Source: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/01/06/authenticity-ethnic-indians-non-indians-and-reservation-indians-152952

1. Che-Wei Lee 1
Copyright © 2014 by Che-Wei Lee. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act
of 1976, no part of this manuscript may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Champagne, Duane. 2014. “Authenticity: Ethnic Indians, non-Indians and Reservation Indians.”
Indian Country Today Media Network, January 6.
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/01/06/authenticity-ethnic-indians-non-
indians-and-reservation-indians-152952.
Review by: Che-Wei Lee, Department of Administrative and Policy Studies, University of
Pittsburgh
Accessed: Sunday, 30 March 2014, 22:11 p.m.
Note: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code).
Comment
In this article, Duane Champagne successfully provokes audience to rethink who are authentic
indigenous people, especially drawing the attention of indigenous nations. Besides to indigenous
people, when seeing this title non-indigenous might wonder whether or not a false or fake
indigenous person really exist. How is this kind of person defined? By whom? What is the
purpose of categorizing true and false indigenous people? Is this re-defining valid and
meaningful for indigenous nations and non-indigenous people? These questions are worth
probing deeper and systematically. In his brief commentary, Champagne offers his argument for
audience to revalue this topic.
I agree with Champagne’s point in his article. The definition of the authentic Indians should not
be fully based on non-Indian understandings. The biggest danger of losing tribal definition will
be that the mainstream cultural government’s system would permanently uproot the connection
from indigenous origins. Unfortunately, in many cases, assimilation has deprived many
indigenous peoples of their most elementary essences and has rapidly exerted its negative
influences. If indigenous peoples thoroughly lose their native identity and cultural roots, they
might face many more challenges. One of the fatal wounds for Native Americans is that it is
difficult to find sources of evidence demonstrating the differences when indigenous peoples need
these roots as examples of the difference or fight for their justification for their homeland,
territory, sovereignty, self-determination. In sum, there is a need to establish a legitimate
mechanism of examining the authentic Indians based on tribal community’s viewpoints and
voice to a certain extent.
Original Text
Paragraph 1: Authenticity is a puzzling feature of contemporary Indian life. Growing up on an
Indian reservation, I rarely encountered challenges to one’s identity as an Indian person. People
within the reservation community knew most of the families. If they didn’t know the family
connections of a specific person they could learn with a few inquiries to elders or their own
family members.
Paragraph 2: One grows up on reservation community where there is an old and somewhat
fixed family and kinship structure. There is very little doubt about who belongs and who does
not, at least from a lineal descendent point of view. Tribal membership, because of blood
quantum and other rules, may be more complicated and legalistic. A person whose family has

2. 2 Authenticity: Ethnic Indians, non-Indians and Reservation Indians
Copyright © 2014 by Che-Wei Lee. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act
of 1976, no part of this manuscript may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
lived within a tribal reservation community for as long as people can remember and who are
legally tribal members usually do not encounter challenges to tribal identity from tribal
community members.
Paragraph 3: This is not so say, in the contemporary world, that every member of a reservation
community has strong commitments to traditional culture and identity. Many tribal and
reservation communities are composed of mixed cultural heritages. The Navajo are often
recognized for retaining their language and culture. However, about one-third of the Navajo
population is traditional, while one-third are Christians, and another third are Mormons.
Paragraph 4: Living within most contemporary reservation communities often implies that an
Indian person is living within a multi-cultural community. That is not to say that most
reservation Indians do not share a commitment to community and Indian identity, they in fact do.
Many contemporary tribal reservation members adhere to non-Indian worldviews, but at the
same time have political and kinship ties to reservation communities and indigenous issues.
While cultural views may differ among tribal members, they often share commitments to
political and economic continuity of the indigenous nation. This contemporary pattern of
American Indian reservation identity reflects contemporary U.S. practices of multiculturalism.
While cultural views and identities may vary, there is often general agreement about national
identity, purpose, and political ground rules.
Paragraph 5: The cultural complexities of contemporary Indian communities tend to confuse
non-Indians who are expecting and often demand traditional cultural expression and personas
from contemporary Indian people. If a person does not look and act like an Indian—usually a
stereotypical image of a Plains Sioux Indian—then many non-Indians doubt the Indian
authenticity of tribal member.
Paragraph 6: Reservation Indians usually have very secure identities, and so when non-Indians
or ethnic Indians doubt their authenticity, reservation Indians often find these circumstances
amusing. Ethnic Indians can be defined as persons of Indian descent who are not members of a
tribal community and often their families have not have had contact with a home community for
generations. For reservation Indians, authenticity is confirmed within the local reservation
community. While for many ethnic Indians and non-Indians, Indian authenticity is determined by
stereotypes and images that are common within American society.
Paragraph 7: There are more non-Indians in the U.S. than reservation Indians, and generally the
views of non-Indians prevail. Non-Indian views of Indian authenticity drowned out reservation
understandings of Indian authenticity. Before the 1980s, sometimes Indians often conformed to
U.S. images of authenticity by dressing in Plains Indian clothes and headdresses, partly because
otherwise they could not be recognized as Indians. Southern California Indians, for example, do
not traditionally have powwow dances, but have dances and songs based on their tribal creation
teachings that narrate an epic migration of ancestral birds who end by establishing the homeland
of the people. Unfortunately, much contemporary discussion about Indian authenticity focuses
more on U.S. definitions of authenticity than tribal understandings, which are less well known
and understood by the U.S. public and many ethnic Indians.

3. Che-Wei Lee 3
Copyright © 2014 by Che-Wei Lee. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act
of 1976, no part of this manuscript may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Author Note
Duane Champagne is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa from North Dakota.
He is Professor of Sociology, American Indian Studies Center, and Law at UCLA. He is
currently a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee for the UCLA Native Nations Law and
Policy Center, and is Acting Director of the UCLA School of Law’s Tribal Learning Community
and Educational Exchange. His research interests focus on issues of social and cultural change in
historical and contemporary Native American communities. He has written and edited over 125
publications. Recent publications include Captured Justice: Native Nations and Public Law 280
(with Dr. Carole Goldberg, UCLA School of Law) (Carolina Academic Press, 2012) and Notes
from the Center of Turtle Island (AltaMira Press, 2010).