “A human being in his native state of rudeness; one who is untaught, uncivilized or without cultivation of mind or manners.”

We all know that Native People are far from this definition and only because we tend to stereotype people, many of us still think this way. There is a short youtube movie which shows that simple advertisement over many years can create stereotype of whole nation and exactly how we integrated Indian stereotypes into our lives: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e15YDqt9n9M&feature=related

When European people arrived in US there was many Indian societies that were highly sophisticated in their politics, economics as well as social and spiritual development. They have already developed their own system of family and social organization. A great example here will be Cherokee Nation which created a large tribe in northeastern Alabama, eastern Tennessee, northern Georgia, and western North and South Carolina. There were three types of political organizations among Indians: bands, tribes and confederacies. Tribes were larger groups of people which included a number of clans. The Cherokee nation included seven clans named after an animal or natural phenomenon: The Bird, Paint, Deer, Wolf, Blue, Long Hair, and Wild Potato. As in our system also among Indians each clan had its own representatives (counselor) who represented clan in their government called Civil Council. Most of the decisions were made by Civil Council. They spread three major task and duties among villages: one was to assign the property to be used as gardens to households of the clan women. Our towns have right to divide property and allow people to build houses. Another task was to regulate marriage. And third task was to create and carry out an orderly plan for resolving disputes between villages. Cherokees government was divided into three parts: peace, civil, and war; they had two tribal chiefs: the Peace Chief and the War Chief who would take over council meetings during the war. There were a some number of people that were allow to attend council meetings such us the chief, clan representatives, seven counselors, and sixteen officials. During the peace time the civil sector’s leader was the Peace Chief who conducted religious ceremonies, held court and made laws.

There are many similarities to the government that we have now and it was happening way before we came here. I think that everyone should study at least a little about Native People. We would understand then that we are not that far apart.

 

Janusz

http://americanindiantah.com/lesson_plans/FederalIndianPolicy.html

I explored website called First Nation Information Project. Hoping to find articles, stories or any other information regarding Native People in North America I started moving from one link to another and to my big surprise this is a great source of information with First Nation Organizations, Education and Culture, Tourism, History and many other links to general information about Aborigines. http://www.johnco.com/firstnat/ . There are much information regarding history of Native People, how Columbus discovered America but what attract my attention was number of businesses that natives own and run. Of course they have to leave of some kind of income, but I always pictured them as people who gather theirs proceeds from tourism in their own reservations.

It turns that these people own lots of different businesses like Computers stores, web development, employment placements, counseling, oil and gas development with trades on the Alberta Stock Exchange; they also have company that is IT based which utilizes the most advanced Geographic Information Systems (GPS), but also business plans as well as construction services and educational programs. Of course more understandable to me are Native Arts and Craft trading, Native Music and instruments handcrafted from elk and deer skin or wood supply companies. This list could be very long and I did not get to half of it yet.

Every time I spoke to someone or watched some news on TV I had this feeling that they did not change since Columbus came here. I always picture those people riding horses and sleeping in theirs tents called tepees. After all we have all this technology changing every day and everyone is allow to use it.

It was very surprising to me and though it was not very educational this website opened my eyes and let me see them from different point of view.  To be continued…