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alek harmon paper
When the first explorers came to the Pacific Northwest in the late 1700’s, they faced a major problem of differentiating the many indigenous people. They could not yet comprehend the way they interacted with each other. They attempted to put them into groups, which was not the way the natives described their relationships with each other. This led to the problems still faced today between Indians and non-Indians.
When Vancouver first came to the Pacific Northwest, he and his men simplified separating themselves from the natives. “On a line being drawn with a stick on the sand on the sand between the two parties.” (p. 4) This worked well when they were just trying to separate themselves from the natives, but as soon as they tried to separate the natives into different groups they ran into problems with how to accomplish this. “Now sxwilacem divides the ten slaves to his people, gives one to this man, one to that, gives them to his tribe… That is where we are from…So we are related to the Skagit people from that time.” (p. 14) The indigenous people separated themselves by the area they lived in, not the people they are from. In a western civilization, slaves would not view themselves as having any relations to those they served for. These slaves in the story, however, change their relations completely. This made it extremely hard to categorize the natives into specific groups when, if they just changed their location, became part of a completely different group.
very rough at this point please work with me.
