Interesting article in the new National Geographic about the state of “native” peoples in America (here’s a map which goes along with the article, giving info on native population around the U.S. plus percent of Indian owned businesses).
Here’s a quote that kinda summarizes the article:
If there is strength in numbers, then Indians are gaining might. The number of Americans who identify themselves as at least part Indian grew from a low of about 240,000 in 1900 to more than four million today (including the 2.5 million who claim American Indian or Alaska Native as their only race).
Showing that yes, we have reversed course in this country to a point where “Native” identity is something desirous. Or this from the person on the front of the article:
For Brad and many thousands of other Indians, Native identity is a growing source of strength that helps them cope with the mainstream America that flows all around them. Yet it can also be a source of turmoil. I speak from personal experience: Like many Native Americans today, my heritage is mixed. My mother was Abenaki, my father was Slovak, and it didn’t really dawn on me that I was Indian until I was in my teens. Even then, it took a long time for my own mother to accept that I was the first of my family in three generations to go “public,” to seek out relatives and elders who could teach me the stories and language my Abenaki grandfather never shared with me. For a while my mother referred to me as, “My son, the Indian,” until my younger sister Margaret asked, “But Mom, what does that make you and me?”
I know that many cynical people would see accepting Native identity as a way to get government benefits and privileges, but Natives in this country have a long history of actually being damaged by government “largesse” and many refuse. I see it more as a grasping, by these mixed persons, for something substantial in a society that is increasingly becoming homogenous which fears emphasizing any sort of Western Ethnic or Cultural values.
Just my thoughts.
Posted by scottm at 01:13 PM