Suchergebnisse

Indian and white relations in the United States have continuously been influenced by the profound conviction of the white man that he is of a superior creation. It is not an attitude reserved for the American Indian—it extends to the members of every non-white race; nor is the attitude peculiar to citizens of the United States—it is shared by our British cousins, and is basic in Latin American relations. In spite of all our democratic protestations, this colour response vitally affects every aspect of the lives of all the members of many of our minority groups.While many of the missionary minded from early colonial days onward have striven to "educate," "civilize," and "Christianize" the Indians, the great mass of the white population continued for many years to look upon the Indians as members of a sub-human group. To be honest with ourselves, many of our citizens still hold to this point of view.In the light of this fact, it is surprising that the government of the United States has maintained as unblemished a record of respect for Indian land titles as is the case. Throughout our relations with the tribes, even though our citizens have invaded Indian territory, sold Indians liquor, incited Indians to revolt, and then put down that revolt with bloody fury, we have preserved the legal position that the Indians held title to the land of the United States when the white man landed; and we have scrupulously treated with each group as we pushed them westward, to extinguish the Indian title by treaty and compensate the tribes in some fashion. In those early days, very little was said about assimilation. We continuously promised Indians that after we had pushed them far enough west to get them out of the way, we would let them settle down and live their lives as independent nations. It is still technically correct to refer to the Six Nations in New York State; or to the Cherokee, Choctaw, or Chickasaw Nations in Oklahoma. Until Oklahoma was admitted to statehood, the United States dealt with these Indians as members of independent nations.

Despite the fact that ethnicity is an important principle of social organization in Canada, there are very few studies that attempt to describe and analyse how it operates at different levels and in different parts of the social system. In this paper we suggest ways that might lead to a clearer understanding of the significance of ethnicity in the country and its communities. In its relevance to research, this paper is both methodological and programmatic. We hope that it will provide fruitful suggestions for research and for the clearer formulation of problems for study.Students in the field of ethnic studies seldom consider more than one ethnic group or category at a time. Where the group selected for study forms an autonomous community, we get an exhaustive account of the group and its relations with the "outside world," rather like the account of an individual's life history. Even where the people who are being studied make up a large element in our population and are dispersed both geographically and socially, there is a tendency to follow the same procedure and to deal with what is really a category as though it were an autonomous, discrete group; the picture we get is of individuals of such and such an ethnic group (as though their only identity were an ethnic one) and their relations with outsiders. This procedure is comparable to making an analysis of a small group by taking each individual in turn and describing him exhaustively without taking into account the structure of the group itself.