2 minutes of listening

Today in class we started off with a listening exercise with a partner (or two) and reported back.  I talked with Alex Sierra and we ended up both having similar feelings--why were we not taught this in school?  Why was this part of our history swept under the rug and not explained to us as youths?  Why is the oppression of the American Indians continuing even until this day?

This class utilizes one of the few things that gets me angry and involved--documentaries.  Documentaries move me more than any other display of new information or controversy or history.  There is something so much more real about personal accounts/experiences than reading some facts in a book or some story that I have to analyze later.  I learn more from these intimate encounters, watching someone's expressions while they tell their story.  The most recent documentary we watched was this Link.  This video talks about the Native American Holocaust, and it blew my mind.  Learning about this sent my mind into a frenzy--why had I not heard of this before?  Why did it seem as though Wounded Knee and the Trail of Tears were the only horrific things that happened to the Native Americans?  I thought back to my World History textbook in 9th grade and grasped for a memory of any of this and only could recall a page and a half regarding Chief Crazy Horse and Wounded Knee.  I still do not know much about the battle at Wounded Knee other than what I've seen in movies.  The Trail of Tears?  Described to me in school as just a big migration from ancestral lands to reservations.  I can't remember if anyone ever taught me about the hardships American Indians experienced on this "migration".

When I was a child, there were a few books I had called "If You Lived With The Sioux" and "If You Lived With The Cherokee".  The first was written by Ann Mcgovern and the second by Peter Roop.  The books gave me a basic overview of how these specific Indian nations lived and operated.  I've posted a picture of the front cover up above this section.  Anyone can buy these Scholastic books on Amazon for $6.99.  There is a three page Table of Contents section, telling the young reader that they are about to know about the Sioux's clothing, their lifestyle habits, their war habits, and finally what happened when "the white people came" and "a note from the author about the Sioux Indians today."  I don't have these books anymore, but I wonder if the author was honest.  I wonder if they are telling the truth in these books and not deceiving the youth of today and yesterday.

I found a blog on wordpress, here's a Link.  The particular article was written in 2008 and asks the question of where the Lakota Sioux are today.  The Sioux, as of 2008, are some of the poorest people in the United States, only 14% speak their original language, there is almost no work for adults, and the average Sioux man is twice as likely to end up in prison comparatively to a white man.  I can't remember what Ann Mcgovern's educational book on the Sioux said when I was a child, but I'm sure it did not tell half the truth about the actual conditions this particular nation of American Indians has been forced to live in.