M. Annette Jaimes and Theresa Halsey, “American Indian Women at the
Center of Indigenous Resistance in Contemporary North America,” in Applied
Ethics, pp. 382-392.
Main Thesis: Euro-Americans in the past and the present have misunderstood
and destroyed the ways of Native American peoples.
Supporting points:
Euro-Americans in the past and the present have regarded themselves
as civilized and Native Americans as primitive.
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Euro-Americans perpetuate such myths as that the Native Americans were
nomads.
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Euro-American treatment of American Indians failed to grant women the prominent
place traditionally assigned to women.
In many communities, Native American women were political leaders, but
Euro-Americans by-passed them in their dealings with Native American peoples.
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Euro-American missionaries imposed a marital code that included the
domination of female by male.
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Divorce was readily initiated and carried through by females in Native
American cultures, a feature ignored and reversed by Euro-American missionaries.
Euro-Americans imposed a practice of inter-marriage with Cherokees,
a practice that set the stage for the Trail of Tears.
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The practice of inter-marriage weakened the Cherokee Nation.
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Inter-marriage produced a mixed blood male caste that built up lucrative
and desirable farm enterprises.
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