Paternalism and coercive acculturation on Native Americans
Acculturation refers to cultural interference as a result of an interaction that influences one to adapt to the culture of the surrounding or dominant culture. Such adaptation can influence such characteristics as customs, dressing codes, integrating beliefs, foods, among other behaviors. The cultural values of Native Americans and African Americans were subsequently altered during the contact period and slavery activities, respectively. In relation to the Native Americans, acculturation is viewed as the transformative consequence that resulted from the forceful adaptation of characteristics and values of the predominant White European culture (Cromer, 2018). The acculturation of the Native Americans was systematically orchestrated through colonization that overtly and explicitly sought racial genocide and ethnic cleansing. The salient features of the assimilation of the Native Americans by the predominant European population during the contact period include a reduction in the population of the Native Americans to below 10% of their original population. It also led to their adoption of European diseases, warfare, and relocation to barren lands, traditional economy, self-determination sustenance, and their lifestyle.
Throughout the history of the European and Native Americans contact, acculturation of the Native Americans to the European culture mostly occurred at institutional levels. Colonization period between 1492- 1787 was a time of violence between the two nations as each strived for cultural independence leading to cultural tension between the Europeans and the Native Americans. This led to a cultural change among the Native Americans due to trading and contact between the cultures, reduction of the Indian population as a result of war and diseases, and loss of land among the Indians through these wars (Cromer, 2018). Although laws were created and treaties signed to protect Native American land, their life was largely impacted as Europeans continued to take their land due to the fact that laws were created but not enforced.
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The Native Americans, also known as American Indians, experienced cultural genocide that was majorly facilitated by relocation. The eastern Native Americans were affected by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that forcibly relocated them to the lands in the Western parts of the United States. The ones who managed to survive the relocation lost their homes, culture, and community. Over 200 boarding schools were set up during the relocation period and led to the forceful removal of over 14,000 Native American children from their homes (Cromer, 2018). The establishment of boarding schools was aimed at striping off cultural values among the Native American children and assimilating them into the European American culture. The Native Americans were indoctrinated to adopt values such as individual ownership contrary to communal ownership of property, and adoption of Christianity instead of the traditional spiritual practices. Additionally, the institutions prohibited the Natives from communicating in their mother tongues and exhibiting their customs. Acculturation, therefore, fashioned the Native Americans with European culture as they adopted Christianity religion, and their communal ownership of a property through relocation and compulsory boarding school programs. The compulsory placement of Native American children in schools continued until the year 1978, where The Indian Welfare Act enable the Natives to rightfully refuse the placement of their kids in the off-reservation schools.
During the period of 1887 – 1934, the government of the United States was introducing paternalistic policies that ensured the dilution of Native American culture. The policies overtly compulsory assimilation of Indians into European culture. For instance, in 1887, The Dawes Allotment Act was enacted by the government to distribute land for individual ownership with the aim of removing the natives from their traditional territories and thus destroying their tribal life. This was a solution to the Indian Native Americans’ tribal life that was infamously known as “The Indian Problem.” The Dawes Allotment Act advocated for natives adopting the European culture by parceling of the their land into homesteads and individual ownership, thereby destroying their communal living (Dalal, 2015). The federal laws enacted by the United States government-dictated policies to eradicate Native American land, customs, religion, and languages. In the 20th century, the policies and laws introduced by the government of the United States were paternalistic towards the Indians and were meant to eradicate or dilute their culture.
During the period of 1934 to 1953, the natives were allowed to engage in self-governance, and their land was finally protected. However, the Act was ethnocentric as a result of the governments’ ultimate goal of assimilating the Native Americans to western culture. After the Indian Reorganization Act ended in 1953, the following period over to 1968 saw continued repositioning programs for American Indians (Dalal, 2015). However, the programs were conducted as housing and training support for individuals leaving the reservation lands. Though starting from 1968 up to the present day America, tribal self-determination has become government policy, any attempts by the United States government to advance the societal and financial life of Indians have continued as a method of assimilation through the types of opportunities it supports.
African Americans and slavery
African Americans were introduced to America as slaves. Slave trade was a legal business, and a massive number of Africans were ferried to America to work as slaves in the plantations, industries as well as house-helps. The African Americans slaves contributed to a considerable percentage in the American population (Moras, Shehan & Berardo, 2018). The slaves faced immense oppression from their masters in comparison with the American Indians in the country. Slaves were often treated as property, and they could be sold by their masters or given all sorts of treatments. Essentially, slavery destroyed African American families and cultures. Perhaps, African Americans faced more severe restrictions than any other immigrants groups in their efforts to maintain and reestablish traditions of their heritage in the conditions related to the slave system (Moras, Shehan & Berardo, 2018). The disruption started in Africa, where these individuals were separated from their family members before being transported to new lands in the Americas. Slaves, therefore, consisted of individuals from different backgrounds under the rule of their masters, unlike the American Indians immigrants who lived freely in homesteads in the new lands.
In these new environments, slaves were forbidden from practicing their traditional customs and thus enforced to adopt the customs of the slave owners. African heritage became a dim memory over the generations. However, they exhibited a special and complex customs as they developed an entirely new form of families as a process of social adaptation to the challenging social conditions. In the first place, their culture and language were not uniform, and the diversity predestined that variation was a significant characteristic of culture among the slave societies (Moras, Shehan & Berardo, 2018). Subsequently, the Africans in new land became a community and started to share a culture that they themselves created after interaction with the flow of Africans from a different African background.
In vital respects, the development and the experience of African-American families characterize a sharp contrast to that of any other ethnic and racial group living in the United States. The distinctive historical situations that have impacted the African American family system have been remarkably complicated to the extent of having no comparison to the American multiracial and multiethnic society (Howson, 1990). The African Americans faced a unique experience as they encountered a forceful migration from their homes in Africa to an extended system of slavery. Planned exclusions from social institutions in the United States and the institutionalized racism are some of the factors characterized by severe oppression and violence that have shaped the African-American families’ well-being. Additionally, from the diversity among the families, they have created heterogeneous communities that have experiences and histories varying with conditions, space, and time (Howson, 1990). Therefore, comparing the experience of the African American and Native Americans' experiences after their contact with the European individuals, African Americans faced a system that was more oppressive and controlling than that of the American Indians.
Indians were free individuals facing acculturation and paternalistic policies. They could carry out their daily chores such as hunting and animal rearing, whereas Africans were strictly under their slave masters. The current experiences of African American families are closely attached to the social, economic, and historical conditions faced by past generations. Unlike the American Indians, African Americans’ population continued to grow after the trade was abolished, whereas the population of the Native Americans declined after policies disfavored them by redistribution of their land for individual ownership. However, both the Native Americans and African Indians faced brutal and harsh treatments from European settlers such as rape cases of their women, especially young girls, and killings.
References
Cromer, L. D., Gray, M. E., Vasquez, L., & Freyd, J. J. (2018). The relationship of acculturation to historical loss awareness, institutional betrayal, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma in the American Indian experience. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology , 49 (1), 99-114.
Dalal, N. (2015). The impact of colonial contact on the cultural heritage of Native American Indian people. Diffusion-The UCLan Journal of Undergraduate Research , 4 (2).
Howson, J. E. (1990). Social relations and material culture: A critique of the archaeology of plantation slavery. Historical Archaeology , 24 (4), 78-91.
Moras, A., Shehan, C., & Berardo, F. M. (2018). African American families: Historical and contemporary forces shaping family life and studies. In Handbook of the sociology of racial and ethnic relations (pp. 91-107). Springer, Cham.
