- RELOCATION: Forcing removal of NA Nations from their traditional land on to reservations, such as, during the Trail of Tears or Long Walk of the Navajos
- GERM WARFARE: Delivering smallpox infested blankets into villages
- BOARDING SCHOOLS: Systematically destroying Native American cultural continuity
- UNDERESTIMATING: Not being accurate about how many NA's were in the Americas and therefore being inaccurate about how many were destroyed.
- ENSLAVEMENT: Many Nations were captured and enslaved, some NA's were forced to work on plantations, others were sent to the Caribbean and be re-routed through the Triangular Slave Trade industry of the time. Some of the Nations affected were: Arawak, Pequot, Apache, Navajo, Pawnee
- STEREOTYPING: Hollywood films, sports mascots, and many other racist images dehumanize Native Americans.
Counted Out of Existence
Schools Have Failed First Nations by Lying About History
Lies My Teacher Told Me
How Many NA's were there?
Death by Disease
"The natives had no resistance to smallpox, influenza, or plague or even to mild (to us) diseases like measles. Entire populations were virtually wiped out, with some Atlantic coast tribes losing 90 percent of their adult members. Some historians go so far as to say European diseases reduced the pre-contact population of the New World as a whole by 90 percent or more. One says the population of central Mexico was reduced from 25 million in 1519 to 3 million by 1568 and only 750,000 by the early 1600s, 3 percent of the pre-conquest total."
Made Invisible so we don't even know about their influence and presence.
"The American Indian influence can be found in every part of America today. Indians can be found in our U. S. Government, local government, law enforcement, health care and our military. According to Jack D. Forbes, an emeritus professor of American Indian studies at the University of California-Davis, because of undercounts and other census quirks the total number of Indians in the United States today may be close to fifteen or even thirty million. In reference to the 2000 census data, Indians can be called America’s fastest-growing minority."
Was this really a barren wilderness?
No Way! Unfortunately, books"still stereotype Native Americans as roaming primitive hunting folk, unfortunate victims of progress" (132).
Loewen, J (1995). Lies my teacher told me. New York, NY: Touchstone.
O'Nell, T. D. (1996). Disciplined hearts: History, identity, and depression in an American Indian community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.