Thanks to whom? My Native American Tale

Thanksgiving, celebrated on the last Thursday of November, an American holiday in which many Americans eat as much as they want especially turkey. In addition, the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys play two pro football games in the afternoon. Thanksgiving is a holiday of remembrance in which the Pilgrims and the Native Americans partook in a meal during the early seventeenth century. This meal may have been one of the rare instances in which the Native Americans and the European settlers/Americans cooperated with one another. This has been the tale of the aboriginals not only in the Americas, but throughout the rest of the world.

The Native Americans have been on this continent for thousands of years even before Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas in 1492. These people have not only lived off the land, but they have taken care of their sacred land. Once the European settlers arrived to the Americas, the way of life of the Native Americans has been devastated to the point of extinction for many aboriginal tribes.

Ever since the United States of America formed a national government, there have been over three hundred treaties between state/national governments and Native American tribes. According to a tribal chief, none of the treaties have ever been fulfilled completely. The national and state governments have broken the treaties by either enacting new laws against them or by ignoring the “Indian” treaty.

Assimilation of the aboriginals to any “modern” society cannot be successful. The only way assimilation can be successful if and only if the aboriginals completely abandon their way of life. Many Native American tribes have very few solutions to assimilation. Here are some of the Native American tribe options:

• Live in a tribal reservation
• Abandon their culture and become “modernized.”
• The extinction of an aboriginal tribe.

Courtesy of a Native American Studies Professor at the University of California, Davis

These differences show how hard assimilation is for Native Americans.
I think that the Native Americans have suffered long enough. I fully support Indian gaming casinos in California. Think about it. Do you want big business running these casinos (in which they already control America through the media and the US Government?) Or would you rather give the money to people who actually need the money in order to continue to survive in America?