He describes that Native American population as having incredible adaptability and perseverance (Edmunds, p. 728). I fear that this conclusion is an attempt at trying to avoid sounding disparaging about a minority group that ignores some of the harsher realties of modern life for the vast majority of Native Americans in the modern United States.
Yes, his conclusion that the numbers of Native Americans in the United States have increased dramatically from their all-time low is true. However, judging the robustness of a civilization based only on its population numbers seems to be a very reductionist approach. Moreover, it lumps Native American populations together in a way that seems inaccurate. Modern Native American populations are "in all stages of development, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated. In the United States, they still speak more than 100 different languages" (American Indian Council). Moreover, the reality is that many of these different populations are in such distressed conditions that it would be irresponsible to suggest that they are somehow prospering in any way. While some Native Americans are doing well, "many thousands live at near-starvation levels. Some are educated and completely assimilated in white society; many live in nearly complete isolation from non-Indian-Americans. Relocation programs have taken hundreds of Indians to work in cities; thousands of others cling to the security of their reservations, hoping to gain education and assistance necessary to develop the resources of their lands and become self-sustaining"...
Moreover, since Native Americans have been self-determining populations since 1975, these results simply do not support the idea of a resilient community as described by Edmunds (Oberg, p.324). My concern with this optimistic description of Native American populations is that it is a way to minimize damage to Native American populations and may actually work against them ever getting the necessary resilience to ever thrive again.
In summary, there are points in Edmunds article that are undoubtedly true. His descriptions of the historical treatment of Native Americans by predominantly non-Native scholars are very accurate, and there does not seem to be any obvious errors in his conclusions about what this scholarly treatment of Native Americans implied about the surrounding social conditions of those time periods. However, I must fundamentally disagree with his conclusion about the resilience of Native Americans, insofar as that refers to a broader social group and culture. Some cultures have shown almost no resilience and the overall condition of Native Americans in modern America is still distressed.
Works Cited
American Indians Cultural Network. "American Indians Today." American Indians Cultural
Network. N.p. 2000. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.
Edmunds, R. David. "Native Americans, New Voices: American Indian History, 1895-1995."
American Historical Review (June 1995): 717-740.
Oberg, Michael Leroy. Native America: A History. Malden, MA: John Wiley and Sons, 2010.
