Native Americans and language: two essays

¶ … Diversity of Native American Nations

Prior to the European's discovery of Native Americans, there was a great deal of diversity among the different tribes. Many people today still have "Indian" ancestry, but yet there is no single definition of what makes a person an Indian. For the U.S. census, for example, anyone who claimed that they were Indian (Native American) were counted as such, whether they were actually Indian or not (Warren, n.d.). The membership criteria for different tribes is also unique, and no two tribes have the same specifics for membership. That makes determining whether a particular person is Native American very difficult, because he or she may meet the criteria set out by one tribe, but not meet the criteria for another tribe. However, Native Americans are also other people who are indigenous to the U.S., such as Alaskan Eskimos and Native Hawaiians (Warren, n.d.). These are different groups from Indians, but all of them fall under the title of Native American.

When the European settlers appeared, they began to focus on moving through the country, taking the land they wanted for their settlements. The Indians who were there at the time resisted this, of course, and many of them were killed. The largest killer of the Indians was not the weapons of the settlers, but the diseases and germs they brought with them from their native country (Warren, n.d.). Many of the diseases they had acquired were not anything the Indians had been exposed to before, so they quickly got sick from new germs. Many of them died, and it took some time before any amount of significant immunity was built up. Other Indians ended up befriending the settlers, and they worked and lived in relative harmony -- but there was still a push for more and more land to be taken from the Indians for use by the settlers (Warren, n.d.). In the end, most Indians ended up on reservations, and the settlers created generations of Americans who took over the country and the majority of the land.

The Language We Know, by Simon Ortiz

Simon Ortiz belonged to the Acoma Pueblo tribe, and was a part of the Native American Renaissance. He is very widely respected, both in the Native American community and as a poet in general (Ortiz, 1987). He spoke Keresan when he was growing up, and went to Indian schools, as did most of the children in the tribe. In the seventh grade, students in those schools were not allowed to speak their native languages anymore, and had to speak English. This was designed to assimilate them into the prevailing culture, so they could be more accepted by the American people. By placing them into mainstream culture, they would be losing a lot of their heritage, but they would not have to worry about not being accepted by other people around them, so it was believed that they would benefit (Ortiz, 1987). Cultural dissonance became a big part of Ortiz's life, because he saw the changes in himself and his friends as they were forced to become more like the mainstream American and less like the Native American (Ortiz, 1987). That was an important theme through a lot of his work.