Abstract
Indians of the Western Hemisphere have resisted assimilation, in spite of the Euro- American Anglos who invaded and requisitioned their lands, from the 1500s to today. To accomplish this, Indian peoples stress differences through ascribed characteristics of race, language, territorial or political independence, education and religion, as well as aesthetic cultural patterns in clothing and decoration, art, food and sporting activities. Indian groups communicate their power of persistence and their persistence of power in several ways: first, by social negotiations with other groups; second, by synergistic relationships with each other and nature; and third, by continual revitalization, redefinition and reconstruction of ethnicity. Sporting events provide excellent contexts through which these assumptions of power are played out.
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