Traditional Native Values Provide Advantages When Resisting Cultural Occupation
Analysis. After centuries of occupation, Native Americans who maintain traditional cultural values may draw strength as centuries of cultural occupation falters throughout the Americas.
Chief among such values is reciprocity for any losses. When compensation has not been offered, native communities, families, or even individuals may take direct action to secure just compensation under traditions of reciprocity.
Applying reciprocity clarifies contemporary developments during the present crisis in empowerment destabilizing modern governments, the United States’ not excepted. A few examples from recent books can reveal advantages when empowered by values-based understandings. Lessons can reveal advantages across the fields of human knowledge; the human story in the humanities, science and technology in the world; and from the social and behavioral sciences.
Read the review by Charles King, “The Anti-Liberal Revolution: the Philosophers of the New Right.” Foreign Affairs, Jul-Aug 2023. Then follow up with a study of the late Nobel-Prize winning economist, James Buchanan, in Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean, 2017. The hidden nature and bases for the current dismantling of the constitutional system in the United States uses Buchanan’s own words, drawn from his archives. While Native relations with the U.S. government will alter, Native responses may become a source of empowerment, instead of disempowerment.
Shifting focus to the natural sciences, the next recommended book breaks down the question, what is life? In doing so, readers can observe benefits of narrowing the focus in each chapter, as they focus on one aspect of the question. Journalists in repressive societies who also narrow their focus may avoid repression by following the examples in the following: Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive by Carl Zimmer, 2021.
Finally, for our purposes, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle, 2024.
This story describes the trails of broken promises and the path to the landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court confirming native rights and sovereignty. Where reciprocity directs Native citizens depends on the commitments and courage of Native peoples themselves.
Written for Indian Voices and Democracy Watch News, May 2025.
