Friday, February 5, 2010
Wounded Knee Creek
The video that we watched today made me angry for several reasons. The most obvious being how the Native Americans and their needs were continually overlooked by the United States government. Its sad that in order for the Native Americans to even get the government to pay attention to them they had to resort to extreme measures, mainly the seizing of Wounded Knee Creek. A group people who have been mistreated for such a long time should not have to commit crimes or put themselves in danger in order to seek help for their families futures. The film also made me hate Dick Wilson, because it showed that he was a corrupt coward. He had some hatred towards his own people and he obviously was a criminal, so instead of picking sides he stayed in the middle, but hardly remained a neutral figure in the conflict. He enticed the opposing sides (Indians and United States Government) to attack one another in the hope that the Indians would be wiped out. When the movie showed the cartoon of the kids being taken away from their homes and put in boarding schools, it reminded me of the Holocaust. These kids lives were being changed without their approval and the only thing that was different from the Holocaust was that the kids and their families werent killed. This is obviously a big distinction, but it does not take away from how horrible it must have been for everyone involved. It made me sad to hear the man (forgot his name) say how him and his mother never a good relationship after he got back from boarding school. Someone should have stopped this from happening, but I guess anyone who realized that it was wrong either turned a blind eye, couldnt stop it or didnt want to stop it because they thought the Americanization of the Native Americans was beneficial.
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I totally agree with everything you've said about the movie. I know that for myself, I had never known any of the details of either Wounded Knee incidents. If it wasn't for this movie, I probably would have never known about this event. What you said about Dick Wilson was interesting because I had never thought about him being in the middle. I saw Dick Wilson as on just the bad side, but now after reading this I can see how he manipulated both sides into benifitting himself. That was interesting to think about.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the cartoon about boarding shool was also quite touching. Very interesting that you compared it to the holocaust, it was definately an institution where they exerted force of one culture onto another. It wasn't right to disturb family relationships between kids and their mothers and I certainly think that if schools were established within the native cultures, it would have preserved their attachment and relationships. But do you think that could have been possible at that time where there was more hostility between the governmnt and the native indians?
ReplyDeleteThe cartoon did make me think of the Holocaust too. Also, the photo of the grave for all the people that died at Wounded Knee reminded me of the same.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that when we see this, we think of this significant historical time period (the Holocaust) almost instantly. But so many people are so unaware of the Wounded Knee events (including me until before this class). It kinda sucks because both of these time periods have the same important elements and are almost equally significant.
Also interesting to think about is that if it is in fact parallel to the Holocaust, then the Americans would be parallel to the Nazis. Kinda a scary thought that I don't want to believe or think about...
I completely agree with everything you said. I learned about Wounded Knee in my history class last quarter, but we only learned about one Wounded Knee. I guess history books miss a lot of the important parts of history. Like you the film also made me hate Wilson, he made me want to punch him in the face every time they showed his image. I don’t understand how someone can be so corrupt with his own people, well I mean even though they were not from his tribe, I would assume that since they were Indians he would stand for them.
ReplyDeleteI admit I knew very little about the incident at Wounded Knee. It was sad when watching the documentary to see the hardships the Indians had to suffered. But then again from my previous experience in high school, my history class has touched upon these issues about genocide and the truths about the government that has never been told. I remember sitting there in my world history class watching a film on the genocide in a small village in Vietnam called "My Lai." Now, as a descendant of the Vietnamese community, it was shocking and hurtful to found out about such a tragedy because I would have never knew about it if it weren't for the documentary. It was also very upsetting because to my knowledge Vietnam is a beautiful country despite the communism impact. So, I definitely agreed with what you said about the corrupted Dick Wilson.
ReplyDeleteThe video made me sad, as well as very angry. I was disgusted with the U.S. government's failures to acknowledge problems in the Native American community. It is a shame that Native Americans had to resort to violence in order to be heard. Obviously no other forms of peaceful negotiation seemed to work, so they were basically forced to take drastic measures. I never realized how impossible the U.S. government made it for Native American culture to survive. In addition to taking their land, the U.S. government felt the need to de-indianize them and strip them of their way of life, which is horrible.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the cartoons it also reminded me of concentration camps. This is an unfortunate part of history that has happened to the Native Americans and many other immigrant groups. For example, in the Southwest young Mexican girls were taken from their families in order to Americanize them. They were taught how to speak English and bake apple pies. The story of the man and his relationship with his mother also touched me and upsets. It is not fair that that man and thousands of other people that went trough the same experience were forced to give up their culture.
ReplyDeleteall your points are valid and i like how someone said that the holocaust had the same significance as wounded knee, i totally agree that early settlers were seriously trying to eradicate a whole race.. there is no other reason to give groups of people blankets with diseases
ReplyDeleteThe question of Dick Wilson is an important one. Wilson was Oglala Lakota, so those were "his people" at Pine Ridge. This means that the question isn't always as simple as U.S. vs Native. Perhaps it relates back to our reading from the first day: "Only Approved Indians Can Play"?
ReplyDelete