Love Medicine
Detail of beadwork from an Ojibwe medicine pouch
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Buffalo Nickel
I've just found something that i haven't come across in a while. The US mint distributed a nickel with a buffalo on the front and the picture of an Indian Chief on the back. I was wondering why they would do that if they were so concerned about ridding the US of their "Indian" cultures. Why would they circulate a tribute around the nation if they were so set on assimilating these "barbaric" people?
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3 comments:
interesting
Maybe because the world isn't black and white like that? There are two sides to every coin (pun intended). The coin is circa 1935, nearly twenty years after World War I, which around 17,000 Native Americans fought in. Furthermore, Native Americans were granted American citizenship in 1924 with the American Indian Citizenship Act. These aren't "barbarians" anymore, they're American citizens. And even ten years later, Navajo Indians would be vital to the United States when they were used as code talkers (speaking their Native tongue) in WWII. I really wish we had gone more in-depth with the government's mentality towards Native Americans. In political issues like this, objectivity is a necessity.
Actually Shiloh, the buffalo nickel dates back to the turn of the century (early 1900s) when Theodore Roosevelt was in his presidency. The first press of the coin was in 1913 which is in the prime of the Indian Boarding school and the time of the Indian "problem". In 1938,the US government discontinued the use of the Indian Nickel which is the year before WWII even started.
I think the reason we did not go into more detail about the governments mentality toward the Native Americans because it wasn't necessary. We learned the history of the boarding schools because that is what we are reading about, but this is not a history class.
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