American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Many immigrant groups in the United States celebrated a quincentennial of the "discovery" of a New World in 1992. However, most of the 1.5 million native peoples in the United States who live in isolated reservation areas or the 50 percent of the native population who live in urban areas are rejoicing in their survival. Their cultural survival against centuries of genocide, legal restrictions on religion and language, and superimposed systems of law that were meant to completely obliterate native law-ways and customary systems of marriage and kinship, and, more devastatingly, demolish belief systems that were considered "pagan" is indeed remarkable. This pattern of conquest and domination exists in many areas of colonization by European powers. At present, it is agreed that there are approximately 325 distinct tribal groups in the United States. Their viability in cultural lifestyles and linguistic persistence lends credence to adaptiveness and tenacity. This contradicts the common view of policy-makers and religious practitioners that American Indians would inevitability join a mythical "melting pot." American Indians of all tribes have been the focus of administered human relations since the beginning of contact with a dominant and domineering governmental system that prevails to the present day. American Indians and Alaska Natives (not Native Americans!) have a comprehensive system of laws, federal statutes, and rules stipulated by Congress that distinguishes them from other so-called minority peoples. Thus they have a constant need for lobbyists and self help associations to carefully monitor every session of Congress to apprise them of and, in some cases, circumvent legal actions that would erode the special status of tribes as ”domestic nations” and abrogate treaties on which tribal sovereignty is based. The need for eternal vigilance as each session of Congress convenes has established watchdog groups such as the National Congress of American Indians (founded in 1944) and the politically astute Native American Rights Fund, which is composed of indigenous lawyers of both genders. Besides these pan-tribal organizations, many tribal governments maintain offices in Washington, D.C. to monitor legislation and inform their tribal constituencies.