Most Native Americans would demonstrate exceptional tolerance to other religions but their own religious beliefs are based on nature.
Even though years of assimilation had initially damaged the cultural roots of Native Americans, there is now a new kind of cultural and social change that we notice in this group. People are working hard to reclaim their cultural identity, which has triggered a gradual process of cultural renewal. This cultural renewal is grounded in the belief that white culture is no longer better or dominant. In other words as new generation of Native Americans have gained the language skills they required to become part of the mainstream culture, they have also found the ability to express their dissatisfaction with the way dominant culture tries to suppress minor ethnic societies. Heaps of literature by Native Americans has opened their eyes to the injustices committed by the white culture and this has sparked renewed interest in their own cultural identities.
Their new sense of community comes from their newly discovered ability to mock the dominant culture. According to Sigmund Freud, mocking is a way of directing aggressiveness toward: "institutions, people in their capacity as vehicles of institutions, dogmas of morality or religion, views of life which enjoy so much respect that objections to them can only be made under the mask of a joke and indeed of a joke concealed by its facade" (Freud 1960: 107, 108-109). By mocking the white culture, they are actually showing their disappointment with 'Whiteman's attitude and policies. Keith Basso offers further explanation of the role of the whiteman in Native American worldview when he says that: "in all Indian cultures 'the Whiteman' serves as a conspicuous vehicle for conceptions that define and characterize what 'the Indian' is not... [and] constitute what Clyde Kluckhohn once described as 'cultural portraits of ourselves'" (1979, 5).
With new sense of their identities, conservatism is restored by means of traditions. For example the tradition of story telling has now found a keen audience in younger generation of Native Americans....
Ojibwe writer Gerald Vizenor explains: "Momaday was talking about Indians, about Native American Indians, that the worst that can befall us is to go unimagined. And today, we are talking about the imagination of tribal stories, and the power of tribal stories to heal. Stories that enlighten and relieve and relive. Stories that create as they're being told. And stories that overturn the burdens of our human existence" (1993: 68).
The Native American worldview is still the same. It offers a deep connection with the earth and nature. The conservatism that originates from believing in old traditions is now being preserved by the younger generation's interest in their own culture. For decades, Native American culture suffered at the hands of the white dominant culture but assimilation has only paved way for better expression and more confidence among the youth. They have the intellectual capacity along with power of language to voice their opinion and to save their dying culture.
References
Basso, Keith H. 1979. Portraits of "the Whiteman": Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Freud, Sigmund. 1960. Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. Trans. James Strachey. New York W.W. Norton & Company.
Jaimes, M. Annette. ANative American Identity and Survival: Indigenism and Environmental Ethics in Issues in Native American Cultural Identity, ed. Michael K. Green. New York: Peter Lang, 1995: 273-296.
Nelson, Robert M. APlace, Vision, and Identity in Native American Literatures, in American Indian Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Contemporary Issues. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1997: 265-284.
Rick Hill. Sacred Trust: Cultural Obligation of Museums to Native People, Museum, Volume VI No. 3-1988.
Vizenor, Gerald. ed. Summer in the Spring: Anishinaabe Lyric Poems and Stories. New Edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993…
