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In what ways "Black Elk Speaks" a counter-narrative of conquest and colonization The book "Black Elk Speaks has an interesting history. It was written by a stranger who showed the American Indians as powerless sufferers of European avidity. The story was repeated to John G. Neihardt, and he gave it the form of recollections of Nicholas Black Elk. This character is drawn as a witness of very important incidents of the American Indian Wars.
He also is shown as a participated of some of them. These wars served as a method of the US moving to the West. Unfortunately not all of us no the truth about these wars, we were sooner disoriented from the beginning. Some generations were brought up on westerns, which seemed to be patriotic and we truly believe that all the participator of the War were lead by patriotic feelings. Only in the sixties and seventies some unsatisfied groups appeared. The number of them was growing and as a result we became to realize that these Wars were not so patriotic and great as we learned before, but it appeared to be the real catastrophe for the Native Americans.
Having studied more material about American Indians, we become to understand the reality about what happened with indigenous people of the country. Black Elk Speaks is one of such source of information. It is a narrative of perfect witness about the life of Sioux in the condition of European moving into the Dakotas. It is a clear history of the terrifying assault of the child's native village by the aggressor with the purpose of killing old people, women and children together with the male soldiers.
It tells about the large number of buffalo's decreased to near dying out as well as the American Indians by the end of the authors life: I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young The narrator was brought up in conditions where children learn from their parents about their duties. They looked at the adults and repeated their steps one by one. Moving into every nest age makes taking new and new responsibilities, not only new rights. The child was a product of his time, devoted his life to the duties, inspired with the mothers milk.
That people were full of beautiful traditions and responsibilities. Of course some of the traditions seemed to New Americans to be wild but still that was not a reason to annihilate Indians. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream Annihilation of the American Indians in both Americas is the largest act of genocide in the history of the world. The history is full of gloomy genocide in which people later bitterly repented.
We are shocked by destruction of the American Indians. Indians seem to us savages, animals. Now we know that it not so. Our ignorance concerning others should make us think. Destruction of Indians is original sin that lays in the basis of the American civilization. Now, when conscience wakes up and the American society becomes more humane, the duty to red-skinned is paid, because of the almost absence of those, -?
to black-skinned. The attitude to the American Indians underwent the changes similar to seismic shift for last half-centuries: at the beginning they were not mentioned at all; then they have appeared as the victims, exposed to exploitation, destruction and assimilation. In the last decades practice of the ethnic history allowed to recreate a picture of resistance of Indians to the European impact, emphasizing depth of their conflict with white and aspiration to keep traditional Indian culture. Despite of bloom of the historical researches devoted to the American Indians, these new researches remain marginal", half-recognized. Representing Indian culture as a full antithesis to culture of white people, it is practically impossible to find the approach with the help of which the history of Indians might join the basic channel of the American historiography ." The author of the book Black Elk Speaks emphasize that: "And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, -- you see me now a pitiful old man who had done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered.
There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead. "
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Research essay sample on Women And Children American Indians
