In the reservation schools, the ‘Indian’
was not valued. Just like when they used to take Native Americans to boarding
schools to get rid of their culture, the schools were designed to make them as ‘white’
as possible. ‘Remove the culture, make a normal person out of them,’ was that
they wanted, not to value their past: "We were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child." (35) The teachers on the reservation were
white and had very little regard for the Native American culture, so they just
taught them like any white kids, and acted as if they were white kids. That influence
by the teachers was why native children grew up trying to act white and deny
their culture. They were taught that if they were white, they would be rich,
and that there was no hope for Native Americans anywhere. They thought that
there was a white child in every one of them, and that by removing the native
culture they would become ‘white’, and that everybody should be like that. Some
teachers thought they were actually saving the children, some just knew that it
was what they were told to do, and the rest were racist and did not like Native
American cultures and traditions. All of those groups did the same thing; they
tried to bleach away the culture of the Native Americans. They think they are
saving the child, but saving it from what? Most of them are trying to ‘save’
the child from being different, trying to make every race the same. That is the
reason that most reservations are as poor as they are, everybody is taught to
leave if they can, leaving their entire culture behind.
(Ian)
(Ian)
(Addie)
ReplyDeleteI respectfully disagree with your comment about the teachers treating the Indian children the same as they would white children. The white teachers were taught to do anything to the Indian kids to make them stay in line. "We beat them. That's how we were taught to teach you. We were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child" (Alexie, 35). My take on this was that the teachers not only tried to bleach the culture out of the children, they also frowned down upon them. The teachers felt like they were better than the Indian population, so it was their job to fix it, starting with the youngest generation.