In what ways do you feel colonization affects a parent’s or grandparent’s relationship with their children and grandchildren? What examples of this did you see in the book?
The pressure to assimilate is immense and most often wins in the end. We see this throughout history, continuing right up to today: it is not sufficient that the powerful conquer, they also insist that those who do not live and think as they do are inherently immoral and misguided. This is the very core of colonization (and slavery, for that matter), the idea that those whose lands and bodies we are appropriating are subhuman and therefore do not deserve our compassion or consideration.
Colonization makes it more difficult for elder generations to transmit traditions. The “older ways” can be lost as families “modernize.”
If by colonization we mean that one must integrate and be assimilated in accordance with that colony’s mores, culture, style, belief systems, then the transition can be very destructive at all levels. Every culture has its history and ways of doing things, and, if all of those inputs could be respected, blended, appreciated, welcomed, then we would have an astounding society. Of course, that does not mean there should be no rules for consistency relating to law and order, but integration of cultures is what made the USA what it is, or, rather, what it was.
There seems to be a no-win contest between the need to fit in to survive (have a home, a job) on the individual level, to raise children/m and/or grandchildren, and the need to survive as distinct Native cultures, to pass down the language, stories and the rituals. This is true for immigrants too, but their assimilation is a choice, or a nonviolent consequence of the choice to immigrate. Very different from forced assimilation as a defeated “enemy” who is evicted from ancestral land.
The burden of the conflict falls on the parents or grandparents in ways the children do not understand, and it seems to weaken their bonds. The sense of being a part of something larger, either in the past or in the present, is lost.