People generally know that the Native Americans have suffered a great deal throughout American history. However, there are people who like to sweep this under the rug and deny that a lot of wrongdoing happened to this group of people and their culture.
For this reason, recent words spoken by First Lady Michelle Obama are particularly impressive. She has just publicly taken a stand for Native Americans and everything that they have had to go through in this country through the centuries. She made a public statement that these individuals are being robbed of their culture and their heritage.
In a statement to Generation Indigenous, Michelle Obama, she spoke of how the government has basically stripped away their culture and made them and everyone feel as if it was wrong in some way. When speaking of issues within the Native American community, she states, “These issues are the result of a long history of systematic discrimination and abuse.” She goes on to talk about the Trail of Tears in the 1800s, and then goes into how the government separated children from their Native American families and put them in boarding schools that basically invalidated their heritages and cultures. She then disapprovingly mentioned the “Civilization Regulations,” which made Native American ceremonies, practices, and cultures illegal.
It is great that Michelle Obama is advocating for these individuals and their culture, especially considering that many right wing politicians are denying that the government has done anything wrong with respect to the Native Americans.