Since ancient times in history it has been seen that all human beings are in a constant struggle to move forward no matter what happens, in order to continue progressing and expanding. When talking about ambition and greed it has, or can be seen, from two points of view and two different perspectives. One negative and the other positive.
From the positive side, it can be said that ambition is the desire to overcome and go much further. It provides the motivation and determination necessary to achieve goals in life. It focuses more on the development and personal growth that refers to a series of activities that help to improve self-awareness and discover one’s identity, in order to promote the development of one’s own potentials, personal and relational skills.
The objective is to improve the quality of life and contribute to the realization of individual dreams and aspirations. Unfortunately, not all people take the proper path and can find themselves in a situation where they feel far from their own essence and live distanced from their dreams, aspirations and needs. However, seeing it from the other point of view, the ambition becomes negative when it is present in the monetary issue, so the mere fact of having an intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth and power.
In one hand, the life of Indians was beyond selfishness and well-being.The integral communication between the visible and non-visible world was considered a sacred path for them. One of the types of communication was through dreams. Their sacred principle was to have a happy life and to be able to face their circumstances wisely with simple and coherent solutions. Not doing something that could harm their descendants either physically and spiritually nor the environment in which they lived. Unlike Americans who lived in a more competitive capitalist society, Indians lived in a more united and shared community.
One example of personal growth is in the story called “Superman and Me.” Sherman Alexie lived with his family in the reservation while growing up. Alexie states how he was not able to read his father’s books and encouraged him to strive more and determine the purpose of a paragraph. Alexie emphasizes that reading and writing has saved his life, because Indian children were expected to be bad and stupid; Alexie said, ‘I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky’ (27). His courage and ambition to be better improved how he refused to give up on something he loved to do, and that was reading books. When Alexie grew up and became a writer, he wanted to teach creative ways to write in Indian schools to help children who were in the same condition as him and share the success that led him to stand out from the other kids.
On the other hand, the European wanted to conquer and take control over the natural resources and territories of the Indians for political and economic reasons. For example, in the movie called “Little Big Man” the ambition of the Americans made them see the opportunities to grow goods to exporting them to other countries and generate as much income as possible.
After the conquerors arrived, the land became a crucial topic of exchange during trade negotiations between Europeans and Native Americans. Straightaway, the misunderstandings led to arguments and fights over the land. The primary reason was that the two groups had different ideas and perspectives of the land and ownership. Native Americans did not consider land as something either with monetary value nor something they could own, buy or sell. The Indians venerated the earth as a sacred gift that was supposed to be shared among the people who lived in it.
The colonizers expected the innate leaders and governors to lead the cities as the settlements of Europe, with annual meetings of the city, government laws, and elected officials. But the plan failed, the life of the conquerors was incompatible with the economy and life of the Native American ; living under the law of the colonizers was not practical for the native tribes. European legislation was much more complicated and complex.
Also, it was believed that the solution of the ‘Indian issue’ was to lock them up in concentration camps called reservations, for that they were assigned in uninhabitable drylands for the target; but they were also stripped of them, and millions of buffaloes were killed. The conquerors tried to keep the Indians in reservations, because for them they were just a group of primitive and savage people that were only obstacles to achieve their goals.
A few loose words, related exclusively by association of ideas, can be constituted in a synthesis of European conquest and colonialism in America: inquisition, genocide, exploitation, looting, transculturation and disappearance. Many indigenous communities that lived in their own domains suffered invasions and land spoils; they had to submit to the current legislation of the established order; they had to renounce their cultures according to education; they were deprived of the economic resources and the freedom of the vital space and limited by national borders that divided their communities. This aggressive policy, denying the total autonomy of indigenous peoples, continues until today.
In her book “Colonial America Reference Library: Almanac,” Peggy Saari declared that “As a consequence [of European devastation], great stresses were placed on the economic, social, political, and religious systems of Native Americans”(26). These negative processes were the essence of unofficial history described from the point of view of the Indian people. Although, the testimonies of those historical periods showed that the systematic destruction of the local culture and its replacement by the cultural guidelines imposed from the nation was a primordial task that justified the use of any means to take it to cape.
Throughout this class I have read and learned about the Indians and their generations of the last 150 years portrayed in different ways and periods of time. Emphasized precisely in the relationship and behavior between Indians and whites.
Both the whites and the Indians had their own purposes and ideals that might not agree with those of the other, but the truth is that Indians had a moral principle based on altruism and integrity. The whites, unlike the Indians, were more focused on acquiring power. Ignored the existing cultural framework in those tribes and the existing social hierarchies in them, in order to impose their own values and have authority over the Indians.
From the Indians I learned values such as loyalty and commitment to their traditions, routines, and lifestyles. Despite the modern and industrialized world that was developing around them, they only wanted justice and peace. The great wisdom of the Indians by respecting: the men, women, children, and nature, maintained their lives in harmony. These primitive Americans have possessed great riches in human and spiritual resources. Lamentably, all this has been consciously and actively destroyed by a civilization that is unbalanced, precisely because it has lost those values for which the Indian lived.
In this change suffered by the Europeans, the massacres and the diseases that harmed the population, as well as the religious beliefs that led them to a peaceful and resigned life, had great relevance. The conqueror, by expanding his true and absolute religion through America, together with his feudal and enslaving systems, driven by the demoralized greed of which the invasion of America is impregnated, produced a transmutation in the Indian, whose result is an inferior human being.
Native Americans today are seen as distinct societies because of their minority status, as separate entities of social opportunities. The result of the western construction of the state from the time of conquest to date, they are also seen as societies that due to the economic and political backwardness fail to fit into many of the structures of the states.
The development of native peoples must be visualized in a local context. It is urgent to recognize the advances of Native Americans coincide in the valuation of the ancestral and effective methods of indigenous organizations. I think the best solution for this circumstances is essentially related with the law. The laws are fundamental, so that the members of the native tribes do not have the policy or legally the prohibition or the obstacle to resort to any federal matter for the solution of controversies. It is also important to recognize the avoidance of the law in the past; The first amendment did not protect the Native American religions, and the fifth amendment did not protect their land.
America took 99 percent of territory that the Indians owned for centuries; the least we could do as country is to do them the favor of protecting their 1 percent that remains.
