Response to Indigenous Resistance

         Michael Marker's "Response to Indigenous Resistance" tackles the issue of assimilation in the United States during 1960s and 1970s. At this time, the United States was occupied by indigenous peoples and Americans were not happy about this; they deliberately pushed these cultures that were unusual to them, and took their land away. Americans wanted these cultures out because they felt threatened that other groups were occupying "their" property.
         Marker's article reviews the experiences of Coastal Salish people of British Columbia and
Washington State as they responded to education for colonisation in a borderlands
region. As the Coast experienced racism prior to being assimilated, they continued to face the racist policies of nineteenth-century Empire building in the Pacific as those occupying the Northwest continued a struggle for cultural survival in integrated public schools in the
1960s and 1970s.
         There are certainly two sides to this issue; those of the indigenous people who were degraded and blatantly treated with disrespect, and although the superior regions were behaving rashly, they had some school of thought behind their actions -- literally. Hence both the Indigenous understanding of the colonizers and the strategies for resistance are cast in local knowledge. The integration of schools and education into the Aboriginal lifestyle was a way for the superiors to improve their knowledge, and in a way was belittling them.