Tuesday in class we discussed major topics that we were interested in class for an activity to brainstorm for a research essay. The topics that are most interesting to me were culture appropriation and genocide.
The reason I find culture appropriation so interesting is because we have seen it around us our whole life, but without taking this class, we would never think about the harsh past of American Indians when we see a non-native “dress up”. The idea of an exchange of resources changed the way I see interactions between non-natives and natives. Everything comes back to the idea that everything has value and there should be an exchange of items with value.
The reason genocide is so important to me is that we have learned about different genocides throughout our elementary education. However, there was a common theme amongst all genocides, none of them involved the United States. Once we read about the Yuki history in California I came to the realization that there has been genocide in the United States ever since the colonial era. The constant denial of genocide by the federal government shows the disrespect to native communities and will hold tension between the two groups until a sincere apology has been recorded.