Silencing Lakota 1

Silencing the First Nations:

Western Standards in the Western Frontier

Emily Barrick

5/2/15

(Choate, 1883 and 1886)

Silencing Lakota 2

Abstract

Carlisle Indian School was only one of many Indian boarding schools designed to assimilate the

indigenous people of the United States. The Great Sioux Reservation made up all of South

Dakota west of the Mississippi; and protected the rights of the Sioux to hunt in unceded Indian

territory in Wyoming and Nebraska. The brutal deaths of the Lakota leader Sitting Bull and

other prominent members of the tribe at Wounded Knee effectively ended the Indian Wars

(Edwards, 2012), silencing the tribes and taking their sacred land. The Keystone XL Pipeline is

being built by TransCanada from Alberta to Nebraska and through the traditional Sioux land.

The U.S. court system deemed that the Black Hills as well as the rest of South Dakota west of the

Missouri River was taken from the Sioux Nation without due compensation in a 1980 Supreme

Court decision. Environmental racism is “the process whereby environmental decisions, actions

and policies result in racial discrimination or the creation of racial advantages”. Racism

internalized by the powerful group (white Americans being the case here) allows them to dismiss

arguments based solely off the interests of a minority group. There is a gross

underrepresentation of Native Americans in the literature on their own culture and history.

Western education from the bottom up—from the romanticization of Thanksgiving to the difficult

odds Native American students have to overcome to get any form of higher education—needs to

be reformed.

Silencing Lakota 3

Introduction

Three boys, dressed in their native garb, pose for a picture in 1883 (Choate, 1883 and 1886).

They are brought to a school far from their homes and their families; their braids are cut, their

feathers and furs are replaced with “the clothes of the White Man” (Public Broadcasting System,

2006), and are beat when they speak Lakota. They learn how to speak English, how to be

farmers, how to be businessmen. They are even renamed, told that they are now ‘Henry’ or

‘Chauncey’, and by the end of the three years, they are right gentlemen. They are no longer

savages. They could even be considered white if it weren’t for their dark skin and dark eyes

(Choate, 1883 and 1886).

Carlisle Indian School was only one of many Indian boarding schools designed to assimilate the

indigenous people of the United States (Landis, 1996). Native Americans were see as others

throughout American history, the ideas of land ownership was a foreign concept, and many tribes

were hostile toward settlers and the expansion of the United States. Boarding schools were a way

of both assimilating the young Native Americans and keeping their parents in check on the

reservations by essentially holding their children for “ransom” far away from the reservations

(Public Broadcasting Station, 2006).

However, these boarding schools mostly closed decades ago, closed down by the scathing

government reports of abuses and misuse of power (Bear, 2008). Perhaps, these closures show a

progression of the American perspective on Native Americans and their cultural identities and

ownership of their land.

Silencing Lakota 4

Sioux Nation

The Sioux Nation, although they all share a common cultural background, is split into three main

linguistic groups: Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota (Edwards, 2012); the Lakota are then subdivided

further into seven groups including the Oglala, Itazipcho, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Sihasapa,

Santee, and Oohenugpa. Although all of these subdivided groups share common language and

culture, they have their own unique experiences and histories among themselves.

The Sioux Nation is a controversial and hypothetical area of land where the Sioux lived prior to

contact with settlers, which included much of the modern states of South Dakota, North Dakota,

Wyoming, Montana, and

Minnesota (Powers & Garret

& Martin, 2005). The Great

Sioux Reservation made up

all of South Dakota west of

the Mississippi; and

protected the rights of the

Sioux to hunt in unceded

Indian territory in Wyoming

and Nebraska as shown in

this map (snowwowl.com, 2005). A very important area within the Great Sioux Reservation was

He Sapa, or the Black Hills, which is located near the border of South Dakota and Wyoming

near the ‘S’ in ‘Sioux’. The reservation was established by a treaty signed in 1868 at Fort

Laramie in Wyoming (Powers & Garret & Martin, 2005), for the “undisturbed and exclusive

use” of the indigenous people.

Silencing Lakota 5

Although scholars believe that the Lakota originated from eastern Minnesota and migrated to

eastern South Dakota in the seventeenth century due to conflict with the other Sioux tribes as

well as the approaching white man (Edwards, 2012), Lakota oral tradition disagrees. One Lakota

medicine man named Pete Catches explained that the Lakota saw the He Sapa (Black Hills), as

central to their religion (Gonzalez, 1996). Catches stated that “seven spirits came to the Black

Hills… The first spirit gave the whole of the Black Hills to the Lakota people forever an ever,

from this life until the great here-after life,” as he described the oral tradition of his people. The

spirits each came with gifts, including the “fire” within the ground, or volcanoes; the water in the

land, such as the Hot Spring which is used for healing; the air that they breathe, which manifests

itself in the Wind Caves in the Black Hills, where the “Earth breathes in and out”; the rocks and

minerals, including the gold; medicine; the animals which sustain the Lakota, such as the buffalo

and the eagle to all the smaller animals. The last spirit “brought the Black Hills as a whole-

brought it to give it to the Lakota forever, for all eternity, not only in this life, but in the life

hereafter. The two are tied together” (Gonzalez, 1996). The Lakota religion was originally

honored by the Fort Laramie Treaty, which gave them total access to He Sapa, and their

traditional hunting ground.

Unfortunately, treaty rights rarely remain in the American consciousness. In 1875, only seven

years after the Fort Laramie Treaty, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and the consequent

illegal westward expansion of gold diggers into the Lakota’s land brought conflict between the

United States and the Lakota, who “actively participated in the defense of their lands under such

leaders and strategists as Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Gall, American Horse, and Rain

in the Face” (Darity, 2008) and effectively kick-started the Indian Wars and the fight for sacred

land.

Silencing Lakota 6

The most famous battle of the Sioux Indian Wars took place at Little Bighorn River, Montana, in

1876, between 7th U.S. Calvary regiment led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer

(Darity, 2008) where in the three day battle against Crazy Horse and his Lakota and Cheyenne

warriors, General Custer

lost both the battle and

his life (Darity, 2008;

Darity, 2008), giving

hope to the resistant

tribes. However, the

American loss at Little

Big Horn also brought

more attention to the hostility of the tribes to the American settlers coming to the Black Hills and

lead to increased military action taken by the United States. Subsequently, an order for Crazy

Horse’s arrest went out in 1877 and a scuffle during his arrest caused his death (Darity, 2008);

the morale of the Lakota people took a sharp plunge.

The 1870s saw the rise of the Ghost Dance movement, which unified many Native American

tribes through a religious belief of a coming liberation for the Native Americans, and may have

inspired strong resistance in the Lakota tribe (Edwards, 2012). The dance was a revivalist

attempt to restore the old way of life (Jones, 2005); a circle dance that was practiced that

originated from a Nevada reservation, and spread through much of central United States all the

way to the Lakota. The Ghost Dance made the white settlers nervous because it was bringing

together a huge number of people for a mysterious new dance and an unfamiliar religion.

Silencing Lakota 7

When the Lakota tribal leader Sitting Bull was confronted about the Dance by the U.S. Army in

1890, a conflict broke out and the ensuing battle (massacre) resulted in the death of at least 150

Lakota, mostly women and

children (Edwards, 2012) many of

whom were not even killed by the

soldiers, but rather froze to death in

the snow as shown in the photo on

the next page (Campbell, n.d.)

which depicts the frozen bodies of

Lakota who died during the

‘battle’. The brutal deaths of the Lakota leader Sitting Bull and other prominent members of the

tribe at Wounded Knee effectively ended the Indian Wars (Edwards, 2012), silencing the tribes

and taking their sacred land.

The end of the Indian Wars led to the relegation of the tribe to several reservations where they

remain today. These reservations are shown on the map on page 4 (snowwowl.com, 2005), and

include the Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Lower Brule

reservations. The Great Sioux Reservation was drastically reduced due to the allure of gold and

the hostilities between the Sioux tribes and the United States (Darity, 2008). Resentment

between settlers and Native Americans contributed to the slaughter of buffalo, which reduced the

resources of the tribal people considerably. The forcible removal of the Sioux from their

religious grounds in the Black Hills wore away on the Sioux resolve.

In the years that followed, boarding school recruiters targeted children from hostile tribes such as

the Lakota as of the early 1880s (Bear, 2008). The poverty and the unstable condition of the

Silencing Lakota 8

reservations of the Sioux made the reservations in western South Dakota prime recruiting

grounds, further removing the new generation of Lakota from their traditional culture.

Modern Lakota Activism

Today, the Sioux are one of the largest tribes in the United States, yet arguably the poorest area

in the United States with “60 percent of people live at or below the poverty line” (Merchant,

2011). The Cheyenne River Reservation is in Ziebach County, a remote area of northwestern

South Dakota, has jobs in construction that can be found in the summer, but the rest of the year

leaves the inhabitants tending to farm animals and hoping the winter doesn’t become too bad.

Poor life on the reservation does make it difficult to raise children, and many Lakota claim that

racial tensions combined with the difficulties of living on reservations make South Dakota Sioux

a target for disproportionate Child Protective Service seizures (Lakota People’s Law Project,

n.d.). The fact is, in 1978 the Indian Child

Welfare Act was passed, which “stipulates

Indian children be placed with extended

family members, tribal members or in a

home with at least one Native foster

parent”, with the explicit object of keeping

the child in a home of their cultural

background (Rena-Murray, 2014), but this

act is rarely ever honored. “South Dakota

has allegedly continued to ignore

stipulations in ICWA … placing about 87

Silencing Lakota 9

percent of Native children in non-Native homes” (Indian Country News, 2014). The blatant

disregard of the rights and culture of Native Americans by the state of South Dakota is

essentially a modern version of the Indian boarding schools of earlier times in its erasure of the

cultural roots of the Lakota people.

Another major issue for the Lakota is the Keystone Pipeline, which puts the natural resources of

several South Dakota reservations at risk (Jumping, 2013), and goes directly through He Sapa.

Keystone XL Pipeline Background

The Keystone XL Pipeline is being built by TransCanada from Alberta to Nebraska as shown in

the map on the previous page (Keystone XL, 2013) to transport the oil extracted from the tar

sands in central Canada. The dotted blue line shows the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, from

Hardisty, and through the western half of South Dakota; according to the map on page 3, the

pipeline will go through the traditional Sioux land. The pipeline project is a very controversial

subject because it has a foot in both the political, capitalistic world and the environmental and

social justice world.

Supporters argue that the pipeline will provide American jobs and will be environmentally safer

than using trucks or other transportation methods, which are at higher risk for spills (Palliser,

2012). With many American Congressional bills pushing for the pipeline to be approved by the

Oval Office, the president is put in a spot: either they choose an economical position and pass the

Keystone XL Pipeline bills, or they take the environmental side and do not pass it (Berwald,

2015). However, the major reasons for the Keystone Pipeline do include environmental reasons.

Although the Keystone XL Pipeline will push forward the extraction of the tar sands in Alberta,

Canada, the Canadian government plans on extracting this anyway. Transporting the oil via

Silencing Lakota 10

pipeline is safer than truck or train, which is why it is strongly supported by environmentalists

who are familiar with the different methods of oil transportation (Palliser, 2012; Berwald, 2015)

Althought TransCanada projected the jobs created by the Pipeline to be several thousand per

month of construction, a Cornell University study found that the actual jobs created will be only

a fraction of the estimate, as shown in the grahp above (Wald, 2013). While the blue bars, which

show the prediction that TransCanada released on jobs created by their project, show thousands

of jobs created for each construction time period, the height of which is 20,000 during the month

of April, the purple and red bars, which depict a Cornell University study and Federal

government research respectfully, only predict around 5,000 jobs for about one month total.

Apparently TransCanada’s numbers were a little skewed.

In light of all the good debate going on about the Keystone Pipeline-- whether economically or

environmentally— one thing is continuously and systematically left out of the mainstream

discussion: Whose land is it that TransCanada plans to build the pipeline on?

Silencing Lakota 11

Lakota and the Keystone Pipeline

The U.S. court system deemed that the Black Hills as well as the rest of South Dakota west of

the Missouri River was taken from the Sioux Nation without due compensation in a 1980

Supreme Court decision (Ostler, 2010; Akwesasne Notes, 1980). Mario Gonzalez, the attorney

for the Lakota tribe, argued that the Treaty of 1868 made in Fort Laramie stated that the Great

Sioux Reservation which made up all of South Dakota west of the Missouri River (see map on

page 3) could not be ceded without the consent and signing of at least three fourths of the adult

males in the Sioux tribes, which did not happen (Akwesasne Notes, 1980). Gonzalez won the

case, and the tribe was offered payment in exchange for the land, plus interest, which comes to

approximately one billion dollars. However, Sioux refused to accept the money offered by the

government, even though the Lakota are probably the poorest people in the country (Ostler,

2010; Merchant

, 2011). Mario Gonzalez expounded:

In essence, the Black Hills Case boils down to this -- the initial taking was

unconstitutional and therefore we have been the rightful owners from 1877 until the

present time. The taking by the government was null and void from the beginning. And

now the government is trying to pay $17.5 million plus 5% simple interest. By accepting

this award, at this time we will be accepting the sale of the Black Hills. Since the

government didn't get it lawfully in the beginning, it is still ours. By accepting the money

now, we sell. That's what it boils down to. And we are not about to be duped into this

kind of fraudulent conveyance. We are going to go out fighting for the Black Hills, we

Silencing Lakota 12

intend to fight like the Oglala Lakota did over 100 years ago, and if we lose, nobody will

ever be able to accuse us of not fighting to try to retain our Black Hills.

Sara Jumping, a Lakota journalist, wrote about the fighting efforts of the Pawnee Nation and the

Ihanktonwan Dakota against the Keystone Pipeline (Jumping, 2013). The title of her article is

“Stopping the Keystone Pipeline: The Battle of Our Time”, and her wording already expresses

her belief that the Keystone Pipeline is a priority for her generation for preserving her culture.

The Black Hills are still important to the Lakota today, and through movements such as Owe

Aku, which means ‘Take Back the Way’, the Lakota and partnering tribes are working to stop, or

at least redirect, the pipeline away from their sacrd land and their water sources. Jumping

concludes her article with a call to action,

We must let our tribal leaders know, that they should not be bought for a few jobs in the

shortterm, when their role is to make decisions based on what is best for next seven

generations. That is what we expect of them. We must continue to protect the land, the

water, the air, the animals The Ogallala aquifer is worth more than any money. Our

children and grandchildren cannot drink oil.

Conveying a similar message of Lakota resistance to being

bought out is this rendition of a propaganda poster,

depicting a Sioux brave wearing his feather, traditional

clothing, and long hair (poasterchild1, 2013). In the

background is a teepee with several Native Americans

going about their business. The brave is holding a dollar

bill in one hand, and a sign in the other. The top of the

1 This is a DeviantArt user’s screen name

Silencing Lakota 13

image reads “Hey, Christians! What do you think about selling us Bethlehem for a lousy $1.50

an acre?” The sign that the brave is holding reads “What? You don’t want to sell it because it’s

sacred ground?” and “Well, we don’t want to sell the Black Hills either! Return the land now!”

The image draws a strong parallel between the sacred land and beliefs of the Lakota and the

sacred land and beliefs of Christians, who are a majority of Americans. Lakota beliefs are so

easily dismissed, while Americans would never dream of dismissing Christians or Jews in the

same way. Why? Why are Lakota beliefs held in such disregard?

Environmental Racism

Native American culture often views important cultural events with strong ties to the land where

it occurred if they were seen as sacred or religious events (Blaine, 2015). In the last three

hundred years, much of this culture has been lost, and with resources hard to come by on many

reservations, tribes find themselves signing treaties, signing kids up for boarding schools, and

signing contracts for waste dumps on their land (Lewis, 1995). In the case of the Ponca tribe, a

carbon black processing factory was put in near their land, but when the tribe reported illnesses

associated with the dangerous chemicals, the complaints were largely ignored by the

government, the carbon company, and courts (Shriver, 2009). Not only in America are

indigenous lands being used as waste sites or otherwise disrespected but Central and South

American communities are also at risk (Lehtinen, 1998).

Environmental racism is “the process whereby environmental decisions, actions and policies

result in racial discrimination or the creation of racial advantages” (Taylor, 2007). It includes

using an inherited power that enables an individuals to further their own group’s agenda over

Silencing Lakota 14

another group’s, the power in both a large and small scale to put policies into place that has a

prejudice against another group, or biased doctrines of an individual.

In Trahant’s 2015 article on why the Keystone Pipeline will not pass, however, his main reason

is not treaty rights, but the economy. Trahant is part of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe, so why does

he not argue that treaty rights are the most important? Does he not believe in his cause or the

power of his people’s movement against the pipeline on behalf of treaty rights? No, it is

inculcated in American culture that if an individual in a special interest group or minority makes

an argument based on the interests of a minority, even if they are part of it, they are just

interested in themselves—which is only acceptable if there is money involved. Why did Trahant

choose to focus on more than just the treaty rights, but also bring in economic and political

reasons. Obviously the political arguments are already over-represented in the literature written

on the Keystone Pipeline whereas Native American treaty rights are not, and yet he still chooses

to only skim over the treaty issues, because he would be easier to dismiss if he focused on Native

American issues.

Like other forms of racism, environmental racism can be internalized and used to have minority

people dismiss their own people. However, I do not believe this is necessarily what happened in

Trahant’s case. Trahant is a passionate and active journalist in his community, so I believe, first

of all, that he had research that he wanted to write on, and he wanted to justify the Native

resistance to the Keystone Pipeline. He may also have been expanding his readership—racism

internalized by the powerful group (white Americans being the case here) allows them to dismiss

arguments based solely off the interests of a minority group.

Silencing Lakota 15

Capitalistic white Americans see the environment as a product to be bought and sold and used to

advance political or economic goals, so the oil pipeline would give an advantage to white

Americans who could get jobs in oil refineries created by the oil industry and also to the middle

class American who wants to pay less for gasoline for their cars. The dismissal of treaty rights in

the Keystone Pipeline discussion is evidence of unconscious environmental racism.

Washington State Example of Environmental Racism

Similarly, right here in Washington State the Makah tribe’s treaty rights are pushed to the side

for political and environmental rhetoric, even when the issue is directly and unarguably tied to

the tribe’s beliefs and tradition. The Makah have always been whalers, and their rights to

continue whaling was protected in the 1855 treaty relegating them to their reservation on the tip

of the Olympic Peninsula (Anderson, 1998; Morrow, 2015). Today they are trying to assert their

right whale hunt, but are met with stalwart opposition from environmentalists.

Local news station, King 5, aired a report on the Makah whaling issue, asking for “public

comment” (Morrow, 2015). Why does it matter what the “public” believes on the matter,

though? I am part of the public, and I live in the Puget Sound area. That does not qualify me to

say whether or not the treaty of 1855 should be upheld. Why is there a presumptuous air that

anyone can chime in on a discussion on the rights of people who were here for thousands of

years before they were forced to trade their land away in order to keep the one tradition of whale

hunting, which has defined the Makah for 1,500 years (Morrow, 2015)? This attitude reveals the

insidious trend of dismissing treaty rights that is no different today than it was one hundred and

fifty years ago. If the conversation is opened up to the general public to determine the rights of

Silencing Lakota 16

local tribes, that should mean that the tribe itself should already have discussed their issues, and

have a fair representation in literature

concerning their issues.

Native Americans in Academia

The National Center for Education

Statistics conducted research on

percentage of Native Americans

according to tribe that have completed

certain levels of education and found

that the total population of Native

Americans in the United States in 1998 was 1,0409,55, and of them 4.5% had less than a fifth

grade education, 9.2% had a 5th through 8th grade education, 20.7% completed some 9th-12th

grade education but did not receive a diploma, 28.9% graduated high school and did not enter

higher education, 20.9% completed some college, and 6.1% completed a Bachelor’s degree. The

Makah have 6.8% of their 754 members as of 1998 who have a Bachelor’s degree, which is

higher than average; however, scholarly journals need to be written by individuals with at least a

master’s degree, and only 4.7% of the Makah tribe have a Master’s degree or higher which

comes to about 35 members being qualified to write ‘scholarly’ articles from the Makah

perspective. The Sioux tribe has 3% of their tribe with at least a Master’s degree, leaving them

with about 1,500 members who can write from the Sioux perspective—out of over 51,000, with

15,000 who did not complete high school. According to the 2012 United States census, 29.3% of

white Americans have a bachelor’s degree or higher, while 13% of American Indians and Alaska

Silencing Lakota 17

Natives have the same (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). There is a gross underrepresentation of

Native Americans in the literature on their own culture and history. Why?

The National Center for Education Statistics also found that Native Americans faced much more

risk when attending higher education as shown in the graph above (National Center for

Education Statistics, 1998). Being financially independent, having at least one dependent, being

a single parent, or being enrolled part time or part year attendance are all risks that prevent many

Native American students from finishing higher education. Even when Native American students

do complete higher education, it is difficult to balance the expected college culture, which is

inundated in western standards and traditions, with Native American roots.

The three boys on the title pages are not boys who exist in a

vacuum. Their names, left to right in the left photo, are

Wounded Yellow Robe, Henry Standing Bear, and Chauncey

Yellow Robe. While Henry Standing Bear became a

prominent Lakota chief who commissioned the construction

of the Crazy Horse monument in the Black Hills, replicating

the style of Mount Rushmore, Chauncey Yellow Robe

became a well-educated Native American rights activist. As

can be seen in the photo (Chauncey Yellow Robe and Father

Chief Yellow Robe, 1895), Chauncey is the young man in the western clothing, standing next to

his father Chief Yellow Robe who is wearing half western clothing, including a tie and vest, but

also holding his blanket and wearing a feather in his long braided hair. The effect of the boarding

school is hauntingly obvious in the contrast between these two generations. The most shocking

aspect of the difference between the generations and also between Henry and Chauncey, is their

Silencing Lakota 18

Wikipedia pages. While Chauncey’s page details most of his life with photos such as the one

above, Henry’s page contains four photos, and approximately three lines of text (Wikipedia, n.d.)

Apparently, Wikipedia and its audience, as well as historians, care a lot more about Native

Americans who look like them than the individuals like Henry Standing Bear who was a leader

in his own community.

In our own Highline library there is a Native American

Collection on the third floor and, unfortunately, a quick

search found me about ten books that referred to Native

Americans with slurs such as ‘Red Man’ or ‘Savage’. I took

this photo of only a few of the books with such titles. These

were published between 1915 and 1983, but they are written

largely by scholars who are ‘authorities’ on Native

Americans, so it is alright for them to use these slurs.

Although some might argue that these words are just a product of their time, this line of

reasoning excuses respected scholars to use ad hominem attacks on their ‘subjects’.

History class and history websites, there is a habitual use of past tense when talking about the

indigenous people of the Americas, but Native Americans are still here: over one million living

the United States today. A quick look at an AP U.S. History course outline for AP students to

study from shows that only one section really discusses Native Americans, and it is primarily

concerned with the removal of the tribes from their traditional land. There is no discussion of the

religions, the intertribal interaction, or anything that is not concerned with the “western

expansion”; winners Native Americans are only portrayed as an obstacle to western progress or

as tragic collateral damage to a conquering force.

Silencing Lakota 19

Discussion

Urban Dictionary is a popular website for definitions of slang terms, edited by volunteers who up

or down vote entries. When an entry gets a certain amount of down votes, the entry is removed,

so the content has some amount of quality control. Sioux Falls is the largest city in South

Dakota, and when you search them on Urban Dictionary you get several entries, including one

by user ‘why do I live here’, which stated “Things to watch out for: Gambling red people

drinking mouthwash and selling siding from government-given houses” (urbandictionary.com,

2011). The author is clearly using stereotypes of Native Americans to fuel an ad hominem attack

on the community. The first identification of these people as Native American is his use of ‘red’.

Is there a connection that scholarly books written on Native Americans have a history of calling

them ‘red’, and this racist also uses that word (urbandictionary.com, 2011)?

Kindle (who wrote about Ostler’s book) and Jumping are Native American journalists.

Jumping’s article was not scholarly because it was only published in a newspaper. Kindle’s

article was likely mislabeled in the database as scholarly because they were reviewing a

scholarly book, but their article was not scholarly itself: it was just a review. The history of the

Lakota Sioux was provided in a specialized encyclopedia on Native American tribes yet it was

written by Edwards, who is white and primarily focuses on writing young adult fiction—this

author wrote what is seen as the official history as seen by a respected dictionary published by

Gale Virtual Library. So the history of the tribe provided by a person not involved in the tribe

and is taken at face value, but the views and histories provided by tribal members on current

events is not seen as reliable?

Silencing Lakota 20

So if only whites are recognized as truly scholarly, or Native Americans are only allowed to

speak on their issues when they also cater to the wider culture through capitalism or politics

(Trahant, 2015), and mainstream news does not mention Native Americans in their pros and cons

list about Keystone Pipeline (Palliser, 2012), and it is disproportionately difficult for Native

Americans to get a higher education (National Center for Education Center, 1998), how are

Native American supposed to make their voices heard? How are scholars supposed to educate

the public on Native Americans, their cultures and their histories, and their current struggles, if

the scholars are outsides looking in? How does academia get away with calling Native

Americans ‘red’ and ‘savage’ in their books, and those books are placed in college libraries with

no question and no explanation as if these white scholars have some special privilege to call

Native Americans ‘red’? Where do you draw the line between academia using these terms and

people like ‘why do I live here’ using them casually on social sites (urbandictionary.com, 2011)?

Conclusion

As long as there is a profit to be made off the Black Hills, from gold or oil, the Lakota will not be

heard over the overwhelming sound effect of cash register ‘cha-chings’ that seem to distract most

Americans. If the Lakota ever get their land back—and I don’t mean in cash value— the land

will not be restored to how it had been. The land has been developed, and there are thousands of

white people who live there. Would the United States government make these people move? The

answer is an probably ‘no’— ironically, they would very likely defend the interest of certain

Americans who have lived there for generations.

Despite the common belief that the current era is a more progressive time, that the days of

western exapansion and American imperialism over Native Americans are over, this is far from

Silencing Lakota 21

true. Instead, American mainstream society have become increasingly good at completely

forgetting about the existence of Native Americans. Why have a member of the Lakota tribe

write the entry for the Lakota in the Encyclopedia of Native American tribes when you can have

a white young adult fiction writer do it? The Lakotan would probably skew the reliability of the

source by including some kind of ‘religious’ mumbo jumbo about the Black Hills if they wrote

it, anyway.

There is a shocking underrepresentation of Native Americans in academia. Native American

issues, such as those regarding the Keystone Pipeline, are often completely overlooked in favor

of economic gain, or the Makah where their voices are drowned out by a ‘public discussion’ of

their rights. There is such a lack of discussion about Native Americans in academia,that is

difficult to find a source critiquing the lack of discussion about Native Americans.

Without doubt, the mainstream United States society, the government, and even the academic

community do not care about Native Americans or Native American issues. They are never

prioritized, or never emphasized for fear of dismissal. History classes do not expound on the

treaties and how they were broken and continue to be broken. In discussing my essay with peers

I have found many people shocked when I explained Indian boarding schools, learning for the

first time of the forced assimilation of Native American children; no one outside of the Lakota

tribe even writes about the Foster Care Crisis of South Dakota.

No one cares.

There needs to be a reform in the way Native Americans are viewed—Native Americans are still

here and their issues are happening now and they matter; they are not ‘savages’. Western ideas

need to be introspected and observed, in how they are still silencing Native Americans today.

Silencing Lakota 22

Western education from the bottom up—from the romanticization of Thanksgiving to the

difficult odds Native American students have to overcome to get any form of higher education—

needs to be reformed. People need to care, people need to see the injustice still happening on

reservations across the country, and people need to be educated; white America needs to be

educated on the realities of Native American life and Native Americans need to be educated in

an education system built for them, not for the goal of assimilation.

Silencing Lakota 23

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