By Jonathan Hook
All of the main emotional concerns between modern Southeast Texas local Americans—including repatriation of continues to be, academic investment, overall healthiness care, and cultural preservation—in a way tackle the query of private id. problems in making a choice on who and what are "Indian" consistently divide the neighborhood, and studying the Alabama-Coushatta cultural transition is complex via the lack of written assets and the repression through 1930 of so much overt facts of the outdated methods. during this e-book Jonathan Hook engagingly discovers the sooner cultural culture and the impacts that triggered it to conform to its current shape and conceptualizes these alterations in a fashion that explores the very idea of identity.
In vibrant, effective prose, Hook describes what's identified of a number of the ecu intrusions into Creek (Muskhogean) tradition and the way those replaced the tribal lifetime of the Alabamas and Coushattas, finally best them to the reservation they now percentage in Southeast Texas. He attracts on written assets the place they're to be had but additionally at the oral heritage of tribal individuals, to whom he had unparalleled entry. He describes village association, management succession, the "law of retaliation," the jubilee occasion of the fairway Corn competition (when all crimes other than homicide have been forgiven), the matri-clan social development and marriage practices, burial rites, and spiritual practices together with delight in being "a extraordinary and loved humans of God."
Hook then considers the twin paths of looking for cultural identification this day: regenesis, "the reintroduction of cultural practices previously saw via the group," and ethnogenesis, the construction of a brand new cultural identification during the planned advent of cultural practices that weren't a part of a selected tribe's cultural background. therefore, he illustrates, at the Alabama-Coushatta reservation the try to get well Indian id has intended the adoption of powwow and different pan-Indian expressions of artwork, track, dresses, and faith. mostly it has intended the adoption of Plains Indians methods, even if "foreign" these will be to the tribe's indigenous tradition. for instance, many Alabama-Coushatta dancers now dance the "grass" dance (of the Plains tribes) instead of the "stomp" dance (their personal conventional ceremony). Hook explores this phenomenon nonjudgmentally, elucidating "the inherently mutable nature of ethnicity."
The results of Hook's paintings is an engaging research of "the dynamic and contextually dependent nature of private and communal ethnic identity." 5 centuries of cultural transition are traced and assessed, but nonetheless made to appear own and extremely human. In his end he symbolizes the research he has made as he describes a mixed-blood baby dancing in a tribal rite. "This younger child," he explains, "inherits a 5 hundred–year legacy of cultural transition instigated via Columbus's arrival during this hemisphere." The technique of attaining endured ethnic survival, he concludes, is "learning to 'walk in either worlds.' . . . either cultural worlds needs to be studied, understood, and navigated." This ebook is a beginning
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Additional info for The Alabama-Coushatta Indians (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas a & M University)
Example text
These two problems point to the cultural disparity between Indian and white culture. Most written descriptions of the Alabama-Coushattas were by non-Indian observers whose observations of native culture were ethnocentric. These documents do, however, provide sufficient information to allow comparisons with subsequent Alabama-Coushatta cultural expressions. 4 According to one of their traditions, Abba Mikko created the people from clay, and they lived in a deep underground cave for a long time. Then they moved upward toward the cave entrance.
Mankind could not prosper under such conditions, for the beasts and serpents destroyed all human of offspring. Geronimo, Apache Leader From their first encounter with Europeans, Alabama-Coushatta lives were altered. During the early contact and migration periods these external forces were not sufficient to completely displace native culture and replace it with that of the Europeans. The transition in Cultural identity, however, had begun. A chronological organizational approach to the depiction of Alabama-Coushatta cultural change is essentially non-Indian in concept, as is the categorization of life-ways for analytical purposes.
Distinct cultural boundaries existed between Indian nations, whose languages and lifestyles were much more diverse than those of the multinational European invaders. " Although there are earlier examples of joint Indian activities,35 widespread pan-Indian consciousness did not occur until the latter half of the twentieth century. "36 The prevalence of supratribal consciousness is particularly evident in the urban context. Many urban organizations are intertribal in nature. In Houston, Texas, there are two supratribal social organizations, an Indian Baptist mission, an American Indian Chamber of Commerce, and two Native American student groups.