Identity Crisis

Yesterday I wrote that "the Westernized Native doesn't fit in modern in society, has no archetypal role." I said this because Westernized Natives cannot fully claim either identity. This cultural vagueness is older than I expected. In Things Material, Butler discusses Indian clothing in the colonial era (142), describing how they would wear blankets as capes and the men would often wear shirts.


"Still, an important change among the Iroquois demonstrates powerful links between housing and broader cultural change. Eighteenth century Iroquois longhouses were distinctly smaller than their seventeenth-century predecessors and put to different uses. They were narrower, shorter, and built for ceremonial functions, such as Iroquois council meetings. The was noticeable to English officials: New York lieutenant goverenor George Clark wrote in 1742 that 'most of the 6 Nations have of late years lived dispersed forgetting their Antient Custom of dwelling together in Castles.' After the 1740s Onadagas lived in 'cabins' that one obseverer described as 'made of bark, bound fast to poles set in the ground, and bent round in the top' and housing one or two families, not entire clans. Eighteenth-century Senecas built European style cabins, also holding only one or two families, although they used a smoke hole rather than a European chimney. Only the Cayugas seem to have retained some traditional longhouses. Yet among the Cayugas, Onadagas, and Senecas alike the change in function produced at least symbolic change, and their principal historian notes that in all three societies the eighteenth-century builsdings lacked 'the elaborate carving of clan animals or other figures that adorned the entrances to dwellings a century earlier.' For the Iroquois as for Europeans and Africans, housing said much about culture and power, not just taste and refinement."(150).


The changes in clothing and architecture show that already, traditional forms were crumbling and Indians were adopting hybrid customs.

In modern times, many tribes are adopting flags with the name of the tribe in English. A flag is a very Western way of establishing identity. Even in the recent resurgence of Indian pride, the old ways have been replaced by Western ones. What Butler describes is the beginning of the modern Natives' identity problem.