After watching the film today in class about the issues with the Natives verses the non-Natives at Devil’s Tower, I can honestly say that people are incredibly ignorant. For the woman in the café to say that the Natives were coming in and taking the land and for one of the men to say that the Natives were just trying to claim land for themselves and they are just saying the lands are sacred so they can have some “right” to them, goes to show how ignorant, uneducated, and closed-minded people are. They clearly have no idea what actually happened. All of the land that makes up the United States of America used to only be populated by the Natives. Settlers came in and took almost every single acre from them and has and still commits cultural genocide against the Natives. Ignorant people are what is wrong with our world today.
Another thing that was mentioned by the woman in the café was why do the Natives have to have their religious ceremonies at Devil’s Tower? And why can’t they do it somewhere in one of the other fifty states? There are a couple reasons why this is thoroughly insane. One is that Natives have very little land as it is, and another is that this is a sacred place for them! Specific places and locations are very important to Native religion and if someone, like the women in the video, is not open to seeing that yes this is different than most western religions but that doesn’t make it anymore real or unreal. Our freedom of religion is protected by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. All U.S. citizens have the right to believe what they want and no one can take that away.