Federal And State Policies California Native Americans

Due to the long history of discriminatory federal and state policies, California Native Americans have been ranked in the lowest income, education, housing quality, and health brackets of any population group in the state (CITATION). The status of Native Americans converted from virtually invisible to being the most powerful political lobby in the 6th largest economy in the world (CITATION). This was not a process that had occurred over a few short years, with Native Americans in California going from being the poorest people in the United States to becoming among the richest. This is considering that some tribes have been highly successful with building gambling casinos on their reservation land, and their economic conditions have†¦show more content†¦LITURATURE REVIEW During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, my grandmother, like thousands of other Native children, was forced into boarding school. Those boarding schools were established in the United States as a way to educate Native children according to Euro-American standards (CITATION). It is without a doubt that the assimilation of Native American children led to the loss of their culture and tradition, as they were required to change their appearance, forbidden to speak their native tongue, and forced to replace their traditional names with European-American names (CITATION). In 1492, Christopher Columbus â€Å"discovered† what is known today as North America. Mistakenly, Columbus thought that he had landed in the Indies, and therefore the native peoples were called â€Å"Indians.† The New World soon became flooded with Europeans from a number of countries, and the Indians allowed them to settle on their land. Treaties and agreements were made between the settlers and the neighboring tribes in which European goods were exchanged for Indian land and assistance. The survival of these settlements could not have survived without the active support and protection of the Native Americans. However