Differences and Technicalities

Something that caught my eye was in the beginning of chapter 5 where the author mentions that American scolars do not necessarily refer to the US as a settler nation, even though it was the people that settled on this land that built the US on the backs of the indigenous and slaves. Unfourtunately, that is why racism is such an issue today because America was built on it.

Another interesting passage was how the European settlers were able to claim citizenship within this country but anyone else who trys to enter does not get to do the same. It is such a banged up policy, how even today, people from foreign countries have to go through so much to get into this country be it legally or illegally, when in the beginning, the settlers just came right in and made themselves right at home.

Some of the differences between the way the indiginous peoples ran their culture and the way that the dominant culture run things were interesting. In our dominant western society today, we base everything off of a patrilocal system where the male is dominant (to be more specific, the European American male is dominant), but in the indiginous cultures the women had more power and say of what was going on. In present day America, when a woman is head honcho she is not viewed as being human. She must be an alien because she doesn't need a male to get her business done, and she does not play the helpless woman role that most are trained to. Hillary Clinton is a great example of that. She had all kinds of lables because she was so head strong about what she believed in and she even ran for president. Not many women have acheived themselves in that manner. It seems that within the indiginous cultures the woman was more sacred. She was more than just a producer of children and dinner, she had a purpose.