The quote, “We were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child.” (Alexie 35), means that if someone is different from the societal norm then you must change them until they fit your image of what they should be like. This quote is spoken when Mr. P comes over to talk to Junior while he is suspended for breaking Mr. P’s nose. At first, Mr. P is asking Junior why he threw the book , but then Mr. P explains that regardless of his feeling, he feels compelled to forgive Junior because he used to “...kill the Indian to save the child.”(Alexie 35) which means he used to break the Indian children’s spirit to make them more like societal norms. For a while, Indians have been mistreated and placed on reservations because they weren’t like Europeans. When they first came to America, they didn’t want to conform to our society. They wanted to continue their culture and practices and not be influenced by others. This is what began the Relocation Program, which led tons of Cherokee Indians to Oklahoma, and many other groups were just simply killed by the U.S. Calvary. Children of relocated Native Americans were taken from their homes and put in schools to strip of them of their cultures and make them learn like Europeans. By Junior throwing the book at Mr. P (it is the same book as his mom used), Junior shows that he isn’t willing to just let the White people break him because they treat him poorly and don’t provide adequate resources. They had decided that because Indians were different that they were going to make them change their ways to conform to their social norm. The quote, “We were supposed to make you give up being Indian.” (Alexie 35), is showing that the White people assigned to break the Indian’s spirit believed they could mold them into whatever they wanted. They did not provide them with adequate resources instead if they wanted to learn like a “normal” child they would have to go to a White school in a racist town, like Junior is attempting to do by going to Rearden. The White people thought that the Indian children were being poisoned by their parents and they believed they could “save” them if they broke their spirit and took away their customs and removed them from their family life. This is very significant because Mr. P is realizing that Junior will not have his spirit broken regardless of how hard the White people try. This quote proves that White people tried to break the Indian’s spirits and culture to make them like the Social Norm.
Walker, I agree with your interpretation of the quote,"We were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child." (Alexie 35) However, I think that in other culture differences with the same situation this quote might have been happening the same way, just with different groups of people. In a specific instance, the situation described in this quote might also have happened with other Native American Tribes that were forced to live in other reservations. Just like you, I also believe that a big part of the situation today is because of what happened in history to develop this circumstance. I also think that this quote is very discriminating and racist, as on a general level it forces people to forget and eventually have no relationship with their own history of generations or even centuries. It is very mean to the people who have to be treated this way and incredibly unfair. Humans would have to become very lowly beings to wipe a minority group out just because the majority believe they are the only "highly civilized" group and the group with a different culture and less amount of people are relatively uncivilized and disgusting to the bigger group. I believe all instances of the quote in action, including in the Indian reservation school attended by Junior, should be stopped.
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