Further information: Native American religion
Kateri Tekakwitha, the patron of ecologists, exiles, and orphans, was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.
Baptism of Pocahontas
was painted in 1840. John Gadsby Chapman depicts Pocahontas, wearing
white, being baptized Rebecca by Anglican minister Alexander Whiteaker
(left) in Jamestown, Virginia; this event is believed to have taken
place either in 1613 or 1614.
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.[citation needed]
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 peyote ceremony. 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 the Pueblo people are regularly part of Masses at Santa Fe's Saint Francis Cathedral.[182] 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.
Gender roles
Main articles: Gender roles among the indigenous peoples of North America, Clan Mother, Matriarchy, and Matrilineality
Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first Native American woman to become a physician in the United States.
Whether a particular tribe is predominantly matrilineal or patrilineal, usually both sexes have some degree of decision-making power within the tribe. Many Nations, such as the Haudenosaunee Five Nations and the Southeast Muskogean tribes, have matrilineal or Clan Mother systems, in which property and hereditary leadership are controlled by and passed through the maternal lines. The children are considered to belong to the mother's clan. In Cherokee culture, women own the family property. When traditional young women marry, their husbands may join them in their mother's household.
Matrilineal structures enable young women to have assistance in childbirth and rearing, and protect them in case of conflicts between the couple. If a couple separates or the man dies, the woman has her family to assist her. In matrilineal cultures the mother's brothers are usually the leading male figures in her children's lives; fathers have no standing in their wife and children's clan, as they still belong to their own mother's clan. Hereditary clan chief positions pass through the mother's line and chiefs have historically been selected on recommendation of women elders, who also could disapprove of a chief.
In the patrilineal tribes, such as the Omaha, Osage and Ponca, hereditary leadership passes through the male line, and children are considered to belong to the father and his clan. In patrilineal tribes, if a woman marries a non-Native, she is no longer considered part of the tribe, and her children are considered to share the ethnicity and culture of their father.[184]
In some tribes, men have historically hunted, traded and made war while, as life-givers, women have primary responsibility for the survival and welfare of the families (and future of the tribe). In many tribes women gather and cultivate plants, use plants and herbs to treat illnesses, care for the young and the elderly, make all the clothing and instruments, and process and cure meat and skins from the game. Some mothers use cradleboards to carry an infant while working or traveling.[185] In other tribes, the gender roles are not so clear-cut, and are even less so in the modern era.
At least several dozen tribes allowed polygyny to sisters, with procedural and economic limits.[173]
Apart from making homes, women have many additional tasks that are also essential for the survival of the tribes. Historically they have made weapons and tools, they take care of the roofs of their homes and often help the men hunt and fish.[186] In many tribes, medicine women gather herbs and cure the ill,[187] while in others men may also be healers.
Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota girls are encouraged to learn to ride, hunt and fight.[188] Though fighting in war has mostly been left to the boys and men, occasionally women fought as well - both in battles and in defense of the home - especially if the tribe was severely threatened.[189]
Sports
Team based
Native American ball sports, sometimes referred to as lacrosse, stickball, or baggataway, was often used to settle disputes, rather than going to war, as a civil way to settle potential conflict. The Choctaw called it isitoboli ("Little Brother of War");[190] the Onondaga name was dehuntshigwa'es ("men hit a rounded object"). There are three basic versions, classified as Great Lakes, Iroquoian, and Southern.[191]The game is played with one or two rackets/sticks and one ball. The object of the game is to land the ball on the opposing team's goal (either a single post or net) to score and to prevent the opposing team from scoring on your goal. The game involves as few as 20 or as many as 300 players with no height or weight restrictions and no protective gear. The goals could be from around 200 feet (61 m) apart to about 2 miles (3.2 km); in Lacrosse the field is 110 yards (100 m). A Jesuit priest[who?] referenced stickball in 1729, and George Catlin painted the subject.
Women's basketball
Currently in the WNBA, there are 2 women who are of Native ancestry and enrolled in federally recognized tribes.Angel Goodrich, Cherokee, was selected in the third round of the WNBA draft (29th pick overall) by the Tulsa Shock. At the time she was the highest-drafted Native American player in the history of the WNBA.[192] During the 2013–14 off-season, she played for Chevakata Vologda in the Russian Premier League.[10] In 2014, she completed her second and final season for the Shock. In 2015, she was picked up on waivers by the Seattle Storm
Shoni Schimmel, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, is an American professional basketball player. She was an All-American college player at the University of Louisville and a first round draft pick of the WNBA's Atlanta Dream. She also earned recognition as the 2014 WNBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player on July 19, 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.[7]
Individual based
Chunkey was a game that consisted of a stone shaped disk that was about 1–2 inches in diameter. The disk was thrown down a 200-foot (61 m) corridor so that it could roll past the players at great speed. The disk would roll down the corridor, and players would throw wooden shafts at the moving disk. The object of the game was to strike the disk or prevent your opponents from hitting it.
Billy Mills crosses the finish line at the end of the 10,000-meter race at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
U.S. Olympics
Jim Thorpe, a Sauk and Fox Native American, was an all-round athlete playing football and baseball in the early 20th century. Future President Dwight Eisenhower injured his knee while trying to tackle the young Thorpe. In a 1961 speech, Eisenhower recalled Thorpe: "Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw."[193]In the 1912 Olympics, Thorpe could run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat, the 220 in 21.8 seconds, the 440 in 51.8 seconds, the 880 in 1:57, the mile in 4:35, the 120-yard high hurdles in 15 seconds, and the 220-yard low hurdles in 24 seconds.[194] He could long jump 23 ft 6 in and high-jump 6 ft 5 in.[194] He could pole vault 11 feet (3.4 m), put the shot 47 ft 9 in (14.55 m), throw the javelin 163 feet (50 m), and throw the discus 136 feet (41 m).[194] Thorpe entered the U.S. Olympic trials for the pentathlon and the decathlon.
Louis Tewanima, Hopi people, was an American two-time Olympic distance runner and silver medalist in the 10,000 meter run in 1912. He ran for the Carlisle Indian School where he was a teammate of Jim Thorpe. His silver medal in 1912 remained the best U.S. achievement in this event until another Indian, Billy Mills, won the gold medal in 1964. Tewanima also competed at the 1908 Olympics, where he finished in ninth place in the marathon.[1]
Ellison Brown, of the Narragansett people from Rhode Island, better known as "Tarzan" Brown, won two Boston Marathons (1936, 1939) and competed on the United States Olympic team in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, but did not finish due to injury. He qualified for the 1940 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, but the games were canceled due to the outbreak of World War II.
Billy Mills, a Lakota and USMC officer, won the gold medal in the 10,000 meter run at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He was the only American ever to win the Olympic gold in this event. An unknown before the Olympics, Mills finished second in the U.S. Olympic trials.
Billy Kidd, part Abenaki from Vermont, became the first American male to medal in alpine skiing in the Olympics, taking silver at age 20 in the slalom in the 1964 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria. Six years later at the 1970 World Championships, Kidd won the gold medal in the combined event and took the bronze medal in the slalom.
Music and art
Main articles: Native American music and Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas
Jake Fragua, Jemez Pueblo from New Mexico
Performers with Native American parentage have occasionally appeared in American popular music such as Rita Coolidge, Wayne Newton, Gene Clark, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Blackfoot, Tori Amos, Redbone (members are also of Mexican descent), and CocoRosie. Some, such as John Trudell, have used music to comment on life in Native America. Other musicians such as R. Carlos Nakai, Joanne Shenandoah and Robert "Tree" Cody integrate traditional sounds with modern sounds in instrumental recordings, whereas the music by artist Charles Littleleaf is derived from ancestral heritage as well as nature. A variety of small and medium-sized recording companies offer an abundance of recent music by Native American performers young and old, ranging from pow-wow drum music to hard-driving rock-and-roll and rap. In the International world of ballet dancing Maria Tallchief was considered America's first major prima ballerina,[195] and was the first person of Native American descent to hold the rank.[196] along with her sister Marjorie Tallchief both became star ballerinas.
The most widely practiced public musical form among Native Americans in the United States is that of the pow-wow. At pow-wows, such as the annual Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, members of drum groups sit in a circle around a large drum. Drum groups play in unison while they sing in a native language and dancers in colorful regalia dance clockwise around the drum groups in the center. Familiar pow-wow songs include honor songs, intertribal songs, crow-hops, sneak-up songs, grass-dances, two-steps, welcome songs, going-home songs, and war songs. Most indigenous communities in the United States also maintain traditional songs and ceremonies, some of which are shared and practiced exclusively within the community.[197]
Native American art comprises a major category in the world art collection. Native American contributions include pottery, paintings, jewellery, weavings, sculpture, basketry, and carvings. Franklin Gritts was a Cherokee artist who taught students from many tribes at Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University) in the 1940s, the Golden Age of Native American painters. The integrity of certain Native American artworks is protected by the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, that prohibits representation of art as Native American when it is not the product of an enrolled Native American artist. Attorney Gail Sheffield and others claim that this law has had "the unintended consequence of sanctioning discrimination against Native Americans whose tribal affiliation was not officially recognized."[198] Native artists such as Jeanne Rorex Bridges (Cherokee) who are not enrolled run the risk of fines or imprisonment if they continue to sell their art while affirming their Indian heritage.[199][200]
Traditional economy
The Inuit, or Eskimo, prepared and buried large amounts of dried meat and fish. Pacific Northwest tribes crafted seafaring dugouts 40–50 feet (12–15 m) long for fishing. Farmers in the Eastern Woodlands tended fields of maize with hoes and digging sticks, while their neighbors in the Southeast grew tobacco as well as food crops. On the Plains, some tribes engaged in agriculture but also planned buffalo hunts in which herds were driven over bluffs.Dwellers of the Southwest deserts hunted small animals and gathered acorns to grind into flour with which they baked wafer-thin bread on top of heated stones. Some groups on the region's mesas developed irrigation techniques, and filled storehouses with grain as protection against the area's frequent droughts.
In the early years, as these native peoples encountered European explorers and settlers and engaged in trade, they exchanged food, crafts, and furs for blankets, iron and steel implements, horses, trinkets, firearms, and alcoholic beverages.
Contemporary barriers to economic development
Makah Native Americans and a whale, pictured in 1910 by Asahel Curtis. (The photo's title is The King of the Seas in the Hands of the Makahs.)
Social statistics highlight the challenges faced by Native American communities: 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% and 90%.
The barriers to economic development on Native American reservations have been identified by Joseph Kalt[203] and Stephen Cornell[204] of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at Harvard University, in their report: What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development (2008),[205] are summarized as follows:
- 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
- Teacher with picture cards giving English instruction to Navajo day school students
- 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. (Many tribes adopted constitutions by the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act model, with two-year terms for elected positions of chief and council members deemed too short by the authors for getting things done)
- Entrepreneurial skills and experience are scarce
- Tribal cultures get in the way
