Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest

“ Despite the consequences of over 100 years of nonindigenous influence, the Native Hawaiian people are determined to preserve, develop, and transmit to future generations their ancestral territory and their cultural identity in accordance with their own spiritual and traditional beliefs, customs, practices, language, and social institutions. ”

“ What a worthy and successful experiment it had proved to be under the wise guidance of Chief Andres Lucero, of the Mahuna Indians of Guana-pia-pa! He was truly a noble character whose labors, love for his people, and self-sacrifice saved the lives of thousands of Indians, and without whose loyalty and kindness to other tribesmen, the American Indian in the Pacific Southwest would be an extinct race of people today, with no one to tell what had actually taken place in the wild mountain regions and the desolate desert, which were neither inhabited nor trespassed upon by the white race. ”

“ On the Atlantic side the territory stretches from Tamaulipas to Honduras, on the Pacific from Colima to Nicaragua. Not that these are definitely drawn boundaries, but outside of these limits, disregarding the New Mexican Pueblo culture, this civilization had left little for Europeans to observe, while within them lived few tribes uninfluenced or unimproved by contact with it. ”

“ This more active type dwelt in a physical environment notable for two features—the abundance of cyclonic storms bringing rain or snow at all seasons and the deciduous forest which thickly covered the whole region. Unlike the Mexican, the civilization of the Iroquois was young, vigorous, and growing. It had not learned to express itself in durable architectural forms like those of Mexico, nor could it rival the older type in social and religious organization. In political organization, however, the Five Nations had surpassed the other aboriginal peoples of North America. ”

“ There is no reason why a custom may not be indigenous in many parts of the world, among peoples labouring under like conditions; and if the same customs be evolved the same cultural types will also be found to exist. Thus it is easy to find even striking resemblances between these Indians of Amazonia and such distant peoples as the Arunta of Central Australia, the cannibal tribes of pagan Malay, or, to go even wider afield, the Basque people of Southern Europe. ”

“ Recognition is accorded to the importance the Maya and other indigenous communities have had and continue to have in the political, economic, social, cultural and spiritual spheres. Their cohesion and dynamism have enabled the Maya, Garifuna and Xinca peoples to preserve and develop their culture and way of life, despite the discrimination to which they have been subjected. ”

“ Instead of being left to its own intuitive unfoldings, or instead of being fostered by the new-comers, who might have elevated by interfusion both their own culture and that of the conquered race, the spirit of progress was effectually stifled on both sides by fanatical attempts to substitute by force foreign creeds and polities for those of indigenous origin and growth. ”

“ The ethnic diversity of the Nation is not yet recognized and valued as one of the greatest riches and the indigenous peoples continue to be subject to strong racial, ethnic and cultural discrimination which deprives them of the enjoyment of their basic human rights. ”

“ But in the New World the inaptitude of the native race for useful serfdom largely contributed to the introduction there of other and very diverse races from Africa and Asia; so that now within a well-defined North American area, indigenous populations of the three continents of the Old World are displacing its native races. ”

“ The indigenous natives of the Western Pacific Islands, forming a distinct stock of the Oceanic Negro family of Ethiopic Man. They are long-skulled, or dolichocephalic, with the lowest cephalic index of all known races, prognathous, broad-nosed, of a sooty-black colour, with black frizzy hair, and of low stature. They are at a low stage of culture, being very savage, bloodthirsty, and treacherous, mostly cannibals and head-hunters, with little social organisation. ”

“ The indigenous peoples continue to be the object of considerable discrimination. Data from the 1998-1999 National Survey of Family Income and Spending (ENIGFAM) indicate that Guatemala’s indigenous peoples represent 48.6 per cent of the total population and that they live in the departments which have the highest levels of poverty. ”

“ Certainly the aboriginal population is steadily diminishing, and all tribes are being driven constantly farther up into the mountains; or, in the case of certain tribes—such as the Ami and Paiwan—are being more rigidly confined to the precipitous, barren east coast. The whole of the island—including the marvellously fertile great plains on the west side of the central mountain range—was naturally once in the hands of the aborigines. ”

“ The aboriginal natives of North and South America seem to be of entirely Asiatic origin; and such resemblances as there are between the North-American Indians and the peoples of northern Europe do not arise (we believe) from any ancient colonization of America from western or northern Europe, but mainly from the fact that the North-American Indians and the Eskimo (two distinct types of people) are descended from the same human stocks as the ancient populations of the northern part of Europe and Asia. ”

“ It is essential that they should be saved from being destroyed by contaminating influences, because, after all, I dare say, even in the wildest parts of the north-west, the primitive native is suffering from contact with the lower type of white people—miners, stockmen and others—who invade his territory. ”

“ It is hard to determine whether the people of the northern pine forest were more or less competent than their Eskimo neighbors. It perhaps makes little difference, for it is doubtful whether even a race with brilliant natural endowments could rise far in the scale of civilization under conditions so highly adverse.
The Eskimos of the northern coasts and the people of the pine forests were not the only aborigines whose development was greatly retarded because they could not practice agriculture. All the people of the Pacific coast from Alaska to Lower California were in similar circumstances. ”

“ While the aborigines of the New World {249} have been noted above almost every other uncivilized nation in history, for their vindictiveness and cruelty towards their enemies, there are, in these attributes, wide differences apparent among them. The Indians along the Pacific coast, as well as in most of Mexico, were always more mild and peaceable than those of the United States. ”

“ For even if the aboriginal peoples of America could be assumed to be as strictly indigenous in their habitat as the negroid peoples are generally held to be in theirs, you have still to explain an isolated outburst of civilisation in Central America marking off an extraordinarily restricted area, comparatively speaking, from the vast continental expanses north and south. But the ethnical problems of the Negro and the American are not even so far analogous ”

“ That underlying principle is adaptation to a certain mode of communal living such as all American aborigines that have been carefully studied are known to have practised. Through many gradations, from the sty of the California savage up to the noble sculptured ruins of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza, the principle is always present. Taken in connection with evidence from other sources, it enables us to exhibit a gradation of stages of culture in aboriginal North America, with the savages of the Sacramento and Columbia valleys at the bottom, and the Mayas of Yucatan at the top ”

“ Another of the core problems of ethnic discrimination is the difficulty in access to land ownership and to natural resources by the indigenous peoples, especially taking into account that this is the material basis for their sustenance and reproduction as a people. The fragmentation and loss of their community lands affects the organization and social relations in the communities, brings about overexploitation of natural resources, the deterioration of their traditional systems of production and labour migrations under infrahuman conditions, internally as well as illegally to other countries. ”

“ In the composition of our people, the indigenous element has never played an important rôle, except for very short periods. In regions where the settlement progressed 253for a long time entirely by the immigration of unmarried males of the white race, families of mixed blood have been of some importance during the period of gradual development, but they have never become sufficiently numerous in any populous part of the United States to be considered as an important element in our population. ”

“ This decrease is due to the policy of extermination carried out among the Santa Cruz for years by the Mexican Government, and the consequent emigration of many of the Indians to British Honduras, Guatemala, and northern Yucatan. The northern and western parts of British Honduras contain between 5,000 and 6,000 Indians; those in the north are partly indigenous and partly immigrants drawn from Yucatecan tribes who have left their homes after various political disturbances, especially after the occupancy of their towns of Bacalar and Santa Cruz by the Mexican Government. ”

“ Since we have drawn the distinction between adapted and indigenous folk-song, the question naturally arises whether there exists in America a truly indigenous folk-song at all. It has been agreed that America, having been colonized by Europeans, possesses no native culture whatever, except such as the Indians may have had. The Indian, indeed, has the best claim to the name American, being indigenous, or at least so early a colonizer as to have constituted virtually a native race. ”

“ This penetration northwards of groups of Athapaskan Indians into districts inhabited for the most part by Amerindian tribes differing widely in language and customs from all those east of the Rocky Mountains, explains the way in which stories of the great western sea—the Pacific—reached, by means of trading intercourse, those Amerindian tribes of the middle-west and upper Canada, and so stirred up the French and English explorers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to make the marvellous journeys which are recounted in this book. ”

“ It also has been subject to great waves of immigration, particularly from New Guinea, from whence came the Papuans, one of the races which itself attained to the Malayo-Polynesian level of culture. Naturally the Papuan influx affected chiefly the northern part of Central Australia. The Tasmanian tribe, now extinct, was probably a remnant of the original Australian population. But migrations and racial fusions have caused even greater changes among those peoples who, culturally, must be classed with the Malayo-Polynesians. ”

“ The indigenous nature of the EZLN has been reinforced, and it continues to be an important driving force in the struggle for the rights of the Indian peoples. The indigenous peoples are national actors today, and their destinies and their platforms form part of the national discussion. The word of the first inhabitants of these lands now holds a special place in public opinion. The "indigenous" is no longer tourism or artisanry, but rather the struggle against poverty and for dignity. ”

“ On the Pacific coast were several tribes, but none of any special importance. In the Columbia and Sacramento valleys were the lowest specimens of the Indian race, the only ones who may be legitimately classed as savages. All the others are more properly known as barbarians.
In New Mexico and Arizona is a group of remarkable interest, the Pueblo Indians, who inhabit large buildings (pueblos) of stone or sun-dried brick. In this particular they stand in a class distinct from all other native tribes in the United States. ”

“ In certain instances like Tasmania and Cuba, European colonization has led to the complete extinction of the aboriginal population as a separate group, and in other instances, like those of the Maoris of New Zealand and the Hottentots, the native population has been very greatly depleted. Most of these disastrous results have come to peoples, generally blacks, in the lowest stages of culture. Where the aborigines are more advanced and hence more pliable they have usually profited by contact with Europeans. ”

“ During one event planning meeting, the peer coaches and library faculty and staff had different scopes in mind for the edit-a-thon about Indigenous people. Originally, library faculty and staff thought the event would focus on Indigenous people from what is now the United States, but the peer coaches wanted to include Indigenous people throughout the world. After a discussion about scope, the team expanded the theme to include Indigenous people from all of North and South America. ”

“ In the preceding volume I have had occasion several times to remark that, in the delineation of the Wild Tribes of the Pacific States, no attempt is made to follow them in their rapid decline, no attempt to penetrate their past or prophesy a possible future, no profitless lingering over those misfortunes that wrought among them such swift destruction. To us the savage nations of America have neither past nor future ”

“ Except among the inhabitants of the narrow Pacific slope and those of the shores of Labrador and the St. Lawrence Valley, a single type of barbarism prevailed among the Indians of all the vast pine forest area. Only in a small section of the wheat-raising plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan have their habits greatly changed because of the arrival of the white man. Now as always the Indians in these northern regions are held back by the long, benumbing winters. They cannot practice agriculture, for no crops will grow. ”