Cree Dueker

Cornel Pewewardy
Tribal Critical Race Theory
10/9/2014

Ch.8 Summary Crafting American Selves

Within chapter 8 the book is analysing how children in America are enabled to craft their own identities
and the role that youth organizations such as Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Camp Fire play when children are
constructing these individual identities.

The book looks into each of these organizations and how they appear today contrasted and compared to
what they started out as or operated like in the past. Boy Scouts of America as an institution for the
construction of White masculinity, they use homophobia and misogyny to foster an aggressive form of
masculinity. These organizations were seen as a way to keep American culture and in particular American
youth on the right track and make sure they were crafting themselves in a way that adhered to the
gendered norms and expectations of society. Using Native culture to do this was a common practice
which largely excluded Natives in the present while appropriating the Native past and traditions. The Boy
Scouts used Native culture and hybrids of Native practices to unify masculinity and reinforce those
gendered roles while instructing boys on survival skills, tracking, hunting, and providing for their female
counterparts. The use of Native culture to reinforce girls gendered roles was seen in the way these
organizations stressed the importance of domesticity and crafting pretty items such as dresses and
headbands adorned with beadwork. These organizations were there to instruct and unify young girls and
Americanizing immigrant girls.

These groups would help children to craft individual identities for themselves through the invention of
their Indian Names and corresponding symbolgrams. They would participate in Native dances and
ceremonies; playing Indian was a way of performing otherness which can lead to some people finding
true connections and participating in an acceptable way within the culture. Most of the time however this
was not the case and playing Indian was a way of enacting and reinforcing racial differences,
entitlements, and hierarchy. It leads to the group being appropriated becoming a caricature and not a true
people and these smaller forms of violence or aggression leads to larger acts of violence against the
people.

The chapter ended with looking at how these organizations have evolved or changed their practices over
the years. Many organizations have shifted to a more multicultural viewpoint and looking into using their
own cultural heritage to draw from. In the instance of the Camp Fire Girls (now Camp Fire USA), the
emphasis on womens reproductive role and re-enchanting domestic life has been replaced by a stress on
gender equality and a recognition of diversity in sexual orientation. While many groups may still draw
from or even appropriate Native culture we can only hope that they continue to change and become
knowledgeable about being respectful towards another culture and encouraging children to craft their
identities not by appropriating someone else's but by looking into their own communities for support and
knowledge as well as being able to teach children about the diversity of individual experience.