American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The perseverance of North American native cultures has finally focused attention on the durability of their lifestyles and on the mechanisms they employ for effective cultural maintenance. These nations represent clear examples of successful cultural adaptation and transformation in terms of both morphostatic and morphogenetic processes. Although native peoples struggled with the complexities of these challenges through time, their persistence is clearly indicative of durability, not simply as the result of social maintenance but as clear evidence of the amazing adaptability built into their processes of socialization and education, both formal and informal. In the initial period of European contact with native peoples, little consideration was afforded the subject of aboriginal cultural structure and operation, because these cultures were targeted for a quick takeover and/or annihilation. Differences between European and aboriginal lifestyles were summarily dismissed by explorers who were propelled by a strong ethnocentrism. From the European perspective, if a culture was different, it was simply inferior. What use could there be in investigating an alternate (and inferior) way of life when the primary goal was economic pursuit? No questions were asked about the origins or history of the native lifestyle, nor did anyone inquire as to its remarkable tenacity and persistence. From first contact, there was a unilateral campaign of conquest. The lndian was expected to listen, and the newcomer talked. In some cases, it was an uncontested conquest, because the natives were favorably inclined toward the newcomers and because they recognized aspects of the imported religion as similar to their own, and they readily bought into it.