"Thunderheart"
North America, from west to east coast, was mostly owned and settled by Native Americans in 1775. Native Americans were the first settlers on North America, but slowly, when the Americans no longer needed Native Americans help, they viewed them as savages and outsiders. So the Americans and the main stream Unites States Native Americans decided to weed out the traditionalists and have them assimilate to the American culture. During 1970s, American Indian Reservations had turmoil within their own people with the clash between cultures (Lakota vs. main stream U.S.) and lost of land as depicted in the film, "Thunderheart." Another issue was identity and dealing with oneself having Indian ancestry. Thunderheart is a medicine man that died in Wounded Knee. His spirit lives on and has sent a hotshot mixed FBI agent to help his people. Ray Levoi is a rule abiding FBI agent whose heritage contains being a quarter of Sioux blood in him, but he does not consider himself as being Indian at all. When asked what nation he is from, he answered "United Nations." Levoi, due to his ancestry, is assigned to work with an experience top FBI agent Frank Coutelle on a homicide on an Indian Reservation called Bear Creek in South Dakota. Levoi was to
Red Deer Table is not just another plot of land, but a place where the U.S. government took away from the Indians to mine for uranium. This mining had some serious side effects to people drinking the contaminated water and getting sick. The mining affected the water reservoir that provides drinking water for the Indians living on the Reservation nearby. Some traditionalists found out about this but did not get a chance to do something about it because the government would always be one step ahead and would already have him/her eliminated. The U.S. government did anything that would hide their tracks and that even means killing, especially Indians since they are all no-good alcoholics that have no jurisdiction rights. Leroy found out the reason to the unpurified water, but the U.S. government made an elaborate plan to kill him and make it look like Jimmy Looks Twice, a radical Indian protester, killed him. That way, the government is free of all accusations and ARM would decease to exist with leaders disappearing. In the end though, Levoi pieced all the evidence together and made other Native Americans aware of what the government was scamming them. Being Native American is not as different as any other culture. Nonwhite ethnicities also experience land loss, racism, identity crisis, poverty, resistance, and clash between cultures. My family's experience is similar to the Native Americans but not to that extreme. We experience racism and discrimination for being
Some common words found in the essay are:
Native Americans, Deer Table, Rights Movement, Indian Reservations, Crow Horse, Native American, Looks Twice, Dakota Levoi, Yellow Hawk, Black Elk, native americans, fbi agent, main stream, clash cultures, north america, american culture, yellow hawk, aware native, rights movement,
Approximate Word count = 995
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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