LITR 4332 American Minority Literature Model Assignments Research Project Submissions 2013 research post 1

Patricia Stacey

Native American Culture and the Hardships It Has Faced to Survive

When I was growing up we had a cassette tape of Cherokee animal folktales, and we listened to that tape all the time in the car on rides until I had some of those stories nearly memorized. As we were asked to consider topics for our projects I thought back to that cassette tape and couldn’t help but wonder- How have the traditional Native American folktales managed to survive despite all the upheaval and cultural assimilation that the tribes have been through, and have these storytellers had to adjust their way of life because of the assimilation that was at times forced on them? Beginning my research, I discovered it was quite difficult to find this information as it specifically relates to the Native American folklore and as a result I expanded this question to include their culture in general. As a result of the adjustment in my research, my curiosity can be boiled down to a much simpler question- What has the Native American culture gone through during the government’s attempt to assimilate them into the dominant white culture?

During my research that was focused on the databases provided by the UHCL library, I was able to find a wealth of information relating to the ways in which Native American’s were made to assimilate and turn away from their own culture. One such article, found in the Wicazo Sa Review in Fall of 2006 as well as in the library database, called “Spiritual Genocide: The Denial of American Indian Religious Freedom, from Conquest to 1934”describes the harsh banning that the Native American people faced on their own land- a banning that was federal policy until 1978 when the Native American’s were finally granted religious freedom. Before this law Christianity was being forced upon the tribes while any Indian “practicing their religious beliefs [non-Christian] could be fined and sent to prison” even if it happened on their own reservation! The law in 1978 apparently wasn’t that big a step forward, because there were no penalties to help uphold the Native American’s religions, and according to Talbot by 2000 “only 10 percent of an estimated 200,000 Indian sacred remains have even been inventoried, let alone repatriated to their respective tribal entities”.

It’s often said that the victors of wars decide how history sees them, and in the second article I found this seems truer than ever. In “Retrieving the Red Continent: settler colonialism and the history of American Indians in the US.”, found in Ethnic & Racial Studies in September of 2008 the author has taken a stance of what appear to be an attempt to gloss over the history of the Native Americans during the colonization years with looking at the events in a different way. Instead of the typical view of Native Americans being the victim of colonization and US expansion, Hoxie “offers a way to conceive of the Native past in a transnational context as well as to understand indigenous encounters with modernity as an ongoing struggle with colonial rule rather than as a campaign to accommodate Native people to ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’ or to ‘assimilate’ them into a nation state.” So, in the name of not looking at the traditional approach to the treatment of Native Americans, Hoxie sugarcoats the consequences of US Expansion of the tribes by saying that they only had to adjust and adapt to having their culture stripped away from them, to being forced from their land and sacred places, to having their children’s Native American identity taken from then in boarding schools. And that all this was just the Native American’s ‘struggle with colonial rule’ as opposed to them actually being the victim.

Contradicting the last article’s views that the Native American’s were not victims, the next article found in the American Indian Law Review admits that there was a problem with the assimilation of the Native American children and even addresses the remaking of policy in an attempt to reverse the assimilation. Seelau’s “Regaining Control over the Children: Reversing the Legacy of Assimilative Policies in Education, Child Welfare, and Juvenile Justice That Targeted Native American Youth.”  began its focus on the differences Native American children and youth face as compared to non-Native children, mentioning statistics related to their physical and mental health, substance abuse, living conditions, education, and juvenile delinquency. The second part was a review of the specific policies that were enacted in the past that were geared toward assimilation and removing Native American children from their culture and even their families. Lastly, Seelau speaks of how some of the Native American tribes were able to stand up against these policies created to take their children away and take control back to begin to reverse the effects assimilation has had in the culture and their children. The last section ultimately shows that despite centuries of policies made to assimilate them into white culture, to the detriment of the Native American youth, that “if Native nations are willing to reclaim control and design programs that meet their own unique community needs, then the effects of assimilative policies will start to fade and the difference will be seen in the lives of the children and, in turn, throughout the entire nation.”

The last article I used for this seemed quite appropriate after all the discussion about the specific things that had happened to the Native Americans to push them toward assimilation, as well as what this push had resulted in for the future generations effected. Coleman’s article “Counterfactuals I'd Rather Not Contemplate: What If The Government Schooling Campaigns (1820S-1920S) To Americanize The Indians And To Anglicize The Irish Had Never Taken Place?." found in the Irish Journal Of American Studies was written to answer the big ‘what if’ question of how the Native Americans and Irish might have developed if the government hadn’t stepped in like they did. The end result of his article where it specifically relates to the Native American question was that “had the government not acted as it did, “The Vanishing Indian” might have become a terrible reality; at the very least, far fewer Indians would have survived into the twentieth century.” His thought was that, despite that the schooling and assimilation process which resulted in generations losing their Native American culture, if the government had not acted as they did and provided the Native Americans with not just protection but with tools (such as learning English and a larger literacy for their people) then the tribes would have had a much smaller survival rate.

Truthfully, while some of the articles contained information I expected because of knowing a little bit about the government’s attempts at Native American assimilation, there were points where the information also surprised me. My previous knowledge about the assimilation process revolved around things like the border schools and their forced move from their traditional lands to reservations, but the articles taught me so much more. I learned how the generations of youth since their assimilation into our culture have had a much harder time, including statistics of their tendency toward crime (as well as many other things) that is higher than non-Native children. I saw the way that even in recent years historians are still trying to rewrite the past to say that Native Americans were not the victims that they have been portrayed as, that their reactions to colonial people taking their land away was merely a ‘struggle’. But what surprised me the most, and made a lot of sense, was the results of Coleman’s paper answering ‘what if?’. I’d wondered myself how the tribes’ lives would be so much different if they’d been allowed to practice their culture the way they wanted without interference, if they would have been able to recover from the seemingly unavoidable hardships they faced at the arrival of the colonists such as their populations being diminished and their land invaded. Coleman’s answer that the Native Americans would be in even worse shape, if not nearly gone all together if the government had not stepped in and taught them (even if it did destroy their culture) is what shocked me the most of all the articles, with the statistics Seelau being the second most surprising information. It was later in Seelau’s article where he talked about the actions the Native American tribes themselves have taken that made me curious to know more about what exactly the Native Americans themselves have done in response to their culture being lost and their attempts to reverse that.

Coleman, Michael C. "Counterfactuals I'd Rather Not Contemplate: What If The Government Schooling Campaigns (1820S-1920S) To Americanize The Indians And To Anglicize The Irish Had Never Taken Place?." Irish Journal Of American Studies 2.(2010): 9. America: History & Life. Web. 7 May 2013.

Hoxie, Frederick E. "Retrieving The Red Continent: Settler Colonialism And The History Of American Indians In The US." Ethnic & Racial Studies 31.6 (2008): 1153-1167. America: History & Life. Web. 7 May 2013.

Seelau, Ryan. "Regaining Control Over The Children: Reversing The Legacy Of Assimilative Policies In Education, Child Welfare, And Juvenile Justice That Targeted Native American Youth." American Indian Law Review 37.1 (2013): 63-108. Bibliography of Native North Americans. Web. 7 May 2013.

Talbot, Steve. "Spiritual Genocide: The Denial Of American Indian Religious Freedom, From Conquest To 1934." Wicazo Sa Review 21.2 (2006): 7-39. Humanities Source. Web. 7 May 2013.