Thoughts on Movie

It was really interesting watching the movie of Native American history during class. I think it is good to view American history through the Native American’s eyes. Throught the movie, there were a couple facts that stood out to me. First, I was surprised to hear that Native Americans also had a civil rights movement during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. In the California K-12 educational system, you primarily hear about the Black and Chicano civil rights movements yet nothing is mentioned about the Native American civil rights movement. Another fact that caught my eye, was when I saw the image of a news paper article that said, “Indians taking City Jobs.” This quote is an example of how the dominant white American society has always used the excuse that minority groups are “taking their jobs away” in order to justify their discrimination towards them. Moreover, there was a part in the movie in which Kent Frizell, from the Department of Justice, was describing how Native Americans and the federal government came to a temporary agreement in the Wounded Knee site. In this part, he mentions how he allowed a few Natives to ride in his helicopter in return for riding on the Natives “ponies.” The tone in which he mentioned this was a belittling one. He mentioned this in order to point out how supreme the white mans technology in comparison to that of the Natives. Furthermore, Frizzell points out how he was giving a 10 day deadline to resolve the conflict in Wounded Knee. He attributes this time constraint to the fact that “adventure seekers, and college students” were going to start showing up in masses in a few weeks. His explanation demonstrates how he viewed the Native American activists as mere adventure seekers and believed that those who joined in the struggle were just trying to be rebellious.