Native American Identity Analysis

Identity in Native America is directly associated with culture and language. As a result, some of the issues today which are important in shaping the identity of modern Native Americans include: representations of native people by the media in sports and popular culture; how indigenous languages are being revitalized and maintained; and identity reclamation. The Native American lifestyle has changed significantly during the last half of the 20th century and that is because views on the Native people have drastically changed over time. They have had many hardships that have greatly impacted their culture over the past few centuries leading up to today.

The great American playwright, Israel Zangwill is quoted saying, “America is God’s crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming. . . . Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen,Jews and Russians- into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American” (Shusta, Levine, Wong, Olson, and Harris 5). The early 1900s was a predominant time to migrate to America to find a better life which mainly consisted of European immigrants. As explained by the authors, the melting pot view of society helped unify the culture we have in America today.

One of the difficulties in studying and assessing the effects and causes of changing terminologies and beliefs regarding Native American and First Nations gender identities is the incredible variety between both the histories of different tribes and the individual’s understanding of personal identity. It is a frequent and recurring problem in academia surrounding minority groups, whether they be racial, ethnic, sexual, or gender minorities, that the voices of actual members of the group being studied are ignored. What they are saying can be sterilized, particularly when the researcher is not a member of the group. The reality of the emotional and practical reasons for terminology used by these individuals cannot be understood without direct input from their voices, and as such five different perspectives regarding identity and terminology taken by Native American individuals are represented here. These examples are taken from blog posts regarding various topics surrounding these ideas, and the tribes represented include the Navajo, White Bear Clan, Cree, Metis, and Mi’kmaq people. While each of the five have different relationships to their Native ancestry, all five individuals take a perspective regarding the use of the term two-spirit. While all five take a positive stance on the use of the word, applying it to themselves, their understanding and emotional attachment to the word varies.

Indigenous people as defined by the Cobo report (1987) are “a group having a historical

A Native Americans identity is deeply rooted in his culture, “it’s a particular way one feels about oneself and one’s experiences as an American Indian or tribal person” (Horse 65). Without his Native American culture, a person can feel lost in the world, disconnected from everything. Throughout history, there have been moments where Native Americans were forced to lose part or all of their culture, of their identity. There was the termination era in the 1950’s and Indian boarding schools that both were ways to strip Native Americans of their culture. In Joy Harjo’s poem, The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window, the woman hanging experiences the termination era. In Sherman Alexie’s book, Reservation Blues, Junior Polatkin experiences the lasting effect boarding schools have on Indians. In LeAnne Howe’s book, Miko Kings, Lena learns that you can always come back from to your Native identity.

Every country and nation has they own special festivals and music, and Native American is no exception. First, the native music related many aspects such as ritual, life and work. They like to combine music with dance, and the Native American music always created rich percussion instruments. For example, the hand drum, log drum, water drum and rattle, etc. Powwow is an important festival and ritual for the Native American, and it is a symbol for the tradition culture of Native Indians. Powwow, is a social gathering by the Native American tribes, and they singing and dancing. Powwow is not only a method that the Native American expresses the enthusiasm of the life and peace, but also enhances the sense of identity and cohesion. Hence,

Throughout the book, Native American Voices written by Susan Lobo, Steve Talbot and Traci L. Morris, many of the authors emphasize the growing concept of identity and state that identity only exists through differences in relationships with others. Without these differences, we would be identified as the “same.” The social grouping of people happens all over the world, not only for Natives, but it is most near and dear to my heart. I have realized my differences from others through my own origins and cultural identity. Native Americans are coined under the same family, yet many of us see ourselves as people of our own tribes and nations, such as me being Sac and Fox. My personal identity grows from many different aspects of my own life. I believe I have an individual identity, as well as many complex identities which can be defined by class, gender, age, spiritual and

“So many things in the world have happened before. But it's like they never did. Every new thing that happens to a person, it's a first... In that night I felt expansion, as if the world was branching out in shoots and growing faster than the eye could see. I felt smallness, how the earth divided into bits and kept dividing. I felt stars” (Erdrich 27)

Indigenous are tribal people who identify themselves as indigenous people. They inhabited a region in a country, generations to generations, which is surrounded by national resources. Their social, cultural and economic conditions distinguish them from countrywide communities, and their customs or traditions, special laws or policy are governed by their own set of regulations, entirely or partly. They are determined to maintain and further develop their identity and distinct social, economic, cultural and political institutions as distinct peoples and community, (“UNITED NATIONS PERMANENT FORUM ON INDIGENOUS,” 2008, p. 7-9).

Sky is eight years old, we have had him since he was three weeks old, he was my baby brother. Sky was birthed and then left at the hospital with many complications, because he has fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) caused from his birth mom drinking while pregnant with him. We were able to adopt him at the age of 1. Sky is Native American, he has dark brown hair and eyes, he is very small for his age because of FAS. Other than his small stature he looks just like any other kid.

Realism has dominated international relations theory since emerging in the 1930’s. The era of state conflict lasting from the 1930’s to the end of the cold war in 1947, proved the perfect hostile environment to fit the largely pessimistic view of world politics. While many aspects of realism are still alive in International Relations today; including the dominant presence of states, intrinsic of war and the decentralised government. However, realism only reaches so far in explaining and creating a structure for international relations. Whilst the strengths of the theory lie in its pragmatic approach to power politics and conflict. However, the realist view is weakened by changes in the way that conflict is fought, the ineffectiveness of the balance of power model and the increasing global and interconnected world. Thus, using realism as a structure to explain international relations today is to some extent, a theory of the past.

Each individual makes up the society as it is, and various characteristics and beliefs makes up an individual. Although, individual lives together with a variety of personal ideologies, emotions, cultures, and rituals, they all differentiate one person from the other making up one’s own identity. This identity makes up who one is inside and out, their behaviour, actions, and words comes from their own practices and values. However, the profound history of Indigenous people raises question in the present about their identities. Who are they really? Do we as the non-native people judge them from the outside or the inside? Regardless of whether the society or the government were involved in their lives, they faced discrimination in every

Indigenous people are those that are native to an area. Throughout the world, there are many groups or tribes of people that have been taken over by the Europeans in their early conquests throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by immigrating groups of individuals, and by greedy corporate businesses trying to take their land. The people indigenous to Australia, Brazil and South America, and Hawaii are currently fighting for their rights as people: the rights to own land, to be free from prejudice, and to have their lands protected from society.

Who are the indigenous people? Emery and Associates defined indigenous people as descent of populations that lived in a particular country or geographical regions to which the country belongs, at the time of colonization or conquest and who irrespective of their legal status retain some or all of their own cultural, social and political institutions (Emery and Associates, 1997). While most literature on the traditional ecological knowledge focused on North American indigenous people, there are also indigenous societies in Australia, South America, Asia and Africa, each with its own version of traditional ecological knowledge.

I’m native American someone who is indigenous to north America. I came to this identity at young age because both my parent practice our traditional ways and culture beliefs. My identity to me is very important because it plays profound impact for shaping me. It native cultural we do a lot of ceremony’s and I took part in at young age. To Native people our traditions is very sacred thing to us and I’ve always felt that way. I remember witnessing a ceremony around 7 or 8, we went south Dakota to attend sun dance. It ceremony where you don’t eat or drink for four days and you offer of your flesh by tying rope to a tree and you piece little wood stakes on each side of your chest and you lean back until the stakes are rip out of your chest. After that you do your back by dragging 7 buffalo skulls across the ground until they rip out of skin. Seeing never bother to me but it was very powerful thing to see and I think that when I started to get into my heritage. After that I learn how to dance, sing traditional songs and learn from elder on how to make native flutes. They’re was powerful experience I had in 8th grade that to me made taught me prejudice can happen from any color person and I think that when society taught me who I am. I was harassed by Latino kid in class and I did something to piss him off and his response was “go back to your home land” I was furious to hear this so I punch him in face. After 8th grade I left Sonoma county and went to boarding school for only