Changes among American Indians - Term Paper Example

Changes among American Indians: adaptation, revitalization, resistance and change The main objective of this paper is to analyze the concept of adaptation, revitalization, resistance and change and how they affect the Indian American in the course of time. Adaptation: Generally, adaptation is keenly associated with the development of the society as well as for mankind. Over the course of time it is very important for the people of every society to get adopted with the changes in the society which are taking place in a regular basis. Indian American are the native habitat of America but slowly as the development started to take place in all aspects of the society, be it social structure, or political or economic adaptation become a key for their survival. One of the key aspects associated with the adaptation of the American Indians is coping with changing economy as well as life style and climate changes. For various American Tribes and other indigenous group, the key point is coping with changing environment conditions. The main objective of all various forms tribal American Indian leaders is “to encounter the contest head-on, probing for plans to manage rising seas, melting ice and unstable populations of plants, animals and fish. Another key fact associated with their adaptation process is tackling changing social and economic culture. The job patter and living style is changing constantly in the USA. The people of America, especially American Indian are facing challenges associated with “With better health and longevity, lower birth rates, and the ageing of baby boomers, the world is seeing a major change in demographic trends. The process of adaptation can be more elaborately discuss in light of Abbott (1999) article- Alcohol and the Anishinaabeg of Minnesota in the Early Twentieth Century. The article discuss about the changing pattern of the drinking style of the Indian American in the country from Nineteenth century till date. In the seventeenth century, well before the discovery of alcohol pathology, Indian American was passionately attached to drinking. In the Nineteenth century the pattern changed slightly as they get addicted to strong drinks rather than regular and large volume of drinking (Abbott, 1999, pp. 25-26).In the earlier stage the trade of Alcohol was carried out against food and other important staff which slowly started to change. Slowly the pattern started to change as the American Indian started to use this as a gift in occasion and often resemble the same with the mother milk. In the areas such as Anishinaabe, drinking was a major incident among the people but soon they forced the pattern that they used to follow. There was a distinct difference in the pattern of drinking of the people in that area, those who used to live near the border or trading area get better access and those who stayed interior has lesser access. People in the inner side often used alcohol as a ritual drink also. Not only alcohol, there is a great difference in tobacco consumption as well among two groups of people (Abbott, 1999, pp. 28-29). From 1820-1867, a large number of initiatives were taken by the administration to force the people of Anishinaabe to change their lifestyle and adopt the life style of white Americans. US government in later stages, from 1900 to 1917 passed various legislation to ensure that people of Anishinaabe could not consume alcohol and live a better life. This is a drastic change for the people of Anishinaabe who required more time to get adapted to this situation. When they were forced to live in the city area, their life style get better and they able to meet new people, find better way of living life, get more education opportunities and at the same time able to develop better thoughts which reduce their over dependency on alcohol and tobacco related products. (Abbott, 1999, pp.32) This article gives a clear idea about how the adaptation helped the people specially the American Indian to get along with the people of the developed society. Resistance: They second key factors associated with the development and changes among the people of American Indian, especially their life style in the changing society is the power of resistance among the American Indians against the continuously changing social as well as economic conditions. Over the course of time, the style of living, level of importance, economic social and political significance of the American Indian started to change considerably. At the beginning, they were the majority but slowly they started to lose their importance in the history and economy of the country. It is a proven fact that the native peoples of the Americas have been fighting Euro-American domination for over 500 years and the protest in the past few decades have been particularly interesting. Some of the most prominent and common ways by which Native American raise their voices are Protests, blockades, and standoffs. In order to establish their rights, the Native Americans specially the American Indians had involved in number of movements such as AIM or American Indian Movement, Wounded Knee standoffs and in modern times armed movement. Among all these movements most talked upon and significant one was the AIM which played a major role in establishing the rights of the American Indians in the 20th century. In November 1969, a handful of Indians from 20 tribal groups took control of the island of Alcatraz after the prison had been shut down; this situation in Alcatraz lasted 18 months and considered as a great example for the future of modern American resistance. In the end, the inhabitants demanded things like ‘self-determination’ and ‘equal rights’, but US federal government was not in a condition to accept the same. In his article, Kotlowski (2003) also discussed upon the role played by Nixon and Ford, two US presidents against the Native American’s protest. In this writing he critically discussed about the point of view of both the Presidents against such rebellion activities and how they able to tackle those. If one analyzes the steps taken by both of the President then it is very clear that both of them were keen on developing a policy well designed and tragically placed to protect the unity and at the same time helped to ensure developments of the natives. The policies applied by Nixon were dramatic as all those steps were taken taking into consideration the tribal rights of the Native Americans. But they never accepted the role or the existence of various kind of Indian American tribal groups and simultaneously defused various heated protest of them .(202)During the first phase of Nixon’s administration, the American Indians were keen on establishing their self-determination- which was associated with various factors. For tribal it was mainly associated with ending of termination process and at the same time great control over the BIA program. The main thought process of the NCAI (National congress of American Indian) was to protest against the policy of termination and assimilation and keeping the special status for the tribal and other native groups. Another key resistance movement was initiated in 1968, known as Red Power by the African Americans, who to establish their status started protesting against government movements. The process advocated distrusting of the federal officials and at the same time development of new tribal leaders to establish their own rights. (Kotlowski , 2003, 203-205) Wounded Knee was another key resistance movement initiated by the Indian American in the last part of the 18th century. Under this movement, flying the US flag upside down, the AIM associates not only showed their loyalty to the United States, but at the same time, they had also demonstrated their firmness towards the fact that, in their opinion, the country was in a state of emergency. The main objective of this group was the same civil rights that every American citizen was enjoying. The wanted to establish a common fact and that was if the Native Americans were going to be forced by the US government to contribute in the US justice system, then at the same time they must have an equal justice system under law. When the US authority refused to accept this fact, the Native Americans were forced to take up guns and involved in a gun battle with the US authority. It is matter of great shame that, although the process was initiated as a peaceful one, the same was turned into a 71 days armed stand-off between AIM members and US Marshals (Kotlowski, 2003, pp. 211-213). The scenario slowly started to change under Ford’s tenure of power. Although He was far less interested in these matters and the main reason was the protest never reached such bloody height again. Although he was less concerned about various, but still some of his works were in tract to keep the resistance calm and non-violent. One of the key parts was to pass legislation which was in favor of increasing the rights of Indian Americans. (Kotlowski, 2003, p. 216) At present the fight is still going on but in a more diplomatic and nonviolent way where the Indian American are trying to put forward their thoughts by means of parliament process and other activities. Change: Change is associated with every civilization, every country. In the beginning the status or the state of world civilization was not like the present time. People in different parts of the globe were remains unnoticed. Soon after the European started to discover number of new countries the scenario started to change. The native people of various locations for a long period of time used to enjoy great freedom but the scenario soon started to change. The impact of the American Revolution in the nation’s history is without a doubt a significant one. However, the contribution of all parties remains to be explored. The participation of the Indians has garnered more attention than the effect of the war on their domestic lives. The story of the Indians within the context of the revolution is relegated to one sentence which states that they have supported the wrong side and so were defeated. The Native Americans used to have completely different ideology about their life style; their policies as well as processes associated with the development of economy, politics and social structure were completely different. As soon as the process started to change, the American Indians also started to feel the heat. For the American Indian tribe, there are 4 different factors associated with the process to get them federal recognition. These 4 factors are: The ability of all the Indian American tribes as well as their members to meet the requirement of developing a particular society or a standard society and at the same they must meet the standard image of an Indian; The degree of cohesiveness of all the tribe members of any particular tribes; how well the common people accept the legitimacy of the tribe member and how they targeted towards population and finally efforts given by the tribal community to gain their recognition effort. (McCulloch & Wilkins, 1995, pp. 368-369) All these factors often plays an important role in helping the Indian American tribal to achieve the tag of community or group in modern America. The most common example of using all the above mentioned factors to gain the status of a community was Catawba and Lumbee. The Catawba tribes have more than 300 years of social relationship with the people of USA (American Indians). As the time moves on they started to sign various agreements with the US government which helped them to gain the status of legitimate Indian American tribes. Whereas, the people of Lumbees did not sign any such kind of government treaties or agreement with the colonial , states or the federal powers which in long run could have helped them to gain the status of a registered tribes (McCulloch & Wilkins, 1995, pp. 380-381). Another key point helping the Catawba to gain social recognition was the social cohesiveness among the members of that group. There were three key points against these cohesiveness; one was “outsiders accord the tribe legitimacy” (McCulloch & Wilkins, 1995, pp. 381) second was keeping the nature or better to say keeping the uniqueness of the traditional style of the tribal group in terms of arts and culture and thirdly and most importantly maintaining the regional uniqueness. All these were the key behind the success that the Catawba group was achieved in terms of getting their official status from the federal government. (McCulloch & Wilkins, 1995, pp. 380-381) Revitalization Revitalization as a process is deeply associated with the changing process of civilization and also changing social structure. All over the globe, in every country, with the changes in the society, people have to undergo number of changes in their living style and behavior to incorporate changing culture and pattern of the modern society. In the past, mainly during 1960s and 1970s, there were number of cases in the USA, where women were sterilized without following proper process. The main acquisition was on the Indian Health Services to induce sterilization process of almost 25% of Native American Women between age group of 15 to 40 years. The main complaint was about misguiding the women about the sterilization process, not following proper method, seldom doing verification and most importantly taking consent in appropriate areas (400). To stop this misguidance as well as to make a systematic family planning process among the American Indians, USA government initiated various general awareness programs for the Indian American tribal women. As par the census report, the rate of child birth among tribal Indian women were 3.79 children, whereas the same rate for the other American was as low as 1.79. There were number of guidelines pass by the court of USA to protect the women of Indian American tribes in the USA and also to control the birth rate. While passing judgment of Schloendorff v Society of New York hospital case in 1914, the court stated that, every adult woman have the rights to decide what to be done with her bodies and doctors doing any kind of surgery without their permission is committing an assault which is punishable. (403) there were number of other cases also associated with the same topic which in long run forced the administrative department to change their stands as well as revised the guideline for the betterment of the Indian American women specially who belongs to tribal group. As per the new guidelines of 1974, based on a case on sterilization the government made it obligatory to sign a consent by the women who was willing to undergo the process. The consent involved declaration such as she knew the exact process, risk associated with it, any alternatives available for her to control the birth of the child, and an option by virtue of which she can withdraw her consent any time before the diagnosis started. (406). People of the USA as well as the US congress started to believe that this strict regulations were in line to protect the women, especially those who are from tribal Indian American group from the involuntary sterilization process. But there was number of incident, where Native American doctors started to figure it out that the IHS was not following the guideline. (406) While finding the reason behind this negligence, the committee figured it out that the HIS group was unable to convey the steps to be followed among their members and at the same time, they were not able to inform the pros and cons to the patients as well. Another key reason was the increasing number of Indian American and African American women to get involved in this. Economic and social changes were also the key fact behind this mismanagement among the HIS professionals. During 1974-197., majority of the doctors who were involved in these process used to believe that they were helping the society by reducing the birth rate among low income groups. (4099-410) to protect the same, in the year of 1976, US Congress passed Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which gave the power to the tribes to control the Indian health service Program in the USA. Native Indian American, African American as well as the Hispanics started to take over the operation of various HIS facilities and initiated their own health service to have a check on the birth rate as well as on the sterilization process. The number of unplanned as well as illegal sterilization in modern times reduced drastically compared to that of 1960s and 1970s among the Indian American and other tribal groups in the USA but the possibility of management failure or process failure is still there. . In modern times, the Department of Heath Education and Welfare does not audit the entire process, they just audit the data stored in the computer. It is important to keep a close look on the process also so that this revitalization process can be maintained properly and the women can get proper services from the HIS and also in terms of other health related issue. (Lawrence, 2000, 414-415) Reference 1. Abbott, K.A (1999) Alcohol and Anishinaabeg of Minnesota in the Early Twentieth Century. The Western Historical Quarterly. Vol. 30 No. 1; pp. 25-43. 2. Lawrence, J (2000) The Indian health Service and Sterilization of Native American Women. American Indian Quarterly. Vol. 24, No. 3; pp. 400-419. 3. Kotlowski, J.D. (2003) Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, and Beyond: The Nixon and Ford Administrations to Native American Protest. Pacific Historical review. Vol. 72, No. 2, pp. 201-227. 4. McCulloch, A.M & Wilkins, D.E (1995), Constructing Nations within States: The Quest for federal recognition by the Catawba and Lumbee Tribes. American Indian Quarterly. Vol. 19, No. 3; pp. 361-388 Read More