No Food This Time :(

The Koreans And The Natives: The Eerie Similarities In Being Different

When I read the “Because My Father Always Said He Was The Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play “the Star-Spangled Banner” At Woodstock” by Sherman Alexie, I felt in a way, relatable. I could feel the emotions Sherman Alexie had described in the text as he blurted out all the wars and battles his ancestors fought. Then he goes on to finish saying, “All I have is video games.” This is how I sometimes feel; I feel the need to be more because I am—just like Sherman Alexie—the mere product of those who gave their lives to protect the country that I am from. And I think the way to give it back to them is to remember and remind ourselves of their unimaginable efforts. So here it is:

When the foreign forces arrived in our land, they forced assimilation and suppressed our culture. For the Native Americans, the colonizers took their land forcefully and later forced policies like the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Through this process, Native American children were banned of their languages and traditions. It was the “social norm” to not be Native American and become like the Americans just the same way the Koreans were forced to be Japanese under their rule. When Japan first annexed Korea in 1910, Koreans were forced to change names to Japanese names and speak only Japanese in schools. When people fought, they were brutally murdered in ways like torture and imprisonment where they would spend the rest of their lives in indescribable torture and pain. 

We practice civil or sometimes uncivil obedience to our laws because we agree, and accept the reasons behind laws and rules. However, when laws are unrighteousness, immoral, and stripping of basic human rights, someone has to object to the injustice. As Henry David Thoreau describes it in his piece, “Civil Disobedience,” “If the injustice is a part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go..., let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.” This is what my ancestors did; they went against what was “civil” and implemented civil disobedience to protect, ultimately, the whole country’s freedom.

How cruel do you have to be to forget the human nature of kindness and force your broken ego onto someone else? The more I see history for its true value, the more I realize that the only way to being a civil human-being is to realize the differences that people have and work to accept it.