Last Wednesday I attended the Becker-Rose café where Professor Cheyfitz spoke about the history of mistreatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. There is a lack of awareness by most people in this country to the plight of Native Americans, which is an attitude shared towards other race issues as well. Professor Cheyfitz began by talking about how Cornell University itself has yet to formally recognize that it exists on the homeland of the Cayuga tribe. Further, The United States government has put in place an extremely complicated system so that many Indian tribes are not federally recognized. The federal government also has jurisdiction over major crimes on Indian reservations but they do not exercise that power while Native Americans cannot hold their own trials. This is especially dangerous because 1 in 3 Native American women will be raped in their lifetimes. Native Americans have experienced various forms of genocide by Westerners. This includes war, ethnic cleansing, and cultural attrition. Professor Cheyfitz was sure to point out that the manner in which the U.S. has wiped out Indian culture falls under the U.N. definition of genocide. I was especially struck by the boarding schools that Native American children were forced to go to where they were not able to speak their native languages and were forced to assimilate. Professor Cheyfitz argued that part of the reason Native Americans who continue to live on reservations are so disadvantaged is because of their refusal to assimilate. This is a similar attitude that the U.S. holds towards immigrants, however, Westerners themselves were immigrants and established their society as the norm.

It’s necessary to have these frank conversations about the history of this nation and the global impacts of colonialism. We owe it to the people who are still affected and disadvantaged today to recognize our actions and work to fix them. It is also necessary so that we can recognize the forms of neo-imperialism that the U.S. takes part in today. Professor Cheyfitz mentioned how it was impossible to teach American history in schools without teaching Native American history, however most people in the room did not learn much about Native American history in grade school. He compared this to how we learned extensively about the slavery of African Americans. While it is important to recognize the existence of slavery in our history, I think besides slavery and the Civil Rights movement, we learned very little about Black culture or history that goes beyond stories of oppression. It’s important that we start teaching the histories of different racial groups in the United States, to be honest about the atrocities our government has committed, but also to recognize that the history of racial minorities in the U.S. is not confined to stories of oppression. We should teach all history in the same manner that we approach the history of White Americans.