Treaty Rights and Natural Resources

Greg Hanson, Rapporteur

The movie “The Color of Fear” brought up the topic of racism between all ethnicities.  The movie had a number of people with different backgrounds sitting around in a circle discussing this topic.  Some of the ethnicities included: Mexican-American, Latino-American, White-American, African-American, Japanese-American, racist White-American, Chinese-American.  There were no women in the movie.  The mood of the discussion went from anger and frustrations to hope.  Our class discussed some of the reasons of why racism is happening, where it’s happening, and some of the current issues.

Topics discussed from the movie

• Gun rack in pickup truck

-Colored people from movie were scared of this, but not so much the white people.
-Class discussed that gun racks are used to not damage the sights on the guns rather than to bring fear to other people, however we acknowledged that not all people with gun racks use them for strictly utilitarian use.

• The White-American (David) comment about jobs

-He said that he would want to hire the best man for the job, he did not say the best person for the job.
-He has five daughters and we found it interesting that a parent with daughters would still hold this bias.
-He is a product of the culture he grew up in.

Gender/Race Discrimination in school and job market

• Most top positions in companies are held by men.
• U of M has 1800 students of color and 48000 white students.

-This could be because prestige colleges are too expensive to people of color
-We should not judge people by race, instead we should by income.
-How do you achieve excellence at the U of M by throwing out general college?
-President of U of M wanted to be one of the top 3 research colleges in the world. This drives up tuition making the U of M not an option for many people with low income.  (This was mostly people of color as discussed in class)

Treatment of Indians

• Some white people feel that the Indian Treaties are more like special treatment for them and not a long-time tradition that has been past down for many generations.
• Treaties between two sovereign is different than a country creating laws. 
• There have been many changes with mascots in the past few decades.  We discussed different schools with mascots representing Indian culture and names, for example the mascot of UND is the “Fighting Sioux”.

State Seals

• Minnesota State Seal

-Pictures an Indian riding a horse west and a farmer plowing a field.  There is a gun leaning up against a rock near the farmer.
-There have been movements to try to change the seal picture, however it has never made it far.

• Wisconsin State Seal

-Civilization succeeds barbarism is a quote on the seal.
-Refers to Indians in a very bias way.

The movie changed the people who were involved.  Everyone left with a better understanding how different races feel racism.  They talked about there is hope for the future; however change just does not happen over night.  People of color said that they will never see equality in their lifetime and that made them sad.  One of the main issues was how David (White-American) didn’t see racism how everyone else did.  Different people took different approaches at trying to let David see and feel what colored people feel.  This was a main point because many people share the same thoughts and stereotypes of colored people as David and that needs to change for racism to disappear.

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Date created: January 10, 2000
Last modified: April, 2008
Copyright © 2008, George R. Spangler