A Study On The Revitalization Of American Indian Tribal System Since The 1960s

American Indians are the first people living in the continent of Americas and tribal system is the essential element in their culture.After Christopher Columbus landed on the "new world" of the Americas in 1492, lots of Europeans flooded into the continent. Since their contacts in the very beginning period, enormous gap between the comparatively primitive American Indian society and the highly industrialized European colonist world had found its expression in constant fights, even wars. After the foundation of the United States in 1776, federal government set out on a journey to civilize the "barbaric" Indians with the launch of a variety of Indian policies. These policies, aimed at grabbing Indian land on the one hand, sought to dismantle Indian tribal system and assimilate Indians in American "melting pot" on the other hand. Fortunately, since the 1960s, federal government switched their Indian policy from the obsessive assimilationist one to the road of encouraging Indian self-determination with the acknowledgement of the crucial role played by tribal system in Indian life, which largely empowered tribal governments and brought about the revitalization of tribal system afterwards.Tribal revitalization is significant in the Indian society. However, few studies have been conducted on it either at home or abroad up to now. Therefore, the thesis aims at conducting a systematic study on tribal revitalization since the 1960s through exploring the main factors contributive to the revitalization and analyzing the ensuing effects it brought about to the Indian society. Based on a wide review of related literature, this paper holds that the turbulent sixties highlighted by widespread civil rights movement and the budding of multiculturalism strengthened American Indian's racial awareness, changed attitudes of the white society towards minority and less privileged groups and finally intrigued American government's Indian policy reform, which in turn resulted in the revitalization of Indian tribal system since the 1960s and dramatically changed Indian life.