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My Community: Oglala Lakota Sioux and the indigenous communities of North America

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My Community: Oglala Lakota Sioux and the indigenous communities of North America

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My Great-grandma and my Grandpa were both born and raised on separate Indian reservations. The Oglala Lakota Sioux reservation in South Dakota, and the Fort Peck reservoir in Montana. Making me part Native.

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My Great-grandma and my Grandpa were both born and raised on separate Indian reservations. The Oglala Lakota Sioux reservation in South Dakota, and the Fort Peck reservoir in Montana. Making me part Native.

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Although I have never visited their birthplace, and I am not connected to my culture by living on a reservation or participating in Pow-wows and other cultural norms of my people I still value the land and ways of life I have been taught by my grandpa and his four other siblings (my aunts and uncles). I hold my small percentage of Sioux with pride and I strive to make others aware of the horrors and struggles that my people and other Indigenous groups have faced, and still face to this day, with the hopes that bringing awareness to their struggles will stop the oppression that every Indigenous person faces. Colonization is one of the biggest social changes that the Native Americans have had to face, and to this day we can still see the scars left on all of society from colonization. Colonization sparked the social change of Indigenous boarding schools led by mostly churches where children and young adults were taken from Native tribes and forced to conform to the "American" way. This act of violence is one of the 2nd leading causes of mass cultural loss for Natives and still holds a lingering side effect on the Indigenous people of today.

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The Native Americans (Indigenous people of North America) have always held a high value on the land and mother nature. As in most Indigenous cultures (those being all over the world), the Sioux also use every inch of the animals they hunt. Although this was true when the Natives roamed the great plains before colonization, they used to have herds of different animals and used to migrate with each animal, killing only what was needed. This way of life has changed drastically since then. Now that civilizations and cities exist, there is no more roaming for these Native cultures. With these cities and newfound barriers also comes a hunting license. Although some Natives can get a special license for hunting, the populations of these animals (such as elk, deer, or even fish which requires a fishing license) have decreased drastically from the number of people who now live in once Native land; causing each individual to have a limit on how much of one animal or the number of kills people can bring back. Other limitations on these permits are seasonal hunting limits, has caused parts of Native culture to be lost due to these modern-day restrictions. Each separate Native culture from all different parts of the world used to have separate seasonal traditions with the land, and with hunting/fishing licenses those past seasonal traditions are now lost. The countless number of native traditions in saving and using all they can from the land is a tradition that helps reduce waste and protects over demolition of natural resources. Although there have been mass limitations to each separate Native cultural tradition, they all still practice the saving of their natural resources and protection of the little lands they have to help keep life in balance. Colonization, which started the Trail of Tears; a massive movement in the early days of the United States, pushed hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people off of their lands and sent them into land chosen by the government. We now call this land "reservations". This mass hearding of not only the Native people but also the hundreds of Native cultures and traditions was then followed up with Boarding schools for Indians, that was supposed to teach them reform and 'proper' human ways only further caused entire Indigenous cultures, traditions, and ways of life to be lost or unable to be spoken again.

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For my family specifically, turquoise is a big part of how we show and celebrate our heritage. For me, turquoise is a reminder of my Great-Grandma and my mother, two strong women who proudly wear/wore jewelry with turquoise. In the Indigenous communities, women and young girls create beautiful headdresses and other ceremonial clothing, jewelry, and items with vibrant beads and string for many different purposes. Each individual tribal nation and family will weave in their own family symbol, crest, or designs to show who they are, who their ancestors are, and more. Since colonialism, lots of these jewelry makers and bead workers have started selling their work to support their families. This tradition is now shared with the world in different ways and even is done by the boys and men of these Native families. I know with my own family beadwork and weaving have been lost and are no longer a tradition passed down thanks to the Catholic boarding schools that forced assimilation and took away a lot of my Great-Grandmas spirit to share her knowledge with her children and Grandchildren before passing.

Since the 21st century, lots of once-Native traditional items like the dream catcher, burning sage, specific styles of beadwork, or even ceremonial clothing have been replicated and mass-produced by non-Indigenous people. Economically this takes away Native's ability to sell authentic items of importance. Lots of these families rely on the income that comes with selling handmade items, and mass producing them in a factory in Indonesia or China, not only runs the cultural significance of these items but also impacts the lives of many Natives who make a living off of the art they make. With websites like TEMU, SHINE, or other cheap and mass-producing stores, everyday people may stumble across unauthentic Native replicas like dream catchers, and ceremonial clothing (or more,) and buythemt. This takes away profit from the Natives who are trying to make a living and hurts their businesses.

Culturally, Indigenous people have lost many traditions and native tongues due to colonialism and boarding schools. Many of the reasons as to why beadwork, ceremonial clothing, dances, or other traditions are performed or done, are lost to time. Colonialism and these boarding schools killed countless Indigenous people, forced an entire generation to suppress their culture and native tongue, moved these people across the country and into different lands foreign to them, and forced them to change and conform for centuries. This mass social change has caused many traditions, cultures, and native tongues to be lost. Hence why the traditions that Indigenous people still remember or have, are so cherished and sacred to us. Countless other families, similar to mine will never have that cultural knowledge passed through to a new generation all in part of the boarding schools and mass slaughterings that forced older generations to be scared to teach and pass down their knowledge. Many others will never learn from their mothers or grandparents the art of ceremonial clothing making or beadwork or other arts simply due to the conforming that had occurred that caused our many separate Native cultures to be lost or almost forgotten.

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A massive historical social change that has affected my family's knowledge of our heritage is the mass assimilation that occurred between the 1790s through the 1920s. This was due to Catholic and Christian churches and Americans as a whole wanting to 'help make them stronger people and fit into social norms' as Native ways of living were seen as primitive and uncivilized During this time. My Great-Grandma was a victim of these church's acts of assimilation, and because of it she and many other children and young Indigenous people were forced to conform. At times, they faced horrific punishments and beatings if they did not follow the teachings. My Great-Grandma, as well as others, were beaten for displaying any signs of Indigenous ways. The Native tongue of these individuals was banned, and the punishment for speaking them varied from beatings to days without a meal. The culture was not only taken from these children, as they were no longer with their families learning the ways of Native traditions but also stripped out of them. As stated previously, these Indigenous children forced to assimilate became afraid and scared to be involved in their culture, and in turn, they lost their spirit and spark to pass down what they remembered to future generations. This social change has come and gone. However, its impact still lingers to this day as an echo throughout time as so much culture and way of life for all and many different Indigenous groups have become lost. Because of what my Great-Grandma faced, she never passed down her knowledge to my Grandpa and in turn, the Oglala Lakota Sioux history was lost with her. Many other families have faced the same loss of culture the way mine has, and in doing so it has created another shift in newer generations of Indigenous people regardless of how Indian we may be, to crave the knowledge that was once lost.

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Education on reservations is very limited. Most teachers who work at the reservation schools have little pay as it's not funded the same way as other schools outside the reservation are. The resources for these schools are lacking, and the curriculum is typically behind the national standard. Although schools on reservations may be smaller in population, there is typically only one school building on a reservation, containing all grades k-12. Few reservations are able to provide different school buildings, proper salaries, proper staffing, and appropriate resources to these kids. Some reservations can't afford to have sports or club teams, and those that do might not be able to have more than a small handful of activities. Due to funding and staff issues, resources like computers or even school supplies are very limited which can limit how much a student is able to 'fit in' with today's society and doesn't allow for them to be prepared if they ever are able to leave the reservation, which unfortunately until recently has been a very low statistic. Since technology is one of the many struggling factors that Indigenous schools face, COVID-19 was devastating to these students' education as many reservations could not provide any computers. Due to COVID-19 restrictions and the lack of resources that reservations had, many who lived on reservations did not have the extra cash around the house to get vaccinations or buy a computer or other health and school items to stay healthy or attend school during 2020-2021, which drastically effected graduation rates, drop-out rates, college acceptance rates, and COVID numbers on reservations. Schooling for reservations is still drastically limited compared to non-reservation schools. The education and resources students have in school are nowhere near enough. Testing scores and college acceptance rates are extremely low, and dropout rates are very high. Teachers on reservations put their heart and soul into providing everything they can for their students, but many kids slip through the cracks due to insufficient resources. Many of these funding errors are due to the government. I could write (and have written) an entire other padlet on the problems that have been caused by reservations and the so-called 'sovereignty' the government claims they have, so I'll summarize. When colonialism began spreading after the Louisiana Purchase the trail of tears occurred. In summary, this was a mass movement forced by the government where hundreds of thousands of tribes were relocated-typically to dangerous and so-called useless land. Eventually over time treaties were signed enacting a select few tribes into sovereignty and naming their claim of lands as reservations. When the Indigenous boarding schools started appearing many Indigenous people were ripped from the reservations and killed or conformed or escaped. Eventually, more treaties were signed and now we have the reservations we know today. The government however still controls their building code rules, education rules, there money laws and they still function like everywhere else in America, but with less government support on funding, education help, and other essential fundamentals in the society that the government forced upon these people. Overall, the amount of hidden government control that was given because of colonialization and assimilation has led the government to control many aspects of reservations but not need to fund them for basic modern-day rights, like the proper tools for education because they claim to be in 'sovereignty'.

Education in the past for early Native American people, as discussed previously was provided in the form of boarding schools. A systematic social change impacted not only the indigenous families of North America but also the Western world as we know it. For more information than what I have provided The NNA Boarding School Healing Coalition is a great source of information on Indigenous historical education and the boarding school horrors.