Reviving Native American Identities

Since the 1960’s there has been an increase in assertions of Indigenous identity. In the Ohio Valley Region (Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky) this has been expressed through performance at powwows, re-enactments and restored ceremonies. In the USA, American Indian identification is founded on government recognition, racial appearance, or language. Since the region’s languages have disappeared, the “racial” appearance of the people is ambiguous, and government recognition is mainly absent, how has this identity been maintained over time? Analysis of interviews and the other data demonstrated that the identity claim is not only a newly emergent construction. Indigenous identity has been maintained performatively in some quarters while remaining submerged in others. It continues to be constructed and performed drawing from combinations of folk and Appalachian culture and “Pan-Indian” powwows. Similarities were found with other mixed peoples, such as the Metis of Canada. This counters widely held conceptions that there are no “real Indians” in the region, calls into question why such claims are made, and provides a basis for understandings of how claims to identity are negotiated.