Chloe Larson Larson 1

Whipple, Cooper
AP US History, AP Lang,
5/24/17
Business as Usual: The Social Conflict Between Native Americans and White Americans

The United States have a history of perseverance and triumph, but also of violence and

the subjugation of unfamiliar cultures. While this has involved the discrimination of European

and Asian peoples, the most damage has been done to those that were in North America long

before the rest--the Native Americans. Before the arrival of Europeans on American soil, the

natives lived in vast areas of diverse ecologies, and developed unique cultures that fit with each

tribes own land and history (Fraser). They developed religions and ways of life that would turn

out to be completely foreign to the Europeans, so much so that they could not accept them or

respect them. As the English and Spanish powers began to take the American land, they clashed

with native cultures on these issues. Throughout the history of Native American and European

American interactions up to the present, the most common theme has been one of conflict and

oppression in religion, education, and culture.

A main cause of the persecution of natives has been religion. Because of the Spanish

interest in converting natives, religion was a huge part of the controversy in the western

hemisphere. The movie The Mission centers around the efforts of Spanish missionaries to save a

mission in South America from the Portuguese, who wanted to enslave the indigenous people

who lived there. Many ideas were expressed in the movie which were accurate to the time

period--some thought of the natives as animals and slaves, while others thought of them as

humans created by God, just as the Spanish and Portuguese were. The film guide that we filled

out helped me reflect on the movie, and realize how much religion shaped south and central

America through causing conflict which lead to European dominance. Another mission, one in

Santa Fe, New Mexico, brings the issue to the present day. Visiting the San Miguel mission was

incredible in its age, as it was built in 1610, only three years after the foundation of Jamestown.
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The Catholic mission was built on top of a Native American building from the 1300s, and was

constructed by Native American hands. A sign outside of the mission gift shop seemed to imply

that the natives willingly traveled to Santa Fe with the Spanish, and helped build the mission

by choice, not by order. These are all examples of ways in which the Spanish subjugated natives,

both in the past and present, through the building of missions and the establishment of the

Catholic church.

Aside from religion, European Americans have changed native culture as a whole. In the

movie Smoke Signals, two cousins who live on a reservation end up taking a trip together in

order to gather the belongings of one of their fathers, who has died. The movie has many

examples of whites being racist or acting strangely to the Native American protagonists--for

example, whites acting rude to them on a bus, or making assumptions about them because of

their race. The characters frequently make ironic and humorous remarks about things that have

historically happened multiple times to Native Americans as a whole, like land being taken from

them by whites. Smoke Signals is a glimpse into the world of reservations, and gave me insight

into how the centuries-old conflicts between natives and whites manifest in the present day. At

the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, our tour guide, Steven, spoke about how their language has

been affected by the American culture that we see today. The native language of the Acoma

people is still taught in schools, but only a portion of the population is fluent and for most it is

their second language. People are trying to revive it, but the language was almost lost on multiple

occasions in history. Language is such an important part of the Acoma culture, and the fact that

European influence could take it away shows how powerful that influence was.

One of the most important aspects of a culture is the education of its children, whether

through stories, books, or public education. This was the main topic of my IBL project, and the
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visit to the ToHajiilee school was especially interesting because I had already researched so

much of it. For the IBL project, my group focused on the education of Native Americans and

how their attitudes toward education affect their success. We discovered that most of present-day

schools on reservations are run by the government and are heavily influenced by the mainstream

American style of teaching, while only a few are community schools lead by elders. And still a

large number of students decide to go to public or charter high schools outside the reservation,

simply because those schools have a higher standard of education or the students would like to

have more opportunities in the world outside the reservation. All of these types of schools show

how Native American education systems were affected negatively by the European contact of

five centuries ago--without that contact, the main form of education would probably still be

stories of the past, told by respected elders. The American school system, when executed poorly,

turns into a mill for churning out young people who have lost their spark and enthusiasm.

Sherman Alexies Superman and Me is a good example--Alexie writes about the enthusiasm of

Native American students in school, or the lack thereof (Alexie). Because of the historical

Americanization of natives and forced boarding school, many students described in Alexies

piece believe that the white Americans have forced education upon them, and are therefore

uninterested in participating. My experiences at the ToHajiilee school were extremely positive,

but the school was underfunded and the classrooms were typically American. I could see no

representations of Native American culture but the children themselves. Education is a huge area

of European and modern American influence, and this influence has whitewashed the traditional

educational values of Native Americans.

For Native Americans, the past has held a theme of conflict and oppression in religion,

culture, and education. However, individuals are working toward upholding native values and
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history. Steven, the tour guide at the Acoma Pueblo, is helping to save his native language by

speaking it and participating in groups that are preserving it. And the woman that spoke to us on

the final night of the trip is saving her culture by telling stories, as well as attending summits

about protecting her culture and values from American influence and mainstream culture. For

500 years, European influence has many times almost wiped out Native American cultures, but

there is hope for those communities through the work of individual people.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. "Superman and Me." Los Angeles Times, 19 April 1998.

Fraser, James. By the People: A History of the United States. Pearson, 2015.
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The Mission. Directed by Roland Joffe, performances by Robert DeNiro, Jeremy Irons, and

Ray McAnally, 1986.