Native American Culture Essay

Without a doubt, the Europeans made an enormous impact on the indigenous people of North America. We should address this impact in our past as a moral question. The Natives had no sense of ownership of land, they thought land could not be owned, this was used as an advantage. The Native culture depends on different aspects of life compared to the Europeans culture. European Culture became the more dominant culture over the Natives. The Native Americans believed in tribal sovereignty which conflicted with the Europeans beliefs.
The Native Americans did not believe in ownership of land, they believed that the earth belonged to no-one, “One does not sell the land people walk on.” The Europeans used this to their advantage, the natives thought
Some may argue that the Europeans morals collapsed, they were still very much alive. The New World was conquered in God’s name. The Europeans had sophistication, social rules and morals. They were very religious and had religious morals and standards. Jayme A. Sokolow wrote an excellent book that provides some insight; “Explorer’s and settlers were not expected to deny traditional moral values but only their application to peoples different from themselves. Second, indigenous peoples were dehumanized by being labeled barbarians. Once they were placed outside the European moral universe, explorers and settlers did not have the same human obligations toward them that they had to each other. And third, the repeated and successful use of violence against native peoples became routine. The terror directed and indigenous peoples was not a breakdown of European culture but its systematic expression.” The Europeans had morals, they never disappeared but they dehumanized the indigenous people so much, they became victims of violence and unjust actions.
The matter of the impact of European contact was a moral question that revealed more about the insight of how this may have happened. Some of the actions taken were completely morally wrong to the indigenous people while they were dubbed acceptable to European power. It is amazing what went on hundreds of years ago that changed the lives of millions and changed