The day had so many important discussions about public issues and history of colonization. My favorite session of the day was of colonial history with Joshua Hathaway. He is a History teacher at Sherman Indian High School and occasionally teaches at Cal Poly Pomona. The way he spoke with what he said made me so drawn to seek information from him. I wanted more and more knowledge from him. The history of this country is based on violence and genocide. The colonizers used methods such as their diseases and alcohol to kill and shrink the Native American population. They thought that it was their ”god given” right to kill the native peoples of this land just because they had different beliefs and had a connection with Mother Earth.
But there was something that really stood with me today and I will never forget it. He said, ” if you want to be a true native, than practice your culture and do not practice the colonizers religion. I truly believe that I do not belong to the colonizers religion and I nee to practice my true culture and language. I learned another thing from this session. It was brought to my attention that Thanks Giving is the celebration of the killing of over seven hundred Native Americans that lasted over two hours. The colonizers decapitated the dead bodies and kicked them around as if they were playing football. It was truly horrifying and disturbing to think that they called us savages when did things such as that. The history of this country is horrifying and we need to stop the affects it had on our people
nativeyouth2college.org 