The Ainu people of Japan are not at all different from the Native Americans who have also been forced out of their homeland and pressured to assimilate. Around 400 years ago, the Ainu people ruled Hokkaido, the northernmost part of Japan. Like many indigenous people, they’ve experienced discrimination, a mass genocide and lived in poverty. They’ve been portrayed as savages for their unique traditions such as hunting bears, tattooing their lips,hands and body. When the Japanese came in contact with the Ainu people they turned against them and murdered their people. They were forbidden to speak their language and live freely. We have yet to know where they come from, but scholars believe they came from Siberia, Russia or from the Southern Pacific. …show more content…
This ritual consisted of the Ainu people capturing a female bear and her cubs, sacrificing the mother bear in a special ceremony and then raising her cubs for several years to then be sacrificed. The Ainu’s believed this four-day ceremony would give the bear and mountain spirit a proper send off before it returned to the mountains. In the 20th century, the iyomante was banned by the Japanese. Even though the iyomante was prohibited, the Ainu people continued to worship and capture bears, however they would no longer kill …show more content…
The Ainu people didn’t resemble the Japanese. They usually had thick wavy hair, round eyes and lots of facial hair unlike the Japanese. This made it difficult for the Ainu people to fit in, find jobs and pursue an education/career. Ainu children who attended school were regularly harassed and called names like Inu (the Japanese word for “dog”). The university rate of Ainu drop outs was 19.1, out of the 70% of Ainu high school students 10% of them dropped out due to financial problems. The average income for an Ainu family was $35,600, forty percent lower than Japan’s national average.The former Aborigine Protection Law in 1899 gave the Ainu people unsuitable land to live off