A Modern Life
After decades of discrimination, poverty, and despair, American Indians can finally look toward a better future
For many Native Americans, reconnecting with their communities and ancient cultures is at the root of renewed strength and success. When Steven Knife Chief was growing up in Pawnee, Okla., in the 1950s, he says his parents had to struggle too hard just to survive to worry about traditions and ceremonies. Standing near a life-size replica of a log-and-sod Pawnee earth lodge at the Field Museum in Chicago--the Pawnee were visiting for a rededication ceremony--he says his generation absorbed enough from their grandparents to revive dozens of traditional dances, games, and other ceremonies. "They must have had an idea that if we don't tell these kids, we're going to lose it all. And we just about did," he says. "But we were raised in those ways, and now we're putting it back the way it was." The Pawnee language almost disappeared, Knife Chief says, but it's a for-credit course at the tribe's high school now, and his brother is busy transcribing tapes of old wax cylinder recordings of Pawnee speeches and ceremonies, "so we can hear them and find out exactly how they were." And on this September night, a half dozen of the Pawnee bunk down in the museum's earth lodge. "Our people haven't slept in an earth lodge in 75, 80 years," Knife Chief says. "It's a big deal."
New names. If many Native Americans are finding strength by re-embracing their cultures, others are resuscitating identities that disappeared long ago. Census data show a rapid increase in the American Indian population during this century--from a low of 350,000 in 1920 to over 4 million today (2.5 million if you count only those who report no other race). It's a jump that far outstrips the Indian birthrate, evidence that Americans are increasingly taking pride in their Indian ancestry, rather than hiding it.
But there's another factor: money. In addition to revenue from natural resources, the advent of Indian casinos in the late 1980s has made some attempts to reclaim Native American identity seem questionable. Only federally recognized tribes can run Indian casinos, which are the sole legal gambling outlets in some regions of the country. And only officially enrolled tribal members can share in proceeds from the nearly $17 billion industry. Defining Indian identity in a time of multiracial and intertribal marriages was already a big concern in Native American communities. But with more than 200 recognition cases now before the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the issue has exploded into mainstream view as well. Would-be investors are scouring the country for groups with even the most tenuous claims to tribal status, critics say, and paying millions to hire genealogists, historians, and lawyers solely in the hope of scoring a casino license.
With $1.5 billion in annual revenues, the Foxwoods Resort Casino is America's largest. Rising out of the woodlands of southeastern Connecticut, the 70-acre complex includes hotels, restaurants, a $193 million museum and research center--and 7,273 slot machines. Not bad for a tribe, the Mashantucket Pequot, who were only officially recognized in 1983. Three decades ago, their 214-acre reservation was home to a single elderly woman. Today, the tribe's 880 enrolled members--who reportedly receive an annual stipend of nearly $100,000 each from casino profits--trace their roots not to colonial times but to the 11 individuals who lived on the reservation at the turn of the 20th century. Combined with facial features that for the most part appear white or black, that tenuous connection has led the tribe's critics to question whether many are, in fact, of Pequot ancestry, or if they are Indians at all.
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