The minorities and women in the top 10 at my high school had no problems getting scholarships, examples of those in the same situation should hold some weight.
If you didn't qualify for scholarships, it's more likely that your application was substandard, particularly in the writing portions (your writing here is crappy). If you are talking generally about financial aid, it's all income-based these days, not race-based. I'm sure there are minority kids in the top 10% of your class who did not qualify for scholarships, but did receive financial aid. I doubt you are privy to exactly what each person received, and the reasons for that. Instead, you're justifying your failure by pretending that their success was based upon race.
That's stupid thinking. You didn't fail to receive a scholarship because you're white. You failed because your application probably wasn't as good as theirs, and the competition is very tough these days.
I agree, but it was apparently much much worse because it was a Native American tribe versus say a local myth or legend. I can understand the offense from disrespect to culture/religion but not the "it is so much worse because it is about Native Americans", to the point that it seems to me they are being put up as superior.
I've worked with folks in Indian country quite a bit, and I think that their reasons for this reaction are simple...so much has been taken from them that they tend to hold on to their culture and mythology that much more aggressively.
We went hiking on the Olympic Peninsula this summer and spent an evening in La Push (Quileute Nation). I don't know if you've ever spent time on the rez, but rez life is shitty. The poverty is extreme, there are very few jobs, there are high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, the crime rate tends to be higher than the average inner city area, and there are high rates of domestic violence and child abuse.
Natives in the U.S. are caught in a catch 22...they can leave the rez for educational and work opportunities, but when they do so, they leave their support system of cultural and family connections...they are basically adrift in a white world without the cultural ties that matter in the native world. However, if they stay, they stay trapped in a low income life with very few outlets.
U.S. history in regards to native peoples is basically just one atrocity after another. We stole their land. We mistreated and abused their people. We removed their opportunities to provide for themselves in the ways that they'd done so for milleniums. We removed their children and put them in boarding schools where they were punished for "acting native" and speaking their tribal languages. And we forced them onto reservations with zero economic value. Now we steal and misrepresent their stories.
Telling people you're part-Cherokee says nothing. The Cherokee nation, unlike other tribes, basically intermarried and assimilated with white settlers. They're the least-native of any U.S. tribe.
.
