Document Type
Article
Abstract
Indigeneity is a multi-faceted identity and idea complicated by a multitude of racial, ethnic, political, historic, and legal contexts. The identity of an Indigenous person, which in this essay I use to refer to people native to the Canada and United States area pre-colonialism, goes beyond a look, a level of ancestry, or an enrollment status. Indigeneity is something lived, something intangible yet undeniably adaptive and oppressed. My understanding of my Indigeneity as an Ojibwe-Anishinaabe and Muscogee person fundamentally changed upon a particularly unique powwow experience with my mom. One powwow and significant conversation with her prompted my consideration of how Indigenous culture adapts within the oppressive cultural, educational, and socio-economic framework of the colonial United States. I look to reconcile the unprecedented context which contains colonial and patriotic influences and Indigenous ingenuity to maintain our cultural identity via song, dance, means of teaching, and labor systems. The formation of legal policies such as the Code of Indian Offenses and The Dawes Act, to name a few, oppressed Indigenous cultural practices, supported westernization of labor systems, and encouraged an American culture set on culturally objectifying and villainizing Indigenous people. This colonial circumstance forced countless involuntary changes to Indigenous cultural practices, changes which exhibit nuance beyond what I’d ever thought about prior to this experience. With that said, within this imposed colonial, capitalist, and oppressive context, Indigenous people actively adapted cultural practices to ensure their survival. These actions reflect two major dynamics within colonialism: immense ethnocentrism, the fuel of such assimilationist and genocidal actions; social stratification, the creation of racial and cultural hierarchy as a consequence of ethnocentrism. I analyze this interaction between paradoxical oppressive colonial contexts and Indigenous agency via song, dance, means of teaching, language, and labor in this essay, and how all of these dynamics directly relate to western ethnocentrism and consequential social stratification.
Recommended Citation
Agaton Howes, Rizal
(2026)
"Indigenous is More Than a Label: The Intersectionality of Colonialism and Indigenous Cultural Practices,"
Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal: Vol. 13:
Iss.
2, Article 1.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.61366/2576-2176.1180
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/horizons/vol13/iss2/1
Primo Type
Article