The Indians GOT “huge swaths of land to roam”.
And, please ‘scuse me, I am not trying to be hostile, but my BA is in Anthropology, and I was taught there’s really no group of which you can say, “their culture wasn’t all that much to begin with”.
Culture is the very air human groups depend on for their existence. I remember my prof saying when we talk about “primitives”we have to remember that doesn’t imply immaturity. They and their cultures are just as old as ours. The Abbos and other Melanesian/Oceanic societies, as I recall, had an elaborate mythology, creation myth, and eschatology.
But the very ethos, the corps, the raison d’être, of a culture is shaken when it comes into contact with a completely alien one, as happened in Melanesia/Oceania when in WW II their islands were suddenly invaded and commandeered because of their geographically strategic importance.
In some cases this generates a new Syncretistic heresy, as it did in that locale: the Cargo Cult. (and actually I’d argue that Islam is exactly the same kinda phenomenon.)
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Yes. Here’s what it looks like (and read the subtitles):
There’s much to be learned. And definitely something to be protected.
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For the Sioux Tribe most of the bison had been killed.
I haven’t really researched it, but I think the death blow to their culture was government subsidies which will destroy any culture as I have warned about UBI.
My point was that any culture is dependent on many variables. A culture cannot be artificially maintained when most of the variables have been removed.
If the Sioux could have fed themselves by traditional methods of hunting, they still would not have had the natural pressure of competition from other tribes for example. How do you maintain a culture that at least in part is a warrior based culture after being destroyed and put on a reservation? Just one aspect of the forces that interact with a culture that is necessary for the culture to be maintained. Without this environment, you preserve something like an exhibit in a museum of a culture that once existed.
I am not being critical and I understand the desire, but the Sioux doing native dances and speaking in Sioux is a farcical representation of the real Sioux culture. It is like having brat and thinking you are preserving your German culture.
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Exactly. A culture can’t be maintained when it’s been shown up as…superceded, unnecessary.
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Are these native dances induced by alcohol? Asking for a ‘friend’…
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