Native American Studies (Essay Sample)

Native American studies
Name
Institutional affiliation
Native American studies.
In the nineteen sixties, a lot of communities deemed to be minority groups in the United States of America, had had enough of being put in the back burner, in regard to being included in the policy making and the general running of the country. A sense of being deprived of their God-given rights was rampant in these communities. This, in turn, led to the formation of civil rights movements. These movements’ objectives were simply to let the government know that their communities will no longer sit idly by while their civil rights are blatantly disregarded. The most common of the civil rights movements were the American Indian Movement and the American Civil Rights Movement (Hertzberg, 1971). A lot of similarities can be noted in these two movements in their struggle to fight for the rights of their community members.
The American Indian movement has been in existence for over five hundred years but had remained without a name for the better part of that duration. The movement is under the leadership of NeeGawNwayWeeDun, Clyde H. Bellecourt, among others. The movement has made great strides in converting policy making into programs and organizations that help serve the Indian people in many communities. The policies made by the movement have been made by consulting with the spiritual leaders and elders of the community. The success of these efforts by the movement is indisputable (Deloria, 1985).
The movement was formed to turn the attention of the Native Americans toward a rejuvenation of spirituality that would impart the strength of the resolve needed to reverse the ruinous policies put into place by the colonialist governments. The American Indian movement has assisted in the realization of many changes in the American Indian community (Johansen, 2013).
The American Indian movement main role is to improve the conditions faced by its community. It tries to accomplish this by putting into place institutions to address the most prevalent issues facing the natives. The movement also aimed to unify the Native Americans all across the country and encourage them to take pride in their Indian heritage. The American Indian movement main goal was to make certain that the government followed through on the guidelines of its treaties with the Native Americans (Stern, 2002).
As opposed to the American Indian movement, the American civil rights movement gained its fame in the years between nineteen fifty and nineteen sixty. The movement struggled for the equal rights of the African Americans. It encouraged other civil rights movements in other states and in other countries that were also being plagued by the problem of civil rights abuse (Finlayson, 2003).
The main purpose of the American civil rights movement in the nineteen sixties was primarily to bring to an end the punitive culture of segregation and discrimination of the African American mainly in the southern states. Through non-violent protest demonstration, many of the southern officials, white proprietors and the citizens in general, were forced to accept the integration of African Americans into what was mainly considered a white man society (Hasan, 2009). This led to legal battles being won in favor of the African Americans seeing segregation in public transport and schools finally coming to an end. The non-violent demonstrations and the support it garnered helped usher in reforms in a grand scale (DeKoven, 2004).
In both movements, the leadership did not result to violence until the government did not to what seemed like reasonable requests from the respective movements. The black power movement, which was more radical in comparison to the American civil rights movement, was formed when it was clearly evident that the subtle ways employed by the American civil rights movement did not yield the desired results (Cashman, 1992). The American Indian movement, on seeing how effective the violent acts of the black community gained massive media coverage also resulted to v...