Native American Family Continuity as Resistance

Abstract

• Summary: The author argues that the history of Native-non-Native relations enables us to understand how the enactment and implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act, passed in 1978 by the United States Congress, is an example of how Indian families have succeeded in persevering despite 350 years of political maltreatment.

• Findings: The realities of past wrongs and the pain associated with remembering them are as vivid a memory now as they were then: memory is a key source of self-destructive behavior, as well as of cultural resilience. This explains why, despite Indian poverty and powerlessness, the persistence of anger against non-Indian governments enabled Indian families to cling to their ancestry, and finally, to be vindicated in their resistance by the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

• Applications: The arguments presented reinforce the conclusion that by manipulating culture American society almost succeeded in destroying the Native American. That American society has not succeeded in this venture is at once a condemnation of ethnocentric bias, an acknowledgement of the essential role played by culture in political development, and a tribute to democratic process as an antidote to laisser-faire capitalist development.