Structural and cultural conflict in American Indian education

TLDR: Actor Iron Eyes Cody, dressed in full buckskins and feather, stands overlooking a freeway. In the background high-rise buildings are shrouded in smog as discussed by the authors, a tear comes to Cody's eye.

Abstract: Actor Iron Eyes Cody, dressed in full buckskins and feather, stands overlooking a freeway. In the background high-rise buildings are shrouded in smog. The actor is symbolic of a culture which existed as a partner to the natural environment, a culture not prized by our now materialistic one. A tear comes to Cody's eye. His natural environment has been obliterated by our society's artificial one, the natural defiled for the material, perhaps hopelessly polluted. This commercial for the preservation of the environment interestingly characterizes society's compartmentalization of issues and social contexts without understanding the underlying bases which support them. Our evolv ing contemporary society has sought to obliterate the Native American and his/her culture both actually and figuratively, yet Americans hold the sym bol of the noble warrior in high regard. We figuratively revere the natural while empirically holding the manufactured, artificial, and materialistic in the highest regard. Society lives in one cultural context while idealizing the other without accounting for the fact that the two are completely out of phase with one another. Contemporary society presumes to admire the Native American and his/her culture while at the same time choosing a countercul ture which is in direct conflict with the natural one.