American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The Tlingits' changing perception of the composition of the family has altered the role of the clan in Tlingli society, thereby necessitating many changes in their adoption practices. The majority of contemporary Tlingits would find it neither feasible nor desirable to revitalize the traditional clan system for adoption; however, they would find those aspects of the clan system which strengthen ties of commitment between relatives, worthy of incorporation into their lives. The traditional clan system for adoption benefited both the children and their clans. As the welfare of the individual and the clan was mutually intertwined, the clan invested in its future well-being, socially and economically, by ensuring that parentless children remained in the clan. The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) grants contemporary Tlingits the right to intervene in state court proceedings, and allows tribes to establish their own courts. Native youth involuntarily separated from their parents by court order thus have a greater likelihood of remaining in the native community, and preferably are placed with extended family relatives. Like the clan system tor adoption, the implementation of ICWA has the potential of being beneficial for all Tlingit youth as well as the tribe itself. This study identifies obstacles the Tlingit community must overcome in order to utilize best the authority allowed them under ICWA.

Native American religious traditions are rich in aesthetics and symbolism. Each tribal group has its own cultural pattern, language, and way of life, which generate the cosmological core of its unique belief system. The development of these elaborate traditions can only be examined properly within their own social, religious, and historical contexts. Several obstacles interfere with the objective study of American Indian religions, however. The major factor is the persistent lack of understanding between the majority of the American nation and Native Americans. Because of their long history of oppression and forced assimilation, Native Americans are protective of their sacred traditions and spiritual knowledge. Most non-Indians have as yet failed to comprehend the full impact of conquest on Native Americans, whose lives were forcibly transformed by systematic efforts to replace their cultures and religious beliefs with various forms of Christianity and Euro-American political structures. Today, however, many non-Indians are interested in learning about Native Americans in the hope of better understanding their own history, environment, and spirituality. Since the mid-1960s, in many universities Native American students have demanded courses in Native American studies that would help them comprehend the historical, political, environmental, and religious issues which confront them in the modern world. Students today face the metaphysical and epistemological questions relative to American Indians with a sense of wonder that is coupled with frustration. Both Indian and non-Indian students alike are often confounded by their own feelings about the historical injustices rendered to native populations.

Excursions in Siouan Sociology David Reed Miller Two Crows Denies It: A History of Controversy in Omaha Sociology. By R. H. Barnes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. 272 pp. $24.95 Cloth. The categorization of the social organization of unilineal societies is often indicated by tribal typifications representing "Omaha" for patrilineal descent, or "Crow" for the opposite principle in societies with matrilineal descent. R. H. Barnes offers his historical interpretations of the scholarship about Omaha-like peoples and contrasts the extant descriptions with theoretical insights generated from the ethnological studies of the Omaha people. Because there has been so much discussion throughout the rise of the discipline of anthropology about unilineal societies, the debate about the functions and nature of patrilineal descent has resulted in many subsequent interpretations of Omaha ethnography. Barnes attempts to write a history of specifically Omaha sociology and the developing sociologies of knowledge. Trained as a social anthropologist, Barnes takes a particularly critical stance, advocating an almost Boasian historical particularist view of Omaha society. He suggests throughout this work that the generally accepted ethnological representation of "Omaha" as a term for societies encompassing patrilineal descent groups is more atypical than typical, and simply no longer warranted in anthropological parlance. Barnes comes to this discussion with a background in the analysis of unilineal societies in other cultural areas. In the opening paragraphs to an article that he wrote in 1976, Barnes notes Claude Levi-Strauss's call in The Savage Mind (1966) for an understanding of the regulatory prohibitions operating in Crow-Omaha kinship and his suggestion that, once these elementary or intermediate forms are better understood, progress could be made in answering questions about more complex societies. Accepting this intellectual call to arms, Barnes has focused his interest upon unilineal societies in North America, particularly on the Plains-an extension of his work in Indonesia investigating the descent systems of the Kedang.