Another cultural exercise that I undertook was to visit a native reservation. This is a very eye-opening experience because this is another group of Americans that we often either do not interact with, or sometimes do not know that the people we are interacting with have native blood. Or we think of reservations as the places with casinos. I was a guest of the band, just to see what life was like. They said they had never really had a request like that before.
I guess the first thing that struck me was the poverty level, being much higher than the rest of the surrounding area. I spoke with people there, and they basically said there was no economy, and off the reservation they had a harder time than white people in finding jobs. Most of the people I talked to did not speak their own native language, and most of them did things like we do -- they eat the same food, watch football on the television and things like that.
I think that my actions again taught me more than it would have taught my hosts. I learned what life on the reservation is really like, and what native people think about the rest of Americans....
It is not all bad, although I think for some people there is some simmering resentment. Still, I feel like I learned a lot from the experience, that all people in America are just people, and that we should have more respect for the cultural differences. I am just as strange to Mexicans and natives as they are to me.
I think that I learned more about native culture and history from doing this. This will help me -- we cover some of that history in school and if I become a teacher I may be faced with teaching this material. We usually learn it from a white perspective, but there are other perspectives and we should take the opportunity to learn about those before we starting passing judgment, or also to give a more balanced perspective when teaching.
I believe that I learned quite a bit from this experience and especially about the differences that we have from our neighbors. But there are also a lot of similarities. People care about the same things, like getting jobs, raising their children and getting a better education. If we focus on those common traits I think we will understand each other better.
