Native Americans and the Dangers of a Frozen Cultural Identity
A sense of cultural identity can be a great strength.
It can also be a potential weakness.
Ever since the landing at Plymouth Rock, the settlers of the Old World have clashed culturally with the natives of the new one. This battle of schemas has led to numerous conflicts, both violent and social, across the centuries. An inability to reconcile our differences, and often a vile hatred for one another, led to some of the darkest and most tragic events in American history. This all climaxed in the “Indian Wars” of the late 19th century, resulting in the tragic deaths, murders, and relocations of several thousands of indigenous peoples.
Over a hundred years later, we are seeing the massively heartbreaking repercussions of American colonization, especially in the cultural identities of the Natives, now forced to live, for the most part, on impoverished reservations.
A once deeply spiritual, mostly nomadic, warrior-oriented people have now been relegated to rural poverty, either forced to assimilate to the dominant culture or dwindle in isolation.
Scholars and historians have dedicated thousands of books to what happened in the past, what could have been done differently, what life is like now, and what the future holds for these displaced people.
One thing oft overlooked is the fallout from a frozen identity.
To freeze someone’s identity is to simplify someone’s whole self into one singular thing, like a “jock” or a “nerd”. All the nuances, the facets, the infinite complexities of someone’s self are boiled down and distilled into one simple label. This can be done with individuals but has also been found to happen to entire cultures.
Native Americans, the settlers on this continent before the Age of Exploration, have had their identity frozen for centuries.
All the variety of their nearly 500 identifiable ethnic groups has been unceremoniously labeled “First Nation” or “Indigenous.” Their hundreds of types of lifestyles, their many spiritual understandings, their languages and customs have been simplified down to headdresses, teepees, totem poles, and war cries.
We as a modern society have frozen them in the past, denying them of any real progression or expansion of their cultural identity.
The tragic part is, they have also done this to themselves.
Because their culture was stripped from them, often in barbaric ways, they hold fast onto any remnants of their past in order not to let their history vanish. This is an honorable and justifiable pursuit. The preservation and restoration of their ancestral customs is both beautiful and important. However, the consequences of freezing your own identity are becoming dangerous.
By forcibly living in the past and refusing (very understandably) to move forward in the world, to learn from other societies, and to expand their own cultural identity, the modern Native American’s ability to move out of poverty has been severely diminished.