Historical Experiences of Native Americans and Alaska Natives
Historically, Native Americans and Alaska have encountered a unique and challenging experience. The Native Americans have experienced suffering through genocide, forced assimilation, and forced mitigation. Therefore, these negative experiences have adversely affected Native Americans over time, especially in the past, which have continuously been noticed in contemporary America hence shaping their life experiences (Kendall, 2012).
Native Americans and Alaska Natives migrated from Asia to North America with more than ten thousand years ago. Many scholars noted that Mongolian migrants moved across Beringia into Alaska. Afterward, they moved from Alaska to Canada and finally landed in the north, which became the United States and South America. Contextually, the arrival of European settlers in 1492 marked the beginning of Native people great suffering, which altered their lives forever. The European settlers came along with their customs, disease including claiming the land for their own, hence confirming their practices that forced natives into smaller regions. Thus, their settlement shrined, forced to change their lifestyles, beliefs, and customs with much depression, segregation, and suppression of human rights.
Consequently, before the arrival of European settlers, over two million natives used to reside in North America. Settlers came along with diseases including smallpox, measles, and typhoid. They also faced suppression in a war where they could not fight the European because of their sophisticated weapons. Therefore, Native Americans remained suppressed through the justification made by Europeans over their aggression by stereotyping them as savages and heathens. Besides, after the Revolutionary war, the federal government gave treaties to the Native Americans to ensure that more of their land could get accessed for the growing white population (Kendall, 2012). The European government broke treaties entrusted to natives to clear the land for settlement. More prominently, Native Americans got subjected to forced assimilation over reservations after 1871, whereby their children got placed in boarding schools driven by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to ensure hastening their assimilation into the dominant culture.
Contemporarily, about five million Native Americans and Alaska Natives, together with those of more than one race, reside in the United States. According to the population statistics, they make up to 1.6 percent of the total population included a wide variety of groups. The historical background and their encounter with the European settlers who suppressed them affected their current lives in several ways (Kendall, 2012).
Firstly, the native settlements in the United States consist of a wide diversity of people of their category, whereby each nation houses its own culture, history including a unique identity, and more than two hundred and fifty Native American and Alaska Natives language exists today among the people. Secondly, these groups reside in confined places occupying small pieces of land hence being concentrated in specific regions of the country. Thus, one – third of Native Americans live on one of the 310 federal Indian reservations in the United States.
Besides, these groups of people tend to become the most disadvantaged racial or ethnic group found in the United States based on their income and employment, including housing, nutrition, and health. They suffer from malnutrition with high levels of poverty hence recording the highest rates of infant mortality. Also, Native Americans recorded great limited educational opportunities and a very high rate of unemployment. However, with the realization of equality, six tribally got introduced, which controlled community colleges in the 1970s leading to an increase in Native students in Universities of over 30 000 students (Kendall, 2012).
Lastly, the Native Americans and Alaska Natives have increased their education attainment, which has enabled them own business enterprises, take part in federal lawmaking, and expanded their settlement. They have found a transition from discrimination to contemporary life, whereby they get new opportunities. However, the historical effects encountered with the European settlers have continuously set challenges for Native Americans today. They fail to erase negative stereotypes in maintaining their heritage and identifying recognition of their contribution to the nation’s development and growth (Kendall, 2012).
References
Kendall, D. (2012). Sociology in our times. Cengage Learning.