Response to Native American Reading

My class and I have just finished reading a Scope Article called "Would We Be Killed". It talks about how "Thousands of Native American children were taken from their families and taken to boarding schools to "Learn the ways of a white man". The Native American children were marginalized in many ways. Specifically the Sioux children. The children weren't really free to do anything that they wanted to do, they were assigned jobs and they had to do only that. They were forced to do so many things as well. In the article "Would We Be Killed" it had said, "At boarding schools, boys learned traded like shoemaking or gardening. Girls were taught domestic duties like housekeeping. All children were forced to speak only English." This quote from the article proves that the kids didn't really have many options on what they wanted to do. Their opinions didn't really matter, and they were forced upon many things that maybe inside, they didn't really want to do.
A 17 year-old girl named Shanice Britton had written essay talking about her and her "Life on the Rez". The purpose for Shanice's essay was to inform the readers that Native Americans aren't that different from ourselves. In the beginning of her essay she says, "When people find out that I am Native American, they have all these ideas about what that means- that I live in a teepee and wear moccasins and a headdress. But those are misconceptions." This quote shows that we are so quick to judge and assume things that we don't even know. Shanice wants us to know that just because she's Native American, doesn't mean that she's andy different from ourselves. Yes, she is a regular teenager. She lives in a house that has a grocery store, a gas station, and restaurants around her neighborhood. She takes showers, she watches TV, and she wears jeans! She's just like us! She is no different! Yeah she may have traditions that go on in her tribe, but if you really think about it, we do too. She wants us to know that we are all the same and different in many ways, and there shouldn't be so many stereotypes about other people just because their different. We have to have tolerance towards others.