Assimilation and seperation of Native people

BY: Adam Sander

DOMINANCE AND CULTURE

The dominant culture is the culture of the dominant social grouping. It is not necessarily the culture of the majority (though it often is) but instead the culture of those who have the resources, assets, and means by which to control the cultural surroundings of a society. The dominant social groupings sphere of influence affects language, fashion, norms, values, behaving, and thinking.

DOMINANT CULTUREOF CANADA

In Canada and in North America, European colonizers engaged in a violent and brutal suppression of traditional native cultures culture. Efforts of European colonizers extended to the theft of children from their parents, forced relocations, and the imposition of systems of apartheid designed to decimate the physical units of native people, by the use of treaties.

THE NATIVE CANADIANS Aboriginal cultural areas depend upon

their ancestors' primary life-way, or occupation, at the time of European contact. These culture areas depend closely with physical and ecological regions of Canada. Although most Native groups look the same, they all have different and unique cultural settings and backgrounds.

ABORIGINAL CULTURES

HOW WERE THE FIRST NATIONS PEOPLE SEPARATED FROM THE GENERAL, DOMINATE CULTURE? When the European people came to North

America for the first time, they took over the land and every thing else that came with it, including the First Nations freedom and the rights they believed to be theirs. With their freedom came their culture, language and ethnicity. They had to learn the foreigners language and culture, ect. Thus, they lost most of their history. Which they to this day haven't got back yet.

MAINSTREAM SEPARATION OF THE FIRST NATIONS TODAY

The first nations have many skills of their own that they use to survive on their own in the wilderness. They can hunt in-order to feed their family, they have incredible self taught survival skills dating back to when the first aboriginal groups settled in Canada. But all these special skill sets are being taken away from them by the dominate peoples of Canada.

MAINSTREAM SEPARATION OF THE FIRST NATIONS TODAY The government of Canada created

treaties to keep the Native people separated from the rest of the Canadians. The Native leaders signed these treaties almost forcefully back hundreds of years ago, so that they could practice their culture in peace and separation from others. But this ended up being bad for the first nations because there way of living was separated from other Canadians and since they are the minority culture they were put at the bottom of the social order.

The Indian ActThe Indian Act was enacted in

1876 by the Parliament of Canada under the provisions of Section 91(24) of the Constitution Act.

The Act defines who is an "Indian" and contains certain legal rights and legal disabilities for registered Indians.

This act allowed the Canadian Government to separate the Native Canadians from mainstream public (dominate culture)

CONCLUSION Today, Native people administer more

than 80% of money budgeted for the Indian and Inuit Affairs Program in Canada. But there still is not even close to enough being done to help the First Nations people out in Canada, and before all of their culture and history gets forgotten about we must do something to preserve it.

REFERENCEShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abori

ginal_peoples_in_Canada#Culture

http://www.google.ca/imageshttp://

www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/nativeamericans/indianactcanada.htm