Native Americans represent a specific national minority group that combines the predecessors of the former tribes of indigenous people throughout the US. Nowadays, this group is typically united on a similar basis. However, in the history of the US, according to which these citizens were the first to inhabit the US territory, the representatives of this minority group have always differentiated themselves around the country based on belonging to various tribes, occupied with different activities, and believing in specific gods. Historically, the ancestors of the indigenous population of Native Americans experienced a severe pressure from the discoverers, who came from England, Spain, and other European countries. According to the Social Theory of Cultural Differences among Nations, the pressure was the result of a varying perception of fundamental social dimensions. The controversial history of the Native American population led to the evolvement of a bunch of myths and prejudices associated with their origin, some of which adversely impact their quality of life even today. For this reason, the modern Native Americans deserve more attention and require a greater deal of support from the local and federal governments as they still have poorer access to different services and those provided are far from being the best.
Nowadays, the Native American citizens are an inseparable part of the American society that has unique traditions and is slowly but stably developing, although it does unfairly remain disadvantaged. The population that can be characterized as Native Americans lives in more than 21 states of the country and constitutes 6.6 million people, which is approximately 2% of the general population of the US. Experts estimate that the total number of Native Americans and Alaska Native population would constitute about 10.2 million citizens or 2.4% of the population by 2030. Thus, the number of the ancestors of indigenous people in the US is slowly increasing, which is a positive demographic tendency. The states with the largest number of representatives of this minority group in 2015 included Oklahoma (13.6%), New Mexico (11.8%), South Dakota (10.3%), and Montana (8.3%), with their median age being 30.2 years. Similar to past days, this population group mostly lives in the reservations they were forced to move to by the colonists, which, however, allows it to preserve the cultural and historical ancestry. As of today, the US has 326 reservations recognized by the federal government excluding the territory of Hawaii and Alaska that have about 631 reserved land areas. Therefore, Native Americans are protected by the Constitution in their rights and freedoms and granted facilitated educational, workplace, and other social opportunities.
Although the major part of Americans may refer to Native Americans as a single majority group, they are extremely diverse. To illustrate, the minority group has 567 tribes, each with a different history, culture, and most of them have different languages or dialects. 27.1% of Native Americans have managed to save their tongues from de-acculturation and speak another language than English at their homes.
In 2016, the Census Bureau registered 1,792,840 Native American households with 38.1% of them owned by married couples. Furthermore, the representatives of the Native American population have different achievements in such spheres as education, business, and sports among others. For example, in 2016, 82.7% of individuals aged 25 and older had at least a high school diploma, and 19.1 obtained a scientific degree . Similarly, in 2014, American Indians owned 26,757 business enterprises whereas 26.4% of indigenous individuals at the age of 16 and older worked in such spheres and business, science, and management. The presented data demonstrate that although Native Americans are a minority group in the US, they have some civil freedoms similar to the ones the major part of the US population has.
The history of relationships of the colonizers with the predecessors of the modern Native Americans is highly controversial due to military oppression and conflicts in which the latter experienced severe losses. The major reasons for armed fights to occur include the rivalry for land and resources that were righteously possessed by the tribes of indigenous people. At the end of the 1770s, many of the armed clashes were local due to the fact that the colonizers faced resistance from separate groups and tribes of Native Americans which were against the spread of agricultural initiative of the Europeans. However, later, the oppression took an organized character as some of the colonists were popularizing ideas directed toward unlimited expansion of the colonization. For instance, in 1830, they adopted the Indian Removal Act aimed at the complete exclusion of Native American tribes from the Mississippi River region. Prior to such organized legal initiatives, it was possible to solve many military conflicts by means of trading lands but after their adoption, the indigenous people of North America experienced severe military pressure from the colonies.
A significant factor that led to the loss of the Native American tribes was their military weakness as they lacked advanced technology such as gunpowder and rifles. For this reason, the military campaigns of the colonizers that lasted from 1898 to 1924 pushed out many Native American tribes including Apache, Navajo, Cherokee and others from their territories quite easily. Due to mass killings of the indigenous tribes and the conquest of their territories, some scholars characterize the abovementioned period as the genocide of Native Americans. The origin of such genocide was provoked by the reluctance of the aboriginal population to accept a complete difference of the representatives of another culture and religions combined with the plans to possess their land.
These reasons for ethnic aggression coincide with the guidelines of the Social Theory of Cultural Differences among Nations. According to it, different social groups have fundamental problems in communication if such dimensions as distance of power, uncertainty avoidance, individualism versus collectivism, and masculinity versus femininity vary significantly. The actual discrepancies between the ethnicities in North America during colonization were widely researched by Cave. According to his findings, the conquerors referred to indigenous tribes as people naked and uncivil, given to sodomy, and adoration of devils, blind witchcraft. Consequently, the failure to tolerate other cultural and religious practices increased the level of prejudice and demonization of Native Americans in the past, giving them almost no chance for survival.
Despite the fact that the major part of the prejudices associated with Native Americans is void, some of them still exist today and negatively impact the lives of this community. A certain portion of these misbeliefs is grounded on the lack of awareness of the aspects of life and the culture of American Indians. For instance, a great number of modern Americans, especially whites, believe that there is a single Native American culture and based on this, see the indigenous people are those who ride horses, hunt bison, live in hogans, wigwams, iglus, and other dwellings as their ancestors did. Such misleading presumption is mainly the result of the impact of popular culture and the films about the colonization of the west of North America in particular. Another type of social prejudice is that all the Native Americans may be fast, have significant physical strength, and relentless courage. As argued by Sheyahshe, this misleading cultural image is the result of comic book series devoted to Native Americans and indigenous culture overall, which established the concept of native pride and power. In general, these myths do not impact the quality of life of Native Americans whereas another category of prejudices may lead to misunderstanding and public misjudgment.
The misjudgments about Native Americans that presumably impair their access to different services are mostly based on the ideas associated with the compensation of harm done to this community in the past. For example, a significant number of the Americans still believe that Native Americans face reduced taxes and financial compensations unfairly. In addition, these claims are aggravated by stereotypes associated with the assumption that it was the federal government that granted Native Americans their reservations, regulates them, and generally helps this social group to prosper. Such misconceptions insult this minority group and lead to the failure of many contemporary Americans to recognize the fact that the Natives represent a disadvantaged community that requires assistance in many spheres of life.
Although some experts claim that the Native American community has all civil freedoms and access to all possible resources and services, their opponents claim that this community has indeed poor opportunities. In this sense, one of the major types of disparities for Native Americans is the access to health care, education, and road safety among other issues. For instance, Native Americans die from tuberculosis, alcoholism, and diabetes at 600%, 510%, and 189% higher than other citizens. Similarly, the representatives of the indigenous population of the US die in vehicle accidents, from injuries, and suicide at 229%, 152%, and 62% higher than other ethnic groups of Americans. Other grave problems that are still present in the Native American community include poverty, poor public safety and security. For example, indigenous people in the US face a twice higher risk of becoming victims of an assault whereas the major part of them still uses a tribal judicial system. Similarly, some scholars find the indicators of racism directed toward Native Americans similar to African Americans in public schools and other educational institutions. Therefore, the Native American community in the US still experiences different problems that make it an underprivileged ethnic group. For the above mentioned reasons, the local and federal governments of the US are required to address the problems of the indigenous communities of the country and remove different barriers to their healthy life and safe well-being.
The analysis of the history and the present days of the Native American community allows presuming that it requires support at different levels in order to overcome obstacles artificially created for them. Historically, this community was significantly larger but it was drastically reduced after facing the colonial influences, which some scholars characterize as the genocide of the indigenous population of the US. The Social Theory of Cultural Differences among Nations explains the failure of the colonizers to tolerate the indigenous communities as the perception of a critical difference in the four crucial social domains. Nowadays, the contemporary aloofness, ignorance, and estrangement led to the fact that many of the American citizens still do not accept the cultural and social identity of Native Americans. Moreover, the majority of the Americans fail to recognize that the Native American community experiences different problems in accessing proper healthcare services, education and others although the situation is better than in the past. Therefore, the community of Native Americans requires support at different levels ranging from local to federal governments in order to ensure its adequate development and adequate access to civil freedoms and rights.
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