Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or assimilates the values,behaviors,and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially.
"Indian giver" is a pejorative expression used to describe a person who gives a "gift" and later wants it back or who expects something of equivalent worth in return for the item. It is based on cultural misunderstandings that took place between the early European colonists and the Indigenous people with whom they traded. Often,the Europeans viewed an exchange of items as gifts and believed that they owed nothing in return to the Indigenous people. On the other hand,the Indigenous people saw the exchange as a form of trade or equal exchange and so they had differing expectations of their guests.
Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be especially controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from minority cultures. According to critics of the practice,cultural appropriation differs from acculturation,assimilation,or equal cultural exchange in that this appropriation is a form of colonialism. When cultural elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture,and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context –sometimes even against the expressly stated wishes of members of the originating culture –the practice is often received negatively.
Native American studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that examines the history,culture,politics,issues,spirituality,sociology and contemporary experience of Native peoples in North America,or,taking a hemispheric approach,the Americas. Increasingly,debate has focused on the differences rather than the similarities between other Ethnic studies disciplines such as African American studies,Asian American Studies,and Latino/a Studies.
War bonnets are feathered headgear traditionally worn by male leaders of the American Plains Indians Nations who have earned a place of great respect in their tribe. Originally they were sometimes worn into battle,but they are now primarily used for ceremonial occasions. In the Native American and First Nations communities that traditionally have these items of regalia,they are seen as items of great spiritual and political importance,only to be worn by those who have earned the right and honour through formal recognition by their people.
LaDonna Vita Tabbytite Harris is a Comanche Native American social activist and politician from Oklahoma. She is the founder and president of Americans for Indian Opportunity. Harris was a vice presidential candidate for the Citizens Party in the 1980 United States presidential election alongside Barry Commoner. She was the first Native American woman to run for vice president. In 2018,she became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame.
Smudging,or other rites involving the burning of sacred herbs or resins,is a ceremony practiced by some Indigenous peoples of the Americas. While it bears some resemblance to other ceremonies and rituals involving smoke from other world cultures,notably those that use smoke for spiritual cleansing or blessing,the purposes and particulars of the ceremonies,and the substances used,can vary widely among tribes,bands,and nations,and even more so among different world cultures. In traditional communities,Elders maintain the protocols around these ceremonies and provide culturally specific guidance. The smudging ceremony,by various names,has been used by others outside of the Indigenous communities as part of New Age or commercial practices,which has also led to the over-harvesting of some of the plants used in ceremonies. Indigenous people in the US and Canada have argued against appropriation and over-harvesting of white sage.
In Navajo culture,a skin-walker is a type of harmful witch who has the ability to turn into,possess,or disguise themselves as an animal. The term is never used for healers.
Since the 1960s,the issue of Native American and First Nations names and images being used by sports teams as mascots has been the subject of increasing public controversy in the United States and Canada. This has been a period of rising Indigenous civil rights movements,and Native Americans and their supporters object to the use of images and names in a manner and context they consider derogatory. They have conducted numerous protests and tried to educate the public on this issue.
In Australia,Canada,New Zealand and the United States the term treaty rights specifically refers to rights for indigenous peoples enumerated in treaties with settler societies that arose from European colonization.
Two-spirit is a contemporary pan-Indian umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a traditional third-gender social role in their communities.
Native Appropriations is a blog that critically discusses the ways that Indigenous people are depicted in mainstream,Euro-American dominated,culture. Active since 2010,the website is created and maintained by Cherokee Nation scholar Adrienne Keene.
Redface is the wearing of makeup to darken or redden skin tone,or feathers,warpaint,etc. by non-Natives to impersonate a Native American or Indigenous Canadian person,or to in some other way perpetuate stereotypes of Indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States. It is analogous to the wearing of Blackface. In the early twentieth century,it was often white performers,who wore blackface or redface when portraying Plains Indians in Hollywood Westerns. In the early days of television sitcoms,"non-Native sitcom characters donned headdresses,carried tomahawks,spoke broken English,played Squanto at Thanksgiving gatherings,received 'Indian' names,danced wildly,and exhibited other examples of representations of redface".
Matika Wilbur,is a Native American photographer and educator from Washington state. She is an enrolled citizen of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington and a descendant of the Swinomish people. She is best known for her photography project,Project 562.
Water protectors are activists,organizers,and cultural workers focused on the defense of the world's water and water systems. The water protector name,analysis and style of activism arose from Indigenous communities in North America during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at the Standing Rock Reservation,which began with an encampment on LaDonna Brave Bull Allard's land in April,2016.
Lenore Keeshig-Tobias is an Anishinabe storyteller,poet,scholar,and journalist and a major advocate for Indigenous writers in Canada. She is a member of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation. She was one of the central figures in the debates over cultural appropriation in Canadian literature in the 1990s. Along with Daniel David Moses and Tomson Highway,she was a founding member of the Indigenous writers' collective,Committee to Reestablish the Trickster.
Aaron Yazzie is a Diné(Navajo) mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His work involves planetary sample acquisition and handling. He has worked on the Mars Science Laboratory,InSight,and Mars 2020 missions.
Pensamiento Serpentino is a poem by Chicano playwright Luis Valdez originally published by Cucaracha Publications,which was part of El Teatro Campesino,in 1973. The poem famously draws on philosophical concepts held by the Mayan people known as In Lak'ech,meaning "you are the other me." The poem also draws,although less prominently,on Aztec traditions,such as through the appearance of Quetzalcoatl. The poem received national attention after it was illegally banned as part of the removal of Mexican American Studies Programs in Tucson Unified School District. The ban was later ruled unconstitutional.
Rebecca Sockbeson is a Wabanaki scholar and activist in the field of Indigenous Peoples' education.
Melinda Beth Coker Micco was an American filmmaker,scholar,activist,and educator. She was a professor of ethnic studies at Mills College,and the first Native American woman to earn tenure at Mills.
