What makes native americans unique

Federally recognized tribes vary in population and land base, but all are considered sovereign nations and hold a specific nation-to-nation relationship with the United States. Prior to European arrival in North America, tribes had effectively governed themselves for hundreds of years and had developed thriving systems of nurturing and teaching their youth and governing their communities. The U. However, European conquest shattered many Native communities through forced relocation, warfare, broken treaties and foreign-brought diseases.

Most Native communities were completely wiped out. Government caused Native peoples to lose their homelands. Broken treaties and forced relocations displaced American Indians from the land of their ancestors, where they had been living for generations, to reservations. As white traders and settlers moved west across the Plains region, they brought many damaging things with them: commercial goods, like knives and kettles, which Indigenous people came to depend on; guns; and disease.

With settlers encroaching on their lands and no way to make money, the Plains natives were forced onto government reservations.

The peoples of the Southwest culture area, a huge desert region in present-day Arizona and New Mexico along with parts of Colorado , Utah , Texas and Mexico developed two distinct ways of life. Sedentary farmers such as the Hopi, the Zuni, the Yaqui and the Yuma grew crops like corn, beans and squash. Many lived in permanent settlements, known as pueblos, built of stone and adobe. These pueblos featured great multistory dwellings that resembled apartment houses.

At their centers, many of these villages also had large ceremonial pit houses, or kivas. Other Southwestern peoples, such as the Navajo and the Apache, were more nomadic. They survived by hunting, gathering and raiding their more established neighbors for their crops. Because these groups were always on the move, their homes were much less permanent than the pueblos.

For instance, the Navajo fashioned their iconic eastward-facing round houses, known as hogans, out of materials like mud and bark. Spanish colonists and missionaries had enslaved many of the Pueblo Indians, for example, working them to death on vast Spanish ranches known as encomiendas. The Great Basin culture area, an expansive bowl formed by the Rocky Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevadas to the west, the Columbia Plateau to the north, and the Colorado Plateau to the south, was a barren wasteland of deserts, salt flats and brackish lakes.

Its people, most of whom spoke Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan dialects the Bannock, Paiute and Ute, for example , foraged for roots, seeds and nuts and hunted snakes, lizards and small mammals. Because they were always on the move, they lived in compact, easy-to-build wikiups made of willow poles or saplings, leaves and brush. Their settlements and social groups were impermanent, and communal leadership what little there was was informal.

After European contact, some Great Basin groups got horses and formed equestrian hunting and raiding bands that were similar to the ones we associate with the Great Plains natives. Before European contact, the temperate California area had more people than any other North American landscape at the time, approximately , people in the midth century.

It's estimated that different tribes and groups spoke more than dialects. Despite this great diversity, many native Californians lived very similar lives. They did not practice much agriculture. Instead, they organized themselves into small, family-based bands of hunter-gatherers known as tribelets. Inter-tribelet relationships, based on well-established systems of trade and common rights, were generally peaceful. Spanish explorers infiltrated the California region in the middle of the 16th century.

New laws like the Indian Self-Determination Act of and the Education Assistance Act of the same year recognized tribal governments and gave them more power. Indian boarding schools have dwindled to only a few, and Native American cultural groups are striving to preserve and maintain old traditions to keep them from being lost forever. Long-term poverty, inadequate education, cultural dislocation, and high rates of unemployment contribute to Native American populations falling to the bottom of the economic spectrum.

Native Americans also suffer disproportionately with lower life expectancies than most groups in the United States. What makes Native Americans unique as a subordinate group in the United States? Skip to main content. Module 6: Race and Ethnicity. Search for:.

Reading: Native Americans Native Americans The only nonimmigrant ethnic group in the United States, Native Americans once numbered in the millions but by made up only 0. Practice 1. They are the only group that experienced expulsion. It's important to acknowledge the diversity of Indigenous Peoples' cultures, traditions, and languages throughout the Western Hemisphere. When teaching about a particular tribe or nation, learning and using accurate terms specific to the community can prevent stereotypes and encourage cultural understanding and sensitivity among your students.

American Indian, Indian, Native American, or Native are acceptable and often used interchangeably in the United States ; however, Native Peoples often have individual preferences on how they would like to be addressed. To find out which term is best, ask the person or group which term they prefer. When talking about Native groups or people, use the terminology the members of the community use to describe themselves collectively.

There are also several terms used to refer to Native Peoples in other regions of the Western Hemisphere. American Indian people describe their own cultures and the places they come from in many ways. The word tribe and nation are used interchangeably but hold very different meanings for many Native people.