Native Americans

I have found through out my research that many Native Americans have had many different problems with racism, prejudice, and segregation from some people that they have had contact with.

I believe that I would have to say that if I was part of the Native Americans I would be more apt to identify with them and not the United States mainstream.

I believe that from all the research that I have read. Here is some of my finds and I believe that many have been at one point or another effected by or has participated in Environmental justice issues and Reverse discrimination.

When European colonies first took hold on North America's East Coast in the early seventeenth century and for some time thereafter, the Native American population greatly outnumbered colonists.

However the colonists negotiated the first treaties were to secure their safety from a position of inferior strength. However, as colonists' numbers swelled and the introduced diseases began to take their toll on the indigenous populations, the balance of power shifted. Indian removal policies began to escalate and the forceful expulsion of Indians from their lands and homes. I believe and have heard from some of my friends that by the end of the nineteenth century marked the low point of the American Indian population. Native populations dramatically rebounded, however, throughout the twentieth century. Still, racial actions would occur they were stating to work through some of the problems that they were facing from the racial thoughts of other people around them.

“When a person's ethnic identity is purely symbolic, it is relevant to them only on a surface level and does not affect the details of their daily life” (Gans, 1979). “American Indians with salient racial or ethnic identities are unlikely to have a purely symbolic identity. Research on symbolic ethnicity has focused on White Americans, though symbolic ethnicity is theorized to affect other people as well. Wealthier and more educated whites are often relatively assimilated and are especially likely to have symbolic ethnic identities” (Alba, 1990; Waters, 1990) because they do not have thick ties to an ethnic group. A similar pattern may exist among wealthier and more educated American Indians.

The symbolic ethnic identity perspective seems to support two conflicting predictions about tribal specification. On the one hand, American Indians with relatively symbolic ethnic identities may be less likely to report their tribal affiliation because they are