Indigenous Resistance and Racist Schooling

Michael Marker wrote this article to explain what happened to the Coast Salish Indians in the 1900s. This Indian tribe lived on the US- Canada border. The US and Canada determined that the Indians needed to be modernized so Canadians forced Indians on the Canada side to go to traditional school, and the US sent the ones in America to boarding schools. Obviously,  in Canada racial discrimination ensued which caused much trauma for the Salish Indian students. The United States did not have much of a problem because the boarding school were Salish Indians only (which actually could be discrimination in and of itself). A little later, the Boldt decision was made which said the Indians were entitled to 50% of the fish population; everyone began blaming all the Indians for the slump in the fishing market.

Surprisingly, this article really kept my attention. I had never heard of this Indian group before. I think it is terrible that once again people were discriminated because they belonged to a different culture. Culture should be embraced if our country is truly going to call itself "free". Making these people change because we thought they "needed" our culture was a horrible idea. Sometimes I wonder why, as United States citizens, even today, we can't start to learn how to embrace different cultures instead of just rejecting them.