Today there are more than half a million Indians in the United
States and millions more elsewhere in the Americas. Still trying
to cope with adjustment to white civilization, they are in all stages of
development, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated. In the
United States, they still speak more than 100 different languages.
Economically they range from pauperism to affluence. A few have made
money from oil and other natural sources found on their lands, but many
thousands live at near-starvation levels. Some are educated and
completely assimilated in white society; many live in nearly complete
isolation from non-Indian Americans. Relocation programs have taken
hundreds of Indians to work in cities; thousands of others cling to the
security of their reservations, hoping to gain education and assistance
necessary to develop the resources of their lands and become
self-sustaining. Generally, the Indians are still proud of their
traditions and heritage, and many of them resist giving them up or
allowing them to be submerged or corrupted by white civilization. But
Indians generally also recognize that their standards of living must be
raised. Without giving up their unique cultural heritage, they have
organized into tribal councils to try to help the federal government
settle on long-range programs of education, health services, vocational
training, resource planning, and financial credit that will assist them
to solutions of the problems that have beset them for so many sad
decades.
Nowadays, there exist about 300
federal reservations in the United States, with a total of
52,017,551 acres held in trust by the federal government, the large
majority west of the Mississippi. There are also 21 state
reservations, most of these in the East. Some reservations are
restricted to one tribe, others are jointly held. Some reservation land
is owned, rented and occupied by non-Indians. The largest reservation is
held by the Navajo tribe. Although the reservations are sovereign
nations, the People are also considered U.S. citizens.
In the contemporary relationship
between the federal government and federally chartered tribes, as it has
reached the present through a number of historical stages, the United
States Congress with its powers to ratify treaties and regulate commerce
is the trustee of the special Indian status. The trusteeship involves
protection of Indian property; protection of Indian right to
self-government; and the provision of services necessary for survival
and advancement. In the commission of its trusteeship, Congress has
placed the major responsibility for Indian matters in the Department of
Interior and its subdivision the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In addition
to the central office in Washington D.C., the BIA maintains regional
offices in 12 states, mostly in the West, with agencies on particular
reservations as well. Many Native Americans have positions in the BIA,
but relatively few are at the highest positions.
Indians are free to live anywhere.
It is estimated that one-third to one-half of the Indian population in
the United States now lives in cities. The greatest concentration of
urban Indians, about 60,000, are found in the Los Angeles - Long Beach
area of California. Other cities with large Indian populations are San
Francisco - Oakland in California, Tulsa and Oklahoma city in Oklahoma,
New York City and Buffalo in New York, Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona,
Minneapolis - St. Paul and Duluth in Minnesota, Seattle - Everett in
Washington, Rapid City in South Dakota, Denver in Colorado, Milwaukee in
Wisconsin, Portland in Oregon, Albuquerque in New Mexico, and Nome,
Bethel and Barrow in Alaska.
On the positive side of the Native
North American situation, Indian art is enjoying a renaissance.
First in the realm of Indian arts and crafts, where many Indians,
using traditional techniques and forms, have found reliable markets
among both tourists and serious collectors; and second, in the realm of fine
arts, where Indian painters and sculptors, in a burst of new
esthetics that blend the traditional with the modern, have developed
international reputations. Native North American culture in both the
United States and Canada is a national treasure. Its renewal is everyone’s
renewal.
In Mexico the Indians called indígenas
- estimated 15 percent of the total population - are direct descendants
of the Aztec, Maya and other ancient civilizations. Some are small
groups living in self-sufficient isolation, others occupy large
territories. While it is convenient for the sake of categorization to
lump all Indians together, Mexico’s native peoples are characterized
by linguistic and cultural differences that can be very distinct. The
status of indígenas in today’s Mexico, unfortunately, is not
much better than it was during the colonial era. Poverty is a chronic,
debilitating fact of life for more than three-quarters of the country’s
Indian communities. Life is very hard for "Mexico’s most
forgotten people", as many indígenas refer to themselves,
but their concerns have garnered international attention and forced
ongoing government negotiations.
In Peru about half of the
population is Indian, descendants of the Incas. These people still
practice their own language, culture and religion. Their situation in
the Peruvian society is similar to "Mexico’s most forgotten
people".
Indians everywhere represent heroic
and romantic historical figures who held out, through skill and
courage, against overwhelming forces. They also represent beings who
were in tune with themselves, one another, and nature. Balance and
harmony are concepts often applied to Indian ways of life, as well as to
Indian inner life. For societies alarmed by ecological damage from
modern technologies, Indian coexistence with the natural environment
serves as a model for survival.
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