This week we've learned about the assimilation programs that were forced on the American Indians. What stuck out to me was the irony behind the situation. They are being forced to fit in with the so-called civilized life - their goal is to be exactly like the white people, to replicate the lifestyles of the "superior." At the same time, they will be treated as inferior even if they reach that goal. They will never actually be white, because that's physically impossible for them. It reminds me quite a bit of high school, actually - no matter how hard you try to fit in completely, it's impossible, because no one is 100% normal.
Last week I talked about how Emily Dickinson had to stand against what everybody else was doing in their religious lives. And out of that difference, a lot of great poems were born. It seems to be a recurring theme that the details that make a person an individual are what creates the greatness in them. So going back to the American Indians, it seems to be that those customs and traditions are things we should be celebrating, just as Luther Standing Bear said. The way I see it, we haven't done a very good job learning from our past. Yes, the US is better than a lot of places for accepting differences. But we should be promoting them and celebrating them, not just accepting them.
I recently watched Belle, a movie about the true story of a mixed-race girl being raised in a white relative's family in eighteenth century England. When explaining why she was breaking off her engagement with a man of high social status, she said, "My greatest misfortune would be to marry into a family who would carry me as their shame." This is the crux of the matter; we need to stop carrying our differences as shameful, as things to overcome, and make them into things we aspire to.
