Through interviewing the different stakeholders in the Burns community
and the Paiute tribe, we were able to sense the two-way street race issues
between both communities, as some of the stakeholders stated. None of the
businesses in Burns hire Native Americans, whereas the casino hires a large
percentage of whites. To this matter it was said that the tribal members
never apply for these positions, because it could be that they never felt
welcome.
It was also mentioned that the lack of understanding between the community
and the tribe keep them from sharing programs and ideas. The tribe members
are so self-contained that they do not go outside of the tribe for help.
Some Paiute people come to the community meetings, but they don’t interact
with the community. There is a feeling that the communication is falling
apart, but the effort to keep this communication is going to continue.
It was said though, that the success with obtaining community and tribal
goals depends on personalities.
One of the stakeholders stated that racism is more less like everywhere
else and it was mostly individuals. Generally it was more visible in 1970;s
than today and that the only factor that came to his mind could be, alcoholism.
The graveyard gave us no evidence of Native American burials. (Assuming that none of them had their names changed)
We also, consider the museum and how it treated the Paiute display in all ways, no archeological, no dates, not even tribal names on top of being buried behind Anglo displays upstairs.
Links For Further Information:
Covert War Against Native Americans
Overcoming Racism Towards Native Americans
Interview with Riboberta Menchu
Book
Review: Sara Winnemucca: Life Among the Pauites
Aaron Hill
Sarah was born into a family of great
leaders with both her father and her grandfather having been Chiefs
of this Nevada Nation. It was her
grandfather who led Capt.John Fremont and his group across the Great Basin
to safety in California. When Sarah's father decided to take his family
for a visit to the San Joaquin Valley in California, his news was received
with great fears for Sarah was terrified of the whites. However, her fears
were erased by generous whites In her thirst for knowledge, she enrolled
in St.Mary's Convent, but was forced to leave after only one month because
of white anger at a Native being allowed into the school.
Great tensions arose between the
Paiute and the growing river of whites pouring into Nevada. As a result
of the Paiute War, the Paiute Reservation was established at Pyramid Lake,
outside of what is now Reno. In an effort to stop the bloodshed, Sara became
an interpreter and spokesperson between the Paiutes and whites but, her
mother, sister and brother were murdered by whites. Sarah was hired by
the Army to serve as official interpreter between the U.S. and several
Native tribes of the area. In the Army, Sarah was able to watch politics
at work from the inside out. It did not take her long to understand that
the persecution of the Paiutes lay at the feet of the government
Indian Agents. Despite orders from Washington, and even an Act of Congress,
the violence against the Paiutes continued. Sarah's hatred of the government
Indian Agents is legendary, and became a cause that dominated her life.
She traveled to the West Coast, meeting with official after official to
present her case for justice. She was ignored.
Book
Review: Sara Winnemucca: Life Among the Pauites
Sarah Ann
Hones
In 1883, Sarah Winnemucca wrote Life
Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims. This book served as an explanation
of the Paiute (modern spelling) people's struggles in the face of white
encroachment on Indian lands in the latter part of the 19th century. The
Paiute clans lived in what are now Nevada, Utah and Eastern Oregon. Sarah
Winnemucca's tribe was a migratory people, following salmon runs and foraging
from the land for their survival. In the 1830s and 1840s, white travelers
to California first contacted the Paiutes in the Paiute home range. Sarah
Winnemucca describes these first encounters from a child's eyes and from
the eyes of her grandfather, chief of her tribe. The Chief, known as Truckee,
actively support white travelers, including the explorer Fremont.
This book becomes Sarah's effort
to explain her people to a white audience and to garner support for a people
displaced from their home lands and made destitute by the American government
that co-opted their lands, blocked access to their migratory travels for
food, and left the Paiute people without the means to survive in the small
parcel of reservation assigned to them.
Many laws passed in the late 19th
century acted as a means of taking Indian lands and providing them to settlers
during the western expansion, the declared Manifest Destiny of the United
States. In 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed
the Morrill Homestead Act into law. This land grant act provided land of
agricultural and research universities in the Union states (later in most
states). (Oregon State University is Oregon's land grant school, established
under the Morrill Act.) It also provided land to homesteaders in the western
states. Much of the Paiute land was declared public domain and became part
of this Homestead Act. In 1887, the Dawes Act offered individual Indians
parcels of land for their families. This Act divided land that had been
owned by tribes into small individual segments. Surplus lands became available
to white settlers. Used as a method to "civilize" the Indian populations,
the Act managed to strip Indians of most of their land base. Sarah Winnemucca
championed the cause of her tribe throughout the country by devoting traveling
lectures to her people's ways and struggles. She acted as cultural translator
between the Paiutes in the dominant culture. In doing so, she tried to
save her people, their culture and their homeland.
For more information about Indian Laws and Laws that affected the Paiutes and other tribes: Indian Laws
Legal Information for Native Americans
Dawes Severalty Act 1887
Homestead Act 1862
Government Position on Homestead Act
Indian Reorganization Act 1934
Warm Springs Tribe Treaty Reorganization Act
What I’m taking away from this class
by: Juanita
B. Estrada
I’m taking more of what I expected. Yes, I expected to obtain information
about the Paiute way of living, and perhaps about their conflicts and social
issues and I did. I come home with a new perspective on a group of people
living as a minority in their own Country, what oppression for this people
really means, how they have to deal with racism and be racists at the same
time; having to buy back the land that they once owed for generations and
generations, and deal with new social enemies, or at least enemies that
their past generations didn’t have to deal with, like drugs and alcoholism.
So, yes I’m taking this knowledge with me, but when I say I’m taking more
than what I expected is because I never expected to get so much more out
of this course.
I come home with and incredible sense of unity, friendship, and "RESPETO"
for each other. It is amazing to see what we accomplished as a group in
six days of sharing together so many hours of work being as we were, a
group of 24 individuals. It wasn’t easy at all, in fact I think it was
harder than I expected, but this gave the group the opportunity to use
the strategies learned in this course in a real life situation and prove
them right. This new model learned will not only help me in my future classes,
but in my future career.
I am really thankful for what I’ve obtained from this course. I think
that the way the facilitators handled this project was very educational
and professional. There is one thing I would change for future classes
though. That is, time set apart for the whole group to do the reading and
journal entries. I found out that not only for me, but for many others
was hard to read or write with so many distractions and if it is said to
do this when ever you can that means different times for everybody. I know
these memories will stay with me forever.