Cultural Persistence and Plains Cree Identity

A substantial body of empirical evidence shows that, contrary to earlier expectation, North American Indian societies are not disappearing as distinct cultural entities. Data available from numerous studies of Indian communities show that significant elements from the cultures of these peoples in the aboriginal or pre-contact period are being retained. Cultural assimilation into the larger Eurocanadian or Euroamerican society does not appear to be taking place. In the literature of acculturation this phenomenon is termed "cultural persistence" or "cultural traditionalism". While considerable attention has been given to development of theories about culture change, including theories concerning acculturative change (change processes between cultures in contact) , comparatively little is available by way of theoretical material concerning cultural persistence. In a theoretical context, cultural persistence would appear to be an unexplained residual , an inexplicable constant in the process of adaptive change. Recent theoretical investigations suggest that the phenomenon of cultural persistence is intimately linked to ethnicity, to the conscious maintenance of ethnic identity. From this point of view, the aggregate of persisting cultural elements may be regarded as a "collective identity system", a way a given people have of identifying themselves and of distinguishing themselves from others. Maintenance of a collective identity system is a process separate from the process of adaptive culture change. Cultural persistence is significantly a feature of the contemporary cultural life of the Sweet Grass community of Plains Cree. While the aboriginal Plains Cree culture has undergone sweeping adaptive change, since founding of the Reserve in 1879, much of the preReserve culture remains to give the community an emphatically Plains Cree identity. The particulars of cultural persistence at Sweet Grass suggest that the concept of collective identity system is indeed a useful tool in developing an understanding of the phenomenon of cultural persistence.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Master

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Social Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina

Year dc:date.issued

1975

Author dc:creator

• Campbell, Lloyd Allan

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

https://doi.org/10.82465/66

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uregina.scholaris.ca:10294/17036