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Native Americans Civil Rights

Summary: "Custer Died for Our Sins and "Indians of All Tribes..."

In a pair of related works, Native American civil rights activist Vine De Loria and Indians of All Tribes make a compelling case for reconsidering the ways in which the civil rights of Native Americans have been treated and the rights of Native Americans to regain control over territory that has been usurped by Caucasians over the past several hundred years. In "Custer Died for Your Sins," De Loria (294) states that "by defining the problem as one of race and making race solely refer to black, Indians were systematically excluded from consideration." Indians, said De Loria (294), have been classified as whites due to laws that were designed to exclude blacks but in other areas Native Americans are classified as blacks or non-whites in order to differentiate them and their rights from those of Anglo Americans.

Over time, De Loria (295) says that Indians have been defined as animals with which the whites had some relation and who were in desperate need of the "civilizing tendencies of the invading white." Unlike African-Americans, Native Americans have been isolated, alienated, and subjected to Anglo-Saxonization. As De Loria (297) puts it, "in transplanting Europe to these peaceful shores, the colonists violated the most basic principle of history: certain lands are given to certain peoples." He proposes that at some time, America will return to the "red man" and that "civil rights is a function of man's desire for self-respect, not his desire for equality" (298).

In "Alcatraz Is not an Island," a group calling itself Indians of All Tribes (298) wrote on behalf of those Native Americans who occupy the site of the former prison and reclaimed the land "in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery." In a deliberately mocking tone, this proclamation describes Alcatraz as more than suitable for an Indian reservation because of its deficits...

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Native Americans Civil Rights. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:21, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/2001149.html