01 June 2009

Living Traditions of Native America

Sisseton Sioux beaded cloth, ca. 1877. Glass beads, wool trade cloth, cotton and wool yarn.

By Gabrielle Tayac

Historian Gabrielle Tayac is a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington. She is a descendant of the Piscataway tribe, who inhabited the Chesapeake Bay area. Her grandfather, Chief Turkey Tayac (1895–1978), was a traditional healer. Here she discusses the importance of an accurate portrayal of the history and culture of indigenous peoples.

“The Earth and myself are of one mind.”

                         — Chief Joseph

Chief Joseph (1840—1904) of the Nimipu Band of the Nez Perce lived much of his life amid the encroachment of white settlers drawn to the Gold Rush in the western United States. The U.S. government promised to reserve land for the Nez Perce, including their traditional homelands, now the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. However, by 1863 the land base was reduced by 6 million acres (2.4 million hectares) to one-tenth of its original size. Chief Joseph reluctantly agreed to move to the reservation, but a violent reaction by younger warriors led the U.S. Army to pursue the Nez Perce. Despite his brilliant military strategy, Chief Joseph was forced to surrender in 1877 because his people were weakened by starvation, cold, and illness. He spoke the words quoted above during his surrender. He was never allowed to return to his beloved home, the Wallowa Valley. Today the Nimipu have not only survived, but they participate in a modern economy through fishing, logging, education, and commerce. A group of us working at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C., thought that Chief Joseph’s story and his sentiment about the Earth should be the first that visitors encounter upon entry to our building.

Four major ideas are helpful for understanding the past and present situation of Native peoples. First, they have diverse cultures that are united in the concept that humans must be stewards of a living world. Second, individuals are defined by and are accountable to their tribal communities. Third, the trauma of the destructive encounters with European settlers has shaped who we are today. Finally, Native peoples’ creative expressions, past and present, continue to contribute to global culture and science.

Native America, to understand it as a world described by NMAI curator Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche), is “ancient and modern, and always changing.”

About 4 million people identify themselves as either being an American Indian or having American Indian ancestry. American Indians can be found across the country, and 70 percent do not live on reservations, the lands set aside by treaty for tribes. Many are intermarried with people of other ethnic and racial backgrounds, the highest rate of intermarriage among any ethnic group in the United States. Despite recent economic gains, especially through casino gaming allowed due to jurisdictional sovereignty that tribes have, American Indians still suffer from poorer health, higher poverty, and lower educational attainment than other sectors of the U.S. population.

Tribes are tremendously diverse, with each having its own traditional culture, language, history, and government. Most Native people seek a balance of maintaining ancestral cultures with participation in an increasingly global environment.

For many years, because of discrimination and misunderstanding in the broader society, Native Americans were not valued and our cultures were thought to be dying. But in the past 30 years, thanks to the collective efforts of people of all backgrounds, new life is coming to the tribes in an era of increasing self-expression. Our museum, which opened in 2004, is a product of that struggle. Created by an act of Congress in 1989, the NMAI brought an important private collection of more than 800,000 objects into public stewardship under the Smithsonian Institution. Perhaps most importantly, NMAI lets Native people speak on their own behalf to interpret their histories, philosophies, and identities for a world audience.

NMAI signals a profound shift in the valuing of Native cultures. An essential role that the museum serves is to educate the public about Native peoples from their own point of view. While stereotypes are difficult to address among adults, our real hope lies with the future shaping of children’s viewpoints. Schoolchildren are a key audience to our facility, and our education department works with tribal scholars to develop accurate materials for use in the classroom. Internet resources are available also, as most people in the country will not have the chance to spend time at the museum, showing a diversity of Native cultures across topics in the arts and sciences. For example, many people aware of American culture may be familiar with the tradition of Thanksgiving as a special dinner in November based on a peaceful exchange between Native Americans and Puritan colonists in the 17th century. However, even in the United States few people are aware that the idea of thanksgiving is based upon a traditional Native daily ceremonial practice to express gratitude and responsibility for the abundance in the world. Different seasons bring different thanksgivings, such as the “strawberry thanksgiving” that is practiced every June among northeastern tribes.

Living Worlds

Historian Gabrielle Tayac

“With beauty I speak, I am in peace and harmony.”

                         — Navajo Blessing

The profound teachings of diverse Native cultures are often known as “original instructions,” meaning that the ways of being in the world were passed to humans by a Creator or other spiritual beings. These ideas have been passed down orally, embedded in story, song, and dance as American Indians north of Mexico did not have writing systems until European forms were adapted by tribes. There is no singular Native philosophy — there are hundreds. Living in balance with the natural and spiritual realms, respecting our role in the world as human beings, and embracing family and community responsibility are shared cultural values intended to guide our peoples in today’s world.

One example, the Navajo, whose blessing is quoted above, call themselves Diné or the people. They live on a reservation extending almost 7 million hectares (26,000 square miles) in the arid lands surrounding the borders of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Their current population of nearly 300,000 comprises the largest tribe in the United States. The Diné are traditionally sheepherders and weavers, although today you can find individuals in every profession and on every continent. A core principle in Diné philosophy is hozho, which has been simplified in English as “beauty.” But hozho is more complicated than that. It conveys values of wholeness, balance, and restoration. Many Diné ceremonies and practices are devoted to restoring harmony in individuals, communities, and the world. So when a person says, “with beauty I speak,” they are stating a much more complicated idea — that their thoughts should be restorative, holistic, and balanced. As the Diné have reclaimed control of their education and government systems over the past decades, they are inserting this philosophy of what should guide their schools, courts, and economy.

Native philosophies are rich and varied. People of all backgrounds are increasingly interested in learning more about these ancient systems that still have relevance. For most of American history, unfortunately, Native religions and philosophies were at best misunderstood and at worst outlawed. Many Native nations are now working hard to recover traditions that were lost and preserve what they still have.

Community

“Being an Indian is not about being part something; it is about being part of something.” — Angela Gonzales (Hopi), 2007

Relationships are at the core of Native identity. The sense of family is often more extended than what we see in the contemporary United States, in which most families are nuclear, chiefly parents and children. In American Indian cultures, family includes not only blood-related relatives but clan or society relationships. Tribal membership is also a key to identity, which is determined by the degree of Indian heritage, or “blood quantum, acceptable for membership to the tribe. To be an American Indian is not merely to be a member of a broader ethnic or racial group but also to belong to a specific community that defines its own membership. Some tribes trace descent through the mother, other tribes through the father, and still others have adopted the rules set out by the U.S. government in the early 20th century. Each tribe is unique.

As subjects of discriminatory racial policies, Native Americans and African Americans have a great deal in common. Both Native Americans and African Americans were viewed as inferior biologically and culturally to many Euro-Americans for centuries. There were laws prohibiting whites from intermarrying with them, laws that were enforced more stringently for African Americans. Interestingly, both Native Americans and Africans shared indigenous lifestyles, enabling them to relate to each other upon first contact. In early colonial history we find quite a bit of intermarriage between them on the Atlantic seaboard. Their work towards overturning discrimination was also linked. Encouraged by the 1960s civil rights movement, many American Indians began their own social movements to regain rights. American Indian identity is perhaps one of the most talked about topics among American Indians themselves. The tensions between obligations to a tribal community and living in a quickly changing era of globalization makes many people feel that they are constantly juggling “two worlds.” Yet as policies and social attitudes about the value of American Indian cultures changed, some younger Native people are exploring the idea that they really live in just one world as whole people with a tribal identity that can adapt to any circumstance.

Expression

“The Indian way is a thinking tradition.”

                    — John Mohawk, ca. 1990

The brilliance of Native cultures is manifold. One can observe creative genius in ancient agricultural innovations, contemporary art, pre-contact concepts of governance, or environmental conservation traditions. Indigenous peoples have much to offer the world, even as they bring their tribal identities and global contemporary realities into one world.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.