Michael Marker's article explains the mechanisms used in the 1900s to assimilate Coast Salish Indians into "modernized" culture. This group of natives lived on the U.S.-Canadian border. Canada began to require the indigenous people to go to traditional schools with the rest of the Canadian population. The United States put the Salish who lived within the border into boarding schools. Racial discrimination increased in the Canadian schools, often causing severe trauma for the Salish students. Discrimination was less of an issue in the U.S. because the boarding schools were selective to Salish Indians only. Problems arose even more when the Boldt decision was put into affect. This decision supported the oral tradition that Indians had rights to half of the fish population. Students and teachers therefore blamed the Salish for their fishing difficulty.
I found this article to be very interesting. I was not surprised that there were issues that arose with the assimilation. Thrusting change on a group of people for the sake of conformity never goes over well. I can see from both sides how and why they reacted the way that they did.
I read a book in my cultural anthropology class last semester that I was reminded of when I read this article. The book was called "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down". It was about a Hmong girl who was very sick. She had many seizures and the doctors were frantic over how to heal her. They were frustrated because they would prescribe medicine to help the girl, but the girl's family believed that the illness was not a physical one, but a spiritual one. Therefore, they did not give the girl the recommended dosages and would sometimes refuse to use certain medicines at all.
From both this book and Marker's article, I learned that both parties get frustrated and angry when cultural values are questioned. Therefore, it is important to learn about the culture's background, views, and ideas before you try to promote change.
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