The Native American Genocide: Where Did My People Go?

Periodically, when I return home to visit my Oglala Sioux relatives, who still live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Western South Dakota, I cannot escape the anger that permeates the daily existence of many members of my tribe. It is not an anger that is isolated to the Oglala Sioux. One can feel it among the Flandreau Santee Sioux in Flandreau, SD; one can feel it among the Red Lake Band of Chippewa of Red Lake, MN; I imagine, even though I have never been there myself, it can be felt among the Coushatta around Elton, LA. The anger arises in the tribal schools, the tribal classrooms, and the tribal elders' stories of days some of them still remember: the days of struggle between the tribes and the United States government, and the days in which Native Americans were forcefully assimilated into White society.

Once, hundreds of years ago, my tribal elders tell me, only my people inhabited the land that is now called the United States. Even American history books can get that part right. This land represents our birthplace, our history, our heritage, and our old way of life. The very name assigned to us by the White people defines our connection to this land called America. We are Native Americans because we were born here; we were here first. This is where our Creation story began, unlike that of the many different types of White settlers, who invaded our lands and brought with them their ideas of colonization and civilization from other places that existed far away from here.

The way I see it, what has happened to Native Americans since the White settlement has been a perfect example of what Michael Omi and Howard Winant refer to as racial formation (Schaefer, 2006). These concepts that I read about today in university textbooks have already played out in the landscapes of my imagination through all of the stories of my people's historical struggle to maintain their identity against the invasion of the White man. In the 1800s, White settlement forced the displacement of all tribal peoples out of their native homes and onto reservation lands. As a result, through a process of expulsion and genocide, White influence in America caused the total Native American population to be reduced by more than half within a period of only approximately 50 years (Schaefer, 2006).

We were accustomed to our self-sustaining lifestyles, which allowed us to hunt, grow, and harvest our own food and build our own shelters and villages. That is what the elders tell me. By forcing my people and the peoples of other tribes to live on desolate, unfavorable lands (Schaefer, 2006), the United States government placed us all in a position of desperation and survival. When White policies forcefully replaced our ways of life, Native Americans tried to fight back. Many of our respected tribal leaders led us in a desperate struggle to overthrow the tightening noose of the White man's ways. However, the United States Army numbered too many, and our Native American leaders surrendered, one by one, to treaties signed by government officials. Such surrenders, each in its own course, signified the closing chapters of the old ways of life for my people. When Sitting Bull finally gave up his long-fought resistance, say the historians like Viola (2003), his actions marked not only a defeat in war but also a defeat in spirit.

Next came the intentional campaign to disassemble Native American culture and society through that process called assimilation (Viola, 2003). To me, as I listen to the stories, assimilation represents the politically correct term for the process of government-sanctioned destruction of cultural identity. When it came to Native Americans, that process was a goal the United States government pursued with a passion. Native Americans were supposed to turn into God-loving Americans despite, as Viola (2003) wrote, "living on desolate tracts of land, under constant cultural stress, enduring economic and emotional poverty" (p. 180 4). Today, thousands of Native Americans like Tim Giago (1999) still remember attending missionary schools (called "Indian schools") on the reservations, institutions that were "geared to separate the children from their families and their culture" (p. 105 8).

Today, even though the United States government has turned against the notion of segregation in its laws and official decrees, many Native American people are still segregated on the pitiful remnants of their tribal lands. As a tribe's general population center, the reservation defines many tribal members' sense of self, serving as the base of a tribe's culture, language, and traditions (Schaefer, 2006). The United States government has allowed Native American tribes to hang on to their sovereignty in exchange for much of their ways of life. We now have these petty few acres of land to call our own, compared to the vast, open lands of freedom and sustenance that our ancestors enjoyed only a couple hundred years ago.

References

Schaefer, R. (2006). Racial and Ethnic Groups (10th ed.). Prentice-Hall.

Viola, H. (2003). Trail to Wounded Knee: The Last Stand of the Plains Indians, 1860-1890. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society.

Giago, T. (1999). Notes From Indian Country, 2. Rapid City, SD: Giago Book Publishing, LLC.