Looking at Matt's Thoughts on Native Americans

While I browsed Matt's blog/presentation about Native Americans, I found myself agreeing with so many of the ideas that he proposed. It wa fvery factual and seemed like it could be in a museum. I never knew that the Native Americans sided wityh the British during the Revolutionary War. This is actually pretty reasonable, since the British seemed to be the stronger side, and American colonists only took away from them since they landed on Plymouth Rock. The fact that they did this has seemed to haunt them to this day. Many Native American tribes are very poor and do not receive a lot of help. Native Americans never really got the proper benefits of American citizenship, but who is to say that they wanted it? Like Matt said, we forced our ways onto them when we came here to THEIR land. It's funny to look at the immigration problem now in contrast and see how we contradict ourselves because we were those immigrants in 1492, and instead of learning the way of Native Americans, we forced our ways onto them while immigrants today are forced to learn our language if they are to be so successful in this country. It is very true that being American means that we feel that our way is the best. Like Obama said in his State of the Union address, "There is no 2nd place for the United States of America!" We really do feel that we are superior, and although that makes us seem cocky, it also gives us a confidence that we need to help others in the world. But that should include helping our own citizens, both regualr and Native American. They should definitely not be on the lower end of the spectrum, because their ancestors were the ones who first claimed this land, and in a way, we should almost be grateful to them. We do not give enough credit to Native Americans. We should help them by learning more about their culture and becoming more familiar with it. There are many ways to do this. For example, I go to a camp that is very in touch with Indian culture, and that has changed some of my values in life and has made me more aware of who they are as a tribe and a people. Hopefully, others will learn to "paint with all the colors of the wind."