Anggie Hernandez
Professor: Brianna Castagnozzi
Writing and Rhetoric: ENG 170-25
February 11th, 2021

How Technology Hinders Native American Culture

Scholarly Source 1:
Cahill, Cathleen D. “”Our Democracy and the American Indian”: Citizenship, Sovereignty, and the Native Vote in the 1920s.” Journal of Women’s History, vol. 32 no. 1, 2020, p. 41-51. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/jowh.2020.0005.

In this academic journal, Cahill talks about the connection between Native Americans and the Women’s Suffrage Movement. In 1890, the National American Woman Suffrage Association tried to enlist Native Americans to join their cause and fight for women’s right to vote.In the 1920s, Native Americans were in poverty and did not have any power in politics. They asked the NAWSA to speak out against these injustices. Two Native women in particular pleaded with the white female suffragists to help them. It is proven that they did not receive the help they wanted as the government did not agree with it; making restrictions worse upon the Natives by taking more of their land. This is an important piece of evidence for the claim that technology hinders Native American culture since it includes new laws being made that harmed the integrity of their history. Taking away something that was part of them.

Scholarly Source 2:

Leonard, Wesley Y. “Insights from Native American Studies for theorizing race and racism in linguistics (Response to Charity Hudley, Mallinson, and Bucholtz).” Language, vol. 96 no. 4, 2020, p. e281-e291. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/lan.2020.0079.

In this academic journal, Leonard talks about the hardships that many Native Americans face when dealing with linguistics in American society. The Native Americans would be forced to have a language shift, therefore forced to learn the new language. They would have to go to boarding schools that would serve as a purpose of destroying their identity and would be obligated to become more “American”. Land theft and desecration would also occur, making the Natives in search of new places to go to. An example is them turning to assimilation. Linguistics increased over time as a weapon against Native Americans and shows how any form of technology could negatively affect these people’s culture. But as time goes on Native Americans can lose part of their culture by trying to adapt to another culture. This happens to a lot of immigrants that come to the United states as well. As time goes on they adapt to how things are here and little by little leave their culture behind without them even noticing. This can be through how the media portrays them to be and they try to adapt to it.

Scholarly Source 3:

Wisecup, Kelly. “”Meteors, Ships, Etc.”: Native American Histories of Colonialism and Early American Archives.” American Literary History, vol. 30 no. 1, 2018, p. 29-54. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/685532.

In this academic journal, Wisecup shares more parallels to Native American culture that can be found in world history. Wisecup mentions colonialism and its certain norms that emphasize on the colonizer and less on those colonized. For example, there were more books brought up that discussed more about an American perspective of history rather than that of a Native American one. Native texts don’t often go with whatever the American texts say because Americans believe this to be false, just so they could stick to their norms. This will definitely be added as evidence for my essay because of how colonialism is still present to this day, and how unjust it really is towards this group of people. This can force a person to change their way of being and losing part of their identity in order to adjust to a new one.

Popular Source:

Archambault, Jodi. “How Covid-19 Threatens Native Languages.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Jan. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/opinion/covid-lakota-language.html.
In this article, Archambault talks about the current problem with COVID-19 threatening the lives, identities, and safeties of Native Americans. As COVID-19 got worse in 2020, spikes went up and many Native Americans that weren’t receiving enough medical treatment. Which they were being treated unfairly. Archambauldt says that this pandemic could have a lasting impact on Native American families because their language is usually passed onto them by their elders, who are the most susceptible to the virus. I believe that this will help me create my major paper since it talks about how a lack of access to medical treatment, or “technology”, can be very dangerous towards minorities like Native Americans. They would be losing the little that they have to keep preserving their beautiful culture.