In the present day there is still a lot of racism against Native Americans. It is something that many live with very quietly because there are also other oppressed groups that are more in the limelight. There are many that have been living in reservations without the same opportunities presented to them that others have gotten. The main concern of my project is how these people are keeping their priceless culture alive.
Today America has placed a lot of attention on racism, ignoring still that it happens not just to Africans but also to Asians, Mexicans, and Natives. It has become a bit unfair that there isn’t much of a call to protect these other people from the same violations and tribulations. It is ignored that there was a time that African Americans were considered a color during segregation, but Irish and Natives were not.
With my final project, I want to reach uneducated people on the topic. A lot of people do not know what the natives have gone through truly, and what efforts are being made to remake a culture that was nearly snuffed out. I would like to inspire curiosity about native culture, about how citizens are taking it upon themselves to keep their heritage alive. There are some really cool things in Native culture that I think people would really enjoy experiencing and would have a deep appreciation for.
I also would like to instill the fact that Africans were not the only race that was discriminated heavily against. As I will repeat in my project, the Natives still had to have protections over their basic right to vote put on them even in 1984. Natives are still discriminated against today, but the difference is they often do not come to the public about it.
In the end, I would like to really show that Native Americans are still a proud strong race, that despite being nearly entirely subjugated and killed, or entirely assimulated and vanished, that people should stand by them too. That this little bit of information shared might occupy someone’s mind a bit and make them think a little broader about some of the struggles in our shared history.