A Blog About Indians...Whoops, I Mean Native Americans

            During AIS this week, we talked a lot about the continuous struggle between Native Americans and white settlers that took place during the 1800s.  One topic that came up was white man’s guilt.  Now that the “war” with the Native Americans has past, many whites feel guilty about what their ancestors did to the Native Americans.  They feel that they need to make amends for past mistakes.  One example is that some colleges give out full ride scholarships to people who are closely related to Native Americans.  This is mainly due to guilt.  I know about these college scholarships because they might apply to me.  My dad’s grandmother was a Native American, making me 1/8 Native American, which is (unfortunately) not enough to get me a full ride scholarship to college.  While I never met my great grandma, my dad recalls many of the stories that she would tell him, from his childhood to adulthood.

            My great grandma was no ordinary Native American.  She lived in a reservation until she was 23, when she fell in love with a white man who was passing by the reservation on business.  She spent the rest of her life living in big cities in Michigan.  She might not have the real life experience that other Native Americans had, but she does still feel resentment towards the attention that she would get due to guilt.  She told my dad how she would hate it when she moved to a new house, and all of her new neighbors would say things like “if there is anything we can do to help out, please let us know” and “we’re sorry about what happened to your people”.  One event that really hurt her, my dad told me, was when she was at an elementary school, giving a speech to teach children about the life of Native Americans.  A first grader, at the start of the event, got up and yelled: “WOW! A real live Native American”.  My great grandma says that this is not what hurt her, but the fact that the school called the parents, who then insisted on giving many gifts to my great grandma. “It was only an innocent little kid”, she told my dad. “He didn’t know better. But what the parents did just made me feel even more alienated.”

            While most whites today thrust their guilt upon the Native Americans without permission, the Native Americans just want to forget about everything.  Will Americans ever pay attention to what the Native Americans want, and leave them alone?