500 Nations Discussion Questions

1
500 NationsDiscussion Questions

• For many, according to the author, Wounded Knee
  represents the end of the Native American
  narrative, how does the author refute this claim?
  Give examples.
• According to the author, how is Wounded Knee a
  typical encounter between Indians and Whites?
• What are three stereotypes the author gives for
  Indians?
• What is the gist of the White account of the
  settling of America by Indians?
• What are some commonalities amongst the various
  Native American Creation myths? How do the
  creation myths show the union between Native
  Americans and nature/the land?

2
500 Nations

• I have tried to remember that the first
  Americans had a way of life and a way of death,
  that their story is long and continuing, and that
  it is only the White convenience that categorizes
  them as Indians. To themselves, they were and
  are 500 different nations, composed of millions
  of individuals.

3
500 Nations

• Distinct by way of life, by physicality, by
  language, the post-Clovis aboriginals became a
  kaleidoscope of 500 nations. Although the whites
  liked to talk of the Indian when they
  gate-crashed America in 1492, the original
  inhabitants had long been Native Peoples who,
  outside the commonality of their spiritual
  binding to the Earth, could be as different to
  each other as the French European was to the
  English European