Volume 10 Number 2
January 1971

Stephen Bayne

THIS article should be, on one level, a guide to help teachers relate to American Indian children. As such, it stems from seven years of work as a teacher, counselor and anthropologist with Indian children. On a deeper level, however, it is an expression of my subjective feelings about Indian people, stemming from working relationships, observations, and some deep friendships over the same seven years.

I will forget about the guide and stress the deeper level for a number of reasons. First, there is an ample literature, which reflects the professional relationship between social researchers and Indian people. Second, general statements put forward as a "guide" often lead people to put more faith in such statements than they deserve. Third, the American Indian population of the United States is presently so diverse that any guide will fall short of being really useful for any given Indian child; and, fourth, such a guide would dehumanize the fine, unique individuals I have known as friends, into a shallow conceptual box called "Indian."

This, then, is a "guide" for those who wish to find one within the context of purely personal feelings about my friends and acquaintances who happen to be American Indians.

The latter statement presents more of a problem than is immediately obvious. Which of the people I have known really are American Indians? I have known a man who called himself an Indian because his great-great grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee. I know a college student who lives in a self-made tipi, believes in Plains Indian religious conceptions he reads in books, and models his appearance and behavior after anthropological accounts of Indian life in the 1800s. I have known people whose parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and ancestors too far removed to be known were Indians. Some of these appear and behave in a manner indistinguishable from that of "non-Indians" around them. Which of these are "Indians"?

What are these commonalities? First of all, members of the community feel themselves to be related to each other primarily as kin. Everyone in the community is, in one way or another, biologically related to everyone else—even if the relationship, in mainstream American terms, is purely fictitious. What really matters, however, is that people actually treat each other as relatives, rather than as holders of certain occupational roles or social statuses. The community thus appears as an extended family which, through hard times and quarrels, sticks together quite naturally because of the strength of family feeling.

This strength may even define Indian identity to Indians themselves. A Sioux girl I know said of a young man, "He’s no Sioux—he’s rich, but he never sees his relatives or gives them anything. We’re not like that. We Sioux remember our relatives all our lives." Within the community generosity is valued, sharing is expected, and putting oneself competitively and selfishly ahead of others is abhorred.

Secondly, children within the community are raised differently from the children of mainstream America. Responsibility for the child’s development does not rest solely with the parents of the child. Older brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and relatives farther removed serve many of the functions we would reserve to biological parents. Children of five and six are often given everyday responsibility for the care of two-year old siblings, and are in turn cared for by older brothers or sisters. Children may spend as much time in the houses of aunts and uncles as in their parents’ house.

Thus, the child’s meaningful human environment extends to encompass the whole community, relieving his parents of the need to constantly watch over, and worry over the child. In this environment children are allowed a great deal of independence, for parents know their children are being looked after responsibly by older playmates, and by any adult who happens to be about.

The visitor to an Indian community can readily observe the effects of this environment of independence and mutual responsibility. As director of a summer youth camp, I found that planned activities were often unnecessary. The children learned what materials were available, and proceeded to initiate their own activities around the materials. I never heard a child complain, "There’s nothing to do—tell me something I can do." As another example, I remember being prematurely nervous about taking 40 Indian children to the San Francisco Zoo accompanied by only four adults—especially as the children scattered all over the place as soon as the bus door opened. There was no need for worry. Older children, as a matter of course, watched after younger children and none got lost or hurt.

Third, in any Indian community there will be some people who speak an Indian language. Perhaps it will only be a few old people who remember Dakota or Navajo or Cree, or it may be that everyone in the community learns the particular language of their tribe first, and English much later as a second language, or it may be that some children from traditional families come to school speaking only their native language while others will only know English. Whatever the particular pattern, however, an important part of the cultural difference between an Indian community and a non-Indian community will stem from the existence of a language capable of interpreting and expressing the world in a different way from the categories of English.

Finally, an Indian community, even if located in the city, is closely tied to an ancestral homeland. Even my most sophisticated urban Indian friends are deeply attached to the earth and the natural beauty of the land their tribal ancestors hunted and farmed. Sometimes the attachment is deeply mystical. I know many Indian people who believe the plants and animals of their land to be one with them, equally intelligent and equally capable of communication with each other, man, and God. Sometimes the attachment involves a tremendous practical knowledge of nature and wildlife, and sometimes it is only a distaste for the city and a yearning for the wildlands of home. No matter how it is manifested, this closeness to nature and homeland is an important part of every Indian community I have known.

Thus, the Indian people I know were brought up in communities in which people treat each other as relatives, in which children are responsible and independent at an early age, and in which people feel close to the earth and nature. With this rich and beautiful cultural background, so different from that of mainstream America, it is not surprising that there are special things about these people which make them distinctively "Indian." I will mention only those things I have noticed in my own relationships with Indian people—leaving the rest to the bibliography and to the reader’s own experience.

To begin with, my rate and style of conversation with most Indian people is distinctive. The rate is slower, and there are longer pauses than usual between the time one speaker ends and the other begins. Interruptions occur rarely, if at all. There seems to be an unspoken, perhaps unconscious rule that says "When you speak with someone, allow yourself plenty of time to think about what you want to say before you say it. When someone else is speaking, let him finish all he has to say, and then think seriously about what he has said before responding."

The Indian people I have known will rarely criticize me or disagree with me openly and forcibly. Rather, they expect me to be aware of subtle signals of disapproval—a change in voice tone or in eye contact—or expect me to get the message from a seemingly innocuous joke. The rule here seems to be "Do not embarrass or denigrate someone unless it is absolutely unavoidable. Allow others to keep their pride and dignity while letting them know, subtly, that you disapprove of something they are saying or doing." Thus, I try to be sensitive to far more than the mere word content of interactions with Indian people. The real message may be conveyed by many other modalities of communication.

Thus, many Indian people I know are embarrassed by exuberant public displays of affection or anger, and refrain from such displays themselves. They will not ask questions about my private life and do not expect to be questioned about theirs until we are very good friends indeed. As I mentioned before, they will hesitate to anger or embarrass anyone in public, but will covertly express displeasure through jokes and tone of voice while overtly speaking and acting as if all is well. Eye contact may even be avoided while conversing, so that each individual may have the privacy of his own thoughts and expression without the intrusiveness of someone else’s emotional reactions. Intrusion and coercion can only damage the individual. Emotional rapport and understanding can only come quietly and slowly, with each individual always secure in his own privacy until he wishes to relinquish part of that privacy himself.

Hopefully the reader has not drawn from this article a composite picture of the Indian child or adult as someone who speaks slowly and thoughtfully, refrains from open disagreement, expresses feeling in voice tone and jokes, ignores social status, takes years to trust others, and rarely expresses or responds to strong emotions in public. That would be a caricature, not a person.

My own hope is that the reader will accept the contents of this article as a description of special tendencies in my interactions with Indian people. These tendencies may be as much a product of who I am as it is of who they are, and therefore, the reader’s own experiences may be quite different. If it is helpful as a presentation of some things to keep generally in mind when first meeting Indian people, some things that may be changed by further experience with unique Indian individuals, then my purpose has been accomplished.