American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The topic of cultural lifestyles of immigrant populations in the United States has received considerable attention over a span of many years. Most of this attention has focused on examining and describing the ways foreign-born populations immerse themselves into mainstream US culture. Examinations of cultural lifestyles based on immersion in one culture only can be labeled monocultural. Various researchers have proposed that monocultural methods are ineffective because of their inability to measure the extent to which individuals also immerse themselves in their native heritage. For example, with respect to the Mexican-American population, a monocultural approach cannot distinguish between individuals who immerse exclusively into the mainstream US culture and those who immerse equally and extensively into both Mexican and mainstream US communities. Theoretical and empirical examinations of cultural lifestyles of immigrant populations based on levels of immersion into two cultures—an alternate non-native community as well as a native heritage—can be labeled bicultural. Within the American Indian community, monocultural and bicultural methods may be ineffective in assessing accurately the complex cultural experiences and lifestyle practices of many American Indians. Specifically, unlike many foreign-born populations that may have primary contact with their Native heritage and/or mainstream US culture, American Indians, as a community, have a long-standing history of extensive contact with many non-Indian ethnic and cultural groups, not just mainstream Anglo-American culture. As a result, it is estimated that over 50 percent of American Indians are of mixed Indian and non-Indian ethnic heritage. This exposure and amalgamation of multiple cultural groups renders typical monocultural and bicultural methods ineffective in assessing the many varieties of beliefs and practices that may manifest within the American Indian community. This study represents a preliminary effort to evaluate the utility of an inventory designed to measure cultural beliefs and practices of American Indians with respect to five major groups in the United States: American Indian, Anglo-American, Latino, African-American, and Asian-American.

The experience of the Anishinaabe in the modern world contains a great amount of variety, from those who are fluent in their language and culture to those who, in the aftermath of the boarding school experience and similar assaults on Native cultures, are “in recovery.” I belong to the latter group. My mother attended boarding schools during the 1930s and 1940s, and “relocated” to Minneapolis in the early 1950s. After moving to a small town in central Minnesota with my father, she raised nine children. Being the only children of Indian descent in school, there were times when our Indian identity was painfully obvious. Yet, as a whole, the exact contours of Anishinaabe culture remained elusive to us simply because our mother was not in a position to provide much information, and there was not an Indian community in town to support us. Much of my adult life, then, has involved a process of recovering my Anishinaabe identity, although I will be the first to admit I have a long way to go in that regard. One part of the search led me to Thomas Shingobe, a respected spiritual leader of the Anishinaabe community in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the 1970s. As part of our conversations, Shingobe would often mention the “Proper Conduct of Life,” although he never explained the term, and I never asked. It was not until years after he died that I realized he was trying to convey something of importance to me. It was with renewed conviction, then, that I set about to understand what I believe Shingobe was talking about: bimaadiziwin, or the “good life,” as defined by the Anishinaabe. The following are my preliminary thoughts on the subject as I continue to pursue the good life of the Anishinaabe. The moral structure of traditional Anishinaabe religion as encapsulated by the term bimaadiziwin is at least one unifying concept providing continuity in the worldview of the Anishinaabe from the past into the modern era. Bimaadiziwin, or the Good Life, can basically be described as a long and healthy life, and was the life goal for the old Anishinaabe.

This ethnohistoric case study examines the comparative philosophies of technology and the concomitant consequences for nature of two contrasting societies inhabiting the southern Puget Sound basin in Washington State: the Southern Coast Salish and the contemporary urban-industrial society. Figure 1 maps a few contemporary cities, Southern Coast Salish traditional tribal locations and language boundaries, and contemporary reservations. This case study should also be interpreted in the context of the discussion focused on ecological issues in American Indian and Alaska Native history. We argue that a striking contrast exists between the metaphysical and ethical systems (with respect to technology and the environment) of the aboriginal peoples of the southern Puget Sound basin and those who immigrated to the region following European contact in 1792. Concomitantly, the aboriginal inhabitants constructed a cultural form that maintained a relatively stable ecosystem for thousands of years prior to contact with Western influences. Outsiders, representing for the most part the outward push of several colonial powers, managed to deteriorate significantly the same ecosystem and harm the aboriginal inhabitants in less than two hundred years. Indeed, the most destructive phase of this rapid ecological and cultural transition occurred over the last 130 years following American settlement in the mid 1800s, the creation of Washington Territory in 1853, and the importation of the industrial revolution in the late 1800s.

The implications of the Civil War divided the nation and created loyalties along social, geographic, racial, and gender lines. Endemic to the divisions were barriers superimposed on the society with resulting restrictions, demands, and tensions. Tomes have been written about the battles and of the calculated maneuvers carried out by the generals and their campaigns, successful and unsuccessful. The stresses of the war resonated in each household. Many lives were transformed and heroes stepped out of the chaos and onto the pages of history, altering the lives of millions. Despite the plethora of Civil War literature, one group remains overlooked and omitted in the annals of war: women. Feminine acts of heroism and selfless patriotism have been recorded in various forms; many written by the participants whose firsthand accounts of their experiences relate excitement, danger, and unthinkable heroism. For the vast majority of the women, however, life was a monotonous continuum of deprivation, fear, and loneliness and their daily activities were carried out in the sphere of illiteracy and poverty. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, along with the dangers of war, a relatively small group of semi- and well-educated women recorded their memories. Their writings exist today and comprise a small collection of diaries, letters, memoirs, and a few novels. Unsung, but not unnamed, the writers shed light on their every day occurrences, fears, and expectations. Katherine M. Jones compiled over one-hundred written accounts by southern women in The Heroines of Dixie: Confederate Women Tell Their Story of the War. Each entry offers the reader an intimate glimpse into the life of individual women who lived in a land invaded and occupied by federal troops. The authors did not think of themselves as

Capable of simultaneously recalling past usage and responding to the present in new ways, culturally established genres serve as primary vehicles for shaping and carrying social experience from one generation to another. The Western genre encapsulates the myth of the frontier, which is at the core of American ideology. This myth and notions of American nationhood are premised on the belief that land- starved Europeans “discovered” an uninhabited wilderness, which they quickly pioneered and to which they had a God-given duty to bring civilization. As Richard Slotkin points out, “the conquest of the wilderness and the subjugation or displacement of the Native Americans who originally inhabited it have been the means to our achievement of a national identity, a democratic polity, an ever-expanding economy, and a phenomenally dynamic and ‘progressive’ civilization.” Western movies, which are often considered American cinema par excellence, usually involve stories about the history of the American West. This genre in all its permutations has, however, resonated with millions in countries around the world. “[T]his universal popularity is due not to global interest in American history, but rather to the fact that Westerns carry elements that evoke emotions and reflections from other local perspectives as well.”

On December 1, 2000, Democratic challenger Maria Cantwell, a former Representative and Internet entrepreneur, was finally able to declare victory over incumbent Republican Slade Gorton in a closely fought Washington Senate race. The contest came down to just over a two-thousand-vote difference out of nearly two-and-a-half million ballots. Though an array of factors contributed to this outcome, it would be difficult to overlook the role played by American Indian interests. Gorton, a staple of Washington politics for over four decades, gained notoriety early on for opposing tribal fishing rights and eventually came to be labeled an “‘Indian fighter’” and “the champion for the anti-Indian effort.” Gorton’s opposition to tribal sovereignty and efforts to reduce funding for Indian programs angered Indians from across the political spectrum. Such a reputation led American Indians and their allies to donate over $1 million to The First American Education Project in an effort to unseat the three-term senator. This financial contribution, likely coupled with the votes of many of the approximately 94,000 American Indians in Washington, helped produce a narrow victory, not only for Cantwell but for American Indians throughout the country. In this particular case, Indian interests paralleled those of the Democratic Party, but was this a coincidence or part of a larger pattern? In an effort to explore the relationship between American Indian interests and political parties in greater depth, this article examines the role that major party platforms have played in addressing American Indian concerns over the past half century. The following investigation compares Democratic and Republican party platforms from 1948 to 2000 to identify consistency and change in party rhetoric over time. This investigation confirms that both parties have made efforts to define policy positions that show support for American Indian interests, but the breadth and intensity of party commitment has ebbed and flowed over time and the parties have emphasized different, though not always contradictory, policy objectives.

In “Robert L. Berner’s ‘Howlers’: A Reply” (in American Indian Culture and Research Journal 25:1) Bruce E. Johansen and Donald A. Grinde Jr., responding to my commentary in the same issue on their long campaign to claim for the Iroqouis League a significant influence on the writing of the United States Constitution, have written this sentence: “When Berner asserts that ‘No founding father knew what the Iroquois structure was,’ he commits a rather astounding ‘howler’ by writing out of the record Benjamin Franklin, who was probably the most influential founder of them all.” As any reader of my commentary should notice, I assumed that in Exemplar of Liberty (1991) Johansen and Grinde claimed John Adams as a Founding Father significant in the introduction of Iroquois elements into the Constitution. Not so, we now learn. Adams “did not endorse the Iroquois system of government.” On the other hand, because he knew about the Iroquois white-dog sacrifice his reference to fifty Greek families in his discussion of the ancient society of Argos “must apply to the Iroquois, not to the Greeks.” I can only refer those who might be mystified by this argument—or, as Johansen and Grinde put it, “[miss] many of the nuances of our presentation” —to my quotation of the pertinent passage from Adams in my commentary, reinforced by my endnote citation of its source.