Cultural Degradation of Native Americans Essay ⋆ Essays on Controversial Topics ⋆ EssayEmpire

Scorn for the Native Americans’ ways of life became apparent soon after their first encounters with Europeans. Disparagement of, and disrespect for, tribal cultures continued thereafter and, unfortunately, still continues today. For centuries, much of what people have known about Native Americans has rested on misinformation, stereotypes, and media creations that have led to biased attitudes and negative beliefs. The very term Indian, in fact, comes from a misconception.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans had rich cultures and social systems. The Aztec, Arikara, Anasazi, Clovis, Hidatsa, Hohokam, Inca, Inuit, Mandan, Mayan, Mogollon, Mounds Builders, Oneota, Pueblo, and others developed flourishing cultures long before 1492. Although the many tribes varied significantly in language, clothing and bodily adornment, housing, social organization, and ways of life, they were mostly similar in their belief systems and primary relationships that were built on a clan or friendship system. Despite the cultural diversity among the hundreds of tribes, Europeans essentially saw them as a single entity and denigrated their culture by describing them as “savages,” “pagans,” or “uncivilized,” for the Europeans believed the tribal ways of life to be inferior to their own.

The rich cultures that Europeans and European Americans failed to recognize would disintegrate through disease, conquest, loss of ancestral lands, and subjugation.

Today, as Native Americans struggle to maintain their cultural identity, restore their lost heritage, and improve their quality of life, they still endure stereotypical assaults on their dignity, such as children playing cowboys and Indians (no one plays Asian, Irish, Hispanic, or Mormon, for example), or sports team mascots (such as the Atlanta Braves, Chicago Black Hawks, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Chiefs, Washington Redskins).

Forced Isolation and Acculturation

Between 1850 and 1880, the U.S. government embarked on a policy of containment, establishing most of the nation’s reservations and forcing Native Americans to live on them. Segregated and isolated, the once self-reliant tribes became wards of the government, with bureaucrats responsible for their welfare, issuing them food rations and supervising virtually every aspect of their lives. Forbidden to engage in their own spiritual practices, they instead faced zealous Protestant missionaries who were anxious to convert the Native Americans and were encouraged to do so by the government, which gave them some reservation land on which to build churches and religious schools. Not until the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act restored their freedom of religion could Native Americans publicly return to their ancestors’ ways.

White patriarchal assumptions about proper families disrupted families that were matriarchal or egalitarian. Families were not allowed to make decisions or to direct their own lives, as everything became subject to approval by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Policies were designed to weaken or break up families.

Government programs and boarding schools thus attempted to dismantle kinship patterns by taking children from their families and placing them in boarding schools or with white families. These programs also coerced Western ways at reservation schools, forcing acculturation by forbidding historical tribal languages, dress, hairstyles, religion, and culture. Children of different tribes, even warring tribes, were boarded together. When school was not in session, children were often boarded with white families to prevent them from renewing tribal ways. Children were often abused, neglected, and mistreated. While some Indian schools did teach American Indian children some vocational skills such as pencil making, programs encouraged them to move away rather than promote employment opportunities on the reservations. This coercive acculturation led to loss of culture, tradition, and way of life.

Religion

Native American religions do not focus on sin, denial of personal pleasure, or fear of hell to guide them. The Protestant ethic of working and accumulating wealth instead of seeking personal pleasure is missing. Rather, the Native American religions focus on spirituality and spiritual practices. Native Americans generally prefer that strangers not attend spiritual services unless invited, yet many come, take pictures, record, or videotape services without permission. A visitor does not take the Muslim prayer rug home after using it in a mosque, yet many people will take sand paintings, dream-catchers, pipes, or other sacred items from Native American services. Unfortunately, such callous disrespect for Native American culture is a merely a modern manifestation of similar actions in the past.

Christian practices have greatly influenced Native American practices. Flathead and other Plains groups, for example, have incorporated many Christian practices into their own. The sign of the cross, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” is translated as, “L’squest’s Le-eu u Sku-se u Sant Spah-pah-paht. Ko-mee e-tse-hyl.” Flathead funerals include wakes, and feast days are celebrated.

Like many tribes, the Flathead have combined Christian and quite often Catholic traditions with their own traditions. A few “Blackrobes” (priests) allowed the Flathead to include some of their own traditions, including peyote and songs, and showed some respect for the Native ways and religion. Catholic hymns, prayers, and rituals were translated into Kalispel dialect, the Salish or Flathead dialect, and others. (The Flathead are also known as the Salish, Bitterroot Salish, and as the Pend d’Oreille or Kalispel.)

The Afterlife

Native Americans send their dead to the next life with rituals and practices that reflect their religious beliefs about death and spiritual afterlife; they view desecration of the dead as a serious and offensive act. They believe that disease and even death can befall those who violate the dead and their resting places.

Archaeologists have for generations been digging up human remains to study what was buried with them to learn about cultures. The tombs of ancient civilizations have yielded great knowledge of their cultures. Reportedly, Thomas Jefferson dug up a burial mound in Virginia in pursuit of similar knowledge. Physical anthropologists have long studied Native American skulls and human bones to learn more about our various indigenous peoples. Following the Civil War, the U.S. Surgeon General ordered Army personnel to obtain Indian skulls for study at the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Army acquired heads from Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Kiowa killed at the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado. Many other museums soon made comparable acquisitions.

Only in 1990, with passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), were their burial sites protected and a process created for returning their cultural artifacts and human remains. Museums are now slowly returning their inventories of such items, putting an end to what Native Americans considered institutional sacrilege.

The Present Scene

Today, slightly less than half of all Native Americans live on isolated, rural reservations, many with inadequate housing, plumbing, and electricity. However, tribal schools and colleges enable new generations to study their tribal languages and cultures and to acquire traditional skills that would otherwise be lost. Desperate for economic relief, some tribes have forsaken their values about the land to allow nuclear waste storage facilities or strip mining on their reservations. Some tribes are doing well from oil and gambling revenues but have abandoned much of their culture. Is it too late to save the cultures? Should the cultures be saved? These are not idle questions, for they go to the heart of a debate that has continued for generations between those who advocate assimilation and modernization on the one hand, and those who believe Native American culture should be preserved and maintained as a way of life on the other.

Cultural diffusion (the spread of values and practices from one culture to another) is one way at least parts of a culture endure. Many nontribal members hang dream-catchers from their rearview mirrors, give Kachinas to children for toys, use pipes, have “sweats,” and engage in traditional rituals in nontraditional ways. By contrast, the “Blackrobes” and other clergy who work with tribal groups adorn the Virgin Mary in traditional Hopi or other tribal garments, promote the “Black Madonna,” and hang pipes, beaded items, shawls, and other traditional items in their churches. Many nontribal peoples attend, take part, respect, and become part of traditional American Indian ceremonies.

Some do respect and admire traditions and practices of Native Americans. Yet, others seem inclined to either ignore or suppress the indigenous cultures that outsiders have tried to destroy since they first arrived. Many “Blackrobes” and other clergy do go to great lengths to respect and preserve traditional ways, as do many funeral directors.

After centuries of denigration, exploitation, discrimination, poverty, and despair, some hope exists. Symbolic is the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian in the mall of Washington, D.C., in 2005, an unusual positive happening in Washington for Native Americans. The future is both positive and negative. The economic future for some tribes is greatly improving. For others, the economic picture is quite bleak. Conflicting views about their cultures, languages, and way of life continue.

Bibliography:

LaDuke, Winona. 1999. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Cambridge, MA: South End.
Powers, William K. 1982. Yuwipi, Vision and Experience in Oglala Ritual. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Richter, Daniel K. 2003. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ross, Allen C. 1989. Mitakuye Oyasin: We Are All Related. Denver, CO: Wiconi Waste.
Stolzman, William. 1988. How to Take Part in Lakota Ceremonies. Chamberlain, SD: Tipi Press.
Wall, Steve and Harvey Arden. 2006. Wisdomkeepers: Meetings with Native American Spiritual Elders. Hillsboro, OR: Atria Books/Beyond Words.

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