Contemporary Native American Cultural Issues (Contemporary Native American Communities)
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In many indigenous families, great grandparents, grandparents, parents, and children live in the same household, or within walking distance of one another.
Even uncles, aunts, and cousins are considered to be close relatives. Whereas non-Indian children may seldom see more distant relatives, Native American youth generally know their kin very well. Twenty-first-century life for Native Americans continues to be characterized by extended-family social obligations and economic responsibilities. The extended family expects its successful members to help other relatives who are not as fortunate.
Therefore, Native Americans who hold good paying jobs, or who operate successful businesses, often support a sizeable number of older and younger members of the family.
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Because of this, there is an important leveling of material well-being among members of Native American families. Often, the oldest woman in the family takes responsibility for making sure those who have wealth share it with those who do not. American Indians have traditionally been very respectful of the elderly members of their communities and families.
For the most part, indigenous elders continue to be treated with deference and affection. Recently, however, some Indian leaders have expressed concern about a growing indifference toward tribal elders on the part of indigenous youth. Obviously, this phenomenon is not unique to American Indian communities.
Over the last several decades, American youth, in general, have grown less respectful of their elders. Despite this trend, however, most Native Americans continue to show respect for the older members in their communities and families. Not long ago, many Americans spent their entire lives in close proximity to their places of birth. As a result, they were rooted in a community and a culture, and they lived within a social network of family and friends. Currently, in response to employment requirements, economic opportunities, and even retirement decisions, people often make several geographic moves during their lives.
Such mobility has tended to diminish the once powerful roles that traditional communities and extended families played relative to the well-being of individuals and the collective security of the nation. Additionally, the mobility of the work force and the increasingly impersonal nature of many work environments have also created a mounting sense of isolation. Therefore, the popularity of Internet communications through which people attempt to interact vicariously is not surprising.
Many Native Americans also find it necessary to move about in search of opportunities, but most remain well-connected to their tribes and families. As a result, they tend to have a sense of belonging that is now missing for a great number of non-Indian Americans. In similar fashion to many other American citizens, youthful Native Americans seem to have a growing sense of entitlement. This is of course not unique to members of the native communities.
Americans, in general, seem to expect the government to do more and more for them. Many of these treaties remain valid because they are legal commitments by the United States government to Native Americans. Therefore, indigenous people, in general, do not consider the government dollars they receive to be subsidies. To the contrary, they think of government expenditures to Native Americans as legally required payments for the land and resources taken from their ancestors during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
Therefore, Native American entitlements do not pose a serious threat to the security of the United States. Government expenditures and tribal enterprises notwithstanding, Native American communities continue to be plagued by persistent poverty, high unemployment, high crime rates, low levels of education, alcoholism, drug addiction, numerous single-parent families, and serious human-health problems. Much has been written, and even more has been said, about what should be done to improve conditions on U.
Many of these suggestions have been implemented, and some have seemed to work. Still, in spite of or perhaps because of these efforts, social problems on reservations seem to have grown worse. It has generally been the position of the academic community that the deplorable conditions that characterize life on many Indian reservations are a product of forced assimilation coupled with the long-term racism of pre-twenty-first century America. Certainly, there is truth in this explanation. Until recently, Native Americans suffered a great deal from discrimination relative to employment, housing, and social interactions.
She is a descendant of the Mohawk Tribe, as well as adopted Lakota. I visited Patricia at her home, which also serves as a community spiritual space for local spiritual practitioners. I married an African American man, and we had kids. The overwhelming experience of racism that we experienced as a family in New England was so transformative. From the time my kids were little, we had neighbors petition our landlord to evict us.
After a series of moves to various urban localities in the late s, they finally moved to Oakland so Patricia could go to graduate school. We became really close as a family because of all of this. So we started going there and getting involved. Patricia went on to become the founding director of Habitat For Humanity Oakland and worked as a nonprofit consultant.
About five years ago the complaints about the sweat lodge began, eventually leading the city to ban them. I met Decoy Gallerina after she gave testimony about how traditional Native ceremonies have helped her heal from abuse and trauma. In the past, when she would travel on her own, she would always return. This time, she simply disappeared from my life and my whole world changed. I lost not only my connection with her, but all the presence, love and acceptance of hundreds of relatives in Mescalero and Oklahoma.
When she was 15, Decoy was raped by an year-old man. She became almost completely silent and withdrawn. Among American Indian and Alaska Native women, I have been blessed to have the ability to absorb and produce almost any artistic form. Creator chose me as a vehicle for these things, is all I can say. Side by side with that I am a courageous, tenacious, kind and ferocious spirit. Wanda had been Christianized and had given up her traditional ways, but she quietly stayed active her whole life reaching out to disenfranchised groups.
She eventually helped to create the Native American health and cultural centers in Richmond. Today, Isabella continues that work as an organizer. Growing up off-reservation in an urban environment outside her tribal community turned out to be a challenge. I feel like that puts historical trauma on us, and we really just want to disconnect. It makes us not feel welcomed and not feel complete because we are a minority mixed within a minority group. So she struggled finding a place to fit in. Natives are so dispersed and statistically sparse that it rarely allows creation of a peer subgroup in an off-reservation environment.
Who am I going to talk to? As she grew older and became more involved in Native activism, Isabella found ways to strengthen her Indigenous identity. There are many ways we still practice our ceremonies. Star Morgan is an year-old member of the Navajo Nation. Native Americans had the highest prevalence rates of marijuana and cocaine use, in addition to the need for drug abuse treatment. Tribal governments have long prohibited the sale of alcohol on reservations, but generally, it is readily for sale in nearby border towns, and off-reservation businesses and states gain income from the business.
Acknowledging that prohibition has not worked, in a major change in strategy since the late 20th century, as of , 63 percent of the federally recognized tribes in the lower 48 states had legalized alcohol sales on their reservations. The tribes decided to retain the revenues that previously would go to the states through retail sales taxes on this commodity. Legalizing the sales enables the tribes to keep more money within their reservation economies and support new businesses and services, as well as to directly regulate, police and control alcohol sales.
The retained revenues enable them to provide health care and build facilities to better treat individuals and families suffering from alcohol abuse.
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Physical and sexual abuse significantly increased the chances of alcohol dependence for men. Sexual abuse and boarding school attendance increased the odds of alcohol dependence among women.
Unintentional injuries account for the third leading cause of death for Native Americans and the leading cause of death for Native Americans under 44 years old. Unintentional injuries include motor vehicle crashes, pedestrian-related motor vehicle crashes, drowning, and fire-related injuries. From to , 1, Native American children died in motor vehicle crashes, which is twice the rate for white children.
Studies have indicated that there is are fewer cases of cancer in Native Americans than other ethnic groups. However, cancer is prevalent in Native Alaskan women and Native American women as the leading and second leading cause of death, respectively. Native Indian and Alaska Native people are disproportionately prone to colon and lung cancer. In some communities, this is consistent with a high prevalence of risk factors such as smoking. One research about the Pacific Northwest Native Americans found that there were many misidentified rates of cancer between This misclassification was due to a low Native American blood quantum, resulting in an over-reported amount of Native Americans diagnosed with cancer.
Because the research took data from the Oregon State Cancer Registry, the Washington State Cancer Registry, and the Cancer Data Registry of Idaho to research tribes in the respected states, their findings show that cancer rates among tribes in the US are heterogeneous. However, data collected from cancer cases are limited. Regardless, experts have suggested that Native Americans experience cancer differently than other ethnic groups.
Contemporary Native American Cultural Issues by Duane Champagne
According to researchers, addressing underlying risk factors and low screening rates by implementing aggressive screening programs can prevent cancer from forming in Native Indian and Alaska Native communities. Native Americans have some of the highest rates of diabetes in the world, specifically Type 2 diabetes.
Although mostly diagnosed in adults, children are increasingly being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes as well. Type 2 diabetes may be manageable through healthy eating, exercising, oral medication, or insulin injections. A study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that the prevalence of diabetes found in Native Americans of the Mohawk Nation was Mirex did not have a connection.
Heart disease accounts for the number one cause of death among Native Americans, causing them to have twice the rate of cardiovascular disease than the US population. High rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, and risk factors unhealthy eating and sedentary lifestyle contribute to the increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Native Americans are at high risk for mental disorders.
The most prevalent concerns due to mental health include substance abuse, suicide, depression, anxiety, and violence. High rates of homelessness, incarceration, alcohol and drug abuse, and stress and trauma in Native American communities might attribute to the risk. According to The Surgeon General's report, the U. Moreover, the budget constraints of the Indian Health Service allows only basic psychiatric emergency care.
Suicide is a major public health problem for American Indians in the United States. Youth who have experienced life stressors are disproportionately affected by risky behaviors and at greater risk for suicide ideation. Suicide rates among American Indians and Alaska Natives youth are higher than those for other populations. Prevention aims at halting or stopping the development of individual or social problem which is already evident.
Prevention is different from intervention and treatment in that it is aimed at general population groups or individuals with various levels of risk. Suicide prevention is a collective effort of organizations, communities, and mental health practitioners to reduce the incidence of suicide. Social workers have an important role to play in suicide prevention. Social workers are the largest occupational group of mental health professionals in the USA, thus they play a significant role in the national approach to preventing suicide.
Contemporary Native American Cultural Issues
The IHS consists of three branches of service: With the two services, tribes have greater flexibility in health care availability. Tribes have direct access to IHS funds, which can be administered via contracts and other arrangements made with providers. However, it alters trust relationships. Although half of the uninsured adults are white, increases in coverage expand to all races to substantially reduce racial gaps in health insurance coverage. The Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which is part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, does not guarantee a health care arrangement of the kind Americans have generally come to expect—namely, comprehensive inpatient and outpatient services available on the basis of need— a critical point when considering the IHS, which is often mistaken for a Native American health insurance program.
Contemporary Native American Cultural Issues and millions of other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Duane Champagne is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Native Nations Law and Policy Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Start reading Contemporary. Contemporary Native American Political Issues and millions of other books are . American Cultural Issues (Contemporary Native American Communities). +.
A key distinction between IHS health services and insurance concerns the policy framework and logic of budgeting that underpins them. This produces a fundamentally different dynamic than that which drives programs such as Medicare or Medicaid, or especially private managed care plans.
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The IHS does what it can with the resources it is provided by Congress but is not obligated to provide the services required to meet the broader health needs of Native Americans in the pursuit of measurable outcomes. In , Oregon initiated Medicaid to 10, of a randomized 90, low-income, uninsured adults to participate in what is now known as the Oregon Medicaid health experiment. Within 4 study groups of one study, researchers observed that utilization of primary care services will increase, as more individuals will begin and continue to use medical care.
The study was limited to the Portland metropolitan area. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Native American name controversy. Stereotypes of Native Americans. Native American mascot controversy. Native American disease and epidemics. Alcohol and Native Americans.
Suicide among Native Americans in the United States. Oregon Medicaid health experiment. Archived from the original PDF on The New York Times. Retrieved April 14, David Baird; et al. Indians and Political Correctness". Archived from the original on Department of Education" PDF. Archived from the original Notice on November 9, A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America including Central America , and who maintains a tribal affiliation or community attachment.
The American Indian Graduate: The Native American population is the only group in American that tends to experience systematic fraudulent behavior.
What it Means to be Native American in Twenty-First Century America
Claiming to be Native American has become such a common and accepted practice that recently, the American Bar Association began to require verification of the identity of Native American applicants. Retrieved April 9, Archived from the original on April 7, Retrieved April 8, Archived from the original on July 3, Retrieved June 5, Where in Environmental Justice Research?
Society and Natural Resources 1: Smithsonian American Art Museum. Multiculturalism and the Media. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs.