Native American Treatment by the U.S. & Feminist Movement of the 20th Century

Vietnam and Watergate were both very important developments in the mid 20th century (if not the two biggest.) But I believe there were two other developments that have said a lot about our country that a lot of people do not think about is the way Native Americans were treated by the U.S. government and the Women’s suffrage movement.

        Everyone knows that most everybody in this country came from another country, or at least our ancestors did, and we are not native born people of this continent. Native Americans have been here since basically day one, we just merely came and took the country from them. We beat them, killed them, and divided them up across the country, like they were some type of livestock. The treatment of Native Americans has never been good, but you would think in the mid 1900’s we would have given them a break from all the torture we put their people through? Wrong.

        In the 1960’s the U.S. government a local Judge in Washington state decided that the Puyallup tribe did not exist and therefore could not fish in the river that was named after them (Zinn 526). The fact that a white judge thought he had the right to tell the people native to this country that their culture did not exist is appalling, but not surprising in the least. As a result of this ruling, policemen in washington raided Native American fishing parties, beat some of them, and arrested 7 Native Americans (Zinn 526). In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans have rights *eye roll* but that the state could regulate all fishing , so therefore it was not a hate crime (Zinn 527). Obviously this was a big deal across the Native American community in the pacific northwest, but to the government it was dust under the rug, there were Vietnam war vets among the Native American parties that were attacked, people who put their lives on the line for the U.S. Government were being treated like street trash. In my eyes this was one of the greatest injustices the United States Government has ever committed, not just the fishing raids, but everything they have put the Native American people through.

        Women have gone through a bunch of B.S. throughout the history of the United States, just like everyone else who wasn’t a white male. The Feminist movement was one of those developments that was really crucial to the history of the United States, but not very talked about in history classes growing up (at least in my experience.) It’s a historical event filled with a lot of triumph but also a lot of sadness, just like the rest of the civil rights movement in the sixties.

        Throughout most of the 20th century women were expected to stay at home with their children, give up their dreams, and heed to every command their husband gave them. “The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — “Is this all?” (Zinn Surprises 505). Women quickly realized that they needed to follow their dreams and make themselves equal to men to be happier in life.