Reflection Week 12

This week we talked about the Natives and their way of life. I can't recall the name of the tribe but I remember that they were based out of South Dakota. Their reservation is in South Dakota and their living conditions are awful. These are considered the indigenous people on this continent but most of them struggle more than what we can imagine. I recall from the video in class on Tuesday that one of the tribesman compared a concentration camp to a reservation. That's a bold statement to make because we all know and heard about the holocaust and most feel that was just I humane and unthinkable treatment to humans beings. We also say I can't believe those Nazis and that Hitler was a bad guy, but we seem to forget about it when it happens on our own soil. We use all kinds of escape goats to cover up our mess but no one ever seems to notice the elephant in the room. What about what we did to all Asian decent people after what happened to Pearl Harbor and how poorly treated the natives are? I feel that it is terribly wrong to treat people less than, I understand that not everyone can live a lavish lifestyle but I'd be upset too if I was promised forty acres and a mule. I have witnessed and seen poor living conditions but from the video these have to be some of the worst living conditions I've ever seen and it is sad. These are some prideful people and they want to keep their tradition going strong and I believe that the only way to do this is to live in these reservations that are provided to them. If they move to these bigger cities where there are endless possibilities and multiple opportunities they would have to adopt a different way of life. In doing this they would lose sense of what they spent many many years of trying to build up. These are he indigenous people of America but yet they are at the bottom of the social class and we hardly learn about them in schools. Even when we learn about the Lewis& Clark exploration they skip over all of what any native could have impacted the story. I'm so ignorant to the sense of what a native could have done for America but I'm also just as numb to the idea because to my knowledge I'm not missing anything. I wish things were different and things like this is what makes me a biased individual. On a lighter note I think that it is kind of cool that a lot of the sports teams that we look up are named after or symbolize the natives. At the same time even though this is cool you want to make sure that you are translating it correctly and not offending them in any kind of way.
So much of what is done in this country is pushed under the mat or set a side for later especially on the political end of everything. It's kind of backwards if you ask me but this has come from hundreds of years of wrong doing and it won't change over night. One thing that I've learned is that money and power can corrupt the kindest people but it'll always come at someone's expense.