Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continentalUnited States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as intact political communities. The terms used to refer to Native Americans are controversial; according to a 1995US Census Bureau set of home interviews, most of the respondents with an expressed preference refer to themselves as American Indians or Indians.
In the last 500 years, Afro-Eurasian migration to the Americas has led to centuries of conflict and adjustment between Old and New Worldsocieties. Most of the written historical record about Native Americans was made by Europeans after their immigration to the Americas.[3]Many Native Americans lived as hunter-gatherer societies, although in many groups, women carried out sophisticated cultivation of a variety of staples: maize, beans and squash. Their cultures were quite different from those of the agrarian, proto-industrial immigrants from westernEurasia. The differences in culture between the established native Americans and immigrant Europeans, as well as shifting alliances among different nations of each culture, caused a great deal of political tension and ethnic violence. Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of what today constitutes the U.S. vary significantly, ranging from 1 million to 18 million.
After the colonies revolted against Great Britain and established the United States of America, President George Washington and Henry Knox conceived of the idea of "civilizing" Native Americans in preparation for United States citizenship.[6][7][8][9][10] Assimilation (whether voluntary as with the Choctaw,[11][12] or forced) became a consistent policy through American administrations. During the 19th century, the ideology of Manifest destiny became integral to the American nationalist movement. Expansion of European-American populations after the American Revolution resulted in increasing pressure on Native American lands, warfare between the groups, and rising tensions. In 1830, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the government to relocate most Native Americans of the Deep South east of the Mississippi River from their homelands to accommodate European-American expansion from the United States. Government officials thought that by decreasing the conflict between the groups, they could also help the Indians survive. Remnant groups have descendants living throughout the South. They have organized and been recognized as tribes since the late 20th century by several states and, in some cases, by the federal government.
The first European Americans encountered western tribes as fur traders. As United States expansion reached into the American West, settler and miner migrants came into increasing conflict with the Great Plains tribes. These were complex nomadic cultures based on using horses and traveling seasonally to hunt bison. They carried out strong resistance to American incursions in the decades after the American Civil War, in a series of "Indian Wars", which were frequent up until the 1890s. The coming of the transcontinental railroad increased pressures on the western tribes. Over time, the U.S. forced a series of treaties and land cessions by the tribes, and established reservations for them in many western states. U.S. agents encouraged Native Americans to adopt European-style farming and similar pursuits, but the lands were often too poor to support such uses.
Contemporary Native Americans today have a unique relationship with the United States because they may be members of nations, tribes, or bands of Native Americans who have sovereignty or independence from the government of the United States. Their societies and cultures flourish within a larger population of descendants of immigrants (both voluntary and slave): African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Europeanpeoples. Native Americans who were not already U.S. citizens were granted citizenship in 1924 by the Congress of the United States.
Religion
Further information: Native American religion
Traditional Native American ceremonies are still practiced by many tribes and bands, and the older theological belief systems are still held by many of the "traditional" people.[specify] These spiritualities may accompany adherence to another faith, or can represent a person's primary religious identity. While much Native American spiritualism exists in a tribal-cultural continuum, and as such cannot be easily separated from tribal identity itself, certain other more clearly defined movements have arisen among "traditional" Native American practitioners, these being identifiable as "religions" in the clinical sense. Traditional practices of some tribes include the use of sacred herbs such as tobacco,sweetgrass or sage. Many Plains tribes have sweatlodge ceremonies, though the specifics of the ceremony vary among tribes. Fasting, singing and prayer in the ancient languages of their people, and sometimes drumming are also common.
The Midewiwin Lodge is a traditional medicine society inspired by the oral traditions and prophesies of the Ojibwa (Chippewa) and related tribes.
Another significant religious body among Native peoples is known as the Native American Church. It is a syncretistic church incorporating elements of Native spiritual practice from a number of different tribes as well as symbolic elements from Christianity. Its main rite is the peyoteceremony. Prior to 1890, traditional religious beliefs included Wakan Tanka. In the American Southwest, especially New Mexico, a syncretism between the Catholicism brought by Spanish missionaries and the native religion is common; the religious drums, chants, and dances of thePueblo people are regularly part of Masses at Santa Fe's Saint Francis Cathedral.[150] Native American-Catholic syncretism is also found elsewhere in the United States. (e.g., the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, New York and the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York).
The eagle feather law (Title 50 Part 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations) stipulates that only individuals of certifiable Native American ancestry enrolled in a federally recognized tribe are legally authorized to obtain eagle feathers for religious or spiritual use. The law does not allow Native Americans to give eagle feathers to non-Native Americans.
Barriers to economic development
Today, other than tribes successfully running casinos, many tribes struggle. There are an estimated 2.1 million Native Americans, and they are the most impoverished of all ethnic groups. According to the 2000 Census, an estimated 400,000 Native Americans reside on reservation land. While some tribes have had success with gaming, only 40% of the 562 federally recognized tribes operate casinos.[161] According to a 2007 survey by the U.S. Small Business Administration, only 1% of Native Americans own and operate a business.[162] Native Americans rank at the bottom of nearly every social statistic: highest teen suicide rate of all minorities at 18.5 per 100,000, highest rate of teen pregnancy, highest high school drop out rate at 54%, lowest per capita income, and unemployment rates between 50% to 90%.
The barriers to economic development on Native American reservations often cited by others and two experts Joseph Kalt[163] and Stephen Cornell[164] of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at Harvard University, in their classic report: What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development,[165] are as follows (incomplete list, see full Kalt & Cornell report):
- Lack of access to capital.
- Lack of human capital (education, skills, technical expertise) and the means to develop it.
- Reservations lack effective planning.
- Reservations are poor in natural resources.
- Reservations have natural resources, but lack sufficient control over them.
- Reservations are disadvantaged by their distance from markets and the high costs of transportation.
- Tribes cannot persuade investors to locate on reservations because of intense competition from non-Native American communities.
- The Bureau of Indian Affairs is inept, corrupt, and/or uninterested in reservation development.
- Tribal politicians and bureaucrats are inept or corrupt.
- On-reservation factionalism destroys stability in tribal decisions.
- The instability of tribal government keeps outsiders from investing.
- Entrepreneurial skills and experience are scarce.
- Tribal cultures get in the way.
One of the major barriers for overcoming the economic strife is the lack of entrepreneurial knowledge and experience across Indian reservations. “A general lack of education and experience about business is a significant challenge to prospective entrepreneurs,” also says another report on Native American entrepreneurship by the Northwest Area Foundation in 2004. “Native American communities that lack entrepreneurial traditions and recent experiences typically do not provide the support that entrepreneurs need to thrive. Consequently, experiential entrepreneurship education needs to be embedded into school curricula and after-school and other community activities. This would allow students to learn the essential elements of entrepreneurship from a young age and encourage them to apply these elements throughout life.”.[166] One publication devoted to addressing these issues is Rez Bizmagazine.
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