Native Americans have been oppressed ever since the pilgrims arrived here in the late fourteen hundreds. The colonists arrived and thought that they were entitled to the land and not the ones living there. At first it was just a plain massacre; colonists were killing the Native Americans and just taking the land. They also were fooled into letting the "white" people stay on the land until finally it was overtaken. Another occurrence that happened was that the Native Americans either sold the land or traded it in very unfair deals that hurt them tremendously. .
The Native Americans were taken by surprise and before they even knew it were completely taken over. By 1900, only 1/8 of them were left, which is only around 250,000. (Tischler) And at this time, they were shoved onto reservations and were completely humiliated. To this day, people do not realize what wrong was done to them. There is still hatred to them even though they were here first, and rightly deserve the land.
The Native Americans were presented with assimilation, pluralism, subjugation, segregation, expulsion, and annihilation to a great deal. The one that was forced on them the most was subjugation. When the Anglo-Saxons came to America, they believed they were predestined to rule over those they did not think were as "adapt" as they. For this, they took over what was not theirs, forced laws on the individuals, and made themselves rulers over those who should not have been ruled. The "whites" dominated over the Native Americans because they were smarter and were more advances military wise. .
In the movie entitled "In Whose Honor.". A college graduate student at University of Illinois was very upset about the portrayal of the mascot, Chief Illiniwek. In the documentary, she was hurt because she was a Native American and she did not believe that her "people" should be mascots. They are ordinary people of a different culture but they are not treated like people.