2. Come out of your blanket, cut your hair, and dress like a white man.
3. Have a Christian family with one wife for life only.
4. Live in a house like your white brother. Work hard and wash often.
5. Learn the value of a hard-earned dollar. Do not waste your money on giveaways. Be punctual.
6. Believe that property and wealth are signs of divine approval.
7. Keep away from saloons and strong spirits.
8. Speak the language of your white brother. Send your children to school to do likewise.
9. Go to church often and regularly.
10. Do not go to Indian dances or to the medicine men.
--from a wall poster, given to a Lakota Sioux student in a Christian missionary boarding school. As reported by Mary Crow Dog in her book Lakota Woman (1991).
August 13th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
What’s amazing is that white people thought they could eradicate thousands of years of culture and tradition with flyers like this one. Oh no, that’s right. They used smallpox and guns too. You gotta hand it to those Christians. They didn’t do anything halfway-–including oppression.
steve
August 13th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Thanks for such great responses. The one that I find most ironic is the one about washing as I’m sure the first words spoken by the first tribes people to see the first Europeans landing in North America was “what’s that smell” because white Europeans hygiene was awful in those days and adding to that many weeks at sea…phew I bet that was one funky boat.
Sharon R.
January 9th, 2010 at 2:35 am
...and the very sad thing is, some of these attitudes aren’t just from a poster in the past. They are still being distributed today.
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