indian american identity essay

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Yale Common App Essay: A meaningful background, identity, interest, or talent.

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. if this sounds like you, then please share your story..

Since my childhood, I wanted success in America, a desire shared by many first generation children of immigrants, but as an Indian male I convinced myself that the only way to attain this was through complete assimilation. I found ways to pick and prod at some of the most unjust aspects of Indian society and used that as enough justification to reject my culture altogether. I wanted to be American and I felt that the Indian accent, the Indian food, and just about everything “Indian” about me had to go. In my quest to become “American”, I almost lost a sense of who I am.

Throughout elementary school, I was identified as Indian, yet I tirelessly attempted to prevent this. On cultural awareness day in first grade, when asked what nationality I was, I proudly proclaimed “American,” to everyone’s surprise. By this time, I had lost the accent entirely, yet there was still enough “evidence” that I was Indian. My mother packed me a traditional Indian lunch every morning and every afternoon I would bring home untouched food. After enough scolding from her, I would make sure that I brought none of the food back by tossing it in the cafeteria garbage. I look back and wonder why I was so obsessed with destroying every tiny bit of “Indian” in me, for none of my peers nor my teachers recognized nor congratulated my efforts. I was locked in an identity conflict. There was no denying who I truly was, but I felt that I needed to change that in order to fit in.

In middle school, I had gained the reputation of being the most “Americanized” Indian in school. My friends would marvel at my complete detachment from my culture. I would pretend to not understand my parents when they spoke to me in Gujarati in public. I would always mark English as my first and only language spoken at home. I would always express my distaste for Indian dishes when engaged in conversation about ethnic food, although I secretly devoured the traditional biryani and makhni chicken whenever my mother would prepare it.

During the summer of 2012, my family and I travelled to London to attend a relative’s wedding. To my surprise, I was introduced to my cousins, who although possessing respectable educational degrees, speaking with a British accent, in interracial marriages, and mingling with British friends, embraced the cultural richness of India. The wedding displayed all the cultural rites and rituals with traditional Indian food and delicacies, while the reception that followed had a totally westernized flare. All the guests had a great time and I realized that there was a creative way in which the two cultures engaged in conflict within me could integrate.

Another turning point for me occurred during my research internship at Yale’s School of Medicine. There was a great amount of cultural diversity that existed in the research atmosphere and I found myself meeting people of various nationalities. Obviously, people of similar cultural backgrounds tended to aggregate, but I found it amazing that during lunch hour everyone, regardless of nationality, would socialize over the various ethnic foods available from street-side vendors. This epitomized the “melting- pot” of cultures that America is. I met highly regarded professors, doctorates, and medical students who despite their successes in America still relished in their cultures openly and even embraced each other’s cultures.

It was at this point that I realized that there was no embarrassment or shame in expressing my culture. For too long had I suppressed my culture due to my flawed interpretation of how success is attained in America. There was nothing advantageous in trying to fit the portrait of a “generic” American, for such a portrait is a fallacy. My identity is Indian and American – in fact, I now like to think that I’m the best of both worlds.

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Growing Up a Desi Girl: What It Means to Be Between Two Worlds

When I'm presented with a "Where are you from?" I usually run through this multiple-choice quiz in my head:

a. Say that I'm American and be prodded to admit where I'm really from, as though being born on native soil isn't enough of a token of my American-ness.

b. Say that I'm Indian and sit through the whole FAQ, ("Wait, red dot Indian or Native American? Do you eat curry every night? Do your parents speak English? Will your marriage be arranged?")

c. Say "around here" and fake that I have to go to the bathroom.

I roll the dice with options A-C, depending on how much energy I have that day. But, the truth is? I'm not sure myself some days.

Being a woman of color, people often press you even harder on that "Where are you from?" question. Questions that are often considered harmless can sometimes result in an awkward, stumbling identity crisis. My standard reply of, "California, around the SF… Bay Area," never seems to placate people, because my tan skin, big dark eyes, and thick eyebrows betray me. I don't look like I'm really American to a lot of people (read: sun-kissed, California-beach-blonde beauty), and so the label never quite fits. Add in the fact that my name is "Nikita" and I've truly thrown the audience a plot twist. Is she from here? Is she mixed-race? Is she an alien? Stay tuned to find out!

I've lived in four big cities in under 18 years: Chicago, New Delhi, San Francisco, and New York. New York is now home, and technically because my family is in California, so is San Francisco. It's odd to juggle specific regional identities that pertain to the U.S. only while negotiating the complications of my ethnic and cultural identities as well. Saying I'm from California means something different to people than "American," and saying I'm Indian carries other implications. Plus, the "Indian" identity is an umbrella term for a series of different identities all woven together by a similar overarching cultural thread and a political boundary. India is a vast country with dozens of languages, cuisines, and more — no two Indian experiences can ever neatly intersect.

Perhaps if I were entirely born and raised in America, I'd feel as though I wasn't too Indian to fit under "American" neatly. And, maybe if I didn't spend the better part of my 21 years in America, I'd feel better just saying I am Indian. I love being Indian, but sometimes I don't feel Indian enough, really. I am Indian. I am American. I am Indian-American. Neither there, nor there — but somewhere in between.

I lived in India for the better part of the first 5 years of my life, and once I moved back to the U.S., I immediately felt alien amongst my classmates. With my broken English, my funny accent, and the fact that I had no idea who Pikachu was, I may as well have been from another planet. I was a quick study, though: I laboriously repaired my accent, always making sure to pronounce my Vs and Ws correctly, and never allowing my Rs to linger on my tongue for too long; I watched all the "Blue's Clues" I could get my hands on; I asked my parents to take me to movies, the works. However, despite all my efforts otherwise, I felt culturally inept.

So I stepped up my efforts. I began shirking my Indian-ness and wholly adopting American culture in an attempt to fit in. I spent the better part of my teenage years acting as though my own culture was backwards, primitive, and something worth being ashamed of. I turned up my nose at Indian food, maligned religion, and was just kind of a brat. "I'm like, the whitest Indian girl like, ever," and all that jazz. I tried so desperately to lose all the things that made me different so that I could fall into a dominant narrative that wasn't mine and didn't need to be mine — despite how much the world sometimes made (and still makes) me feel otherwise.

I had made an error in naively assuming that assimilating wholeheartedly would make my life easier, but the truth is: whiteness didn't fit. And somehow, full on Indian-ness didn't either, given that I was (mostly) raised and schooled in America. I didn't feel as though I could relate to either fairly. In retrospect? As much as I desperately wanted one label or the other to fit in an absolutist fashion, they never needed to: it's okay to be who I am, the way I am. I think I fall somewhere in between Indian and American; I am the definition of a hyphenated, hybrid identity.

The truth is, it's okay to feel like you're neither here nor there — we are all shaped by the experiences we've lived through. There is no right way to be Indian, and there is no right way to be American. We're formed by our individual experiences and beliefs, and it's daunting to collapse millions of experiences into one label for a curious stranger (or even yourself!). It is normal to feel confused by your own identity from time to time, to feel like an enigma. Trust me though — as much as the world keeps making you feel like an absolute weirdo, you are not. Learning and knowing that I have a place in this world has been healing; finding people who have shared similar struggles, experiences, and stories has been instrumental. Know that you are not entirely alone, and as you go through life you will encounter your people.

I still don't know how to really answer that dreaded question, though. I'll keep rolling the dice and get back to you.

*Editor's Note: This headline has been adjusted from "Growing Up Indian and American" since its original publish date to reflect that Neelam Gill, the model pictured, is Indian and British.

Want more Teen Vogue ? Go behind the scenes of our August cover shoot with the new faces of fashion!

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Never Have I Ever…reflected on my identity by Ankita D. '23

"too indian" or "not indian enough"?

May 4, 2020

• in People & Identities

This week, I, like many other Indian American girls I know, binge-watched the Netflix show Never Have I Ever . The show, which happens to be the No. 1 trending series on Netflix right now, garnered a lot of attention for finally, finally giving South Asians the representation in media they deserve. I was, of course, hyped to watch it since I’ve never seen a convincingly spunky Indian female character, let alone a protagonist.

Sadly, this show did not meet my expectations. It did many things well and is obviously a huge step for Indians in Hollywood, but…yeah, it has a lot of issues that have prompted me to think about my culture and where I fit into it.

The main character, Devi, is an outgoing and brash girl whose two main goals are to go to Princeton and to have sex. Alright, relatable. But in an attempt to eschew the “nerdy girl” stereotype for Devi, the show’s creators center the plot development on her trying to get with the hot athlete. It’s great that they try to portray a reality where the teens who get perfect scores on their PSAT’s and participate in a host of extracurricular activities also strive to have vibrant social lives, but…at what cost??

For the record, I had no social life in high school—I took a multitude of AP classes, watched aggressive amounts of anime, and pretty much didn’t leave my house except to go to school or quiz bowl matches. Obviously, I’m thrilled to see Devi embrace a life of partying as a mere sophomore, since I only got to do that at MIT, but damn. She has to be bitten by a coyote to be relevant? She has to ditch her friends, who are grappling with serious personal issues, to go do a favor for the hot athlete in order to get a chance at kissing him? What???

I’m mad, y’all.

Also, there’s “busting Asian stereotypes” and then there’s “giving Asian characters random backstories that aren’t related to their cultural identity in a way that distracts from the fact that they’re Asian.” Indeed, Devi’s trauma is so…intense…and plot-consuming that it hinders any meaningful character development.

What I wanted to see more of in this show was Devi’s struggle between being “too Indian” and “not Indian enough,” since that’s a critical facet of the Indian-American experience. In one scene, where Devi is talking to a college admissions counselor, he tells her that she’s “just another Indian girl” unless she has a compelling narrative to write about in her application essay. That part really struck me since in my Common App Essay, I wrote about my homestay experience in Japan and how I feel more connected to Japanese culture than Indian culture as a result.

Here’s the last few paragraphs of the essay. Disclaimer: I didn’t really care about the Common App, so I kind of…spliced up some ideas from my MIT essays and pasted them together to make this. Not my best work, for sure. so don’t judge me too hard uwu

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. …I often wondered how I could be drawn to Japanese culture when the Indian one is so vibrant. How could I not feel an affinity for the whirling skirts and lively music, the colorful festivals and aromatic foods, or even the sense of community that binds families so strongly together? In truth, I wanted desperately to resonate with Indian culture, but with a Catholic background ⁠ 01 lol my family is from that one Indian state that has a lot of Catholic people and feeble understanding of any Indian dialect, I felt alienated from it. Since my parents gave me the independence to explore my own cultural identity, I gravitated towards Japan’s traditions, and fell in love with the intricacies of the language and the vitality of the customs. I grew to admire the people for their harmony, stalwart nature, and ability to respond to bitter adversity with focused determination. Today, I’m grateful for how much I’ve learned from the Japanese culture and the friends I’ve made through a mutual appreciation for it, but most of all for the family I’ve gained. A 6,800-mile distance is nothing when we’ve already bridged language and culture barriers and forged bonds that will last a lifetime. After all, family is forever.

Growing up, I never felt in touch with my culture. I didn’t attend Shishu Bharati, the school that teaches first-generation kids about Indian languages and culture, and only vaguely went to Indian functions and parties. I never attained fluency in Malayalam, the language native to the Indian state where my family is from, and never learned Hindi ⁠ 02 I know two words: namaste, and anar, which means pomegranate. I distinctly remember walking into the room where Nisha was learning the Hindi alphabet, and leaving right after a:anar either. I watched only the essential Bollywood movies ⁠ 03 Three Idiots, Dhoom 2, Jab We Met, PK, etc and could answer maybe three questions about Indian popular culture. And I didn’t particularly want to do any of these things since I wanted to feel “unique” and separate from the rest of the Indian community. Honestly, the derogatory comments Devi makes about the girls dancing at the Indian festival Ganesh Puja are ones a younger me would’ve made to deride my “too-Indian” peers.

In my essay, I describe how I came to embrace Japanese culture after a six-week homestay with a Japanese host family. My appreciation for it stemmed (surprise surprise) from more than just being a weeb , but from a willingness to immerse myself in a new culture since I didn’t feel all that connected to the one I was born into. I picked up Japanese with ease through my annual visits to Japan and my passion for studying the language as a means of bridging the cultural divide, and eventually was able to feel completely comfortable as a gaijin ⁠ 04 foreigner; Japan is super homogenous, so those who don't look Japanese won't really be treated as Japanese. watch the video 'But we're speaking Japanese!　日本語喋ってるんだけど' for more insight on this living in Japan.

…the closest I’ve felt to immersing myself in Indian culture is eating so many gulab jamuns that I grow closer and closer to becoming a gulab jamun.

Truly, the only connections I have to my culture, at this point, are food and the ideals my parents have instilled in me. I didn’t even consider joining MIT SAAS ⁠ 05 South Asian Association of Students because of the disconnect I feel, and I’d probably feel out of place at any of the Indian cultural events at MIT. My Common App Essay might be emo and dramatic, but it’s true: I feel more connected in nearly every way to Japanese culture.

And although I’m grateful that I found solace in another culture, I’ll always wish I were more connected to my roots. Indian culture is freaking incredible, so I hate that I felt ashamed of it as a kid. I hate that I can’t understand Malayalam, or feel comfortable in any traditional attire, or feel like anything but an outsider.

So, yeah, I’m disappointed in Never Have I Ever.  The show could’ve depicted an uplifting Indian support system that helps Devi reconcile her two conflicting identities, or at least some representation of Devi and her mother understanding each other’s competing cultural mindsets that doesn’t stem from extenuating circumstances, but….nah.

I’m glad that I got to see an Indian girl be gutsy and confident on-screen, but I wish she could’ve been portrayed in a way that wasn’t cross-culturally problematic. Overcompensating for her academic success by making her entire narrative about being thirsty and desperate to party was not it , folks.

I am disgruntled and disappointed and sad that I wasn’t able to gain anything from this show. But I guess that’s my fault for hoping to be enlightened and empowered by a whimsical teen comedy just because it has an Indian girl as its protagonist.

• lol my family is from that one Indian state that has a lot of Catholic people" ⁠ back to text ↑
• I know two words: namaste, and anar, which means pomegranate. I distinctly remember walking into the room where Nisha was learning the Hindi alphabet, and leaving right after a:anar ⁠ back to text ↑
• Three Idiots, Dhoom 2, Jab We Met, PK, etc ⁠ back to text ↑
• foreigner; Japan is super homogenous, so those who don't look Japanese won't really be treated as Japanese. watch the video 'But we're speaking Japanese!　日本語喋ってるんだけど' for more insight on this ⁠ back to text ↑
• South Asian Association of Students ⁠ back to text ↑

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The Truth Behind Indian American Exceptionalism

Many of us are unaware of the special circumstances that eased our entry into American life—and of the bonds we share with other nonwhite groups.

This article was published online on December 19, 2020.

I n 1978 , several years after leaving India and coming to Texas, my parents decided to move out of our middle-class neighborhood in southwest Houston. Our new home, a few miles away, was a custom-designed contemporary structure on a one-acre lot in the exclusive Piney Point Village, population 3,419, a community that vies for the title of “richest city in Texas.” We had a swimming pool and a three-car garage, where my dad, an immaculately tailored allergist, parked his silver Cadillac and my mom parked her ivory Mercedes. We had, quite clearly, arrived.

Like countless other immigrants, my parents had come to the United States, in 1969, with little cash in hand. Within a few years, my devout Hindu mother, orphaned at an early age, had switched from a sari to tennis skirts and was competing at Houston’s swankiest clubs. My father, who hadn’t owned a pair of shoes until he was 10, was buying season tickets to the Houston Symphony, where he promptly fell asleep during every performance.

Our world was filled with Indian doctors and engineers. We never stopped to ask why their entrance into American society had been so rapid. We simply accepted that their success was a combination of immigrant pluck and the right values: Indians were family-oriented, education-oriented, and work-oriented.

There was a term for our place in the country’s racial order: model minority . The concept is generally traced to a 1966 article in The New York Times Magazine by the sociologist William Petersen, which focused on Japanese Americans; the basic idea was extended to other Asian Americans. Of course, the notion of “model minorities” comes with a flip side—“problem minorities.” The terminology took on life at a time of intense social unrest: race riots across the country, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the emergence of Richard Nixon’s racially charged “southern strategy.” Many Americans were losing what faith they may have had in the possibility of racial equality.

Today, it’s easy to take for granted the measures of Indian American success: the ubiquity of the “Dr. Patel” stereotype; the kids who, year in and year out, dominate the Scripps National Spelling Bee; a vice president–elect, Kamala Harris, whose mother was Indian; and, most notably, the median annual household income , which is among the highest of any group. Nikki Haley, Donald Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, whose parents arrived in the U.S. in the late ’60s, summed up one prevailing view this way: “Mostly we’re just good at being Americans.”

Read: Kamala Harris and the ‘other 1 percent’

What is forgotten is that before Indian Americans became a model minority, we were regarded as a problem minority. Also forgotten is the extent to which the U.S. engineered the conditions that allowed certain nonwhite groups to thrive.

This is a reality to which Indian Americans themselves often seem blind. From the comfortable perspective of university towns and tech hubs and white-dominated suburbs, Indian Americans do not see what they have in common with other nonwhite Americans—as if life in a bubble were truly possible, and as if the idea of common interest with other groups were unseemly.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, after the Exclusion Act halted most immigration from China, North American employers in need of laborers turned to India, among other places. As Erika Lee notes in her 2015 book, The Making of Asian America , leaflets blanketed the Punjabi countryside promising “opportunities of fortune-making”—typically a wage of $2 a day if a man was strong. As their numbers grew, Indian immigrants, primarily working as farm laborers or lumberjacks, came to be considered “the least desirable of all races.” Nativists warned of a “tide of turbans.” The immigrants were overwhelmingly men, and were legally prevented from bringing over a wife or children. Subject to anti-miscegenation laws, the unmarried frequently found spouses in the Hispanic or Black communities.

In 1920, a court in Oregon granted citizenship to a man named Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian immigrant who had served in the U.S. Army during the First World War. A naturalization examiner objected, and the issue made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court . Citing immigration and naturalization law of the time, the Court in 1923 ruled that Thind was not white in “the understanding of the common man” and denied him citizenship. In 1924, the U.S. passed the draconian Johnson-Reed Act , the last of a series of laws that effectively closed the door to immigrants from Asian countries.

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Vaishno Das Bagai, the son of a wealthy landowner in Peshawar, had arrived on Angel Island, in San Francisco Bay, in 1915 with his wife, their three sons, and $25,000 in gold. He became a naturalized citizen in 1921. But the revocation of his citizenship, in 1923, led to the liquidation of his property, including the store he owned. In 1928, despondent, he took his own life. “I came to America thinking, dreaming, and hoping to make this land my home,” he wrote in a farewell letter addressed to “the world at large,” which was published in the San Francisco Examiner . “Now what am I?”

Attitudes began to change during the Second World War. The U.S. began—selectively—to scrub exclusionary laws in a bid to build wartime alliances in Asia and to counter propaganda by Germany and Japan, which took aim at America’s grim racial history. Naturalization rights were extended to Chinese immigrants in 1943 and to immigrants from India and the Philippines in 1946. Japanese Americans were of course an exception—their loyalty questioned, they were rounded up during the war and interned in detention camps.

The nature of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. was always different from that of racism directed at Black Americans, which was much older than the nation. In sheer numerical terms, the Asian and Pacific Islander population was small—in 1940, it was one‑50th the size of the Black population. African Americans would fight for decades more to end legal segregation and secure voting rights, even as doors were thrown open for Asians.

As one nation after another shed its colonial overlord—the Philippines in 1946, India and Pakistan in 1947, Indonesia in 1949—the U.S. was in the delicate position of trying to expand its sphere of influence without perpetuating imperial optics. In her book Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (2011), the legal historian Mary Dudziak framed the issue pointedly:

How could American democracy be a beacon during the Cold War, and a model for those struggling against Soviet oppression, if the United States itself practiced brutal discrimination against minorities within its own borders?

The career of Dalip Singh Saund can be understood against this backdrop. Saund, a Democrat from California, was the first Indian American elected to Congress . In 1956, he narrowly defeated the Republican candidate, Jacqueline Cochran Odlum, a pioneering pilot and the first woman to break the sound barrier. She found it hard to believe that she had lost to “a Hindu,” and never ran for office again. Saund was in fact Sikh. He had arrived in the U.S. in 1920, at the height of anti-Asian sentiment, and received a doctorate in mathematics, but had gone on to become a successful farmer (and a justice of the peace). Early on, he wore a turban, but at some point he stopped. The images we have of him in later years show a dashing man in dark suits. In one photo, he flashes a rakish smile while greeting then-Senator John F. Kennedy. He represented a new kind of mid-century American.

Saund’s election was a big enough deal that a CBS television crew shadowed him on his first day in office. The House Foreign Affairs Committee sent Saund on an international tour to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines. Saund said he wished to “present myself as a living example of American democracy in practice.” He and the committee hoped to counter, as Saund put it, “the Communist lie that racial prejudice against Asians is rampant in America.”

In 1959, Saund sat for a TV interview at WCKT, in Miami. The host introduced him, breathlessly, as “probably the most unforgettable character I have ever met. The son of parents in faraway India who could neither read nor write, Judge Saund sits now with dignity and works with skill in the Congress of the United States.” The interviewer seemed to be saying, See how far you have come. See how far we have brought you . But Saund more than held his own.

In 1965, Congress made sweeping changes to U.S. immigration law. Part of the impetus was greater equity, but there was also pressure, in a Cold War context, from dozens of newly independent nations in Asia and Africa. The U.S. did away with the admittance formula that had heavily favored immigrants from Western Europe. The new legislation also prioritized family reunification and professional skills, and Asian immigrants ultimately leveraged both to their advantage. When the legislation was passed, no one anticipated how radically it would alter the country’s demographics.

Nor did my parents understand the extent to which their own lives and fortunes would be transformed when they arrived in this country. They had fled a slow, lumbering economy, one derided by Western skeptics for its “Hindu rate of growth.” My father’s decision to move to the U.S. with my mother was at once an act of economic necessity and a sign of his intense ambition. The image of his sobbing parents and younger siblings upon their departure for the airport has stayed with him to this day. “It was like a death in the family,” he recalled in his self-published memoir, My Mother Called Me Unni: A Doctor’s Tale of Migration .

This scene played out in thousands of families as many of India’s best and brightest left for the U.S. From 1966 to 1977, according to the historian Vijay Prashad, about 20,000 scientists immigrated from India to the United States, along with 40,000 engineers and 25,000 physicians. The majority spoke English and came from upper-caste communities (as my parents did). The composition of the diaspora was representative of only a narrow slice of India: people who had the social capital and intellectual means to succeed far from home, and who had the resources to make the journey in the first place.

The result was an intense form of social engineering, but one that went largely unacknowledged. Immigrants from India, armed with degrees, arrived after the height of the civil-rights movement, and benefited from a struggle that they had not participated in or even witnessed. They made their way not only to cities but to suburbs, and broadly speaking were accepted more easily than other nonwhite groups have been.

I don’t recall hearing the name Dalip Singh Saund until I was in my 30s, well after I’d left Houston. Nor had I heard of Vaishno Das Bagai or Bhagat Singh Thind. These names were absent from my childhood. It was as if the entire history that preceded my family’s arrival, the messy parts, had been snipped off. The year 1965, when the Immigration and Nationality Act was amended, was our Year Zero.

My parents arrived in this country in the waning days of 1969. They first settled in Washington, D.C., then moved to Connecticut, and finally put down roots in Texas. In a recent text thread with my two sisters, they recalled the excitement of moving into the Piney Point home—the trees, the serenity. “But I didn’t perceive it at the time as moving up in the world,” Kala wrote. Subconsciously, though, we understood the new rules. We began to demand brand-name clothes—Izod and Polo—something my mother told us, years later, that she regretted giving in to.

In his memoir, my father recounted what he saw as my mother’s evolution, and her awkwardness.

For a girl who grew up without parents, in a laid-back Kerala village with only one street, a big river, and three temples scattered across clusters of ancestral homes, Devi tried her very best to be Americanized. Exchanging her favorite sarees, she made attempts to dress in evening gowns and mink coats and leather boots. From her preciously nourished, long, braided hairstyles with tucked-in jasmine garlands she half-heartedly learned to put up her hair on the top or to the fancy of the stylists.

I called Mom and asked her what she had felt about her adjustments back then. “That’s all Dad’s fancies, you know. I had to go along with it. To have peace. And I thought, These are the things you have to do .” As kids, we had been proud of our mother the tennis star, the woman who taught herself to ride a bike in her 30s. I hadn’t considered the strain placed upon her—by her kids, by her husband, by the world beyond our home—as she attempted to fit herself and her family into this new place.

In many ways, my sisters and I had an exalted childhood. We traveled abroad, to Paris, Lucerne, Venice, and Tokyo, with frequent visits to see our relatives in India. Even as a young brown man, I felt secure. My parents never had to give me “the talk” that many Black teenagers receive. At the same time, I knew better than to expose my family life, even something as simple as the food in our refrigerator, to the judgment of the white world. Some people in that world, I realized, thought we were going to hell, that our food stank, that our customs were freakish.

Recently I looked up the current census data for Piney Point: The city is 85 percent white and 12 percent Asian. The Black population, however, stands at 0.6 percent—virtually nonexistent, as it has been for decades. The historian Uzma Quraishi, who has studied the residential patterns of middle-class Indian and Pakistani immigrants in the Houston area in the 1970s and ’80s, found that they track almost identically with those of white residents who left the central urban area for more affluent neighborhoods on the outskirts, ostensibly so their kids could attend “good schools” but also to distance themselves from Black residents. She calls this process “brown flight.” Those of us with roots in the Indian subcontinent had it drilled into us from an early age that “divide and rule” had been the most potent tool of the colonial power. As immigrants, had we become complicit in this same strategy?

During the pandemic this spring, my parents were stuck in Kerala and watched, bewildered, as America seemed to implode, and not just from disease and economic distress. Police killings of unarmed Black Americans inspired national outrage and protest; a backlash led by armed white counterprotesters was quick in coming. I communicated with them by email and WhatsApp. On one occasion, I asked Dad what had prompted him and Mom to move to Piney Point, back in the ’70s. “Perhaps,” he ventured in reply, “the American dream.”

That “perhaps” reflected the fact that many years had passed and memories were foggy. But I think it also reflected something else: that the American narrative is not nearly as neat and linear in his mind as it had appeared when he arrived here, months after the U.S. had put a man on the moon. The American dream doesn’t mean what it once did to a newcomer.

Read: Trump is scaring Indian Americans into finding their political voice

In 2017, just a few weeks into the Trump presidency, Srinivas Kuchibhotla , an Indian-born engineer, was killed at a bar in a Kansas City suburb. The killer had shouted: “Get out of my country.” Not long after, I found myself on an email thread with my dad and a few of his good friends, or “uncles,” as we refer to them, all retired Indian American doctors around the age of 80. They understood that the position of Indian Americans was in many ways privileged, and that threats were sporadic. But they were worried. “The more noise we make, these racists will be awakened, who may never have heard of Hindus and their customs,” wrote one. “Fighting them alone may get us under six feet.” The only thing to do, he said, was lie low. Despite all their success, and nearly 50 years of living in the U.S., the uncles were reacting as if their Americanness remained tentative and conditional.

Like most of their Indian-immigrant peers, the uncles came from historically advantaged communities. This had helped them emerge from India’s ferocious academic system victorious, allowed them to leap across continents and flourish professionally, and enabled them to isolate themselves in America’s best and whitest neighborhoods.

It did not, however, prepare them for a fight—or for the realization that they were not in this alone.

This article appears in the January/February 2021 print edition with the headline “The Making of a Model Minority.”

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Winning Essays: Growing Up Indian In America

Atlanta, GA, July 14: Last month, we asked Indian-American teens to submit an essay on the topic, ‘Growing up Indian in America’. We had a total of 15 submissions; seven in the senior age group (16-18 years) and eight in the junior group (13-15 years).

“It was good to see the perspectives of these youngsters,” said Ajay Vishwanathan, one of the judges. “From being embarrassed by their Indian lunches to becoming aware (and eventually respectful) of the space they occupy between the two cultures, the experiences were intriguing to read.” The other judges echoed his sentiments.

We are pleased to feature the two winning essays, one from each category. Congratulations to the winners! Later this month, we will feature other notable essays.

Diversity Within Diversity (Winner, Senior Category)

Imperialism. It’s a word that the entire world was familiar with when Great Britain was a force to be reckoned with. Snatching up territory to expand its sphere of influence, the unassuming island claimed lands from the bottom tip of Africa to the northern regions of the Americas.India was also caught in its wide cast net, tangled in fishing line, but jumped to turn back to water.

In the traditional sense of the word, imperialism is now obsolete. Countries don’t stake claim to territories; they influence others by diplomacy, military, and most importantly, culture.America’s cultural imperialism is very subtle, taking the form of a boosted denim industry in Korea and a greater likelihood of spotting a Kentucky Fried Chicken in India. If my India-dwelling counterpart is swaying from her traditional Indian culture, then how am I, a first generation America-dwelling desi, supposed to stick to mine? This imperialism is not only the root of an internal struggle, but also led to the birth of the American-born Confused Desi (ABCD).

This person will be ready to eat a Domino’s pizza, while secretly craving some biryani, butter chicken, and saag paneer. This person loves to go to football games, but also gets up at 5 to watch the India-Pakistan cricket match. This person perfects the art of the Indian mono-braid at a young age, and later perfects the art of the messy bun.

But sometimes, this dual-culture can be confusing. Do we go to the new Hollywood blockbuster with trendy actors, or do we go to the run-down theater on the other side of town to see the Bollywood box office hit? Do we press a single button on our car sound system to get English music, or do we shuffle through our Hindi music playlists on our phones while simultaneously rushing to find the aux cord at a red light? How many times can we make a conscious decision to immerse ourselves in American culture before we can no longer make a list of the Top 10 Shah Rukh and Kajol moments from film, or forget the words to our favorite Hindi song? How much time does it take for us before keeping up with Bollywood movies, Hindi songs, Indian sports and current events becomes too taxing?

Being an American-born Confused Desi is difficult. We dwell on the dichotomy between American and Indian culture, with a cultivated respect for both. We go through phases where being Indian is easier, but usually the American phase predominates. Maybe some can sit on the bridge between the two, but such cases are regarded as rare.

However, even the most ‘white-washed’ Indian treasures and possesses the remnants of his Indian heritage. He might wear Polos and Sperry’s to school, but he still remembers how to play the tabla from the lessons he took as an elementary school kid. She might refuse to speak Hindi at home, but she will always oil up her rusty vocabulary before speaking on the phone with her thamma. And even the most ‘fresh off the boat’ Indian still captures part of the essence of American culture growing up, despite his boycott on Hollister tees and McDonald’s fries.

ABCDs lie on a spectrum of Indian-American culture, but can never reach one side completely. This diversity within diversity is what makes the Indian community inAmericaremarkable. Instead of consisting of two primary colors blue and yellow, an American-born Confused Desis is one of thousands of shades of green. We might have struggled growing up in two worlds, but as young adults, we appreciate our unique cultural perspectives, our atypical social experiences, and our great fortune of having been born into a culture with such a storied past and present.

We are criticized for being too Indian by Americans, and too American by Indians. But by our own standards, we are all sitting on a bridge together.

-Ananya Ghose Age: 16 School: ChattahoocheeHigh School

 A World Split Between Two Cultures (Winner, Junior Category)

Culture has a significant role to play on one’s life and defines the character of a person, so being Indian-American, our world is split between two cultures, forcing us to play a dual role. For instance, we spend half-day at school living as an American, and at home experience a true Indian lifestyle. As an Indian in America, we face the world with self-identification issues, are open to a wider selection of opportunities, and have an impact on society from the moment we are born.

We grew up in a society where media has taken over the way children see the world. Wherever they look, they see an ideal American lifestyle which their family differs from. In the United States, Miss America is considered to be the beauty image of the nation. Our Indian community was recognized as a whole when Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss America in the year 2014. In an interview with Fox News, Davuluri stated, “Growing up as a girl, I imagined Miss America to always be the girl next door,” with the intent to emphasize the cultural preferences seen within the United States and its impact on the younger generation.

The differences in skin, eye, and hair color influences insecurities in an average Indian American. Furthermore, Nina Davuluri conveys a negative connotation to her perspective as a young girl to emphasize the idea that young Americans are brainwashed in a way to believe blond hair, white skin, and blue eyes are ideal for beauty and social acceptance.  I have seen many peers at school that conceal their lunch boxes, forgetting the hard work and time their moms spent in preparing their lunch. Children at times feel obligated to conceal what makes them unique because everywhere they look, they see the stereotypical American family. This self-identification problem poses a question whether their lifestyle is “correct”.

Although experiencing life inAmerica as an Indian can be difficult, the positives outweigh the negatives. Young Indian-Americans have already proved by now that we are a ‘cut-above’ in studies than any other ethnicity, several schools’ rating have inclined, where we have predominant Indian population; being bilingual gives Indian-Americans a better comprehensive ability over other peers.

I faced many hardships growing up due to my cultural differences in the  country. I have realized that this culture is worth embracing. I am proud to be in a culture that has expanded so much and by the year 2020, one out of every three Americans will be of Indian descent.  We are given the ability to experience a whole new culture without having to leave the house. This expands our knowledge of the world around us making us more aware of the circumstances we face. The bond of sharing a culture and language makes our Indian society stronger as a whole, allowing us to create stable friendships among one another. In our culture we are fond of putting together events to educate not only the younger generation but non-Indians too. These events open the eyes of many who aren’t aware of the cultures practiced in their own country. As actress Rani Mukerji said, “Once you understand and appreciate other people’s cultural backgrounds, then you can also connect with them more.”

Schools in America contain a diverse group of students, and when we are all put together, we are bound to experience new cultures. During lunch, we see food from all over the world come together in one room, and in social media we see special events held from different cultures. We play a big role in this cycle as we practice our Indian culture because we open the eyes of others that we socialize with. Studies have shown kids who are open to various cultures around the world have an “independent view of themselves”, meaning that they define themselves based on personal traits and characteristics. This is an opportunity for kids to stand out and express themselves in a unique way.

In conclusion, the Indian culture we practice has an everlasting impact on the society we live in. Identity and culture is what builds ethnicity, causing us to face the hardships in life, making us stronger as a person and makes us realize the impact we have on the peers around us.

I am proud to be a part of Indian culture that is full of life, color and various diverse festivities. Our culture believes in unity in diversity, religious tolerance and universal acceptance. The determination and effectiveness of our community to pass on this rich and radiant culture to younger generations puts us in the forefront. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.”

-Pranathi Goli Age: 14 School: Finished 8th grade from Piney Grove Middle School

 ——————————————————

The essays were graded blind by this panel of five judges- all with great writing credentials. Thank you for your time and effort, judges!

• Ajay Vishwanathan has work published or forthcoming in over ninety literary journals, including The Minnesota Review, Sou’wester, Southern Humanities Review, The Potomac, and The Baltimore Review. He’s currently working on a new novel as his completed manuscript, Little Hands of Silk, is being readied by his literary agent to be sent  to potential publishers. One of the editors of Foundling Review, Ajay is the author of  From a Tilted Pail , a short story collection from Queen’s Ferry Press (2014).
• Navami Naik works as Lead, Global Partnerships with the American Cancer Society. Navami has been working in non-profit management for the past 10 years. Prior to this, she worked as a journalist with The Times of India, where she primarily covered issues related to health and education. Navami holds a Master’s degree in Social Service from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania,USA and has trained as a journalist in the United Kingdom.
• Jyothsna Hegde grew up in a house full of ardent readers, and has always enjoyed writing. Being a software engineer and an adjunct faculty at a university in Baltimore hardly left any time to read, let alone write. But after moving to Atlanta, she found an opportunity to write for NRI Pulse and has been part of the newspaper’s editorial team for several years. She hopes to write about real or fictional people and events in way that makes the reader feel part of the experience, and encourages thinking that goes deeper than the surface.​
• Aditya Rao is a 2015 graduate of New York University. While his papers have been published in academic journals, he is fond of creative and essay writing. He also maintains a blog: Bureaumania.wordpress.com .
• Reena Joshi is the owner of WriteRight . WriteRight’s goal is to help all its students from grades 2-12 understand the English concepts tested on all assessments culminating with the SAT and the ACT.  Students are taught to master reading comprehension techniques, conquer confusing vocabulary, and of course, score well on assessments. From constructing basic sentences to constructing SAT and college application essays, WriteRight students learn to consistently write well. The long term goals are high SAT/ACT test scores and acceptance into choice colleges, and so the earlier students start preparation, the better the chances for a higher score, acceptance into choice colleges and scholarships.

  WriteRight has a special offer for NRI Pulse essay contestants and readers:

• All essay contestants – free registration ($100 regular registration) + $50 discount on tuition upon registration for a semester. 
• All readers – free registration upto September 1, 2016 ($100 savings) *must bring the page from NRI Pulse Newspaper that has the essay results on it

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Reclaiming Representations & Interrupting the Cycle of Bias Against Native Americans

The most widely accessible ideas and representations of Native Americans are largely negative, antiquated, and limiting. In this essay, we examine how the prevalence of such representations and a comparative lack of positive contemporary representations foster a cycle of bias that perpetuates disparities among Native Americans and other populations. By focusing on three institutions – the legal system, the media, and education – we illustrate how the same process that creates disparate outcomes can be leveraged to promote positive contemporary ideas and representations of Native Americans, thereby creating more equitable outcomes. We also highlight the actions some contemporary Native Americans have taken to reclaim their Native American identity and create accurate ideas and representations of who Native Americans are and what they can become. These actions provide a blueprint for leveraging cultural change to interrupt the cycle of bias and to reduce the disparities Native Americans face in society.

ARIANNE E. EASON is a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at the University of Washington. Her interests lie at the intersection of social and developmental psychology, specifically how children and adults process environmental information related to race and interracial interactions. Her research has been published in  Developmental Psychology, Current Directions in Psychological Science , and  Infancy .

LAURA M. BRADY is a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. She has published in such journals as  Current Opinion in Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , and  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

STEPHANIE A. FRYBERG is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. Her work on representations of Native Americans has appeared in  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Social Issues, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology , and  Journal of Applied Social Psychology , among other publications.

What white people see when they look at you is not visible. What they do see when they do look at you is what they have invested you with. . . . To survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and recreate yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to impose who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you. –James Baldwin, The Last Interview and Other Conversations 1

When you think about the most accessible representations of Native Americans in the United States, what comes to mind? You might conjure historical representations of buckskin-wearing, teepee-dwelling people with feathers, or contemporary images of impoverished, drug-abusing, uneducated people. 2  Such negative, limiting, and inaccurate representations are widely accessible in the United States. Now, take a moment to think about what it means to be successful. You might think of someone who is highly educated, with a lucrative career in law, entertainment, education, or some other field. Do the aforementioned representations of Native Americans align with this image of success? How do you think these representations affect the way Native Americans are viewed and treated in consequential domains such as the legal system, the media, and education?

Social scientists largely agree that being human is a social project; people are shaped by the individuals around them and the cultural context in which they live. 3  The dominant culture provides ideas, beliefs, and assumptions about what it means to be a person or a member of a group and, as such, offers a schema for understanding both oneself and others. 4  For Native Americans, the most widely accessible ideas about their group, as well as the representations that stem from them, are not harmless misunderstandings or overgeneralizations. As Baldwin’s quote highlights, White American institutions and individuals have overwhelmingly created and defined prevalent representations of racial minority groups, including Native peoples. 5  The resulting representations reflect negative, inaccurate ideas about Native Americans while ignoring positive, accurate ideas. Consequently, biased understandings of how contemporary Native Americans look, sound, and behave permeate U.S. society. We contend that biased ideas and representations of Native Americans – particularly the scarcity of positive, accurate, and contemporary ideas and representations – constitute the modern form of bias against Native Americans and perpetuate a recursive cycle of low expectations, prejudice, and discrimination that reinforces disparities in domains from public health to education.

Breaking this cycle, as Baldwin contends, requires that new ideas and representations defined by Native American people accurately reflect who and what Native people are, not who others imagine them to be. We draw upon the culture cycle framework to describe how ideas and representations of Native Americans become embedded in the social fabric (that is, within institutions, interactions, and individuals) and provide a roadmap for change. First, we highlight how widely accessible ideas and representations about Native Americans fuel a cycle of bias and create disparate outcomes, specifically in the legal system, the media, and education. Second, we call attention to actions of Native American tribes and individuals that have reshaped U.S. culture and promoted more equitable outcomes for contemporary and future Native people. We end with a discussion of how both Native and non-Native people can leverage cultural change to break the cycle of bias against Native peoples.

The  culture cycle  describes the relation between the surrounding cultural context and individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Four levels of culture –  ideas, institutions, interactions , and  individuals  – work together in a mutually constitutive manner to shape and reinforce social and cultural outcomes. 6  The highest level of the culture cycle includes  ideas , such as social, political, and economic histories, assumptions, and norms. These ideas include understandings of how to be a “good” or “moral” individual, stereotypes that shape expectations of group members, and the value placed on different ways of knowing or engaging with the world.  Institutions  include the legal system, the media, and the education system. The practices, policies, structures, and products of institutions reflect prevalent cultural ideas. For example, the legal system sanctions individuals who violate ideas about “good” and “moral” behavior, and the media produces movies, books, and news reports that reflect and reify cultural ideas. Institutional practices and policies in turn provide scripts and norms that shape everyday  interactions  among people, institutions, and cultural products. Finally, ideas, institutions, and interactions all shape the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of  individuals.  When individual behavior aligns with cultural influences, it reinforces the culture cycle; when behavior does not align, it pushes back in subtle and not-so-subtle ways against the dominant cultural ideas and reconstitutes the culture cycle.

While conversations about disparities focus on how individuals’ characteristics – such as race, gender, or social class – relate to outcomes, the culture cycle framework highlights the importance of considering the role of the entire cultural system in perpetuating and alleviating disparate outcomes for Native Americans. In the next three sections, we highlight the mutual constitution of cultural ideas, institutions, interactions, and individuals by focusing on the legal system, the media, and education. These institutions reflect and foster a core set of negative and limited ideas about Native people that can lead influential individuals – for example, politicians, judges, lawyers, and educators – to lower expectations and ultimately bring about the exact same disparate outcomes society has come to expect of this group. Finally, we discuss the steps Native American individuals and communities have taken to create more accurate and positive cultural ideas of their groups, and how these actions reverberate throughout the culture cycle to promote more equitable outcomes, both today and in the future.

In historic and contemporary legal policy and practice, Native Americans have been represented as “uncivilized,” incapable of behaving according to mainstream American norms. 7  For example, until the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act was passed, federal policies treated Native Americans as “wards of the government” and prevented Native American communities from making their own decisions about health care, education, and governance. Similarly, federal laws have restricted tribes’ control over policing Native American communities; and federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, have failed to provide adequate funding to keep Native communities safe. 8  On one hand, restricting tribal control over law enforcement reifies the notion that Native Americans are incapable of policing their own communities. 9  On the other hand, federal and state governments’ failure to provide sufficient resources to Native communities causes the negative outcomes expected to arise from Native Americans’ supposed inability to police themselves, thus reinforcing harmful stereotypes.

Biased institutional understandings of Native people also impact law enforcement officers’ interactions with Native people and, ultimately, Native peoples' outcomes within the legal system. For example, interactions with law enforcement are more likely to end in the use of deadly force for Native Americans than for any other racial group relative to population size. 10  A study of Native American individuals from seven states and eight tribal nations revealed that even when interactions with police do not lead to violence, police often use racial slurs or derogatory language. 11  Courtroom interactions are similarly biased; for example, Native youth are 30 percent more likely than White youth to be referred to juvenile court rather than having their charges dropped. 12  Given these outcomes, Native Americans report being reluctant to turn to the legal system when they need help because they believe that law enforcement will not take their complaints seriously or intervene when they are in danger. 13  Interactions between Native Americans and the legal system not only perpetuate distrust, but also promote racial disparities that undermine Native peoples’ well-being and livelihood. 14

Construing Native people through a negative and limiting lens – as unable to govern themselves or as “uncivilized” – further justifies the perpetuation of disparate outcomes for Native Americans interacting with the legal system. The underlying assumption of these negative and limiting ideas is that anything non-Native legal institutions do on behalf of Native Americans is better than what Native people could have done on their own. According to this logic, in spite of Native Americans’ disparate outcomes in the legal system relative to other groups, changes do not need to occur because Native people are still better off than they would be if they were governing themselves. Yet such a biased and inaccurate view of Native people in the legal system obscures the fact that Native people have long governed themselves and worked to alleviate the disparate outcomes they face in the American legal system. According to the National American Indian Court Judge Association, 93 percent of federally and state-recognized tribes have their own tribal justice systems. 15  Furthermore, Native American individuals and communities have long utilized Indian law to advocate for their well-being and to challenge federal and state laws. Two such examples include the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

ICWA, which passed in 1978, gives Native American tribes jurisdiction over child welfare cases involving Native children. From 1969–1974, the U.S. government separated 25–35 percent of all Native children from their families and placed them in foster homes, adoptive homes, or institutions. A majority (85 percent) of these children were placed in non-Native homes even when Native homes were available, reflecting the bias that Native Americans are incapable of raising their own children. 16  The Association on American Indian Affairs conducted surveys in states with large Native American populations to understand why so many Native children were removed. These surveys revealed that many children were removed not because of abuse or neglect, but because their families practiced communal childrearing. Communal childrearing is normative in Native American communities, but it conflicts with the nuclear family model of childrearing that prevails in White, middle-class contexts. 17  Thus, the research affirmed that the removal of Native children was fueled by cultural bias against Native ways of being.

By giving tribes control over child welfare cases, ICWA directly challenged negative beliefs about Natives’ ability to care for their own children and changed how the U.S. government intervened in these cases. Following ICWA, the number of Native children placed in foster care or adoption between 1978 and 1986 decreased significantly. 18  ICWA’s passage set the stage for Native tribes nationwide to build child welfare agencies that keep Native families and communities together. 19 By challenging biased understandings of Native families and ways of being, ICWA and the Native individuals, organizations, and communities that were essential to its passing improved both disparate child welfare outcomes and relationships among tribal governments, Native parents, Native children, and federal and state governments.

Just as ICWA was a direct response to the disproportionate removal of Native American children from their families, the 2013 reauthorization of VAWA came as a direct response to the disproportionate rates of violence experienced by Native women at the hands of non-Native men. Approximately 56 percent of Native American women report experiencing sexual violence in their lifetime, and 96 percent of these women report sexual assault by a non-Native man. 20  Native women are the only ethnic group more likely to be assaulted by a male of a different ethnicity than by a male of the same ethnicity. 21  Prior to VAWA, federal and/or state governments had jurisdiction over cases involving non-Native men assaulting Native women on reservations. Despite this jurisdiction, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors failed to investigate or litigate many cases involving non-Native individuals, leaving perpetrators free to reoffend and victims without justice. 22  While rates of reporting and litigating against sexual assault perpetrators are low regardless of victim demographics, people of color, and Native American women in particular, face additional barriers rooted in racial bias. 23  Like many people of color, Native women are perceived as less worthy of protection than White women: 24  as recently as 1968, a federal appellate court upheld a statute that reduced sentencing for rape cases involving Native American women. 25  Furthermore, prosecutors often take Native women’s sexual assault claims less seriously, assuming that Native victims were under the influence (in accordance with the stereotype of Native Americans as drunks), making it less likely that litigation will proceed. 26   In 2015, after a decade of Native American grassroots efforts and advocacy, Congress added a provision to VAWA granting tribes jurisdiction over cases of intimate partner violence involving non-Native individuals on reservations. Once VAWA passed, a pilot project gave three tribes early jurisdiction. In the span of seventeen months, these tribes charged a total of twenty-six offenders. 27  While advocates are seeking to expand VAWA protections to other types of violence, this legislation stands as an example of Native communities working to address the needs of their people and improving their outcomes by assuming control over their own legal processes.

ICWA and VAWA demonstrate how Native tribes have pushed back against biased legal policies and practices to better protect and serve their communities, thereby improving their lives in contemporary society. In particular, there is a direct relationship between the number of self-determining actions a tribal community takes and the community’s mental health. Specifically, First Nations bands (the Native people of Canada) who enacted more self-determining practices that reflected their cultural histories and values, such as making claims to traditional lands or taking community control over education and health services, had lower suicide rates than bands who enacted fewer self-determining practices. 28  The legal system’s biased understanding and paternalistic treatment of Native Americans undermines equitable outcomes for Native American individuals and communities. Importantly, these outcomes are not predetermined or rooted in Native Americans’ “inadequacies”; when Natives challenge biased legislation and self-govern, Native communities flourish.

The institution most responsible for creating and transmitting biased representations is the media. Psychologist Peter Leavitt and colleagues, for example, examined the content that emerged from search engine queries for the terms “Native American” or “American Indian.” 29  Ninety-five percent of Google results and 99 percent of Bing results included antiquated portraits of Native American people in traditional clothing and feathers; contemporary images of Native Americans were scant. Although inaccurate, these antiquated images remain prevalent because people continue to consume them, so search engine algorithms continue to present them as valid representations of Native Americans. 30  Biased and inaccurate representations of Native Americans also persist in television, film, and advertising. While contemporary members of other racial groups are by and large represented, Native Americans are largely omitted. 31  From 1987–2008, only three Native American characters were featured on primetime television (out of 2,336 characters). 32  On the rare occasion that Native Americans are represented in mainstream media, they often appear in stereotypical roles (such as the casino Indian, “Indian Princess,” or drunken Indian) or in secondary roles lacking character development. 33  Individuals responsible for creating new media representations, such as casting agents or directors, often reify the invisibility of contemporary Native peoples by passing over Native actors for roles that are “unrealistic” based on stereotypes about Native Americans (for example, by not casting Native people as doctors or lawyers). 34  While there is great variability in how Native Americans look, speak, and act, Natives who do not fit a narrow, prototypical image of a Native American are often excluded from roles intended for Natives. 35  The lack of positive and accurate contemporary representations denies Native Americans’ continued existence and literally and figuratively writes them out of contemporary life.

Widely available media representations of Native Americans carry significant consequences, as they undermine Native Americans’ psychological well-being and hopes for future success. For example, Stephanie Fryberg and colleagues demonstrated through multiple studies that negative stereotypes of Native Americans and sports mascots such as the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo depressed Native Americans’ self-esteem, decreased perceptions of their Native community’s worth, and made them less likely to envision successful futures (such as earning good grades, finding a job, or completing a degree). 36  Such representations set in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy that renders Native American accomplishments invisible, hindering Native people from imagining and pursuing their own successful futures. 37  While harmful for Native Americans, these biased representations have a positive impact on White individuals, which may exacerbate intergroup tensions and disparate outcomes. After exposure to widely available representations of Native people, European American participants reported boosts in self-esteem and greater feelings of connection to their racial group. Both the negative effects of Native Americans and the positive effects for Whites at the expense of Native Americans suggest that it is critical to promote positive, contemporary representations of Native Americans that accurately reflect who Native people are and what they are capable of achieving. Breaking the cycle of discrimination and disparities in resources and achievement requires taking control of how Native people are portrayed both to the outside world and within Native communities themselves.

Although non-Native individuals created many of the prevalent representations of Native Americans, Native people are working to recreate representations that accurately reflect contemporary Native Americans. For example, in 2012, Matika Wilbur, a Swinomish and Tulalip photographer, launched Project 562, which aims to photograph members of all 562 federally recognized tribes. To date, Wilbur has photographed members of four hundred tribes. Wilbur’s photos depict Native people of all ages in both urban and rural settings, wearing contemporary Western and tribally appropriate traditional clothing. Unlike twentieth-century photographer Edward Curtis, who is responsible for many of the antiquated images of Native Americans that prevail today, Wilbur collaborates with her Native American subjects. She presents contemporary Native Americans in positive, contemporary ways that counter the systemic exclusion that characterizes the modern form of bias against Native people. 38

Similar video campaigns (including Buzzfeed’s “I’m Native, but I’m Not … “ and Arizona State University’s “Native 101”) and websites ( WeRNative.org ) showcase Native Americans resisting negative cultural ideas and offering more positive contemporary representations of Native people. 39  Native-defined representations offer accurate, nuanced understandings of Native Americans that have always existed but have been obscured by biased portrayals created by non-Natives. As accurate images of Native Americans take hold, they have the power to challenge harmful stereotypes and ideas about Native Americans and illustrate what is possible for them, breaking the cycle of bias and disparate outcomes.

For a final example of how negative cultural ideas and representations of Native Americans perpetuate a cycle of bias and disparities, we turn to the education system. In the United States, education is often viewed as the key to upward social mobility and “a better life.” Yet, just as in the legal system and the media, biased ideas about and representations of Native Americans limit Native students’ opportunities and outcomes. For centuries, Native Americans have been portrayed as intellectually inferior and Native ways of knowing have been viewed as incorrect and incompatible with mainstream U.S. education. Federal boarding schools, in which Native children were forcibly enrolled throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, aimed to eliminate Native cultures and languages and acculturate Native children into White society. Although this explicitly assimilationist agenda has faded, many of its ideas prevail within the education system today. Research reveals, for example, that Native students are often perceived to struggle or to be “problem” students. 40  School curricula also fail to incorporate – and sometimes actively exclude – Native Americans’ cultural history and practices from the learning environment, as these histories and practices are deemed irrelevant to the goals of mainstream education. 41

Negative and limiting ideas and representations influence interactions between educators and Native students and contribute to Natives’ disparate outcomes. For example, compared with White students with equivalent test scores and grades, teachers are less likely to recommend Native students for advanced coursework. 42  Native students are also suspended at more than twice the rate of White students. 43  These inaccurate and biased understandings of what is possible for Native students systematically deprive them of the ability to engage with and succeed within a system intended to foster opportunities for upward mobility.

Changing the way Native students are understood and treated within educational institutions can break the cycle of bias and alleviate educational disparities. For example, Stephanie Fryberg, Rebecca Covarrubias, and Jacob Burack describe an intervention in a predominantly Native American school that resulted in an 18 percent increase in the number of Native students who met state performance standards. 44  Teachers were taught about Native cultural ways of being, and school guidelines and routines were created to validate Native American cultures. Each school day began with a welcome assembly that included a tribal song and dance and a culturally relevant welcome message. When the intervention began, the school ranked in the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state, and much like the state and national pattern for the past forty years, there were no notable positive changes among Native students. 45  However, during the intervention, Native students improved immensely, showing growth on the Measures of Academic Progress (map) test at a rate of 1 to 1.5 years’ advancement in half a school year. This intervention revealed that school culture was the problem, not Native students: Native students thrive when their ways of knowing and being are validated in educational contexts and when they are seen as having potential. Creating more accurate representations – and thus understandings – of Native students paved the way for their success.

The culture cycle framework demonstrates the power of cultural ideas and representations in shaping Native Americans’ experiences. Prevailing harmful and limiting ideas and representations of Native Americans fuel a cycle of bias and reinforce disparate outcomes for Native people. These ideas and representations shape the policies and practices of consequential social institutions, promote low expectations for Native people that influence their interactions with non-Natives, and limit what both Native and non-Native individuals believe is possible for Native Americans. In addition to the prevalence of harmful and antiquated ideas and representations about their group, Native Americans  also  contend with the systematic exclusion of positive, contemporary ideas and representations. Consequently, Native Americans are effectively written out of contemporary existence, which creates barriers to their well-being and success. Hence, the modern form of bias against Native Americans includes not only negative ideas and representations, but also the omission of positive, multidimensional ideas and representations of their group. 46

Breaking this cycle requires challenging derogatory ideas and representations and also, as James Baldwin suggests, infusing the broader cultural context with more accurate contemporary representations defined by Native people themselves. The culture cycle framework can be leveraged to reclaim what it means to be Native American and promote equity. Indeed, Native people and communities have already begun harnessing this power for change. As we have shown, their actions in key institutions have brought light to positive, nuanced understandings of Native Americans as they live today and have challenged antiquated, biased representations. As Native Americans and their allies continue fighting systemic exclusion and bias, we must ensure that targeted action is implemented at each level of the culture cycle. The ideas and representations put forth must reflect Native Americans’ knowledge of who they are and what they are capable of achieving.

While it is essential for Native individuals and communities to have a voice in creating accurate representations of Native Americans, the onus for changing the culture cycle does not rest solely on Native Americans. Non-Native individuals and institutions must also actively foster cultural change. For White individuals specifically, this responsibility necessitates acknowledging the legacy of building and benefiting from a cultural system that has intentionally misunderstood and devalued Native people and ways of life and attempted to thwart Natives’ well-being and, in many respects, their very existence. As such, the dominant institutions must ensure that their practices, policies, and products set the stage for positive and equitable interactions with Native American individuals and communities. More generally, this responsibility hinges on a commitment to building a more equitable system that uplifts people from all backgrounds and allows all people to understand and recognize the needs, voices, and contributions of communities of color.

As the opening quote suggests, Native Americans are living within a cultural system that was constructed neither for nor by them. By understanding cultural influences on institutions and individuals, and by taking strategic, targeted action to change biased cultural ideas and representations, we can reconstitute the culture cycle to reflect accurate understandings of who Native people are and what they can become. Ultimately, these actions will produce more equitable outcomes for Native peoples both in the present and in the future.

• 1 James Baldwin, James Baldwin: The Last Interview and other Conversations (New York: Melville House, 2014), 4–5.
• 2 Walter C. Fleming, “Myths and Stereotypes about Native Americans,” Phi Delta Kappan 88 (3) (November 2006): 213–217.
• 3 Hazel R. Markus and Maryam G. Hamedani, “Sociocultural Psychology,” in  Handbook of Cultural Psychology , ed. Shinobu Kitayama and Dov Cohen (New York: Guilford, 2010).
• 4 Serge Moscovici, “The Phenomenon of Social Representations,” in  Social Representations , ed. R. M. Farr and S. Moscovici (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 3–69; and Serge Moscovici, “Notes Towards a Description of Social Representations,”  European Journal of Social Psychology  18 (3) (1988): 211–250.
• 5 In the case of Native Americans, see Robert F. Berkhofer,  The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present  (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 96.
• 6 Hazel R. Markus and Alana Conner,  Clash! 8 Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are  (New York: Hudson Street Press, 2013).
• 7 Devon Abbott Mihesuah,  American Indians: Stereotypes & Realities  (Gardena, Calif.: SCB Distributors, 2013).
• 8 Stewart Wakeling, Miriam Jorgensen, Susan Michaelson, and Manley Begay,  Policing on American Indian Reservations  (Washington D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 2001); and United States Commission on Civil Rights, Office of Civil Rights Evaluation,  A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country  (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2003).
• 9 Rosemary M. Maxey, “Who Can Sit at The Lord’s Table? The Experience of Indigenous People,” in  Native and Christian: Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada , ed. James Treat (New York: Routledge, 2012), 38–50.
• 10 Mike Males, “Who Are Police Killing?” Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, August 26, 2014,  http://www.cjcj.org/news/8113 .
• 11 Barbara Perry, “Nobody Trusts Them! Under- and Over-policing Native American Communities,”  Critical Criminology  14 (4) (November 2006): 411–444; and Robynne Neugebauer, “First Nations People and Law Enforcement: Community Perspectives on Police Response,” in  Interrogating Social Justice: Politics, Culture and Identity , ed. Marilyn Corsianos and Kelly A. Train (Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 1999), 247–269.
• 12 Christopher Hartney,  Native American Youth and the Juvenile Justice System  (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 2008).
• 13 See Perry, “Nobody Trusts Them !”; and Neugebauer, “First Nations People and Law Enforcement.”
• 14 Barbara Perry, “Impacts of Disparate Policing in Indian Country,”  Policing & Society  19 (3) (2009): 263–281.
• 15 “National Directory of Tribal Justice Systems,” National American Indian Court Judges Association,  http://directory.naicja.org/directory  (accessed September 15, 2017).
• 16 Claire Palmiste, “From the Indian Adoption Project to the Indian Child Welfare Act: The Resistance of Native American Communities,”  Indigenous Policy Journal  22 (1) (2011): 1–4.
• 17 H.R. Rep. No. 95–1386, at 10 (1978); and Steven Unger, ed.,  The Destruction of American Indian Families  (New York: Association on American Indian Affairs, Inc., 1977).
• 18 Ann E. MacEachron, Nora S. Gustavsson, Suzanne Cross, and Allison Lewis, “The Effectiveness of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978,”  Social Service Review  70 (3) (September 1996): 451–463.
• 19 Lakota People’s Law Project, “5 Sioux Tribes Applied to Fund Their Own Foster Care Programs,”  Indian Country Today , June 26, 2014,  https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/culture/health-wellness/5-sioux-tribes-applied-to-fund-their-own-foster-care-programs/ .
• 20 André B. Rosay,  Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men: 2010 Findings from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey  (Washington D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 2016).
• 21 Amnesty International,  Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA  (New York: Amnesty International USA, 2007).
• 23 Ibid.; International Indigenous Women’s Forum,  Mairin Iwanka Raya: Indigenous Women Stand Against Violence. A Companion Report to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Women  (Lima, Peru: FIMI, 2006); and Sarah Deer, “Toward an Indigenous Jurisprudence of Rape,”  Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy  14 (2004): 121–154.
• 25 Gray v. U.S. , 394 F.2d 96, 98 (9th Cir. 1968).
• 26 Amnesty International,  Maze of Injustice.
• 27 Jennifer Bendery, “At Last, Violence Against Women Act Lets Tribes Prosecute Non-Native Domestic Abusers,”  Huffington Post , March 6, 2015,  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/06/vawa-native-americans_n_6819526.html .
• 28 Michael J. Chandler and Christopher Lalonde, “Cultural Continuity as a Hedge against Suicide in Canada’s First Nations,”  Transcultural Psychiatry  35 (2) (1998): 191–219.
• 29 Peter A. Leavitt, Rebecca Covarrubias, Yvonne A. Perez, and Stephanie A. Fryberg, “‘Frozen in Time’: The Impact of Native American Media Representations on Identity and Self-Understanding,”  Journal of Social Issues  71 (1) (March 2015): 39–53.
• 30 Rand Fishkin, “The State of Searcher Behavior Revealed Through 23 Remarkable Statistics,” March 17, 2017,  https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed .
• 31 Dana E. Mastro and Susannah R. Stern, “Representations of Race in Television Commercials: A Content Analysis of Prime-Time Advertising,”  Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media  47 (4) (December 2003): 638–647; Russell K. Robinson, “Casting and Casteing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms,”  California Law Review  95 (1) (February 2007): 1–73; and Riva Tukachinsky, Dana Mastro, and Moran Yarchi, “Documenting Portrayals of Race/Ethnicity on Primetime Television over a 20-Year Span and Their Association with National-Level Racial/Ethnic Attitudes,”  Journal of Social Issues  71 (1) (March 2015): 17–38.
• 32 Tukachinsky et al., “Documenting Portrayals of Race/Ethnicity on Primetime Television.”
• 33 Casey R. Kelly, “Representations of Native Americans in the Mass Media,”  Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication  (February 2017),  http://communication.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-142#acrefore-9780190228613-e-142-div2-5 , doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.142; and Robinson, “Casting and Casteing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms,” 1–73.
• 35 Hilary N. Weaver, “What Color is Red? Exploring the Implications of Phenotype for Native Americans,” in  The Melanin Millennium: Skin Color as 21st-Century International Discourse , ed. Ronald E. Hall (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2013), 287–299.
• 36 Stephanie A. Fryberg, Hazel R. Markus, Daphna Oyserman, and Joseph M. Stone, “Of Warrior Chiefs and Indian Princesses: The Psychological Consequences of American Indian Mascots,”  Basic and Applied Social Psychology  30 (3) (July 2008): 208–218.
• 37 Stephanie A. Fryberg and Sarah S. M. Townsend, “The Psychology of Invisibility,” in  Commemorating Brown: The Social Psychology of Racism and Discrimination , ed. Glenn Adams, Monica Biernat, Nyla R. Branscombe, Christian S. Crandall, and Lawrence S. Wrightsman (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2008), 173–193.
• 38 Hilal Isler, “One Woman’s Mission to Photograph every Native American Tribe in the U.S.,”  The Guardian , September 7, 2015,  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/07/native-american-photographs-matika-wilbur-project-562 ; Whitney Richardson, “Rejecting Stereotypes, Photographing ‘Real’ Indians,”  Lens , February 19, 2014,  https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/rejecting-stereotypes-photographing-real-indians/?mcubz=1 ; and Matika Wilbur, Project 562,  http://www.project562.com .
• 39 Chris Lam, “I’m Native, but I’m Not … “ Buzzfeed, February 3, 2016,  https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrislam/im-native-but-im-not?utm_term=.yvERRZyBPe#.py9JJKLdl8 ; Deanna Dent, “Native 101,”  ASU Now , November 29, 2016,  https://asunow.asu.edu/20161129-sun-devil-life-native-101-asu-students-faculty-bust-stereotypes ; and WeRNative,  http://www.WeRNative.org .
• 40 Stephanie A. Fryberg and Peter A. Leavitt, “A Sociocultural Analysis of High-Risk Native American Children in Schools,” in  Cultural and Contextual Perspectives on Developmental Risk and Well-Being , ed. Jacob A. Burack and Louis A. Schmidt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 57–80; and Katie Johnston-Goodstar and Ross VeLure Roholt, “‘Our Kids Aren’t Dropping Out; They’re Being Pushed Out’: Native American Students and Racial Microaggressions in Schools,”  Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work  26 (1–2) (January 2017): 30–47.
• 41 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,  A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country  (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2003).
• 42 Claudia Rowe, “Gifted Programs across Washington Leave Out Black and Latino Students – But Federal Way is One Model for Change,”  The Seattle Times , April 2, 2017,  http://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/gifted-programs-across-washington-leave-out-black-and-latino-students-except-in-federal-way/ .
• 43 Rebecca Clarren, “How America is Failing Native American Students,”  The Nation , July 24, 2017,  https://www.thenation.com/article/left-behind/ ; and U.S. Department of Education,  Civil Rights Data Collection 2011–12  (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2014),  https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/data.html .
• 44 Stephanie A. Fryberg, Rebecca Covarrubias, and Jacob A. Burack, “The Ongoing Psychological Colonization of North American Indigenous People: Using Social Psychological Theories to Promote Social Justice,” in  The Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology and Social Justice , ed. Phillip L. Hammack Jr. (Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2016), doi:10.1093/oxford hb/9780199938735.013.35.
• 45 Kim Burgess, “‘Stagnant’ Test Scores for Native American Students,”  Albuquerque Journal , April 10, 2017,  https://www.abqjournal.com/985310/stagnant-test-scores-for-native-american-kids.html .
• 46 Stephanie A. Fryberg and Arianne E. Eason, “Making the Invisible Visible: Acts of Commission and Omission,”  Current Directions in Psychological Science  26 (6) (2017): 554–559.

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Communication Currents

Stories of Indian-American Identity

One of the ways we make sense of who we are is by telling stories that reveal how we fit in or identify with specific groups and communities. Identity is in many ways a communicative act, meaning that we create our identities through the stories we tell, the ways in which we tell those stories, and to whom we tell those stories. Indian-Americans have been a part of American society since the late 1800s. Currently, there are over one million Indians living in the U.S. To better understand this immigrant group, I studied the ways in which members of the Indian community in the U.S. told their stories of the ways in which they communicate what it means to be Indian, what it means to be American, and what it means to be Indian-American. Several themes emerged from the stories that emerged during field observations and interviews with participants. These stories focused on the ways in which Indian-Americans navigate their identity outside their native homeland, their memories of India, and their ways of negotiating race in America.

For many immigrant communities in the U.S., identity is often a matter of continually holding onto a homeland while figuring out strategic ways to navigate their host world. For many immigrants, despite having migrated 10, 20 or 30 years ago, the land of their birth will always be their home. This experience makes sense for older immigrants who lived their most formative years in their homelands, but it is vastly different for children of these immigrants who either immigrated early in their lives or were born in the host country.

The stories we tell about our identities are sometimes strategic in the telling to help us navigate both the home culture and the host culture. For immigrant Indian-Americans, the stories they tell about what it means to be Indian are often based in a frozen-in-time memory. Their recollections of India are based on an India of the 1940s and 1950s--culturally, socially, and economically. Furthermore, as with any form of nostalgia, the recollections are highly selective: the positive aspects of certain practices are illuminated and the negative aspects are virtually non-existent, while other practices are marked as completely negative, with positive aspects erased. These memories then get used to define what it means to be Indian and how one then performs authentic Indianness. The question of what is authentic and what is not is something all ethnic groups navigate and it changes over time.

For the children of these immigrant families, identity is about both their Indianness and their Americanness as they attempt to navigate being non-white in the U.S. In the U.S., we tend to think of race as binaries: black/white, model minority/problem community, immigrant/native. These types of dualities leave immigrant groups such as Indian-Americans without a place. Furthermore, unlike their parents who have economic and social status in American society, many second generation Indian-American youth are desperately seeking ethnic identity. As participants in a nation where race is a dominant cultural identity, many Indian-American youth utilize their Indian heritage as a way to claim a space in the race matrix of the U.S.

For immigrant communities, identity is a process of navigating multiplicity such that they can communicate their whole selves in a world that often tends to compartmentalize and quantify, especially in terms of race and ethnicity. Utilizing the hyphen in naming themselves is one way to address this multiplicity. One way to think about the hyphen is to consider it a story of cultural fusion that lets Indian-Americans fight against the cultural bias they often face in the U.S.

Through the constant negotiation of Indiana and American worlds, a clear and separate world emerges that presents a story of the many identities in a form of cultural fusion. Instead of positioning one culture over another, cultural fusion allows for a blending of cultures. Immigrants absorb the ways of being in various cultures and utilize them as necessary for survival. Cultural fusion is a total connecting of several worlds in a way that is seamless. Through cultural fusion, behaviors are not identified as Indian or American; they just are. Cultural fusion is the connecting of various cultures in a manner that, once incorporated, the original culture becomes a defining part of the other cultures. There can be no Indian culture without the reference of American culture. One must embody both cultures in order to interact in either world. It is, therefore, possible to be 100 % Indian and 100 % American at the same time.

A hyphen creates both a connection and a space between being Indian and American. It represents the in-betweenness and the nothingness that shapes the experiences of those who navigate multiple identities. Several participants talked about this space as “dhobi ka kuta.” This phrase, translated as the  washer man's dog , refers to a well-known Indian parable about a washer man and his family who are caught in a conundrum. They have a dog that has become attached to the family. Although they have affection for the animal, they are lost as to what to do with it. Because they understand that the dog is a family pet, they want to bring it into the house, but at the same they see that it is a dog, dirty and unclean. Repulsed by this, they cannot bring themselves to allow it in their home. The dog represents the hyphen; it is this in-betweenness that Indian immigrants feel. They are Indian, yet somehow they also are not, and this taints them. For many second generation Indians, identity is a crucial point at which they attempt to find a place where they can achieve a sense of belonging. Though they are comfortable with the actions and behaviors of people in the United States because it is the culture that is most inscribed on their bodies, they are clearly aware of their difference, both in regard to Americans and Indians.

The stories immigrants tell about themselves become a way of making sense of who one is, how one can be of many worlds at once and most importantly, making sense of those experiences in light of both the homeland and the host culture. For Indian-Americans, the stories they tell help them find a way to continue belonging to the land of their heritage, while carving out a space for themselves in the U.S. These stories and the stories of other immigrant communities help us then make sense of how to broaden our own ways of talking about what it means to be American.

Black-Native Identity and Futurity

Amber starks (a.k.a. melanin mvskoke).

Black Natives exist! We are Indigenous peoples of (what is currently known as) the Americas and the Caribbean, and we are also the descendants of Indigenous peoples of Africa. This identity often includes Freedmen—the free men and women who were once enslaved by citizens of the Five Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and Choctaw)—and their descendants. Black Natives and Freedmen are the legacy of our Black and Native ancestors. We are the personification of their joy, pain, resistance, and endurance, and it is because of our Black and Native ancestors’ hope and resilience that we are still here.

It is impossible to lump Black-Native identities into a single identity. We are as diverse as we are numerous and our lived experiences, like our identities, are not monolithic. We therefore refer to ourselves in a number of ways, such as “Afro-Indigenous,” “Black Native,” “Indigenous and Black,” “Black and Native,” “Black and a tribal identity.” Many of us, by choosing to honor both our peoples through our identities, are intentionally pushing back against America’s tradition of classifying people into distinct racial categories. We are pushing back against society’s pressure to choose between our identities because we may look more like one than the other, or not enough of both. Some of us are even simultaneously decompartmentalizing and desegregating our Black and Native identities by using traditional language or developing a new language of resistance to speak to who we are and the peoples we come from.

Portrait of Zerviah Gould Mitchell (Wampanoag, 1807–1898), ca. 1850–1860. NMAI N15198. Mitchell, along with Ebenezer W. Pierce, wrote Indian History, Biography, and Genealogy , about the life of Wampanoag leader Massasoit and his descendants.

Many Black Natives are also deliberately and willfully seeking new ways to show up as our whole selves, as equally Black and equally Native, in our daily lives. We are challenging, interrogating, and dismantling the political borders placed upon us. By choosing to exist as Black and Native and owning our dual identities, we are an affront to these very systems that seek to erase our Indigeneity and marginalize our Blackness. We are reclaiming our right to self-determination and exercising bodily and cultural autonomy by inhabiting and celebrating both of our peoples.

Many of us have learned to root our full selves in the knowledge that, since first contact between Africans and Native people, our Black and Indigenous ancestors have continuously built community, forged relationships (platonic, romantic, familial, kinship, and political), and fought against systems of oppression that are both unique to our respective communities as well as overlapping. But we are not disillusioned and do recognize that there have been times, even today, when our peoples have been at odds or even in opposition to one another, forfeiting alliances and even participating in one another’s oppression as a means of survival and, in some cases, out of self-interest. However, these instances of harm or betrayal should not be understood in isolation but must be contextualized in direct relation to that of our respective and mutual oppression, which traces back to the founding of the nation on the backs of enslaved Africans and their descendants and the attempted genocide and assimilation of Indigenous people.

A Chickahominy family in Virginia, 1918. NMAI N12600

Despite what our peoples have endured, we have never been conquered because we, Black and Native peoples, have found ways to refuse our oppression and create modes of defiance such as abolition, free towns, cross-cultural alliances, kinship ties, and community building. We have pushed for freedom, individually and in solidarity with one another, and out of our struggle we have birthed enduring movements of resistance. Those of us who are today advancing Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty through movements such as Black Lives Matter and Land Back understand that it’s our duty to continue the work of those who came before us. We must harvest the fruit of our ancestors, plant new seeds of freedom, and pick the weeds of subjugation. We must work towards and believe in the world we want for ourselves and our descendants—a world born of our imaginations and not those of our oppressors. We cannot forget that it was and is by navigating these systems in authentic community that we will continue to prevail. Existing as both Black and Native is not a burden we must bear; it is our birthright, our inheritance, and an intersectional identity we get to bask in.

Maya Bernadett (Tohono O’odham/Black/Mexican/white) and her husband Drew Harris (Tohono O’odham/Black), 2021

Amber Starks, a.k.a. Melanin Mvskoke, (Black/Muscogee Creek) is an Afro-Indigenous activist, organizer, cultural critic, decolonial theorist, and budding abolitionist. She is an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and is of Shawnee, Yuchi, and Quapaw descent. Her passion is the intersection of Black and Native American identity. Starks’s activism seeks to normalize, affirm, and uplift the multidimensional identities of Black and Native peoples through discourse and advocacy around Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, anti-Blackness, and abolishing blood quantum. She hopes to encourage Black and Indigenous peoples to prioritize one another and divest from compartmentalizing struggles.

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Gender and sexuality in native america: many people, many meanings.

Photo by M. James Slack, Historic American Buildings Survey. Collections of the Library of Congress (HABS NM,31-ACOMP,1-8)

Part of a series of articles titled Finding Our Place: LGBTQ Heritage in the United States .

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Last updated: February 20, 2018

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The Myth of Asian American Identity

We’re the fastest-growing demographic group in the U.S. But when it comes to the nation’s racial and ethnic divisions, where do we fit in?

Credit... Artwork by Kensuke Koike. Photograph by Tommy Kha for The New York Times.

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By Jay Caspian Kang

• Published Oct. 5, 2021 Updated Oct. 18, 2021

During the first days of the Trump administration, when my attention was split between the endless scroll of news on my phone and my infant daughter, who was born five days before the inauguration, I often found myself staring at her eyes, still puffy and swollen from her birth. My wife is half Brooklyn Jew, half Newport WASP, and throughout her pregnancy, I assumed that our child would look more like her than like me. When our daughter was born with a full head of dark hair and almond-shaped eyes, the nurses all commented on how much she looked like her father, which, I admit, felt a bit unsettling, not because of any racial shame but because it has always been difficult for me to see myself in anyone or anything other than myself. But now, while my wife slept at night, I would stand over our daughter’s bassinet, compare her face at one week with photos of myself at that delicate, lumpen age and worry about what it might mean to have an Asian-looking baby in this America rather than one who could either pass or, at the very least, walk around with the confidence of some of the half- Asian kids I had met — tall, beautiful, with strange names and a hard edge to their intelligence.

These pitiful thoughts quickly passed — for better or worse, my talent for cultivating creeping doubts is only surpassed by an even greater talent for chopping them right above the root. The worries were replaced by the normalizing chores of young fatherhood. But sometimes during her naps, I would play the “Goldberg Variations” on our living-room speakers and try to imagine the contours of her life to come.

My daughter spent her first two years in a prewar apartment building with dusty sconces and cracked marble steps in the lobby. The hallways had terrible light because the windows had been painted over with what in a less enlightened time might have been called a “flesh tone” color. Such cosmetic problems will improve with the arrival of more people like us — the shared spaces will begin to look like the building’s gut-renovated apartments, with their soapstone countertops, recessed light fixtures, the Sub-Zero refrigerators bought as an investment for the inevitable sale four to six years down the road.

At the time, it seemed like the other markers of her upper-middle-class life — grape leaves from the Middle Eastern grocery Sahadi’s, the Japanese bridges of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, weekends at her grandparents’ home in Newport — would keep pace with the changes in the building. If she enrolled at St. Ann’s or Dalton or P.S. 321, in nearby Park Slope, she would join other half-Asian and half-white children at New York City’s wealthiest schools.

In December 1979, my mother flew back to Korea from the United States to give birth to me, because she assumed her stay in America would be temporary and I would need Korean citizenship. I have since renounced that Korean citizenship, because it would have required me to serve in the Army, and today my parents live on a farm that sits on five flat acres on an island in Puget Sound. Nearly two acres have been planted with springy, waist-high lavender bushes that bloom in mid-June and are cut down and composted or burned at the end of the summer. There are 20 rows of grapes, a greenhouse filled with tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and Korean herbs, several hundred bulbs of garlic, an overgrown patch of buckwheat and an assortment of potatoes and onions. I met my wife at the farm. She and her best friend had come to pick lavender to sell at a farmers’ market.

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Native Americans in the United States Essay

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Introduction

American identity, works cited.

Our planet is inhabited with a great number of different people. Having chosen different places to live, they formed different groups with some common features. Peculiarities of the each group, or folk were determined by the environment where people lived. People of the North are severe and solid, people of the South are passionate and emotional. These differences made every nation unique and underlined its character. Great diversity makes our planet an interesting place to live.

Identity of a nation is the thing which should be boasted and treated very carefully as it is contains the whole history of the folk. America is a unique phenomenon among other lands. Its history witnessed the great people migration and culture interchange. However, due to these facts and strong bond with its roots America managed to save its unique identity, having made it even richer.

Being inhabited with Indian tribes from the earliest moments of its history, American land has taken a lot from them. Great love for nature, realization of your place in this world, connection with the roots and ancestors and unique love for native land are the factors which determine American identity.

It cannot be doubted that Indian tribes influenced greatly the formation of the American identity. That is why it is possible to speak about inherited deep and respectful perception of environment and nature. Native Americans used to deify natural events, treating them in the proper way. In the book The Norton Anthology of American Literature the chapter form the book Black Elk Speaks is given.

In contains the words of Oglala Lakota man, which can prove Indians’ great love for nature “I looked below me where the earth was silent in a sick green light, and saw the hills look up afraid and the grasses on the hills and all the animals” (Baym and Levine 30). His understanding of nature as one of the main treasures of this world came from his upbringing and it became the part of American identity.

Another thing which is peculiar for it is great respect to ancestors and to the land where they lived In the same chapter, written from the Black Elks words the author also stresses the great respect for wisdom and experience of ancestors. “Your Grandfathers all over the world are having council, and they have called you here to teach you” (Baym and Levine 27).

The phrase which reflects the whole understanding of relations between generations peculiar to Americans. The Grandfathers are the wisest men and their knowledge is unlimited. Their pieces of advice should be followed.

In American identity great respect for old people is instilled since early childhood. Great love for native land is an obvious result of this great respect. Nothing can be worse than to lose your Motherland, place where a great number of your ancestors were born and died, the place which is filled with their knowledge and power.

Having analyzed the great history of American people, its great cultural heritage and peculiarities of its development it is possible to conclude that there are some main characteristics which give America its identity. Having descended from the Indian land, America has inherited its great love for nature and the careful attitude to it. Respect for ancestors and love for native land are also important characteristics. Many times in the history America proved it showing great patriotism which was not easy to break.

Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Eighth Edition. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company. 2011. Print.

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Pluralism Project Archive

Native american religious and cultural freedom: an introductory essay (2005).

I. No Word for Religion: The Distinctive Contours of Native American Religions

A. Fundamental Diversity We often refer to Native American religion or spirituality in the singular, but there is a fundamental diversity concerning Native American religious traditions. In the United States, there are more than five hundred recognized different tribes , speaking more than two hundred different indigenous languages, party to nearly four hundred different treaties , and courted by missionaries of each branch of Christianity. With traditional ways of life lived on a variety of landscapes, riverscapes, and seascapes, stereotypical images of buffalo-chasing nomads of the Plains cannot suffice to represent the people of Acoma, still raising corn and still occupying their mesa-top pueblo in what only relatively recently has come to be called New Mexico, for more than a thousand years; or the Tlingit people of what is now Southeast Alaska whose world was transformed by Raven, and whose lives revolve around the sea and the salmon. Perhaps it is ironic that it is their shared history of dispossession, colonization, and Christian missions that is most obviously common among different Native peoples. If “Indian” was a misnomer owing to European explorers’ geographical wishful thinking, so too in a sense is “Native American,”a term that elides the differences among peoples of “North America” into an identity apparently shared by none at the time the continents they shared were named for a European explorer. But the labels deployed by explorers and colonizers became an organizing tool for the resistance of the colonized. As distinctive Native people came to see their stock rise and fall together under “Indian Policy,” they resourcefully added that Native or Indian identity, including many of its symbolic and religious emblems, to their own tribal identities. A number of prophets arose with compelling visions through which the sacred called peoples practicing different religions and speaking different languages into new identities at once religious and civil. Prophetic new religious movements, adoption and adaptation of Christian affiliation, and revitalized commitments to tribal specific ceremonial complexes and belief systems alike marked religious responses to colonialism and Christian missions. And religion was at the heart of negotiating these changes. “More than colonialism pushed,” Joel Martin has memorably written, “the sacred pulled Native people into new religious worlds.”(Martin) Despite centuries of hostile and assimilative policies often designed to dismantle the structures of indigenous communities, language, and belief systems, the late twentieth century marked a period of remarkable revitalization and renewal of Native traditions. Built on centuries of resistance as well as strategic accommodations, Native communities from the 1960s on have vigorously pressed their claims to religious self-determination.

B. "Way of Life, not Religion" In all their diversity, people from different Native nations hasten to point out that their respective languages include no word for “religion”, and maintain an emphatic distinction between ways of life in which economy, politics, medicine, art, agriculture, etc., are ideally integrated into a spiritually-informed whole. As Native communities try to continue their traditions in the context of a modern American society that conceives of these as discrete segments of human thought and activity, it has not been easy for Native communities to accomplish this kind of integration. Nor has it been easy to to persuade others of, for example, the spiritual importance of what could be construed as an economic activity, such as fishing or whaling.

C. Oral Tradition and Indigenous Languages Traversing the diversity of Native North American peoples, too, is the primacy of oral tradition. Although a range of writing systems obtained existed prior to contact with Europeans, and although a variety of writing systems emerged from the crucible of that contact, notably the Cherokee syllabary created by Sequoyah and, later, the phonetic transcription of indigenous languages by linguists, Native communities have maintained living traditions with remarkable care through orality. At first glance, from the point of view of a profoundly literate tradition, this might seem little to brag about, but the structure of orality enables a kind of fluidity of continuity and change that has clearly enabled Native traditions to sustain, and even enlarge, themselves in spite of European American efforts to eradicate their languages, cultures, and traditions. In this colonizing context, because oral traditions can function to ensure that knowledge is shared with those deemed worthy of it, orality has proved to be a particular resource to Native elders and their communities, especially with regard to maintaining proper protocols around sacred knowledge. So a commitment to orality can be said to have underwritten artful survival amid the pressures of colonization. It has also rendered Native traditions particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Although Native communities continue to privilege the kinds of knowledge kept in lineages of oral tradition, courts have only haltingly recognized the evidentiary value of oral traditions. Because the communal knowledge of oral traditions is not well served by the protections of intellectual property in western law, corporations and their shareholders have profited from indigenous knowledge, especially ethnobotanical and pharmacological knowledge with few encumbrances or legal contracts. Orality has also rendered Native traditions vulnerable to erosion. Today, in a trend that linguists point out is global, Native American languages in particular are to an alarming degree endangered languages. In danger of being lost are entire ways of perceiving the world, from which we can learn to live more sustainable, balanced, lives in an ecocidal age.

D. "Religious" Regard for the Land In this latter respect of being not only economically land-based but culturally land-oriented, Native religious traditions also demonstrate a consistency across their fundamental diversity. In God is Red ,Vine Deloria, Jr. famously argued that Native religious traditions are oriented fundamentally in space, and thus difficult to understand in religious terms belonging properly tothe time-oriented traditions of Christianity and Judaism. Such a worldview is ensconced in the idioms, if not structures, of many spoken Native languages, but living well on particular landscapes has not come naturally to Native peoples, as romanticized images of noble savages born to move silently through the woods would suggest. For Native peoples, living in balance with particular landscapes has been the fruit of hard work as well as a product of worldview, a matter of ethical living in worlds where non human life has moral standing and disciplined attention to ritual protocol. Still, even though certain places on landscapes have been sacred in the customary sense of being wholly distinct from the profane and its activity, many places sacred to Native peoples have been sources of material as well as spiritual sustenance. As with sacred places, so too with many sacred practices of living on landscapes. In the reckoning of Native peoples, pursuits like harvesting wild rice, spearing fish or hunting certain animals can be at once religious and economic in ways that have been difficult for Western courts to acknowledge. Places and practices have often had both sacred and instrumental value. Thus, certain cultural freedoms are to be seen in the same manner as religious freedoms. And thus, it has not been easy for Native peoples who have no word for “religion” to find comparable protections for religious freedom, and it is to that troubled history we now turn.

II. History of Native American Religious and Cultural Freedom

A. Overview That sacred Native lifeways have only partly corresponded to the modern Western language of “religion,” the free exercise of which is ostensibly protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution , has not stopped Native communities from seeking protection of their freedom to exercise and benefit from those lifeways. In the days of treaty making, formally closed by Congress in 1871, and in subsequent years of negotiated agreements, Native communities often stipulated protections of certain places and practices, as did Lakota leaders in the Fort Laramie Treaty when they specifically exempted the Paha Sapa, subsequently called the Black Hills from land cessions, or by Ojibwe leaders in the 1837  treaty, when they expressly retained “usufruct” rights to hunt, fish, and gather on lands otherwise ceded to the U.S. in the treaty. But these and other treaty agreements have been honored neither by American citizens nor the United States government. Native communities have struggled to secure their rights and interests within the legal and political system of the United States despite working in an English language and in a legal language that does not easily give voice to Native regard for sacred places, practices, and lifeways. Although certain Native people have appealed to international courts and communities for recourse, much of the material considered in this website concerns Native communities’ efforts in the twentieth and twenty-first century to protect such interests and freedoms within the legal and political universe of the United States.

B. Timeline 1871 End of Treaty Making Congress legislates that no more treaties are to be made with tribes and claims “plenary power” over Indians as wards of U.S. government. 1887-1934 Formal U.S. Indian policy of assimilation dissolves communal property, promotes English only boarding school education, and includes informal and formalized regulation and prohibition of Native American ceremonies. At the same time, concern with “vanishing Indians” and their cultures drives a large scale effort to collect Native material culture for museum preservation and display. 1906 American Antiquities Act Ostensibly protects “national” treasures on public lands from pilfering, but construes Native American artifacts and human remains on federal land as “archeological resources,” federal property useful for science. 1921 Bureau of Indian Affairs Continuing an administrative trajectory begun in the 1880's, the Indian Bureau authorized its field agents to use force and imprisonment to halt religious practices deemed inimical to assimilation. 1923 Bureau of Indian Affairs The federal government tries to promote assimilation by instructing superintendents and Indian agents to supress Native dances, prohibiting some and limiting others to specified times. 1924 Pueblos make appeal for religious freedom protection The Council of All the New Mexico Pueblos appeals to the public for First Amendment protection from Indian policies suppressing ceremonial dances. 1924 Indian Citizenship Act Although uneven policies had recognized certain Indian individuals as citizens, all Native Americans are declared citizens by Congressional legislation. 1928 Meriam Report Declares federal assimilation policy a failure 1934 Indian Reorganization Act Officially reaffirms legality and importance of Native communities’ religious, cultural, and linguistic traditions. 1946 Indian Claims Commission Federal Commission created to put to rest the host of Native treaty land claims against the United States with monetary settlements. 1970 Return of Blue Lake to Taos Pueblo After a long struggle to win support by President Nixon and Congress, New Mexico’s Taos Pueblo secures the return of a sacred lake, and sets a precedent that threatened many federal lands with similar claims, though regulations are tightened. Taos Pueblo still struggles to safeguard airspace over the lake. 1972 Portions of Mount Adams returned to Yakama Nation Portions of Washington State’s Mount Adams, sacred to the Yakama people, was returned to that tribe by congressional legislation and executive decision. 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act Specifies Native American Church, and other native American religious practices as fitting within religious freedom. Government agencies to take into account adverse impacts on native religious freedom resulting from decisions made, but with no enforcement mechanism, tribes were left with little recourse. 1988 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association Three Calif. Tribes try to block logging road in federal lands near sacred Mt. Shasta Supreme Court sides w/Lyng, against tribes. Court also finds that AIRFA contains no legal teeth for enforcement. 1990 Employment Division, Department of Human Resources v. Smith Oregon fires two native chemical dependency counselors for Peyote use. They are denied unemployment compensation. They sue. Supreme Court 6-3 sides w/Oregon in a major shift in approach to religious freedom. Scalia, for majority: Laws made that are neutral to religion, even if they result in a burden on religious exercise, are not unconstitutional. Dissent identifies this more precisely as a violation of specific congressional intent to clarify and protect Native American religious freedoms 1990 Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) Mandates return of human remains, associated burial items, ceremonial objects, and "cultural patrimony” from museum collections receiving federal money to identifiable source tribes. Requires archeologists to secure approval from tribes before digging. 1990 “Traditional Cultural Properties” Designation created under Historic Preservation Act enables Native communities to seek protection of significant places and landscapes under the National Historic Preservation Act. 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act Concerning Free Exercise Claims, the burden should be upon the government to prove “compelling state interest” in laws 1994 Amendments to A.I.R.F.A Identifies Peyote use as sacramental and protected by U.S., despite state issues (all regs must be made in consultation with reps of traditional Indian religions. 1996 President Clinton's Executive Order (13006/7) on Native American Sacred Sites Clarifies Native American Sacred Sites to be taken seriously by government officials. 1997 City of Bourne v. Flores Supreme Court declares Religious Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional 2000 Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) Protects religious institutions' rights to make full use of their lands and properties "to fulfill their missions." Also designed to protect the rights of inmates to practice religious traditions. RLUIPA has notably been used in a number of hair-length and free-practice cases for Native inmates, a number of which are ongoing (see: Greybuffalo v. Frank).

III. Contemporary Attempts to Seek Protection Against the backdrop, Native concerns of religious and cultural freedoms can be distinguished in at least the following ways.

• Issues of access to, control over, and integrity of sacred lands
• Free exercise of religion in public correctional and educational institutions
• Free Exercise of “religious” and cultural practices prohibited by other realms of law: Controlled Substance Law, Endangered Species Law, Fish and Wildlife Law
• Repatriation of Human Remains held in museums and scientific institutions
• Repatriation of Sacred Objects/Cultural Patrimony in museums and scientific institutions
• Protection of Sacred and Other Cultural Knowledge from exploitation and unilateral appropriation (see Lakota Elder’s declaration).

In their attempts to press claims for religious and cultural self-determination and for the integrity of sacred lands and species, Native communities have identified a number of arenas for seeking protection in the courts, in legislatures, in administrative and regulatory decision-making, and through private market transactions and negotiated agreements. And, although appeals to international law and human rights protocols have had few results, Native communities bring their cases to the court of world opinion as well. It should be noted that Native communities frequently pursue their religious and cultural interests on a number of fronts simultaneously. Because Native traditions do not fit neatly into the category of “religion” as it has come to be demarcated in legal and political languages, their attempts have been various to promote those interests in those languages of power, and sometimes involve difficult strategic decisions that often involve as many costs as benefits. For example, seeking protection of a sacred site through historic preservation regulations does not mean to establish Native American rights over access to and control of sacred places, but it can be appealing in light of the courts’ recently narrowing interpretation of constitutional claims to the free exercise of religion. Even in the relative heyday of constitutional protection of the religious freedom of minority traditions, many Native elders and others were understandably hesitant to relinquish sacred knowledge to the public record in an effort to protect religious and cultural freedoms, much less reduce Native lifeways to the modern Western terms of religion. Vine Deloria, Jr. has argued that given the courts’ decisions in the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the Lyng and Smith cases, efforts by Native people to protect religious and cultural interests under the First Amendment did as much harm as good to those interests by fixing them in written documents and subjecting them to public, often hostile, scrutiny.

A. First Amendment Since the 1790s, the First Amendment to the Constitution has held that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The former of the amendment’s two clauses, referred to as the “establishment clause” guards against government sponsorship of particular religious positions. The latter, known as the “free exercise” clause, protects the rights of religious minorites from government interference. But just what these clauses have been understood to mean, and how much they are to be weighed against other rights and protections, such as that of private property, has been the subject of considerable debate in constitutional law over the years. Ironically, apart from matters of church property disposition, it was not until the 1940s that the Supreme Court began to offer its clarification of these constitutional protections. As concerns free exercise jurisprudence, under Chief Justices Warren and Burger in the 1960s and 1970s, the Supreme Court had expanded free exercise protection and its accommodations considerably, though in retrospect too few Native communities were sufficiently organized or capitalized, or perhaps even motivated, given their chastened experience of the narrow possibilities of protection under U.S. law, to press their claims before the courts. Those communities who did pursue such interests experienced first hand the difficulty of trying to squeeze communal Native traditions, construals of sacred land, and practices at once economic and sacred into the conceptual box of religion and an individual’s right to its free exercise. By the time more Native communities pursued their claims under the free exercise clause in the 1980s and 1990s, however, the political and judicial climate around such matters had changed considerably. One can argue it has been no coincidence that the two, arguably three, landmark Supreme Court cases restricting the scope of free exercise protection under the Rehnquist Court were cases involving Native American traditions. This may be because the Court agrees to hear only a fraction of the cases referred to it. In Bowen v. Roy 476 U.S. 693 (1986) , the High Court held against a Native person refusing on religious grounds to a social security number necessary for food stamp eligibility. With even greater consequence for subsequent protections of sacred lands under the constitution, in Lyng v. Northwest Cemetery Protective Association 485 U.S. 439 (1988) , the High Court reversed lower court rulings which had blocked the construction of a timber road through high country sacred to California’s Yurok, Karok and Tolowa communities. In a scathing dissent, Harry Blackmun argued that the majority had fundamentally misunderstood the idioms of Native religions and the centrality of sacred lands. Writing for the majority, though, Sandra Day O’Connor’s opinion recognized the sincerity of Native religious claims to sacred lands while devaluing those claims vis a vis other competing goods, especially in this case, the state’s rights to administer “what is, after all, its land.” The decision also codified an interpretation of Congress’s legislative protections in the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act as only advisory in nature. As of course happens in the U.S. judical system, such decisions of the High Court set new precedents that not only shape the decisions of lower courts, but that have a chilling effect on the number of costly suits brought into the system by Native communities. What the Lyng decision began to do with respect to sacred land protection, was finished off with respect to restricting free exercise more broadly in the Rehnquist Court’s 1990 decision in Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith 484 U.S. 872 (1990) . Despite nearly a century of specific protections of Peyotism, in an unemployment compensation case involving two Oregon substance abuse counselors who had been fired because they had been found to be Peyote ingesting members of the Native American Church , a religious organization founded to secure first amendment protection in the first place, the court found that the state’s right to enforce its controlled substance laws outweighed the free exercise rights of Peyotists. Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia’s opinion reframed the entire structure of free exercise jurisprudence, holding as constitutional laws that do not intentionally and expressly deny free exercise rights even if they have the effect of the same. A host of minority religious communities, civil liberties organizations, and liberal Christian groups were alarmed at the precedent set in Smith. A subsequent legislative attempt to override the Supreme Court, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act , passed by Congress and signed into law in 1993 by President Clinton was found unconstitutional in City of Bourne v. Flores (1997) , as the High Court claimed its constitutional primacy as interpreter of the constitution.

i. Sacred Lands In light of the ruling in Lyng v. Northwest Cemetery Protective Association (1988) discussed immediately above, there have been few subsequent attempts to seek comparable protection of sacred lands, whether that be access to, control of, or integrity of sacred places. That said, three cases leading up to the 1988 Supreme Court decision were heard at the level of federal circuit courts of appeal, and are worthy of note for the judicial history of appeals to First Amendment protection for sacred lands. In Sequoyah v. Tennessee Valley Authority , 19800 620 F.2d 1159 (6th Cir. 1980) , the court remained unconvinced by claims that a proposed dam's flooding of non-reservation lands sacred to the Cherokee violate the free excersice clause. That same year, in Badoni v. Higginson , 638 F. 2d 172 (10th Cir. 1980) , a different Circuit Court held against Navajo claims about unconstitutional federal management of water levels at a am desecrating Rainbow Arch in Utah. Three years later, in Fools Crow v. Gullet , 760 F. 2d 856 (8th Cir. 1983), cert. Denied, 464 U.S.977 (1983) , the Eighth Circuit found unconvincing Lakota claims to constitutional protections to a vision quest site against measures involving a South Dakota state park on the site.

ii. Free Exercise Because few policies and laws that have the effect of infringing on Native American religious and cultural freedoms are expressly intended to undermine those freedoms, the High Court’s Smith decision discouraged the number of suits brought forward by Native communities under constitutional free exercise protection since 1990, but a number of noteworthy cases predated the 1990 Smith decision, and a number of subsequent free exercise claims have plied the terrain of free exercise in correctional institutions. Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith (1990)

• Prison:Sweatlodge Case Study
• Eagle Feathers: U.S. v. Dion
• Hunting for Ceremonial Purposes: Frank v. Alaska

iii. No Establishment As the history of First Amendment jurisprudence generaly shows (Flowers), free exercise protections bump up against establishment clause jurisprudence that protects the public from government endorsement of particular traditions. Still, it is perhaps ironic that modest protections of religious freedoms of tiny minorities of Native communities have undergone constitutional challenges as violating the establishment clause. At issue is the arguable line between what has been understood in jurisprudence as governmental accommodations enabling the free exercise of minority religions and government endorsement of those traditions. The issue has emerged in a number of challenges to federal administrative policies by the National Park Service and National Forest Service such as the voluntary ban on climbing during the ceremonially significant month of June on what the Lakota and others consider Bear Lodge at Devil’s Tower National Monument . It should be noted that the Mountain States Legal Foundation is funded in part by mining, timbering, and recreational industries with significant money interests in the disposition of federal lands in the west. In light of courts' findings on these Native claims to constitutional protection under the First Amendment, Native communities have taken steps in a number of other strategic directions to secure their religious and cultural freedoms.

B. Treaty Rights In addition to constitutional protections of religious free exercise, 370 distinct treaty agreements signed prior to 1871, and a number of subsequent “agreements” are in play as possible umbrellas of protection of Native American religious and cultural freedoms. In light of the narrowing of free exercise protections in Lyng and Smith , and in light of the Court’s general broadening of treaty right protections in the mid to late twentieth century, treaty rights have been identified as preferable, if not wholly reliable, protections of religious and cultural freedoms. Makah Whaling Mille Lacs Case

C. Intellectual Property Law Native communities have occasionally sought protection of and control over indigenous medicinal, botanical, ceremonial and other kinds of cultural knowledge under legal structures designed to protect intellectual property and trademark. Although some scholars as committed to guarding the public commons of ideas against privatizing corporate interests as they are to working against the exploitation of indigenous knowledge have warned about the consequences of litigation under Western intellectual property standards (Brown), the challenges of such exploitation are many and varied, from concerns about corporate patenting claims to medicinal and agricultural knowledge obtained from Native elders and teachers to protecting sacred species like wild rice from anticipated devastation by genetically modified related plants (see White Earth Land Recovery Project for an example of this protection of wild rice to logos ( Washington Redskins controversy ) and images involving the sacred Zia pueblo sun symbol and Southwest Airlines to challenges to corporate profit-making from derogatory representations of Indians ( Crazy Horse Liquor case ).

D. Other Statutory Law A variety of legislative efforts have had either the express purpose or general effect of providing protections of Native American religious and cultural freedoms. Some, like the Taos Pueblo Blue Lake legislation, initiated protection of sacred lands and practices of particular communities through very specific legislative recourse. Others, like the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act , enacted broad protections of Native American religious and cultural freedom [link to Troost case]. Culminating many years of activism, if not without controversy even in Native communities, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act , signed into law in 1978 and amended in 1993, in order to recognize the often difficult fit between Native traditions and constitutional protections of the freedom of “religion” and ostensibly to safeguard such interests from state interference. Though much heralded for its symbolic value, the act was determined by the courts (most notably in the Lyng decision upon review of the congressional record to be only advisory in nature, lacking a specific “cause for action” that would give it legal teeth. To answer the Supreme Court's narrowing of the scope of free exercise protections in Lyng and in the 1990 Smith decision, Congress passed in 2000 the  Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA)  restoring to governments the substantial burden of showing a "compelling interest" in land use decisions or administrative policies that exacted a burden on the free exercise of religion and requiring them to show that they had exhausted other possibilities that would be less burdensome on the free exercise of religion. Two other notable legislative initiatives that have created statutory protections for a range of Native community religious and cultural interests are the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act and the Native American Language Act legislation beginning to recognize the significance and urgency of the protection and promotion of indigenous languages, if not supporting such initiatives with significant appropriations. AIRFA 1978 NAGPRA 1990 [see item h. below] Native American Language Act Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA)  2000 National Historic Preservation Act  [see item g below]

E. Administrative and Regulatory Policy and Law As implied in a number of instances above, many governmental decisions affecting Native American religious and cultural freedom occur at the level of regulation and the administrative policy of local, state, and federal governments, and as a consequence are less visible to those not locally or immediately affected.

F. Federal Recognition The United States officially recognizes over 500 distinct Native communities, but there remain numerous Native communities who know clearly who they are but who remain formally unrecognized by the United States, even when they receive recognition by states or localities. In the 1930s, when Congress created the structure of tribal governments under the Indian Reorganization Act, many Native communities, including treaty signatories, chose not to enroll themselves in the recognition process, often because their experience with the United States was characterized more by unwanted intervention than by clear benefits. But the capacity and charge of officially recognized tribal governments grew with the Great Society programs in the 1960s and in particular with an official U.S. policy of Indian self-determination enacted through such laws as the 1975 Indian Self Determination and Education Act , which enabled tribal governments to act as contractors for government educational and social service programs. Decades later, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act formally recognized the authority of recognized tribal governments to engage in casino gaming in cooperation with the states. Currently, Native communities that remain unrecognized are not authorized to benefit from such programs and policies, and as a consequence numerous Native communities have stepped forward to apply for federal recognition in a lengthy, laborious, and highly-charged political process overseen by the  Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Federal Acknowledgment . Some communities, like Michigan’s Little Traverse Band of Odawa have pursued recognition directly through congressional legislation. As it relates to concerns of Native American religious and cultural freedom, more is at stake than the possibility to negotiate with states for the opening of casinos. Federal recognition gives Native communities a kind of legal standing to pursue other interests with more legal and political resources at their disposal. Communities lacking this standing, for example, are not formally included in the considerations of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (item H. below).

G. Historic Preservation Because protections under the National Historic Preservation Act have begun to serve as a remedy for protection of lands of religious and cultural significance to Native communities, in light of first amendment jurisprudence since Lyng , it bears further mention here. Native communities seeking protections through Historic Preservation determinations are not expressly protecting Native religious freedom, nor recognizing exclusive access to, or control of sacred places, since the legislation rests on the importance to the American public at large of sites of historic and cultural value, but in light of free exercise jurisprudence since Lyng , historic preservation has offered relatively generous, if not exclusive, protection. The National Historic Preservation Act as such offered protection on the National Register of Historic Places, for the scholarly, especially archeological, value of certain Native sites, but in 1990, a new designation of “traditional cultural properties” enabled Native communities and others to seek historic preservation protections for properties associated “wit cultural practices or beliefs of a living community that (a) are rooted in that community’s history, and (b) are important in maintaining the continuing cultural identity of the community.” The designation could include most communities, but were implicitly geared to enable communities outside the American mainstream, perhaps especially Native American communities, to seek protection of culturally important and sacred sites without expressly making overt appeals to religious freedom. (King 6) This enabled those seeking recognition on the National Register to skirt a previous regulatory “religious exclusion” that discouraged inclusion of “properties owned by religious institutions or used for religious purposes” by expressly recognizing that Native communities don’t distinguish rigidly between “religion and the rest of culture” (King 260). As a consequence, this venue of cultural resource management has served Native interests in sacred lands better than others, but it remains subject to review and change. Further it does not guarantee protection; it only creates a designation within the arduous process of making application to the National Register of Historic Places. Pilot Knob Nine Mile Canyon

H. Repatriation/Protection of Human Remains, Burial Items, and Sacred Objects Culminating centuries of struggle to protect the integrity of the dead and material items of religious and cultural significance, Native communities witnessed the creation of an important process for protection under the 1990 Native American Graves and Repatriation Act . The act required museums and other institutions in the United States receiving federal monies to share with relevant Native tribes inventories of their collections of Native human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of “cultural patrimony” (that is objects that were acquired from individuals, but which had belonged not to individuals, but entire communities), and to return them on request to lineal descendants or federally recognized tribes (or Native Hawaiian organizations) in those cases where museums can determine cultural affiliation, or as often happens, in the absence of sufficiently detailed museum data, to a tribe that can prove its cultural affiliation. The law also specifies that affiliated tribes own these items if they are discovered in the future on federal or tribal lands. Finally, the law also prohibits almost every sort of trafficking in Native American human remains, burial objects, sacred objects, and items of cultural patrimony. Thus established, the process has given rise to a number of ambiguities. For example, the law’s definition of terms gives rise to some difficulties. For example, “sacred objects” pertain to objects “needed for traditional Native American religions by their present day adherents.” Even if they are needed for the renewal of old ceremonies, there must be present day adherents. (Trope and Echo Hawk, 143). What constitutes “Cultural affiliation” has also given rise to ambiguity and conflict, especially given conflicting worldviews. As has been seen in the case of Kennewick Man the “relationship of shared group identity” determined scientifically by an archeologist may or may not correspond to a Native community’s understanding of its relation to the dead on its land. Even what constitutes a “real” can be at issue, as was seen in the case of Zuni Pueblo’s concern for the return of “replicas” of sacred Ahayu:da figures made by boy scouts. To the Zuni, these contained sacred information that was itself proprietary (Ferguson, Anyon, and Lad, 253). Disputes have arisen, even between different Native communities claiming cultural affiliation, and they are adjudicated through a NAGPRA Review Committee , convened of three representatives from Native communities, three from museum and scientific organizations, and one person appointed from a list jointly submitted by the other six.

I. International Law and Human Rights Agreements At least since 1923, when Haudenosaunee Iroqois leader Deskaneh made an appeal to the League of Nations in Geneva, Native communities and organizations have registered claims and concerns about religious and cultural freedoms with the international community and institutions representing it in a variety of ways. Making reference to their status as sovereign nations whose treaties with the U.S. have not been honored, frustrated with previous efforts to seek remedies under U.S. law, concerned with the capacity for constitutional protection of what are typically “group” and not individual rights, and sometimes spurned by questions about the rightful jurisdiction of the U.S., Native organizations have sought consideration of their claims before the United Nations and engaged in its consultations on indigenous rights. After years of such appeals and efforts, a nearly unanimous  United Nations General Assembly passed the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples The 1996  Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples includes reference [article 12] to the “right to manifest, practice, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies; the right to maintain, protect, and have access in privacy to their religious and cultural sites; the right to the use and control of ceremonial objects,; and the right to the repatriation of human remains.” Importantly, the Declaration does not exclude those communities whose traditions have been interrupted by colonization. Indigenous peoples are recognized as having “the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures as well as the right to the restitution of cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs.” Also specified are their rights to their languages. An offshoot of the American Indian Movement, the International Indian Treaty Council is one such organization that has shifted its attention to the international arena for protections of indigenous rights, including those of religious and cultural freedom.]]

J. Negotiated Agreements and Private Transactions Many if not most Native claims and concerns related to religious and cultural freedoms have been and will continue to be raised and negotiated outside the formal legal and regulatory structures outlined above, and thus will seldom register in public view. In light of the career of Native religious and cultural freedoms in legislative and legal arenas, Vine Deloria, Jr., has suggested the possibilities of such agreements to reach Native goals without subjecting Native communities to the difficulties of governmental interference or public scrutiny of discreet traditions (Deloria 1992a). Still, the possibilities for Native communities to reach acceptable negotiated agreements often owe to the legal and political structures to which they have recourse if negotiations fail. The possibilities of such negotiated agreements also can be shaped by the pressures of public opinion on corporate or governmental interests. Kituwah Mound Valley of the Shields/Weatherman’s Draw

IV. Selected Past Native American Religious and Cultural Freedom Court Cases

A. Land Sequoyah v. Tennessee Valley Authority 620 F. 2d 1159 (6th Cir. 1980) . Dam’s Destruction of Sacred River/Land Badoni v. Higginson 638 F 2d 172 (10th Cir. 1980) . Desecration of Rainbow Arch, Navajo Sacred Spot in Utah Fools Crow v. Gullet 706 F. 2d. 856 (8th Cir. 1983), cert. Denied, 464 U.S. 977 (1983) . State Park on top of Vision Quest site in S. Dakota Wilson v. Block 708F. 2d 735 (D.C. Cir. 1983) ; Hopi Indian Tribe v. Block; Navajo Medicine Men Assn’ v. Block Expansion of Ski Area in San Francisco Peaks, sacred to Navaho and Hopi Lyng v. Northwest Cemetery Protective Association 485 U.S. 439 (1988) Logging Road in lands sacred to Yurok, Karok, and Tolowa

B. Free Exercise Bowen v. Roy 476 U.S. 693 (1986) Native refusal of Social Security Number U.S. v. Dion 476 U.S. 734 Sacramental Eagle Hunt contra Endangered Species Act Frank v. State 604 P. 2d 1068 (Alaska 1979) Taking moose out of season for potlatch *Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council 272 F 2d 131 (10th Cir. 1959) Peyotists vs. Tribal Gov’t Prohibiting Peyotism People v. Woody 61 Cal.2d 716, 394 P.2d 813, 40 Cal. Rptr. 69 (1964) Groundbreaking recognition of Free Exercise exemption from State Ban. Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith 484 U.S. 872 (1990) Denial of Peyotist’s unemployment compensation held constitutional

C. Prison cases involving hair *Standing Deer v. Carlson 831 F. 2d 1525 (9th Cir. 1987). *Teterud v. Gilman 385 F. Supp. 153 (S. D. Iowa 1974) & New Rider v. Board of Education 480 F. 2d 693 (10th Cir. 1973) , cert. denied 414 U.S. 1097, reh. Denied 415 U.S. 939 *Indian Inmates of Nebraska Penitentiary v. Grammar 649 F. Supp. 1374 (D. Neb. 1986)

D. Human Remains/Repatriation *Wana the Bear v. Community Construction, Inc. 180 Cal Rptr. 423 (Ct. App. 1982). Historic Indian cemetery not a “cemetery.” *State v. Glass 273 N.E. 2d 893 (Ohio Ct. App. 1971). Ancient human remains not “human” for purposes of Ohio grave robbing statute

E. Treaty Rights Pertaining to Traditional/Sacred Practices *U.S. v. Washington 384 F. Supp. 312 (W.D. Wash. 1974) aff’d 520 F.2d 676 (9th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1086 (1976). Boldt Decision on Salmon Fishing *Lac Court Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Voight, 700 F. 2d 341 (7th Cir.) Cert. denied, 464 U.S. 805 (1983) 653 F. Supp. 1420; Fishing/Ricing/Gathering on Ceded Lands Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians 124 F 3d 904 affirmed. (1999) Fishing/Ricing/Gathering on Ceded Lands

V. References & Resources

Brown, Michael, Who Owns Native Culture (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003). Burton, Lloyd Worship and Wilderness: Culture, Religion, and Law in the Management of Public Lands and Resources (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002).

Deloria, Vine, Jr., “Secularism, Civil Religion, and the Religious Freedom of American Indians,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 16:9-20 (1992).

[a] Deloria, Vine, Jr., “Trouble in High Places: Erosion of American Indian Rights to Religious Freedom in the United States,”in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance , ed. M. Annette Jaimes (Boston: South End Press, 1992).

[b] Echo Hawk, Walter,  In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided ( Fulcrum Publications , 2010) . Fine-Dare, Kathleen, Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

Ferguson, T.J., Roger Anyon, and Edmund J. Ladd, “Repatriation at the Pueblo of Zuni: Diverse Solutions to Complex Problems,” in Repatriation Reader , ed. Devon Mihesuah (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000) pp. 239-265.

Gordon-McCutchan, R.C., The Taos Indians and the Battle for Blue Lake (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Red Crane Books, 1991).

Gulliford, Andrew, Sacred Objets and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000).

Johnson, Greg, Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007).

King, Thomas F., Places that Count: Traditional Cultural Properties in Cultural Resource Management (Walnut Creek, Calif: Altamira Press, 2003).

Long, Carolyn, Religious Freedom and Indian Rights: The Case of Oregon v. Smith (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2001).

Maroukis, Thomas A., Peyote Road: Religious Freedom and the Native American Church (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010)

Martin, Joel, The Land Looks After Us: A History of Native American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

McLeod, Christopher (Producer/Director), In Light of Reverence , Sacred Lands Film Project, (Earth Image Films, La Honda Calif. 2000).

McNally, Michael D., "Native American Religious Freedom Beyond the First Amendment," in After Pluralism ed. Courtney Bender and Pamela Klassen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).

Mihesuah, Devon A., ed., Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).

Nabokov, Peter, A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Sullivan, Robert, A Whale Hunt (New York: Scribner, 2000).

Trope, Jack F., and Walter Echo-Hawk, “The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act: Background and Legislative History,” in Repatriation Reader , ed. Devon Mihesuah (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), pp. 123-168.

Wenger, Tisa, We Have a Religion : The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

Fact Check: Kamala Harris’s birth certificate used to discredit her Indian, Jamaican heritage

• Medium Text

‘CAUCASIAN’ MOTHER

Caucasian, not white, indians in u.s. census, donald harris self-identified as ‘jamaican’.

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Fact Check: Clipped video of man’s sentencing over social media comments is misleading  

A video of a judge sentencing a man in Britain over comments he made on social media has been clipped to suggest the conviction centred on a remark about not wanting to give money to migrants.

​Independence Day 2024: 8 thought-provoking essay ideas for students

Aug 12, 2024

8 Insightful Essay Ideas for Students

Independence Day commemorates our country’s journey to freedom and the enduring values that define it. For students, writing essays on this topic offers a unique opportunity to delve into the historical, cultural, and personal significance of this monumental day.

Image Source: Canva

​Modern-day relevance of Independence Day: Why it still matters in today's world

Independence Day comes as a powerful reminder of past victories and is also a living testament to the values etched in the history of our nation. This essay could explore how the ideals of freedom remain relevant in addressing the challenges of the modern world.

How diverse traditions enhance national unity

Picturing the multicultural fabric of the nation, this essay topic can highlight how diverse cultural traditions weave and strengthen the national bond. You can delve deeper by capturing the subtleties of each culture and its contribution to India’s cultural richness.

How Independence Day principles have influenced national policies and social change?

The principles of Independence Day such as freedom, equality, and justice have had a lasting impact on the development of national policies and social reforms. The essay can demonstrate how these ideals have translated into action over the years.

Post-Independence: The journey of India's educational system

Analyze how India’s education system has evolved since independence. This could include changes in curriculum, the introduction of new institutions, and the challenges and achievements in making education accessible to all.

Voices of the youth: What independence means today

Conduct interviews with students across India to understand what independence means to the younger generation. Explore their thoughts on freedom, national identity, and the challenges India faces in maintaining its independence in a globalized world.

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Traditions through time: evolution of independence day celebrations from past to present.

Chronicling the history of traditions, this essay can trace the changes in them over the years. You can also underscore how the traditional ceremonies have transformed into new forms, and what it reflects about the shifting priorities and values of our country.

Role of education in preserving Independence Day

Education is key to ensuring that the significance of Independence Day is passed down to future generations. The topic can explore the importance of integrating Independence Day into the curriculum and the role of schools, and teachers in fostering patriotic values in students.

Impact of media on Independence Day

The essay can talk about the role of media in instilling national pride and fostering a national bond in the nation. You can depict the efforts of media in reinforcing the narratives of Independence and its significant role in shaping the perceptions of the viewers.

Thanks For Reading!

Next: GK for Students: Do You Know the Scientific Names of These Common Plants?

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Kamala harris is again facing attacks on her racial identity. here’s more about her background..

• Race and Ethnicity

Vice President Kamala Harris campaigns for President as the presumptive Democratic candidate during an event July 23, 2024, in West Allis, Wis. (AP)

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, is facing a reprisal of attacks from some conservatives and their surrogates on her racial and cultural heritage, ethnic background and gender. A list recently shared across social media titled " Kamala Harris Facts ," contains wrong or missing-context claims about her background, including that she is "Not African American — Indian & Jamaican." These attacks — similar to ones raised when she was named President Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020 — misrepresent Harris’ heritage.

On television and social media, some people have also falsely and repeatedly claimed Harris isn’t eligible for the presidency because of her family’s immigrant background. Harris was born in 1964 in Oakland, California, and as someone born in the U.S., is constitutionally eligible to be president. 

All of this reflects a poor understanding of history and the fluid nature and various interpretations of racial identity in the United States, race and politics experts say.

"The approach to Harris in this instance, the attempt to ‘other’ her, is a common practice in American politics," said Keneshia Grant, a political science professor at Howard University. "These tactics will continue because they work. People have to prepare themselves to check their own biases and fears and use logic and facts to guide their decision-making when these kinds of attacks occur." According to a October 2022 report by the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit that seeks to advance civil rights and liberties in technology, women of color candidates in the 2020 general elections "were twice as likely as other candidates to be targeted with or be the subject of mis- and disinformation, and more likely to receive sexist and racist abuse than any other group."

We consulted experts in Caribbean and Africana studies, political science professors and anthropologists to learn more about how Harris’ gender, multicultural and multiracial background offers a unique glimpse into how American politics grapples with issues of race and identity.

Harris grew up in a Black middle-class neighborhood in Berkeley, California, where her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris and father, Donald Harris, would often join civil rights protests. Donald Harris was born in Jamaica and immigrated to the U.S. after he got into the University of California, Berkeley, Kamala Harris wrote in her autobiography, "The Truths We Hold: An American Journey." Shyamala Gopalan Harris was born in Chennai, India, and moved to California after graduating from the University of Delhi to pursue a doctorate in nutrition and endocrinology at Berkeley. The couple separated around the time Harris was 5 and divorced a few years later, Harris wrote in her book. Kamala Harris lived in California until she was in middle school, when she moved to Montreal after her mother was offered a teaching position at McGill University. Kamala Harris attended college at Howard University, an historically Black university, in Washington, D.C., and earned her law degree at the University of California, Hastings in 1989.

Several experts told us that the implication that Jamaicans aren't African or connected to Africa is wrong on its face. According to a 2011 census , 92.1% of Jamaicans are Black, with genetic studies showing that the vast majority are descendants of people from sub-Saharan Africa. "Jamaica is a country where more than 90% of the population is of African ancestry," Judith Byfield, a Cornell University professor who teaches Caribbean and African history, previously told PolitiFact. "So the idea that because her dad is Jamaican she has no African ancestry is completely false." Byfield said people scrutinizing Harris’ ethnic background often conflate several different categories. "Jamaican is a national identity at the same time that it’s also a cultural identity and you can say the same for her Indian heritage," she said. "Those are her parents, but she's born here, and I think for first-generation people, there's always a bit of tension between the extent that they are American, and by the extent they've been shaped and framed by their parents’ cultural affiliations." The African diaspora refers to the many communities of people of African descent dispersed throughout the world as a result of historic movements, both voluntary and involuntary. During the more-than-400-years-long trans-Atlantic slave trade , an estimated 15 million African men, women and children were kidnapped from their homelands, forced into ships, and forced to endure a weekslong journey in crowded. filthy conditions before being sold into enslavement. The slave trade took millions of people to different regions throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. In a 2020 op-ed , New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie described how Jamaica was home to a brutal and violent plantation system and was a pivotal point in the slave trade. "Many Jamaicans trace their origins directly to slavery and the mass importation of African captives," Bouie wrote. "Based on a genealogical account by her father , there is a strong chance Kamala Harris is one of them. What’s more, many descendants of enslaved people in the Americas have European ancestry on account of the pervasive sexual violence whites perpetuated wherever slavery took root." Some anthropologists and ethnographers consider the African American identifier more broadly to encompass Black people who come from a wide range of countries, while others see it as being limited to Americans descended from people who were enslaved in America. Grant said that claims that say Jamaican people are not African are unaware of slavery’s global reach. "Slavery impacted many people from Africa, and we went to many places," Grant said. "Harris’ father’s people got dropped off in Jamaica. Mine got dropped off in Haiti. The African diaspora is huge, and it is worldwide, so to suggest that a Jamaican is not African, or connected to Africa is not acknowledging the vestiges of slavery."

Harris told The Washington Post in 2019 that she identifies simply as "an American," and that she’s been comfortable with her identity from an early age, something she credits to her Hindu immigrant single mother, who adopted Black culture and immersed her daughters in it. Harris said that she grew up embracing her Indian culture while proudly living as a Black girl. She said the same in her book, "The Truths We Hold."

She told the Post that she hasn’t spent much time dwelling on how to categorize herself, but being forced to define herself was more of a struggle when she first ran for office. We have plenty of ways to categorize people, but racialized categorization has structural implications, Tracie Canada, a sociocultural anthropologist and an assistant professor of cultural anthropology and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Duke University, previously told us when she taught at Notre Dame. "Anti-Black racism, anti-Black violence, those are the things that actually matter," Canada said. "Those are systemic problems and structural issues, so no matter how she identifies or how we identify her, is she going to be implicated in that systemic problem?" Dianne Pinderhughes, a professor of Africana studies and political science at the University of Notre Dame, had told PolitiFact that the subject of racial identity is complex, especially for Harris, because she was immersed in Black culture and community since she was very young. "You have a person who was socialized from her earliest years to be socially, culturally African American and also was supported and immersed in African American organizations," Pinderhughes said. "I think the way race is played out in the United States, it’s just been the case for centuries, that people who have some color are usually assimilated in an African American community of some sort, and that community recognizes people who are willing to look in the mirror and recognize them as well." Another aspect of racial identity has a lot to do with where a person grew up or now lives. People’s local community tends to weigh heavily on how they identify themselves, experts said. Byfield, who is of Jamaican descent and grew up in Queens, New York, said her life experience involved a blended community of Black individuals who came from countries all over the world. But they banded together in their identity and shared experiences. That may have been Harris’ experience, too. "She has chosen to define herself in terms of the American landscape, and I think those of us who have had a multinational, cultural lifestyle, we've all had to figure out individually how to come to terms with it," Byfield said. "You have all these different groups from different African countries, as well as Caribbean countries. African American community in the U.S. is not from one place, everyone is from everywhere." RELATED : Fact-checking ‘Kamala Harris Facts’

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