As an Indian-Americans, I grew up with two very different cultures influencing me in to distinct worlds: my home life and my school life. It wasn’t until I became a freshman a few years ago that these two cultures fused into one. I used to think using my mother tongue in public was weird, and that I had to be just like my Caucasian friends to be “cool”. As an early teen, I never acknowledged my own religion, culture, and ethnicity; sometimes I disgraced them. But, as I matured, I realized that my religion, culture, and ethnicity is a gift. Although it makes me different, it helps me succeed. The standards my parents set for me propagate a new academic standard. When I came to accept it, and met other Indians, I succumbed to a pressure that …show more content…
Proceeding to look for answers, I looked to google for a simple search, “Indian Americans”. This search turned up millions of results, from answers from yahoo.com to racist videos about Indians. One in particular interested me, an article on pewresearch.org, caught my attention. It seemed reliable because the sources were cited at the bottom and it was a “.org” site. After clicking on it, I saw a plethora of generalized studies involving Indian Americans. One thing that particularly interested me was where DeSilver, the author of the article, claimed that, “Indian Americans are among the most highly educated racial or ethnic groups.” This fact alone explained a lot. It is general knowledge that you have to go to college in order to get a good job in the corporate world. As I learned in Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, the more human capital you build up, the more valuable you are in the working world. In other words, if you have more skills, in this case education, then you’ll be more valuable in the professional world. Thus, by transitive property, Indians are richer because they are generally more educated then other ethnic
We are often told that it’s ok to be different. My younger version would definitely agree. Growing up Indian, I had the benefit of teachers repeating instructions a bit louder and slower. I never worried about getting injured on the baseball field, because I got to sit on the bench. My parents never had to worry about driving me to sleepovers, though I was seemingly friends with everyone in school.
Narrative: Sacagawea (Dani E.) “Everything I did I did for my people” Bird woman I was born in May of 1788 in Lemhi County, Idaho into the Shoshone Tribe. My dad was the chief of the Shoshone Tribe. At around the age of 12, I was captured by the enemy Hidatsa tribe during a buffalo hunt. I was traded to a French Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau, who made me his wife in 1804.
For my first diversity event I decided to attend the 43rd annual Mankato wacipi (Powwow). I chose this event because I attended some like it when I was younger. I always have admired Native Americans and their deep connection with their spirituality. I remember in fifth grade my elementary school hosted a Powwow that my mother and I attended. This was the first time I have ever been exposed to the Native American culture and the memory has stuck with me till now.
Andy Rooney used a stereotype when he made the statement, “Indians were always considered to be brave, strong, stoic, resourceful, true to their word and unconquerable. Anyone with a touch of Indian blood in their ancestry is proud of it” (51). While it may be true that some Indians are “brave, strong, stoic, resourceful, true to their word and unconquerable” (Rooney 51) these attributes cannot be used to describe every single person with Native American heritage as not every single person may necessarily have these qualities. Some Native Americans may possess these qualities, others may possess only some of these qualities, and some others may possess none of these qualities. The statement, “Anyone with a touch of Indian blood in their ancestry is proud of it” (Rooney 51) also may not necessarily be true.
These problems make it even more demanding for immigrants to feel comfortable. One of my favorite authors writes about cultural chasms in Immigrant Indian American generations. In NPR’s morning edition interview with Jhumpa Lahiri, she discusses “the
It is important to ensure that all students feel comfortable among each other and understand each other so they can learn from each other. Therefore, if there are any stigmas associated with American Indians and their education that can be projected by their peers, it is due to the negative images and thoughts provoked by the inaccurate history taught in the classrooms. It is important that students are getting a precise and truthful education so that the lack of understanding towards and about Native Americans can be avoided and how that can be reflected in the education
At school Alexie and his Indian classmates faced stereotypes such as they were being failure and were not expected to be successful in their life’s just for been an Indian. His classmates would not participate in class because they grew up with the
Sunaina Maira of Harvard University addresses a recurring issue within the dance floor among the second-generation Indian American community throughout her paper, Identity Dub: The Paradoxes of an Indian American Youth Subculture (New York Mix). She traces a wide variety of subjects, one of them being regionalism leading to violence. In this section, she addresses the social division between the South Asian communities that occur at social events. Another one of the subjects she includes in her paper discusses are gender roles within the Indian community.
“I’m not the Indian you had in mind” challenges the widely accepted image held by society of what an Indian should look, act, and essentially be like. The short video starts out with a man dressed in casual business attire carting out a life size statue of the stereotypical Indian. He takes the statue, dressed head to toe in what society expects an Indian to look like including a traditional headdress, tomahawk, long hair and clothing then places it next to a television. The man, along with a woman dressed in a blazer and pencil skirt and another man in what society would define as casual clothing, go on to tell the stories of what society believes true Indians are. Stereotypes are essentially preconceived notions or ideas about groups of
At first I wrestled with where my identity lay. The strong values and traditions of the Indian culture sometimes made it difficult to fit in with the crowd. As I grew older, I began to understand that I was not part of an individual culture, but a fusion of two rich and colorful histories. I recognized that there is remarkably more to an individual than where she comes from, and more to her than where she currently lives. Importantly, being from two cultures allows me to incorporate the best qualities of both.
Even though America has become quite the diverse place with diverse cultures, the cultural appropriation found within the American society contributes to the loss of multiple minority culture’s identity. Native Americans are one of the minority groups most heavily impacted by cultural appropriation. From offensive sports, many American Indians feel as though their cultural identities are lost in the mass of stereotypes and false representations of them in popular culture. In literature and film, Indians are too often portrayed as some variation of “the Noble or Ignoble Savage” (Gordon, 30), violent and uneducated, and it is easy to imagine how this negative representation inspires resentment in the Native American community, who have no interest in having their cultures and peoples being reduced to mere savages,
Raised in an Indian household in an American environment I am torn between deciding which represents me as a whole. My family dictates that I should cherish my heritage. However in all honesty I am not fond from where I come from, I still don’t know how to read my native language, I am still basic speaker in my mother language, and there are some values in my culture that I am totally disgusted
Life as a Native American sucks. I realized this when I was a little kid. I’ve come to accept that what other people label or describes us as are true. I’m not happy to admit this they are right. My people don’t do anything to prove these people’s claims, or better known as stereotypes, about Native Americans wrong.
If my Native American tribe was to choose a side between the French and the English, I would pick the French. Firstly, the French have a small population in America. Therefore, they aren 't as demanding for certain supplies since there is less of them. That will leave more supplies for the Native Americans. Also, this means that they won 't take up as much land in America as the English do.
America Indian Cultural Communication Practices From a young age, Indian culture has been depicted as stereotypical feather headdresses and face paint, whether in school, movies, or recognizable logos. However, the culture of American Natives goes deeper than that, it is rich in history and culture that has continued into the modern American society seen today. Intercultural communications have always been prominent in societies and developments, but the American Indian and American Immigrant history are special in how the relationships have changed and how the cultures have remained respected. This paper will cover what real American Indian Culture looks like, speak on religious, relational, and assimilation, and communication