American Indian Culture Summary
Students at JHU-SAIS went to the National Museum of the American Indian altogether today. The weather was HOT when we were walking there from SAIS (also used the subway too). I saw many food trucks on that way and the smell of those make so hungry because I didn’t have lunch. The curator was Indian and he has unique pronunciation so it was not easy to understand what he says but he spoke slowly, so that’s not a big problem. First we saw animal-shaped sculptures and then we saw 4 meaning of the corns in Santa Clara community. And we saw the corns of Mayan. Finally, we saw forced assimilation of Indian people by government.
The most interesting thing to me was forced assimilation of Indian people, which is called “civilization”. Indian Peoples
never thought of themselves as uncivilized and they wanted to stay their own way. But policy makers at the time didn’t want to, so to break down Indian resistance, officials used ruthless methods. For example, Indian children enrolled in school by force. At the school the children had to pray, despite their religion is not Christians. Uniforms overlaid instead of Indian traditional dress uniforms, and they had to use English rather than their native language.
I think the persecution that Native American got is very similar with the persecution that Korean got from Japan during Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). In that time, we lost our own language, traditional culture, even our name similar with Indian. Japanese called it enlightenment and said they helped modernization of Korea. The Indians lost their land, were deported, were hunted. Their population and the settlement continuously decreased now are not much left. I think it's really cruel. It seemed too cruel that even the curator who explaining that is Indian. When my eyes met his eyes while he explaining slowly about his people is fading away, I felt a great sadness.
The most interesting thing to me was forced assimilation of Indian people, which is called “civilization”. Indian Peoples
never thought of themselves as uncivilized and they wanted to stay their own way. But policy makers at the time didn’t want to, so to break down Indian resistance, officials used ruthless methods. For example, Indian children enrolled in school by force. At the school the children had to pray, despite their religion is not Christians. Uniforms overlaid instead of Indian traditional dress uniforms, and they had to use English rather than their native language.
I think the persecution that Native American got is very similar with the persecution that Korean got from Japan during Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). In that time, we lost our own language, traditional culture, even our name similar with Indian. Japanese called it enlightenment and said they helped modernization of Korea. The Indians lost their land, were deported, were hunted. Their population and the settlement continuously decreased now are not much left. I think it's really cruel. It seemed too cruel that even the curator who explaining that is Indian. When my eyes met his eyes while he explaining slowly about his people is fading away, I felt a great sadness.