Question

compare the worship of red Indians to whites Indians

Answer 1

Contemporary education and culture:

For more than 100 years the US government pursued a policy whose purpose has been to dissolve the structures of the tribal chief system and to assimilate the American Indian culture.

American Indian culture has been considered primitive, by the Westerns especially the European colonialists, in comparison to their more modern and advanced culture. A lot of measures had been taken to make this plan real, for example missionary work to convert the “wild pagans” to Christianity, bans on ritual dance, worship and Indian clothes, and the separation of the American Indian children from their tribes as soon as possible and their education in special boarding schools.

Culture & traditions

Another idea to assimilate the American Indians to European culture was to convert the “wild pagans” to Christianity so many missionaries had come to North America funded by the US government. Since the Europeans harshly punished any kind of resistance against their “civilization” programs (the boarding schools have also been used as a threat to put the Native American parents under pressure), the most American Indians obeyed the new laws, stopped talking their original language and gave up the majority of their customs.

But during the 20th century the suppression of American Indian culture became less strict and successively the American Indians returned to their culture and explored more modern mediums which had been unknown to them before: for example several Native American newspapers have been published for the first time ( e.g. the magazine »Wassaja« (»smoke signal«) by the Cherokee (1916 /1926) and the “Navajo Times” (1943)).

In the 1970's a lot of American Indian radio stations had their first broadcasts, in tribal language of course, and today many of them are on air for about twelve hours a day (for example KYUK , Alaska, and KTDB, New Mexico). New media like the Internet and motion picture have been “discovered” by American Indians,too, and a lot of tribes are presenting themselves on websites today. When the government officially removed the prohibition of the American Indian culture in 1990 (→ see Native American Languages Act & Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) a great revival of the American Indian culture took place:

Sports

Probably the best known American Indian sport is Lacrosse, a rough game played with sticks similar to butterfly nets, which originally took place when conflicts between tribes should be solved more or less peaceful and without armed force. It is still played by American Indians as well as Whites in sports clubs or in schools.