Decentering of Culture in Native American Groups

Decentering of Culture in Native American Groups in the Later Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

While Westernization has created tremendous problems for a wide variety of indigenous cultural traditions, there is little question that the introduction of Westerners to the Americas resulted in some of the most massive destruction of an indigenous culture ever seen in history. The vast majority of this destruction occurred prior to the 19th century. When Europeans first came to the Americas, they decimated native populations with disease and violence. Later, Native Americans were forced off of their land. The infamous Trail of Tears in which many Native American groups were forced from their traditional lands and onto reservations occurred in the early 19th century. Therefore, by the end of the 19th century, it is fair to say that Native American culture had already been indelibly impacted by the Western expansion. However, it is important to note that Western expansion continued to impact the cultural identity of Native American groups. Moreover, rather than a recentering of culture, as one would imagine would occur in a reservation-system, there was a decentering of cultures, as Native Americans were expected to abandon their native traditions and assimilate to the white, Western world.

Beginning in the late 1850s, many whites began lobbying for the intentional Americanization of Native American tribes. While some Americanization, such as intermarriage had previously occurred due to contact between Native American groups and European-Americans, the general emphasis had been separation between Native Americans and Europeans. However, beginning in the 1850s, many European settlers began to question how Native Americas were being treated and sought to Americanize them. The goal was to teach Native Americans tenets of U.S. citizenship, English, "life skills" and Christianity. By 1871, many of these goals had been realized. On December 4, 1971, Ulysses Grant's state of the union address talked about the successful attempts to get Native Americans to accept civilization, along with the threat that failing to become Americanized would result in their extermination (Grant, 1871). This is a decentering, rather than a recentering, because, while Native Americans were expected to assimilate into white society, there were still several barriers to full participation in white society. For example, Native Americans were not considered American citizens and could not fully participate in the American society in which they were being pressured to assimilate.

Moreover, by 1900, "the Native American population in the United States had dwindled to approximately 250,000" (The Library of Congress, 2003). Therefore, Native Americans had in many ways been reduced to a novelty act for the amusement of white Americans. For example, the World's Fair featured several traditional performances by Native American groups, however, this interest in tradition contrasted with the actual treatment of Native Americans during that time (The Library of Congress, 2003). Although asked to perform for white groups, in daily life, Native Americans were being asked to give up traditional means. For example, the irony of asking a group to perform traditional dances when the context of those dances, like open hunts, was being denied to them, was such a complete stripping of culture that it could not be considered a recentering. Instead, by denying Native Americans the context for their culture and asking them to continue to act out that culture, white Americans were enacting such a mockery that it could not be said that Native American culture was being recentered. To suggest that a group of humans could have their culture recentered as a means of entertainment for the dominant cultural group ignores the damage that a culture experiences when it is considered little more than a mockery.

Another way that Western expansion impacted Native Americans was with the rise of Native American boarding schools throughout the United States. These boarding schools were designed to eradicate all evidence of Native American culture. Richard Pratt, the Army officer who founded the first of the boarding schools, stated that the goal was to kill the Indian in these young men in order to save the man. Obviously, this all-out war on culture has to be considered a decentering. First, these children were taken away from their families, which was an actual physical decentering. Second, these children were subjected to a huge amount of racist propaganda. Children were forbidden from wearing long hair, speaking Indian words, or using their American Indian names (Bear, 2008). The result was children who, because of their color, could not fit into white society, and, because they had been stripped of their Native American identity, could not fit into Native American society. It was not only the children that were targeted by these schools. The government actively sought to hold the children of hostile tribes and targeted the children of leadership, in effect, keeping these children hostage as a means of maintaining a surface tranquility with the tribes (Bear, 2008).