Native American Indian Culture

American Indian and Alaskan Native (AI/ANs) people in the United States, either identified as Native alone or of mixed race, numbered at 5.2 million people (Norris, Vines, & Hoeffel, 2012, para. 1). To date, there are 566 federally recognized tribes plus numerous Tribes who are not federally recognized with a majority population base of low socio-economic status. With the birth of America came the genocide, domination, culturecide, ecocide, separation, termination, racism, stereotyping, marginalization, and forced assimilation for the original Native Indian people of the United States, which resulted in historical and intergenerational trauma. The cultures and lifeworld views of American Indians and the White race (predominate American race), are

Did you know the Sioux nation is made up of the Dakota Sioux, the Lakota Sioux and the Nakota Sioux? My heritage affects me in multiple ways, including the foods I eat, the traditions I do with my family, and the languages I know. Here are the three my heritage affects me: foods,traditions, and languages.

Every country and nation have 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. The Powwow is an important festival and ritual for the Native American, and it is a symbol of the tradition culture of Native Indians. Powwow, is a social gathering by the Native American tribes, and they are 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.

Native Americans and Asian Americans have historically been cruelly misrepresented in mainstream American media. We see the effects of this in the dancing “Apache” during halftime of a college football game or the ‘model minority’ labelled as foreigners for taking our jobs. While similar in overall degradation of cultural values and public image, I would argue Native Americans have suffered by lack of support for their values and culture within America’s schools and popular culture while Asian Americans have altogether been ignored because of their “foreign” nature.

Long before what is known as today’s civilization and even longer before technology had shown its face, the now-United States of America was majority, if not entirely, populated by the Native Americans. Amongst the various well-known Native American tribes, the Pueblo may very well be the most diverse. From their philosophical views on how our world came to be to their days-on-end labor in the fields to provide for their people, Puebloans were, or rather are, a very unique breed.

Native American cultures and societies were without a doubt dynamic. Each society and their culture were comprised of various aspects including: creation stories, morals, beliefs and overall ways of living. Native Americans would base their beliefs on scientific, religious, or mythological studies. Unfortunately, with each society’s different style of living, it would lead to the demise of many tribes. External structural forces are circumstances that are beyond our control. It contains larger forces and institutions that one cannot personally stop. On the contrary, a historical agency is comprised of people who manifest history or history that people brought about. Throughout Native American societies, events occurred that shaped the

Native American Culture should be saved the human people. They need our help to keep the language and traditions alive. The Navajos are going outside the territory to find jobs to support their families because the economy isn’t very good. Like the rest Native American territories they mostly rely on the Federal Government for support. But that isn’t helping them enough with money and resources to keep the culture around.

Long before the white man “discovered” America, people have already been living here. These people are known as the Native Americans. As the settlers came to the native land, they brought firm beliefs with them that ended up causing great conflicts with the native people. It was clear that the travelers and the native people could not live among one another since the native people has their own set of values and they were much different than the white man’s beliefs. Traditional Lakota spirituality is a form of religious belief that each thing, plant and animal has a spirit.

The Native American tribes’ culture has been affected as a result of the change in a climate whereby most of the refined foods are not consumed by the modern and the manufactured foods. The Native Americans of the American Indian, Alaska and the Bannock tribes face unique challenges whereby their native foods are no more due to the destruction of their cultural practices, and people have turned into taking the modern food (Marry, 2016).

The word culture is a set of shared beliefs, goals, values, attitudes, and practices that characterizes a particular group (powerpoint). The culture that I pick to write on today is the Native North Americans because they are very creative and unique. Native North Americans are among the most cultural diverses populations on earth, yet also among the most stereotyped by outsiders (Zimmerman, Larry. Native North Americans. Great Britain: Duncan Baird, 1996). The native people were characterized as ‘’noble savages,’’ whiles today’s environmentalist call them ‘’ the first ecologist’’. However the family structures of the Native North Americans is extended family because it included the mother and father, son and daughter, uncles and aunts, grandmother

The identities of the indigenous American societies changed in their techniques of hunting. Instead of having permanent homes, they divided themselves into groups of 15 to 50 hunter-gatherers, who would follow the great mammals, “Giant beaver, giant ground slot, mammoth, mastodon, horses, and camels”(8). But, “By about 1500 BC, people in the American southwest and Midwest had begun to cultivate some maize and squash, but only as a minor supplement to their hunting and gathering”(11). As one can tell, in the beginning, the indigenous American societies were hunter gatherers that traveled with their prey, but eventually they learned how to farm, and established permanent homes where they would farm a great portion of their food. As for the colonizing

Native American tribes have effectively governed themselves for hundreds of years. Native Americans have even developed many different systems of nurturing and teaching their youth. Today, many tribes that are located in the United States are reviving their cultures and even their traditions. Every single tribe has its own unique rich culture. Whether the tribe is founded in language or ceremony, it strengthens America as a nation today. Although it was not always like this, there have been many obstacles in the way. At one point federal laws and policies had completely prohibited tribes from practicing any of their religions and any of their ceremonies. It was unfair, “Tribes lacked control of their own ceremonial items and even their human remains until the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act required federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding to return Native American "cultural items" to their descendants and tribes” (“Native Americans Destroying”). That law was not completely repealed until the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Which was then later amended to protect the Native American Church’s ceremonial use.

According to the article “Native American Cultures,” the history of the Native Americans began approximately 12,000 years ago with the migration of Asian nomads over a large land bridge. The article then explains how these nomads would splinter across the North American continent, creating no fewer than ten identifiable cultural areas. As each area became more established, tribes began to develop traits such as how food was obtained. Many tribes continued to be nomadic, just as their ancestors were, depending on how harsh their environment was. The article also shares how unfortunately for all of these Native American tribes, a prevailing theme was that the introduction of Europeans and their diseases proved to be a foe too powerful to overcome. I agree with the article in all three of the following themes: tribes varied on how they obtained food, whether a tribe became settled or nomadic was dependent upon their environment, and all Native American tribes were affected by European settlers in some negative way.

On Wednesday, April 4th, Dr. Adrienne Keene presented Native Appropriations, Indigenous Social Media, and Responding to Racism in Graff Main Hall. As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and an Assistant Professor of American and Ethnic Studies at Brown University, Dr. Keene is well established as an authority to speak on this subject.

During my visit to the National Museum of American Indian I witnessed a large amount of historical items used in traditional American Indian life. The first items presented were replicas of a variety of different canoes essential to American Indian daily life including the native Hawaiian Canoe and Central Artic Kayak. I also saw a large variety of traditional clothing which was displayed with vivid colors and intricate designs that are handed down from generation to generation. In addition a vivid and unique display of American Indian hats were also presented along with a very large detailed tunic made of alpaca or vicuna wools that only exalted members of Inca society could wear. Different utensils used by the American Indians were also