Native American Informative Essay

Indian reservations across America are lands that are reserved for Native Americans. On the reservation, the Native children are taught an education and ways to interact with others. On most reservations the children are taught the Indian language, but are also taught how to speak English. They mainly keep most of the Native American techniques and heritage. In a way these lands set aside are best for the Native Americans since they were on this land first. In North America there were seven main groups of tribes. In the far north there were Eskimos. Next were the Mackenzie-Yukon caribou Hunters. In the East was the Eastern woodland Indians. The Plains Indians were in Central America. In the Northwest were the fishermen, California and Intermountain seed gatherers, and finally in the southwest were the Southwest Farmers and Hunters. Native American education is a very important topic to today’s way of living. What percentage of Indians for to what schools? In the 1990’s, about 40,000 Native students (10% of the total) attended some 170 Bureau of Indian Affairs. The BIA is an organization which helps fund the reservation schools. There were also about 10,000 (3%) attended private schools, and over 300,000 (87%) attended public schools. In these schools, a disproportionate number of Native students achieve below national averages. On the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading assessment, 40% of white fourth graders scored at or above proficient, compared to only 17% of Native American students. New performance standards are being served to American Indians and Alaska Native Indians. The new standards are challenging Native students more. New performance standards outline shows how well students learn from the content, and new assessments measure their learning capability. The new content standards hold promise for Indian education for several reasons. First, they may help create a more common curriculum among schools within states, and clearer learning expectations across states. This could prove helpful to Indian educators in meeting the needs of the many students who transfer between schools. Second, because the content standards drive the curriculum, educators, parents, and students can refer to them to provide increased focus for teaching and learning. Bureau of Indian Affairs schools have chosen to adopt the content standards for their individual states, a curriculum which is more common to nearby schools. Third, new content standards may help improve the quality of instruction for Indian students. The constructivist approach promoted by national and most state content standards allows for a more holistic, real-life, active learning sort of pedagogy, which consists of more traditional American Indian ways of teaching and learning. Before others started moving here, North American education was geared to teaching children how to survive. Social Education taught children their responsibilities to their extended family and the group, clan, band, or tribe. Vocational education taught the children about farming, hunting, gathering, and fishing. Basically all the techniques needed to grow food for hunt for the food they ate. Native Americans have educated the ways we live in so many ways. They had techniques for growing many foods. Native farmers were the first in the world to domesticate potatoes, tomatoes, and many other plants that helped feed the peoples in the world today. You may ask yourself, Where did the Indians come from? Like the white settlers, the first Indians were immigrants. Anthropologists say they came from northeastern Asia. They resembled the early Mongoloid people of that region. Nobody knows when or how they came. They probably arrived when ice sheets covered much of Northern North America. This may have been 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. They may have come because they were wondering hunters hunting for food. How did the Native Americans start to be called Indians? The Native Americans had lived in America for thousands of years when the first European explorer set foot on their land. When Christopher Columbus landed in the New World, he called the Native people â€Å"indios† (Spanish for Indians) because he thought he had reached India. The first people to inhabit the North American continent were the Indians. Their settlements ranged across the western hemisphere and were built on many of the sites where modern cities now rise. They hunted deer, buffalo, and other game and cultivated land where today’s crops still grow. Their hunters, warriors, and traders used paths now followed by roads and railways. Indians words dot the map of the United States. Twenty-seven states and large numbers of cities, towns, rivers, and lakes bear names from the languages of the first Americans. Native Americans were dieing of diseases that had spread all through the countryside. The European invasion that began in the 15th century brought tremendous changes to the life of Indians. The Europeans brought over many diseases, such as the measles and smallpox. The Indians did not have any immunities for these diseases which could be life taking. Medicines were not invented in past years, as they are today to cure smallpox and the measles. After all the Europeans and other immigrants had entered the North American continent. The government was starting to be established. With the establishment of the United States, the federal government was faced with the â€Å"Indian Problem†. To deal with the Indians, the government established the Indian Bureau in the war department in 1824. Later in years, under President Andrew Jackson, the government established the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. After four centuries of precipitous population decline to a low of about 237,000 in 1990. American Indian and Alaska Native population in the U. S. began to increase in the turn of the century. The population of Native Americans has more than doubled in the past 30 years, from one million to almost two and a half million. Half of this population lives in urban areas and less than a third lives on a reservation. Poverty and social problems have plagued American Indians. They want political and economic equality, and want to region their native identities. Which includes their languages and traditions that historically were suppressed in schools. By recovering the past through a strong sense of identity and by using culturally appropriate curriculum and instruction, some Indians and Alaska Native students are achieving education success that therefore proved elusive. In the early 1970’s Indian activism, part of the civil rights movement, created an atmosphere that led to the passage of the 1972 Indian Education Act. It also led to the 1975 Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. The Self-Determination Act is the idea that the Indians decide what is the best for them, not the government. Now the Indians were receiving less federal funding. They are still for the Self-Determination Act because they have more control over the Indian people and Indian Education. The 2,476,000 Native Americans represent some 500 different tribes, each having their unique culture, and 200 surviving languages. Today as the population increases, American Indian languages and cultures are being lost, partly as a result of federal and state education policies for the â€Å"Americanization† of Indian students. Now that the government is calling for this, Native are not being able to be in cultures and use the own unique techniques. All Indian tribes had their own way of surviving and gathering food. The Indians lived in different ways in various parts of the country. When a roaming band of Indians found a place with good hunting and plenty of seeds and berries, they settled down. Gradually they learned to utilize the area’s trees and plants, its animals, fish, and birds. Stones and earth were also a great part in surviving. Indians in different areas had other types of foods and ways to live. Clothing and shelter was fit to the surroundings around them. Before the Indians had gained the benefit of having horses, the hunters had worked out cunning methods by which they could kill enough buffalo to supply the tribe with meat and hides. In snowy weather, Indians would encircle a herd and kill many of the animals before they could flounder away in the drifts or get lost in a blizzard. Indians did not always have to work. They also had time to play games and other activities. The tribal members would come together for festivals that lasted a week or more. The gatherings usually had religious ceremonies as their main purpose, but there was time for games and visiting, storytelling, and social singing and dancing. At the festivals the braves would paint their bodies for dances and for the battle. The designs might be special â€Å"medicine†, or magic to protect their lives. They may be used to look more ferocious. For paint the Indians used red and white clays, black charcoal, and yellow pigment from mulberries or moss. They first smeared their bodies with buffalo or dear fat, and then rubbed on the colors. The women also had to dress up for the ceremonies. Women used the softer, finer skins of deer and antelope for most garments. They embroidered the ceremonial costumes with dyed porcupine quills ad painted the carrying cases and the tepee linings. In the designs, they drew triangles, diamonds, and other geometrical figures. They beaded the costumes after traders brought in beads. Native Americans have a large part on the countries history. They were the originating people on this land and are being pushed aside by other people who now live in the United States. The government had to set aside land for them, but now that land is becoming smaller and smaller. If the Native Americans would receive a proper education, I am sure they would fit into today society better.