Native American project By: Trey tafoya
Introduction
I am a Native of the Sioux tribe to this homeland that you call America and I have some issues that need to be expressed to your government about the way us Natives have been treated. Your settlers and your people are constantly moving even more westward and your government just keeps pushing us off of our native lands and once we get comfortable we are moved again. You have the superior army and weapons and we do not want violence but we always have a constant fear of violence from your people. You are constantly moving us and our people from our sacred homelands and drawing and redrawing territory borders and pushing and killing our people. Could you imagine how we feel being pushed from home onto reservations without the right to refuse because of the fear of violence I have some ideas that I believe will fix these problems without violence.
Wounded knee massacre problem
We the native people to this land are now since you Americans have moved into our land have only given us constant fears of violence to force into places we don’t want to live as you can see by the wounded knee massacre where you massacred a lot of my people men, women, and children. You force us out of our home native lands that we have lived on for centuries and move in your white people to farm and mine the gold. If we try to resist there is always that fear that you and your people will be violent and slaughter our people how are we supposed to live with this. Yes, you give us land to live on and try to turn into your people and be “civilized” but we do not want this we want to live where we live and you can live where you live just not on our lands.
Territory problems
On top of all this constant fear and moving to different lands where actually is our territory and borders? In your Declaration of Independence you said "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Where are our rights why can't we live here with you in peace without you guys trying to control us? You are moving onto our previous land and drawing where we live and where you live but you can’t account for the fact that those are precious lands to us and our people. You can’t just come in and draw borders and tell us to leave so that you can mine there and live there that’s not going to work without violence. Your people are more advanced than us on the fact that you have more updated weapons and ways of killing.
Conclusion
All of this was apparently fixed by your government in the Dawes Act which basically moved us and gave us land but took away our sacred land we do not want the land because we do not believe in owning land. We do not believe in the drawing of borders and owning different territory and people moving onto our sacred original land and it’s not fair that you guys can just take away our culture because of our fear of violence so the Dawes act did not help our problems here. My way of fixing this problem is first of all a peace treaty that makes so violence between your people and our people nonexistent and illegal and also you drawing borders around our native land and let us live here and make sure your people do not move into our lands.
Thank You!
Works cited page
http://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/wounded-knee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=50