The past wednesday, I attended the Becker/Rose House Cafe series with speaker Eric Cheyfitz who talked about America’s history and current relationship with Native Americans. I enjoyed this talk not only because it was on a topic I did not know much about but also because the speaker was excited to share the information with all the students. It was clear that Prof. Cheyfitz was knowledgable about the topic. He wanted to make sure he could answer all our questions on Native Americans because although it is bad to not know much about them, it is even worse to have misconceptions about America’s relationship with Native Americans. In high school, I once had a realization that I had not had much exposure to the history of with our relaitonship with Native Americans, so I read some books on the topic. I definitely agree with Prof. Cheyfitz that the current middle/high school curriculum does not do enough to teach students about this topic. I came away from the Cafe series this week with more knowledge and understanding of Native Americans than before. It was definitely one of the most memorable cafe series I have been too (I was a Rose Scholar the previous year as well).

I learnt a lot from this week’s cafe series. It was interesting that Prof. Cheyfitz talked about how Cornell is currently situated on Native Indian land. Although I hadn’t known for certain, I had a vague idea that this used to be part of Native American land. America’s history with Native Americans is also very interesting. One of the most important take away points was how the Supreme Court under John Marshall treated Native Americans. High school curriculum teaches students well that President Andrew Jackson was not kind to the Native Americans. But we are not taught how that affected our policies regarding indigenous people. I really enjoyed the discussion with Prof. Cheyfitz because rather than just going over things that we might have already learnt from high school, he gave us new information about the topic. He made sure we learnt something new and a better idea of America’s current relationship with Native Americans.