Blog Week 9: Settler Colonialism

I am not sure this history impacts the lives of the characters in the way I thought it would. I thought the impacts would be more direct, yet some were not at all. I also thought the impacts would mean one thing but when comparing them to the text I found them to reveal something else. For example, the Indian Termination Act of 1953 seemed to have had quite a large impact on the characters, but in the opposite way than I expected. It made many tribes become unrecognized federally. So, I thought that when comparing it to the text, I may find many characters who were from federally unrecognized tribes. However, many of these characters are of Cheyenne descent, which is in fact a federally recognized tribe. So, these characters' parents/grandparents grew up in this odd time of erasure all around them, yet not of themselves. They maintained their identity in a greater sense than other people of their generation who were not part of federally recognized tribes. The fear this creates is that your tribe, and you, could be next. You could be erased next. Yet, most of these characters never had that happen to them. 

Some Acts' impacts were far more direct on the characters. For example, the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 caused many Native peoples to be forced to relocate to cities. This was for the purpose of breaking down the tribes and creating a stronger sense of individualism. In the book, one of the main reasons for having a Powwow is to break this forced individualism and become a community once more.