Cultural Mentality
It isn’t outrageous to assume that those in power will slight their influence and abilities in a manner that will best accommodate them; even at the expense of those not in power. The United States of America is no exception when one is to investigate their past actions. From its most primal beginnings, American law has been selective in who it will be applied to and who it will protect. The trend, in the cases of the native peoples of the Americas and the Pacific, has been to manipulate, oppress, or blatantly neglect their cultural and political necessities – all in the name of American dominance. Currently, the United States is known internationally as a mecca for cultural diffusion and its overreaching welcoming of those in despair globally.
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That means we cannot harm the earth because we have respect for the place of those things in the word… Heart, body mind and soul all together with the world: that is the Indian way to live. You see, these hills are our church; the rivers and the wind, and the blossoms and the living things – that is our Bible. Nature is God, God is nature.” (3). The cultural mentality of the American natives held a philosophy of having great respect for the lands and only cultivating what was needed; exploitation for personal gain was not an option. Humans and nature were spiritually connected and, as such, no human owned land. This is virtually the polar alternative to the mindset of the colonist. Their capitalist ideals promoted abundance and surplus, only using as needed was regarded as inefficient would be used as a primary argument against Native Americans to take land from them. According to western ideals, nature is “God’s gift to man, subject to man’s dominion.” (4). There exist an inherent ideological chasm between the Natives and the increasingly powerful colonist; to deal with this difference, laws were wielded as a tool to assimilate the Native Indians, and if that failed, then to eliminate them. The ethnocentric ideals of the Europeans generated a great intolerance for anything outside their native
That means we cannot harm the earth because we have respect for the place of those things in the word… Heart, body mind and soul all together with the world: that is the Indian way to live. You see, these hills are our church; the rivers and the wind, and the blossoms and the living things – that is our Bible. Nature is God, God is nature.” (3). The cultural mentality of the American natives held a philosophy of having great respect for the lands and only cultivating what was needed; exploitation for personal gain was not an option. Humans and nature were spiritually connected and, as such, no human owned land. This is virtually the polar alternative to the mindset of the colonist. Their capitalist ideals promoted abundance and surplus, only using as needed was regarded as inefficient would be used as a primary argument against Native Americans to take land from them. According to western ideals, nature is “God’s gift to man, subject to man’s dominion.” (4). There exist an inherent ideological chasm between the Natives and the increasingly powerful colonist; to deal with this difference, laws were wielded as a tool to assimilate the Native Indians, and if that failed, then to eliminate them. The ethnocentric ideals of the Europeans generated a great intolerance for anything outside their native