Stereotypes uncovered

I think that this is the first class that I have ever had that is both formal and informal at the same time. It is quite informal in nature, in the aspect that we all sit around in a circle, however very formal in the topics that we discuss. I really like that this class is all about Native Americans because I had never had a class that touched upon not only the historical significance of Natives but how other Americans assume there are no Natives left or if they are they are smoking a pipe on a reservation and saying "how". This is the first class that I have had that challenges everything that I thought I knew about Native Americans. We are all taught as children about thanksgiving and how the settlers and Natives were friends, the teachers never tell you the darker aspect of the story, that not only did the settlers strip them if their land, steal their women and children, and banish them to lands that the Indians had no experience with, they then proceeded to give them smallpox blankets, kill the buffalo that many tribes revered, and overall just decimate their culture and populations. So that is why I called this blog stereotypes uncovered because I feel that that is exactly what we are doing in this course, uncovering. Not only uncovering things about Natives, but things about our own ethnicities, ourselves as people, and uncovering the untruths and things we thought we knew. Personally I do not consider myself an ignorant person. I pay attention to world news, and am a registered voter. That being said, until this class I really was ignorant about the lives of native Americans post 18th century.