Cultural Concepts
This means judging another culture using the standards and values of your own culture.
What is ethnocentrism?
He founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and promoted the forced assimilation of Indigenous children.
Who is Richard Henry Pratt?
This 1887 law divided communally held Indigenous lands into individual allotments.
What is the Dawes Act?
This Indigenous-led organization formed in the 1960s to fight for Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and better treatment of Native communities.
What is the American Indian Movement (AIM)?
This modern Indigenous movement calls for the return of Indigenous lands and greater Indigenous control over their homelands.
What is Land Back?
This means trying to understand a culture based on its own values, beliefs, and context rather than judging it by your own culture.
What is cultural relativism?
Complete this phrase associated with Richard Henry Pratt: “Kill the Indian, ______.”
What is “Save the Man”?
What was one major goal behind policies such as the Dawes Act?
What is assimilation?
Actions taken to oppose, challenge, survive, or push back against colonization and assimilation can be described as this.
What is resistance?
Restoring and strengthening Indigenous languages, traditions, cultural practices, arts, and knowledge is known as this.
What is cultural revitalization?
A person begins to use some aspects of another culture while continuing to maintain their own. What concept best describes this process?
What is acculturation?
Name two ways Indigenous children were pressured to assimilate in boarding schools.
What are cutting hair, changing clothing, suppressing Indigenous languages, forcing English, separating children from families, suppressing cultural/religious practices, etc.?
One major consequence of the Dawes Act was that Indigenous peoples lost control of large amounts of what?
What is land?
Why is it important to study Indigenous resistance when learning about colonization? Does not need to be framed as a "What is...?" statement.
It shows that Indigenous peoples were active agents who resisted, adapted, protected their communities, and worked to maintain their cultures and identities.
Why can Land Back be about more than simply getting property back? Does not need to be framed as a "What is...?" statement.
Because land is connected to culture, identity, community, sovereignty, traditional knowledge, sacred places, and self-determination.
A government pressures a community to abandon their language, traditions, and cultural practices and replace them with those of the dominant culture. What process does this represent?
What is assimilation?
When Pratt used the word “kill” in his famous phrase, what was he referring to?
What is eliminating/suppressing Indigenous cultural identity rather than literally killing people?
This 1934 law represented a shift away from some earlier assimilation policies and supported greater tribal self-government.
What is the Indian Reorganization Act?
The American Indian Movement advocated for Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and community needs. What does the work of AIM demonstrate about Indigenous peoples? Does not need to be framed as a "What is...?" statement.
That Indigenous peoples actively organized, resisted injustice, and advocated for sovereignty, rights, and self-determination.
An Indigenous nation regains control of part of its ancestral homeland and uses that land to teach traditional practices to younger generations. What two concepts from our unit are represented?
What are Land Back and cultural revitalization?
What is the key difference between assimilation and acculturation? This does not need to be answered with a "What is...?" frame.
Assimilation involves pressure or expectation to adopt the dominant culture and potentially give up aspects of one's original culture; acculturation involves cultural change or exchange while a person or group may continue maintaining parts of their original culture.
Why is it inaccurate to describe Indigenous boarding-school students only as passive victims?
Because students also demonstrated resistance, resilience, adaptation, and efforts to maintain their identities, languages, relationships, and cultures.
Compare the Dawes Act and the Indian Reorganization Act. How did their approaches to Indigenous communities differ? Does not need to be framed as a "What is...?" statement.
The Dawes Act promoted allotment and assimilation and contributed to land loss; the Indian Reorganization Act supported tribal self-government and sought to reduce further land loss.
Resistance does not always mean physically fighting. Give one example of how maintaining or rebuilding culture can be a form of resistance. Does not need to be framed as a "What is...?" statement.
Answers may include maintaining language, practicing traditions, teaching younger generations, protecting sacred places, revitalizing ceremonies, reclaiming cultural knowledge, etc.
Land Back and cultural revitalization can both be understood as forms of Indigenous resistance. Explain how either one challenges the effects of colonization or assimilation. Does not need to be framed as a "What is...?" statement.
Land Back challenges the loss of Indigenous lands and control; cultural revitalization challenges cultural suppression by restoring and strengthening Indigenous languages, traditions, knowledge, and identities.