American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The carriers of cultural tradition have been the unsung heroes and heroines of Native American history. Seldom in the historical spotlight, these ordinary community members somehow managed to pass cultural traditions to the next generation, despite the political and cultural oppression surrounding their lives. We rarely read about their extraordinary accomplishments, and we know little about their motivation except that they were powerfully moved by their cultural experience to keep what they could of it alive. What survives of native heritage we owe to them-the "cultural sovereignty activists"-who believed that the death of the culture also meant the death of the people. Without their efforts, much of what is happening today to preserve and develop native culture and win respect for and protection of native cultural rights and resources would not be possible. In the past, United States policies with respect to Indian cultural rights and resources reflected the interests and assumptions of the larger society. These policies fluctuated between deliberate attempts to destroy Indian culture and efforts to use Indian language and culture as a foundation for eventual assimilation into American life. Accepting the widespread belief in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that Indian culture was destined to disappear from the American scene, museum professionals, academics, government officials, and many Americans assumed that Indians possessed few, if any, cultural rights that needed to be recognized or respected. Similarly, Indian cultural resources were viewed as part of the public domain, for scientific study and educational purposes. As a result, collections of Indian human remains, funerary objects, sacred materials, and other cultural items came into the possession of cultural, educational, and governmental institutions, often without the knowledge or consent of native communities. However much these practices resulted in the preservation of Indian culture that might otherwise have been lost, another reality intervened-that Indian cultures changed over time rather than disappearing, and Indian tribes survived into the present century as legal and political entities with a legitimate interest in native cultural rights and resources.