Film Summary: The Indian Act

In 1876, the Indian Act was passed as an attempt to civilize the Aboriginal people. In the movie “Bury my heart at wounded knee”, during the event of “Little bighorn”, the US. government decided that the Indian’s way of fighting, which used techniques like scalping was not acceptable. The Europeans saw scalping as barbaric but the Indians used it as a cultural punishment. However, while trying to help the Indians, the Indian Act ended up trying to assimilate them into European culture. The Europeans had much more power over the Indians and forced them to assimilate, or else war would break out and their population would become extinct. Part of the Indian Act made it mandatory to send children to European schools and while attending, they had