Native American Expressive Culture: Vision, Identity, and Tradition

Introduction: Forced Assimilation and Cultural Revival

The Native American tradition can be seen as an evolving cultural tradition that encompasses countless expressions of creativity from many varied cultures. Native American cultural expression has been, at various times, subverted and reformed. During the 19th century and into the 20th century there was a large movement to force the assimilation of Native Americans into white, English-speaking culture (Scheckel).

The circumstances of this change were developed through a series of boarding schools, where children were taken from their homes and subjected to English-only learning environments, where they were barred from speaking their native languages and largely prevented from participating in Native American cultural expressions (Allison and Vining 193; Spack 120). This period had two — and possibly more — effects on the culture. First, an entire generation of Native American children was exposed to white society and forced to assimilate. Second, their elders at home, as well as the children themselves, became the subjects of a kind of cultural martyrdom that created within them the desire to rebuild and relearn the ways of their ancestors. This backlash to forced assimilation demonstrates the historical precedent for the revival and re-conceptualization of Native American culture across the many of the 500 sovereign nations that constitute the rich Native American landscape of the United States (Einhorn 6).

Holding on to old ways and old stories of heritage was exceedingly difficult during the period of forced assimilation, and many would argue that much tradition and culture was lost. From the late 19th century forward, Indians have been to some degree at the mercy of the dominant culture and have had to become dichotomous individuals, expressing cultural creativity in various ways while also attempting to build a new sense of self, culturally (Scheckel).

Some Indian nations retained their oral traditions and handed down the seeds of this information to later generations through traditional forms, while others lost much and had to regain such information through arduous searching and development. What has evolved is a Native American tradition expressed in many varied ways: horizontally, in the traditional folkloric style; vertically, in the form of print materials and even films; and through a conglomeration of mediated horizontal creative outlets utilizing global digital communication — that is, the internet. Against significant odds, the many nations have developed a manner of transmitting culture through any or all of these means, and through individual and group creativity. The thematic recurrence of individual and collective "vision" will be explored throughout this work, as it recurs continually in the Native American tradition of creativity and across media of expression (Einhorn 6).

Individual Indians seek to define who they are through culture in varied ways, and are frequently challenged by distance. The revival of culture is centered around reservation life. Reservation schools attempt to transmit the traditions of the past along with language through bilingual systems or submersion programs, and yet many Native Americans live far from home and family as a result of the pressures of modernization and the fact that economic and higher education opportunities are limited on many reservations. For many Indians it is a challenge to meet the goals of a highly connected social network of family and nation, as distance creates change that challenges their ability to meld their historical culture with the white culture they frequently live within. Yet individual definitions of self are strongly associated with family and cultural connections and traditions. It is for this reason that Native American creativity is expressed in novel ways through many avenues and media, and also why individual and collective vision becomes a constant recurring theme in many of these interpretations.

Works Cited

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