Thursday, July 02, 2009
Destroying Heritage
Native American people have been faced with American schools since the 1870's or so as a federal policy. The policy was to break or sever ties to culture, family, and tribe, to change indigenous people into Americans. It was a severe and traumatic form of brainwashing, literally to destroy the heritage and identity of native people, ostensibly to assimilate them into an American way of life.
--Woven Stone by Simon J. Ortiz
