Will the Mesquaki Culture Survive?

¶ … Mesquaki culture will survive in spite of all the changes brought by the forces of modernization and global capitalism. Your answer should draw on specific examples or incidents reported in the Foley book (Heartland Chronicles). The best answers will also draw on concepts discussed in the Haines book (Cultural Anthropology: Adaptations Structures Meanings).

Will the Mesquaki culture survive? Douglas Foley's The Heartland Chronicles portrays the society of the Native American Mesquaki as in a state of profound social change, wrought by the influence of a number of new developments in the external economic environment of the tribe. The Native American tribe has garnered new power because of the wealth generated by a casino; there are also representatives of the Indian rights movement that have been agitating for recognition of tribal identity.

Tribal members are gaining some empowerment by virtue of this new business which is both enriching the tribe but which may be eroding many of their organic traditions. Foley suggests that ultimately, the Mesquaki tribe will survive despite the many years of white oppression they have faced but they have had to resort to creative adaptive economic, cultural, and political responses to do so that have fundamentally altered some of the cohesive values of the tribe.

The Iowa community in which the Mesquaki reside is torn apart by racial tensions between whites and natives. Members of the Indian tribe are becoming forcibly more integrated into white society because of the lack of available housing and job opportunities. Despite this, tribal members still have a sense of collective cultural awareness. They are extremely resistant to being subjected to the scrutiny of anthropologists such as himself, which they view as essentializing their culture.

The members of the Mesquaki tribe are richly immersed in the academic discourse as Foley notes of one member named Claude: "with great solemnity, he began drawing a diagram of Mesquaki culture -- the naming, ghost feasts, adoptions, mourning, and burial ceremonies. He wielded white anthropological discourse about the 'Mesquaki core ritual complex'" (Foley 6). However, Claude uses this to identify who he regards as an assimilationist or a traditionalist in the community, i.e. For his "very practical purposes" (Foley 6).

Even someone who is a traditionalist is affected by the outside discourses about 'Indianness.' The Mesquaki culture has clearly been profoundly affected by its interactions with white culture, as is typical of all native tribes. Many tribal members have adopted Christianity, no longer speak the tribal language, and live off of the reservation. There is a sense of common tribal identity but every succeeding generation has seen this identity grown more fragmented.

Even the purists and the traditionalists who try to define an essential core of the Mesquaki identity are themselves a kind of a splinter faction, rather than representatives of the core of the tribe. The unity of the tribe now comes through the common economic support provided by the gambling on the reservation rather than from a common sense of culture and identity that links generations.

The Mesquaki will likely survive in the future in the sense that the tribe will profit off of the casino and many tribal members will still remain on the reservation to live. But the culture will inevitably fragment and change, pulled in different directions from a number of competing forces. The first force is that of the outside white society which for many young Indians offers the attractions of escape from the reservation and in some instances greater opportunities for prosperity.

The second force is divisions within the Indian community between traditionalists and assimilationists and different economic interests related to the casino. And the third force comes paradoxically from academia itself, which, despite Foley's best intentions, has tended to view Indian culture as something as static, unchanging, and of the past -- attitudes that affect how the Indians perceive themselves as well as outsiders. Whites frequently do not regard the Mesquaki as 'real' Indians because they are less.