The most interesting discussions this week for me came from the 500 Nations documentary that we watched during Monday's class. This was very disturbing to me in many ways, especially the opinion I had of white Americans of European descent after leaving the class. Anyway, the stories of Black Kettle and White Antelope were very distressing and also the leader of the Kiowa resistance (I don't remember his name, does anyone else?) The pictures were very haunting, all of them have such sad eyes. I cannot help but wonder what made this alright to the Americans that engaged in activities such as these, especially the buffalo hunters that participated in the murder of buffalo to kill off a people's food source? I would be very interested in watching the whole documentary.
I also began to wonder about the reservation concept and wish that those were explained more in depth.
2 comments:
Maybe in an attempt to defend the whites of the day, the actions of Shivington were on the extreme side of what happened in the West's history. After hearing about the event, most Americans actually did express their displeasure. I know it's not much, but atleast they didn't congradulate it.
Throughout this class I am constantly shocked at how religion is the main drive for how the Europeans reacted to native peoples. The documentary showing what happened in Southern California expressed how far some will go to spread their own beliefs.
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