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Alaska Natives at the Time of the Invasions: A Cultural Profile Project Draft 3 Do not quote or copy without permission from Mike Gaffney or from Ray Barnhardt at the Alaska Native Knowledge Network, University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Mike Gaffney suggests that one read the Teacher's Manual Preview first to get a good idea about the purpose and design of this secondary school textbook. Mike Gaffney Chapter
1 The Cultural Profile Project in a nutshell. The major aim of your assignment is to construct a “Cultural Profile” of the traditional life of a Native group, perhaps from your region of Alaska. Again, traditional times is that period of history before the Russian and American invasions changed forever the physical and social worlds of Native peoples. You are asked to select an Alaska Native group and do a cultural profile of their way of life in traditional times. And again, to “profile” means to describe the significant features of something or someone. It means to concentrate on the important stuff. The Cultural Profile Project asks you to first research and describe significant features of your region’s environment and the various subsistence resources on which people depended. What subsistence hunting and fishing opportunities did it offer people? In what ways, for example, did the surrounding environment – the “ecological zone” – determine a Native group’s settlement patterns and how they socially organized themselves? What technologies were required to maintain a successful subsistence way of life in that environment? By the way, what do we mean by “a subsistence way of life?” Dictionaries define subsistence as what people do to maintain themselves at a minimum level of existence, especially when there is barely enough food or money for survival. When talking about Alaska, however, subsistence means to support oneself and family through hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering. It has nothing to do with being rich or poor. For example, Title VIII of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) defines subsistence as:
After describing the ecological zone, you are asked to profile the Native group’s traditional social organization, including such elements as family and kinship structure, economic activities, and systems of law and politics. Were there rules about who could marry whom and where the new couple would live? Within the family, who was expected to do what? What did their seasonal round of subsistence activities look like? Did they always have enough to eat? How did they govern their community and maintain law and order? Did they have hostile neighbors and how did they defend themselves? What do we know about their commerce – that is, what do we know about their trading relationships with other people and what was traded? Because Worldview is the central feature of any society’s culture and deserves special consideration, we devote an entire chapter to it. As used here, the concept of worldview refers to a traditional Native society’s beliefs about their natural and spiritual worlds and how they should properly behave in both. What were their spiritual beliefs and how were these beliefs expressed in ceremonies and rituals? What role did shamans play in the society’s spiritual practices? Did Shamans have important social roles beyond their spiritual role? What ideas were held about human nature and a person’s proper place in the natural world among all other living things? And how did the Native group’s ideas about their own history contribute to their cultural identity, to their view of themselves as a people with distinct values and traditions? You will then describe their cultural products which includes their science, technology, and art. What was their housing like? What did they do for transportation? What kinds of weapons (including body armor) and tools did they use? What do we know about the scientific knowledge they developed in order to live productively within their environment? What about artistic expression and its relationship to other parts of traditional Native life? Outlining the Cultural Profile Project. On the next page is a complete outline of the Cultural Profile Project. Even if you browsed it when reading the Introduction, take a good look at it now. See how it is divided into the five major sections of ecological zone, settlements and land use, social organization, worldview, and cultural products. And within each section you find the specific elements you will research and describe. Keep in mind, however, that we cannot anticipate every significant element making up the traditional life of every Native group. There are always surprises. No matter which group you select to study, you almost certainly will find an important feature not listed in the Cultural Profile Outline. Suppose, for example, you are working on worldview as part of a Central Yup’ik cultural profile. In your research you come across a 1998 announcement of an museum exhibit of Southwestern Alaskan culture and art called Agayuliyararput or "Our Way of Making Prayer.” You find that the purpose of the exhibit is “to bring Yup'ik masks and ceremonial materials to a wide audience in their native context.” This connection between masks and ceremonies gets your attention. You then find that Ann Fienup-Riordan, the curator of the exhibit, wrote an accompanying article entitled, “The Living Tradition of Yup'ik Masks.” You read this article and conclude that an exciting way to portray the spiritual aspects of the Yup’ik worldview is by describing the meaning of various masks and their relation to the song and dance of traditional ceremonies. 1 But wait! You look at the Cultural Profile Outline and nowhere do you find masks as an element to be described. Don’t worry about it. Just include it as part of your discussion of worldview with perhaps a note on its overlap with Artistic Expression as discussed in Chapter Fourteen on Cultural products. 1. Ecological Zone
2. Settlements and Land use
3. Social Organization
4. “Worldview” deserves special consideration
5. Cultural products
Why history and tradition cannot be ignored. Some years ago Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company, reportedly said this about history:
Perhaps you have heard people make similar statements, maybe something like, “what happened in past should stay in the past.” Or, “these are modern times and we must look forward, not backward.” There is a major problem with this anti-historical perspective. For better or for worse, history simply cannot be ignored. Our judicial system, for example, is based on judges using legal history to make decisions. The first thing they do when hearing a dispute is examine earlier cases for legal precedents to guide their decision-making. We will see in Chapter Five that the very foundation of federal Indian law rests on decisions made by the Supreme Court 170 years ago. Indeed, a most precious American value is our constitution and the rule of law it secures. That regardless of wealth, power, and social status, no one is above the law. Everyone is to be treated equally before the law. But maintaining the rule of law depends not only on the words of the Constitution – a 220 year old document – but also on interpretations of these words by Congress, the courts, and by presidents down through time. [Legal precedent = a legal standard or doctrine established by previous court decisions which guides the reasoning of judges in current cases.] As much as we may sometimes wish it, history will not go away. To the contrary, history continually shapes our everyday life. Even historical traditions clearly offensive to large segments of the population die hard. Consider the example of the Confederate Battle flag shown in Figure 1 below. The flag was adapted from a design known as the Southern Cross. To many white southerners it is a symbol of a unique southern heritage to be remembered, even cherished. But to black southerners, it is a visible reminder of a long and terrible history of slavery and segregation. For years southern states either flew the confederate battle flag along with the U.S. and state flags over their statehouses or incorporated it into the design of their state flags. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, many extremist groups use some form of this flag as one of their symbols, including the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups. Figure 1 In 1963 the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, hoisted the Confederate Battle flag over the state capitol as an act of defiance to federal orders to racially integrate Alabama schools. It wasn’t until 1993 – thirty years later – that a lawsuit filed by African American state legislators and the Southern Poverty Law Center finally persuaded a state judge to issue an injunction requiring the governor to take the flag down.2 Then there is the case of South Carolina. In 1962 the Confederate battle flag was placed on top of the South Carolina statehouse by a vote of the all-white state legislature. While other Southern states removed the flag from their statehouses, South Carolina refused. In response, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) organized an effective national economic boycott against South Carolina's $14 billion-a-year tourism industry. On April 12, 2000, the South Carolina state senate finally passed a bill to remove the flag. The bill specified that a more traditional version of the battle flag (square shaped as opposed to the rectangular flag then flying above the statehouse) would be flown in front of the Capitol next to a monument honoring fallen Confederate soldiers. However the NAACP did not call off its boycott because they felt the flag's new position on the Capitol lawn is still much too visible and offensive.3 [Boycott = to protest the actions and polices of companies or organizations by refusing to do business with them.] The value of knowing about Native life in traditional times. We all should know our culture’s history from earliest times to the present. Although this proposition applies to all people, it seems particularly important for Native Americans whose historical experiences are so different from mainstream American culture. Without this historical knowledge, how can one become a culturally competent adult able to pass on to younger generations the respected traditions and values of the group? This cultural competence is certainly in demand when traditions seem in danger of being overwhelmed by modern life’s confusing mix of competing value systems and instant temptations. Unfortunately, this modern confusion includes the harsh social realities of alcohol and drug abuse. Here is a question: Without this knowledge, is it possible for one to become a well informed citizen capable of making positive contributions to the civic affairs of the community? Indeed, to know about Native life in traditional times is valuable civic knowledge in itself. All Alaskans – Native and non-Native – will be smarter citizens for having studied the various cultural traditions and historical experiences of Alaska Native peoples . We will certainly be smarter about how this history has shaped many of the civic issues facing Alaska today. Again, one of our major objectives is to connect elements of the Cultural Profile Project to current Native affairs. Traditional times and the study of social change. Achieving cultural and civic competence is certainly a very good reason for studying Native traditions and histories. But there is still another very good reason for doing the Cultural Profile assignment. To understand the full impact of the Russian and American invasions on traditional Native societies, we first need a good idea of what Native life was like before that life was changed so dramatically. Suppose, for example, a friend just passed his driver’s test and wanted to explain to you how being able to now drive a car has changed his daily life. To understand his changed life surely would require some description of his life before passing his driver’s test. If we did not have this “before-the-event” information, we would have obvious difficulty understanding the changes in the new driver’s life and what they mean to him. Likewise, it is study of Native life in traditional times that gives us the before-the-event information required for understanding how profoundly social change has marked Alaska Native history since the invasions. Clearly we cannot assess the changes in anything – be it an ecological system or a chemical element or a human society – without knowing the prior state of that thing. In many parts of the Aleutians, for example, the Russian fur harvesting system resulted in the near extinction of the otter by the 1790s. So the question arises: What were the consequences of this excessive harvesting of the otter on Aleut culture and subsistence resources? To answer this question requires us to know about the relationship between the Aleuts and the otter as it existed before the arrival of the Russians in 1744. Unlike the Russians, perhaps the Aleuts saw the otter as something more than simply a valuable fur resource. Maybe it was a major part of their subsistence diet. If not part of their diet, perhaps it occupied a special place within their spiritual world. Cultural Profiling and Native civics: A practical application. Suppose an Alaska Native community was not on the congressionally approved 1994 list of 227 federally recognized Alaska tribes. Without federal recognition, this group has no sovereign powers and is not eligible for many of the federal programs and grants designed to benefit Native Americans. But now that Native community thinks they can make a strong case for federal recognition. The current Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) application process for recognition requires extensive historical research. Along with fulfilling other requirements, for example, a Native community must document how “a prominent portion of [their] group comprises a distinct community and has existed as a community from historical times to the present.” Furthermore, the tribe must document how it “has maintained political influence and authority over its members as an autonomous entity from historical times to the present.” We get a good idea of how large a tribal research effort is required to obtain federal recognition when we examine that rather mysterious term “historical times.” According to the BIA, it means the tribe’s earliest contact history as revealed through written documentation. Such documentation can be the observations of tribal life by early missionaries, traders, and government agents. Or it can be reports by scholarly authorities such as historians and anthropologists who have studied this early documentation. Or it can be written references to the tribe found in government records describing their earliest relations with the United States as a politically organized group. Do you see the similarity between the BIA requirements and your cultural profile assignment? Like your assignment, the BIA requirements essentially call for a detailed “cultural profile” of tribal life in traditional times. This means the research necessary to satisfy these requirements is very much like the research you will do to complete the Cultural Profile Project. There are, however, two differences. The BIA emphasizes the history of the tribe’s political authority, whereas it is only one of the cultural profile elements you will cover. Secondly, the written reports the BIA expects to receive from a petitioning tribe most likely add up to many more pages than your final report for this project. Obviously the collection of such historical documentation to the satisfaction of the BIA and the courts can be a difficult and lengthy process. Today some 200 Native American groups do not have this federally recognized status. The Cultural Profile Project and serious thinking. This is not a “fill-in-the- blanks” exercise. It is simply not good enough to look at one book and then copy whatever that book says about the elements of the cultural profile. A major objective of the Project is to have you think about the ideas and information we use to describe traditional Native societies. For example, are the ways we think about how governments work today useful for describing how early Native societies made political decisions, defined leadership, and maintained law and order? If we expect traditional Native governance to look like present day tribal councils or city governments, we will be sorely disappointed. We know, moreover, that to get the information we need to complete the Cultural Profile assignment, we must rely on the research and writing of others. So we need to think about the sources of information often used by historians, anthropologists and other scholars to study traditional Native societies. As all careful researchers know, what ideas they have and assumptions they make about the subject of their study largely determine what questions they ask. And what questions they ask determines the kinds of information they find and what conclusions they reach. Recall how asking different questions of the historical record led Etok to do more research on Alaska Native land rights. Let’s go back to the problem of federal recognition for a minute. Obviously the key to obtaining federal recognition is finding and presenting the required historical documentation. But this emphasis on the written record raises the question: Can Native oral history be used as legal evidence of its political authority and occupation of a specific territory from historical times to the present? Although American courts have yet to directly answer this question, the Canadian Supreme Court has done so. In 1997, the Canadian Supreme Court said yes to the question when it reviewed a lower court’s decision on a highly controversial Native land claims case in British Columbia. The Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en tribes of Northwestern British Columbia claimed aboriginal title to large tracts of land and presented their oral histories as supporting evidence. The case was controversial because several other tribes opposed the claim and many non-Natives had fee title to sizeable areas. [fee title or land held in fee = clear title to land, private property.] Moreover, a Canadian Court of Appeals previously ruled against the land claim. One reason given by that Court for denying the claim was that Native oral history cannot be given legal standing because it lacks reliability. The Canadian Supreme Court, however, reversed this lower court decision. Here are the Court’s own words on the oral history issue:
Most important, the Canadian Supreme Court’s ruling that a tribe’s oral history must be admitted as evidence and given “independent weight” set a legal precedent which allows use of Native oral histories as supporting documentation in all Canadian courts. No longer can Canadian judges simply dismiss Native oral histories as unreliable information. As they would do with the written historical record, now they are required to hear any oral history offered and then make a judgment as to its reliability. In later chapters it is strongly suggested that to get the most complete picture of traditional life we must pay close attention to a Native group’s oral history as passed down through the generations. We also tackle the question which bothered the Canadian courts: How can we be sure that the oral history we have been told is a reliable description of long-ago events and people? After all, it has been told and retold in countless ways by different people at different times. It is likely, moreover, that many Native oral historians emphasized different aspects of that history to fit what they thought was important for their audience to understand at a particular time. We should remember that the great Greek epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, began as oral historical traditions told by roving storytellers. But how much confidence can we have in written history? We know that much of our current knowledge of traditional Native life comes from the written observations of outsiders present in Native regions in the early days of contact. But can we be sure that these culturally different outsiders got it right? For example, how much confidence can we have in early outsider accounts of traditional Native beliefs and values if they didn’t speak the Native language or have competent translators? They may have accurately described what Native ceremonies and rituals looked like, when they occurred, and who was involved. But what about the cultural meaning of these spiritual events and how they influence people’s behavior in other aspects of their lives? Then there is the question of the outsider’s ethnocentrism and how it may have influenced what they wrote about Alaska Natives. We become ethnocentric when we judge the beliefs and actions of other groups according to our own cultural standards and find these “others” deficient in character and values. Indeed, we later address the question: Can we still find use for outsider observations when many times they use insulting terms like “savage” and “uncivilized” to describe Native people and Native customs? So stay tuned for discussions of this question and more. Is our use of Invasion appropriate? The title of the Cultural Profile Project is Alaska Natives at the Time of the Invasions. We will not often find the coming of the Russians and Americans described as invasions. Some people may even take exception to the use of this term. They will argue that the movement of Russians and Americans into Native Alaska did not constitute a true invasion in the sense of numerous hostile forces entering another sovereign group’s territory for the purpose of conquest. They will tell us that only once did Native – non-Native conflict reach the intensity of Lower-48 “Indian wars.” And that conflict occurred during the Russian period in Native history when Alexander Baranov, Chief Manager of the Russian American Company, returned to Sitka in 1804 and waged war against the Tlingits. This was in retaliation for an 1802 attack by the Tlingits which completely destroyed the fortified trading operations he established there in previous years.5 They also may concede that early American Naval attacks on several Tlingit villages in Southeast Alaska were needless and tragic. After reciting this history, however, they will still maintain that the Americans never directly sought to displace or eliminate a Native community by force. They will point out that for the most part Alaska was empty land ready to be used and occupied by industrious newcomers. That during the gold rushes, for example, most mining claims were staked in little used lands away from settled Native communities. Now let’s apply this reasoning to an imaginary invasion situation in modern times. Suppose, for example, a foreign power invades the West Coast of the United States. But they make every effort to stay on the interstate highway system until they reach unpopulated or sparsely populated areas further to the east. They are not interested in killing people or uprooting American settlements. They are after newly discovered energy producing minerals in what they classify as empty lands like Death Valley and the Great Salt Lake. If we leave them alone, they will leave us alone. Would we Americans consider this an invasion of our sovereign territory? Of course we would. So would the United Nations and any other reasonable person or international organization. It would be considered a flagrant violation of international law. But how does our imaginary invasion of the West Coast and the legal violations it implies compare to Alaska Native history? It just so happens that at the time of the American invasions, there existed United States legal doctrine protecting Native land rights, even in empty or barren lands. The fact is that the federal government ignored this legal doctrine when it turned a blind eye to what was happening on Alaska Native lands during the gold rushes and at other times. To explain this legal doctrine and how it applies to Alaska, we go to the landmark 1959 federal court decision, Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska v. the United States.6 In this historic case the United States Court of Claims took a hard look at Alaska Native land rights under American law. The question the Court was most concerned with was whether the aboriginal land title of Alaska Natives was violated because the United States government failed to protect their lands from invading miners, whalers, settlers, and fishing operations. Aboriginal title – or “Indian title” as it was known in earlier times – is a fundamental principle of American law. It refers to the federal government’s obligation to protect from “all others” a tribe’s right to use and occupy lands traditionally under their dominion [political control] until officially transferred to the United States by treaty or some other act of Congress. When the land transfer is complete, the tribe’s aboriginal title is said to be extinguished. (In Chapter Five we discuss more fully the origin and development of aboriginal title as a fundamental principle of federal Indian law.) This case reminds us again of the importance of history. The Court of Claims researched the historical record and found that neither the Americans nor the Russians before them had passed laws extinguishing Tlingit and Haida aboriginal title to lands used and occupied by them in Southeast Alaska. Indeed, the Court found that the United States government had completely failed in its legal obligation to protect the aboriginal title of these tribes. For the lands they lost as a result of this failure, the Tlingit and Haida eventually would be awarded $7.2 million. (We should mention an interesting historical coincidence here. In 1867 Russia sold its interests in Native Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million.) What made Tlingit and Haida a landmark case in Alaska history was the clear legal implication that if the federal government failed to protect the aboriginal title of these two Native groups, then most likely it failed other Native groups as well. Therefore all Alaska Natives may have solid legal grounds for filing their own land claims. Not too many years later Alaska tribes did just that by filing claims which, taken together, covered nearly all of Alaska lands. A decade-long Native land rights struggle finally ended with the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971. So how does the Tlingit and Haida case help us determine if invasion is the appropriate term, even though much of the invaders’ early activities took place on so-called barren or empty lands? We know aboriginal title refers to a tribe’s right to use and occupy their traditional lands until extinguished by an act of Congress. In the Tlingit and Haida case, however, the Court of Claims went one step further. It held that aboriginal title can also include the “the barren, inaccessible or useless areas” if within boundaries of lands historically recognized by others as under the tribe’s dominion. These “others” are neighboring tribes and early foreign visitors to the area. This expanded legal definition of aboriginal title offered by the Court of Claims rejects arguments suggesting that because outsiders were mainly using and occupying empty lands and therefore not in violation of any American law. Indeed, the Court’s inclusion of barren lands seems to support our use of “invasion” to describe the coming of the Russians and Americans and their massive impact on Alaska Native societies. What we should be thinking about – key study questions.
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