Should an ethnic group that makes up only 1 percent of our population have a holiday? (Native Americans and Native Alaskans combined.) Disregarding the fact that there are few true Native Americans left, they do not deserve a holiday because their ancestors suffered under the fulfillment of the U.S.’s Manifest Destiny. A second reason for not creating a holiday for the Native Americans is that it is counter-productive to their assimilation into modern American culture. A third reason is the bias behind creating a holiday for an ethnicity that the U.S. is to blame for their downfall.

Native Americans fought with the U.S. because of their need for the land in the West. Admittedly, Americans could have taken the land in a less cruel way than slaughtering women and children, but the outcome would have been the same. The cultural differences in the sense of land ownership and religion barred any chance for a symbiotic relationship to survive. The destruction of the Native Americans in the sense of their original way of life was inevitable, so we should not praise the loser of a mutually caused battle.

In order for America to become a melting pot of ethnicities, we need to put all groups on equal grounds. Treating everyone as Americans, not by what their ancestors may have been. No group should have a holiday for any reason. There should be no Martin Luther King Day, no St. Patrick’s Day, and no celebration for Christopher Columbus. It may honor them and create an excuse for celebration, but ultimately it tears away the progress we have made in accepting other cultures and religions. In modern America it is socially unacceptable to mistreat based on race, but if we separate a group with a holiday, it would give one more reason for racism to thrive.

Finally, there is no valid benefit to creating a holiday for the Native Americans. A holiday should not be created on the premise that it would make up for wrongs that a past generation have committed. Almost all cultures have been mistreated, oppressed, or slaughtered by another culture. That does not mean that future generations cannot succeed. African Americans were enslaved, the Chinese are brutally oppressed even today, the Irish were denied jobs in the U.S., and the Jews were killed in great numbers. After this all of these cultures have bounced back. There are not enough days in the year to celebrate the sufferings of peoples who were mistreated, so why should we celebrate the Native Americans? Celebrating the failure of cultures that was primarily the U.S.’s fault not only degrades the victory that was ultimately beneficial for the country, but makes an excuse for the Native Americans lack of success even though they have had many opportunities provided by the government including a college education.


In conclusion, there should not be a holiday for Native Americans. The U.S. had divine right to inhabit the West, no matter what the repercussions may have been. Native Americans today live on reservations and have had a chance to acculturate with the modern U.S. Creating ethnic holidays only prevents the U.S. from accepting all people. All people have been mistreated at some point in their history, so we should not honor those that were mistreated by the U.S., but instead we should prevent such mistreatment from happening again.