The Transculturation of Native American College Students

Digital Commons @ George Fox University Faculty Publications - School of Education School of Education 1990 The rT ansculturation of Native American College Students Terry Huffman George Fox University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/soe_faculty Part of the Education Commons Recommended Citation Huffman, Terry, "The rT ansculturation of Native American College Students" (1990). Faculty Publications - School of Education. 113. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/soe_faculty/113 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Education at Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications - School of Education by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ George Fox University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Transculturation of Native American College Students Terry E. Huffman ui have advised my people this way - when largely been ignored by researchers, they are worth you find something good in the white man's investigating. This bridging and the progression of road, pick it up. When you find something values, attitudes, behaviors, and feelings associ that is bad or turns out bad, drop it, leave it ated with it, is referred to as transculturation. alone. We shall master his machinery, and his Methods - The results of this paper are part of inventions, his skills, his medicine, his plan an on-going research project involving Native ning, but we will retain our beauty and still be Americans who are attending or have attended Indians." South Dakota colleges. The subjects consist of Na Sitting Bull tive American students attending predominantly non-Indian institutions, students attending reser Native Americans have one of the lowest levels vation community colleges but who have attended of higher educational achievement among Ameri non-Indian institutions, and former students who can racial and ethnic groups. It has been estimated have dropped-out of non-Indian institutions. that a mere six percent of Native American stu The research design utilizes a "double-barreled" dents complete their college education (Astin, approach utilizing both quantitative and qualita 1986). tive methodologies. The quantitative approach in A variety of factors have been identified to ac volves a questionnaire designed, among other count for this dismal record of educational things, to obtain information on cultural, social, achievement. The lack of success has been attrib academic, and financial problems encountered by uted to low achievement motivation, poor aca Native Americans. The qualitative approach in demic preparation, inadequate financial support, volves in-depth interviews in order to gain greater and lack of parental and community support (Guy insights on the Native American's subjective ette and Heth, 1983; Falk and Aitken, 1984; Lin, thoughts and views regarding their college experi 1985; Mcintosh, 1987; Scott, 1986; and West, ence. 1988). There is little doubt that these factors, indi At the time of this writing, thirty subjects have vidually and cumulatively, pose barriers for Native participated in the project. Americans. However, perhaps none of these fac The Phenomenon of Native American 1fanscu/ tors are more problematic for those students and turation - Not all Native American students face mysterious to researchers than the potential for cultural conflicts in college. Many are not appre cultural conflict that often seems to be inherent in ciatively different from their fellow non-Indian the college setting. classmates. That is, there are those students who College is an institution of values, norms, and have spent little or none of their lives on reserva attitudes. Moreover, it embodies a cultural milieu tions and have relatively little contact with tradi which reflects middle-class America. Many Native tional Indian culture. As they generally identify Americans find this cultural milieu foreign, even with and are assimilated into the American cultural alien. These are individuals oriented toward cul mainstream, these individuals feel no great sense of tural expectations different than those found insti cultural conflict (Huffman and Rosonke, 1989). tutionalized in the college setting. On the other hand, there are those students who For those who face cultural conflicts the options have a strong identification with traditional Indian are-seemingly few: withdraw from the institution in culture. 'JYpically they have lived a great deal, if not an attempt to preserve one's "Indianness," or adopt all, of their lives on reservations. These students non-Indian ways and pursue assimilation. How find assimilation repulsive and thus reject the no ever, there is another alternative. There are stu tion. For these individuals the potential for cul dents who have been successful at retaining their tural conflict looms large (Huffman and Rosonke, cultural heritage while negotiating the complexities 1989). of the non-Indian institution. These rather unique A large proportion of the students who encoun individuals bridge the cultures and while they have ter cultural conflict simply leave college (Chadwick, 1972; Falk and Aitken, 1984). Scott why biculturalism has endured with relatively little (1986:381), who describes the attachment to tradi refinement: tional Indian culture as the "difficult situation," re . .. even though interrelated and interdepen ported: dent, biculturalism and bilingualism are not The data confirm that being a "cultural In identical terms. Bilingualism, in its most or dian" reduces the likelihood to academic suc dinary employment, means fluency in at least cess . .. those committed to Indian ways are two languages, including oral communica less likely to become integrated into the uni tion, the encoding and decoding of written versity community, and consequently less symbols, and the correct inflection and pitch, likely to succeed. commonly called the superimposed structure Certainly many "cultural Indians" desire to leave of a language ... Biculturalism, on the other once they encounter the cultural dilemmas of col hand, refers to the cultural elements that may lege life (Huffman and Rosonke, 1989). The stu include language but go beyond language, in dents who succumb to this temptation stand out in sofar as it is a functional awareness and par the literature as examples of Native Americans who ticipation in two contrasting sociocultures have failed to make the necessary adjustments to (statuses, roles, values, etc.). Thus for the the gesellschaft world of academia. purpose of clarifying the conceptual diffi What then separates those who persist from culty here, if it is only the fluency that is as those who become another Native American attri sessed as bilingual, it is obvious that tion statistic? It can not be merely assumed that bilingualism is not biculturalism ... There is academically successful traditional Native Ameri a sense in which it would be hard to find a cans have experienced a radical form of assimila better example of the danger of naively defin tion. There is a growing body of evidence to refute ing a term in educational discourse in order the assimilationist model of Native American edu to win acceptance of the program offered cation (Huffman, Sill , and Brokenleg, 1986; (Pratte, 1979: 183-185). Kerbo, 1981; McFee, 1972). Rather, it is the very Also the idea of biculturalism typically implies a retention of traditional culture that has enhanced kind of acculturated end product. The idea gener the performance of many cultural Indians. That is, ally is that biculturalism follows a linear pattern these more culturally traditional Native American with the individual, like a mathematical equation, students undergo a process of transculturation that adding elements from the host culture while relin is fundamental to their academic success. quishing elements from the native culture (McFee, The Concept of 11'anscu/turatlon - Transcultu 1972). Ultimately the result is a sort of "hybrid" ration is the process by which an individual of one with the necessary repertoire of cultural skills (i.e., culture can enter and interact in the milieu of an language) to relate to two cultures. In this sense, other culture without loss of the person's native biculturalism has simply been a variation on the cultural identity and ways. Hallowell (1972:206) idea of acculturation. has defined transculturation as: Furthermore, how an individual receives a . a phenomenon that involves the fate of per blended cultural repertoire is largely ignored. The sons rather than changes in socio-cultural point of emphasis is that the bicultural individual systems ... It is the process whereby individ is a product rather than a process. Only a few at uals under a variety of circumstances are tempts have been made to formulate a bicultural temporarily or permanently detached from process. For instance, Szapocznik and his col one group, enter the web of social relations leagues have formulated a three-dimensional bicul that constitute another society, and come un tural process consisting of: (1) the acculturation of der the influence of its customs, ideas, and cultural elements from the host culture, (2) the re values to a greater or lesser degree. tention and relinquishing of native cultural ele Transculturation has some important distinc ments, (3) the syncretization of the two cultures tions from the more

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