Excerpt: Navajo Women and the Politics of Identity

Schulz, Amy J. [1997] 2005. "Navajo Women and the Politics of Identity". Pp. 58-69 in Understanding Society, 2nd ed., edited by Margaret L. Andersen, Kim Logio, and Howard Taylor. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.

Ethnic identification is a large facet of American life, one some say is making a resurgence among young people seeking to create their own identities. Indeed, the processes and structures of group membership is a pivotal topic in social psychology, and it is a necessary subject to understand the construction of reality in everyday life.

Amy Schulz examines the construction and reconstruction of the "American Indian" and, more specifically, "Navajo" ethnicities among women who identify as such. She discusses identity as "including nationality, ethnicity, gender, family, social class, and sexuality", and that "the salience of these identities may vary with situational and political forces". Identities may be deconstructed or reconstructed in response to power shifts between and among groups—a concept known as the politics of identity.

The Navajo identity was shaped and negotiated through interaction with other tribes and, later, with European colonists. Repeated and changing interactions have led to a pan-Indian identity that encompasses those from other tribes as well, in relation to the "Anglos". Through these relative collective identities, individuals "define or locate themselves", and political and social relations may be observed.

Through in-depth interviews, Schulz found that a recurring theme of Indian identity, regardless of the women's age, was that of "being different." Women who spent more time growing up among Anglos stressed their Indianness as a source of differentiation. Others, who spent more time with family and the Navajo Nation, recognized that they were ascribed the label of "Indian" by non-Indians but preferred their more specific tribal identity for themselves.

Most of the women in earlier age cohorts did not embrace the "Indian" label, noting that it was always applied to marginalize them. To them, the Indian identity was imposed by Anglos and suppressive of their much more complex tribal cultures, which they were quick to point out. As one of these women said, "I'm considered an Indian but within Indian society there are different tribes that have different languages and different cultures. There are differences among the Indian people".

In marked contrast, the youngest age cohort in the study (born between 1960 and 1976) did not deny their Indian identity or eschew it in favor of a more specific tribe. Schulz speculates that these children has much different experiences than their parents due to the activism of the 1960s and the broadening of education on the Navajo Nation. Many of these women learned Navajo as a foreign language where their parents had learned it in the home:

Their sense of themselves as Navajo was developed in part through their interactions at school and the intentional efforts of teachers and parents to teach them what it meant to be Navajo. This exposure to Navajo language and identity differed from that of the older cohorts, who developed a Navajo identity through interactions with extended family members and encountered explicit efforts to eradicate it in the schools.

This examination of Navajo identification is quite telling of the impact social interaction has on the identity construction of any ethnic group. As many Navajo women were taught Navajo language and culture instead of picking it up naturally, many Asian Americans I know attended "Chinese school" or "Korean school" to learn their languages and cultures. And the lessening of ethnic stigma brought on by the social movements of the 1960s and 70s explains how younger African Americans, like younger Native Americans, can take to such liberal use of an N-word that formerly held such marginalizing connotations.

That the women born prior to the 1960s rejected the term "Indian" shows that they rejected the labels applied to them by others. Instead, they assumed an identity of their own making to reinforce their group's sense of efficacy in defiance of the Anglos' social and political superiority. A close link can be drawn to labeling theory, which holds that people who are consistently labeled will eventually assume the label as an identity; it seems to work uncannily well in describing the identities and behaviors of many individuals, but fails in this case of a single group that has the power to collectively reject the label.

Relevance: 4/5 (relevant)
Salience: 4/5 (salient)

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