I have been fortunate to get to know some Native people who are caught in the web of acculturation and their intense desire to maintain their culture.
So happy was I when my traditional texas kickapoo sister , Mena, sent me a photo of a new addition to the family: Kisikapacua.. Kisi for us.
Her genealogy was explained to me by Mena.
She is the daughter of Peminoicua, who is the daughter of my "niece", but in the indian wasy, Nieces do not exist, only daughters.
Her father is the grandson of Kisikapata or Clan leader.
she then included a picture of the traditional summer houser of the Traditional Kickapoo. Which is constructed in the same fashion as they did long before the europeans arrived without invitation at their borders.
Women collect the reeds and preparing the reeds for the roof bloodies their hands for days and they prepare the raw material for their summer homes and winter homes (which are often completely re constructed).
How do traditional tribes maintain their desire to maintain their culture and identity when the outsiders are telling them to integrate? Integrate in the indians world means, give up what you have and take what we give you ? To call this highly advanced spiritual people, sauvages /salvajes/ savages exhibit the cataract vision painted in their brains of negating or looking down upon whatever group, culture, religion they belong to.
Indians have survived.
how have they survived the cultural aggression of missionaries, greedy land grabbers and politicians?
By maintaining the integrity of their own symbols: tribal, political or cultural
Most traditional tribes reject the efforts of Christian missionaries belonging to the aggressive variety such as the hideouly disguised Summer Institute of Linguistics SIL , the american missionary enterprise and there is a British Enterprise as well , New Tribes Mission.
They go deeper and deeper into the area of contact and for one "martyred" priest, they usually kill about 500 "savages" by brining infections, inlammation and intolerance.
Traditional Indians will reject wholeheartedly symbols of the oppressors
The first is the Evangelical Christianity of any type
Second are the institutions, such as Army . I would like to know when did the warriors in the Plains region of USA turned from being enemies to the obeisant sepoys of the Military Industrial Complex of the Yanquis?
I did notice that the traditional Kickapoo unlike their relatives up north never joined Armed forces of the USA which has been demonstrated as a fine way to assimilate into the American Culture.
I was told by an elder of the HoCank tribe that the name St.Cyr was bestowed upon an Indian warrior for his bravery and strategy by the invading French, honouring the well known army officers school near Paris, France.
Missionaries also knew that destruction of language and knowledge was an important way to "assimilate" the "savages"
Just the other day, a sixty year old Navajo Indian told me that he was asked to wash his mouth by the Nuns of his Catholic school whenever he spoke to his fellow Navajo classmates. We know of thousand such stories.
I have always liked to visit Yucatan and specifically Merida. One can still see in the innocent faces of the Maya who had built Chichen Itza and Tulum and Kabah and Uxmal and Labna.....the tragedy imposed upon them by the Inquisitorial minded Spaniards, in the person of Bishop Landa who burned their libraries (only three books remain).. Mayan libraries were larger than the libraries that Spain had at that time!
Like all the destructive missionaries, he wrote down all that he was destroying..so that we know how they lived before he and his ilk destroyed their lifestyle.
He joins the infamous with names such as Pizarro, Balboa and hundreds of other conquistadores whose actions are still felt in the poverty ridden flesh of South America .
