Indian Identity Research Articles

Supplemental Material for Intersecting Sex and American Indian Identity Moderates School and Individual Correlates of Binge Drinking Among Reservation-Area Adolescents

Supplemental Material for Intersecting Sex and American Indian Identity Moderates School and Individual Correlates of Binge Drinking Among Reservation-Area Adolescents

Lambs of Sacrifice: Termination, the Mixed-blood Utes, and the Problem of Indian Identity

Lambs of Sacrifice: Termination, the Mixed-blood Utes, and the Problem of Indian Identity

Of Cherokee Culture and American Indian Identity: An Interview with Joshua Nelson

Of Cherokee Culture and American Indian Identity: An Interview with Joshua Nelson

Ruptures and resurgences: Marking the spatiality of transgender identity in India since the enactment of Transgender Persons Act 2019

Transgender groups in India constitute an indigenous community with a rich and vivid culture and history. However, it is unfortunate that under the hegemonic influence of heteronormative traditions, the democratic inclusion and accommodation of transgender groups could never take place. This exclusion and neglect have recently been challenged through the activism of several groups, which has given rise to a new chapter in the democratic unfolding in India. This article attempts to evaluate the social activism of transgender groups on two planes. One plane attempts to evaluate it in terms of the uniqueness of an indigenous social movement and the areas that distinguish it from other social movements. It is interesting to note that what started as a purely identity-based social movement has now acquired dimensions of redistributive justice. The second plane attempts to evaluate the social activism of transgender groups in terms of the achievements and advances made by the movement on the social and political fronts. This evaluation is necessary in order to appraise the trajectory of the politics of transgender groups, which could foretell the direction of the activism and help in understanding the future scope and direction. The article takes up three arguments in the context of the legal framework put in effect by the state. The first point of discussion is the effectiveness of the transgender ID provided by the Transgender Persons Act and the possible challenges and loopholes related to it. While the state provides legal recognition through the issuance of the transgender ID card, it only remains a symbolic marker as the de facto identity remains unchanged, unless changed by the person themselves. The second point of discussion is the emerging rift amongst transgender groups with respect to the reforms introduced recently. This rift has a tendency to pull in the opposite direction, causing tensions. The final aspect of my discussion relates to the subsequent challenges that emerge from the legal recognition of transgender persons. These challenges touch upon the various aspects of legal, political, social, and economic policymaking and are inevitable for understanding the concerns of transgender persons in India.

Geographies of the classical: Kathak across India and Hong Kong

ABSTRACT This article examines Kathak as an Inter-Asia dance form across India and Hong Kong. Typified as “classical” dance in India, Kathak’s twenty-first-century transposition to Hong Kong is enabled by members of the Indian diaspora and local performers. Kathak’s expansion is also facilitated by an interest in popular Indian culture across Asia, notably through Bollywood. Against this background, Kathak cohabits a tension between a classicized identity in India, and an ethnicized folk representation abroad. Drawing on perspectives of Kathak practitioners and my study of the dance in Hong Kong and India, I examine structures that enable the institutionalization of certain art forms and popularization of others. An analytical consideration of dance as performance art, academic discipline, and professional pursuit requires an Inter-Asia methodology of triangulation to examine narratives of “high” culture. Such an approach offers a variegated understanding of Kathak as an embodied art form that resonates across postcolonial Asian societies.

The New Image of Indian Girl in Sherman Alexie’s The Search Engine

The current paper examines the Native American people's identity, especially the main female character's cultural identity in the short story entitled The Search Engine. Sherman Alexie, the author of the story, is a Native American writer who harnesses the Indian identity as one of the main topics. The identity presented in the main character, Corliss, shows the challenges of the stereotypes of Native American girls. For that reason, the paper aims at exploring the new Indian woman’s cultural identity represented in the main character, Corliss, in the short story The Search Engine. The study applies feminist literary criticism that enables the writers to deeply explore the issue of woman's identity among the American native people. The main character, Corliss, shows the new female image identity, in which she can challenge traditional stereotypes of Native American women. Corliss is represented as a highly literate woman, with a lot of reading on English literary works, and has concern on her Indian-ness, which is often incommensurable to her big family’s views. The main character shows the new female image of an Indian girl evidenced in her excellent literacy and attitude toward Indian and White people. She has new consciousness in seeing the Indian men and women and their relation to White people.

The Variation of Hybridity in Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown

In the context of this paper’s central logic of building Indian identity in a multicultural society, discuss hybridity, “otherness” and stereotypes. The purpose is to recognize the hybridity, otherness, stereotype relevance, and how the concept of “The Third Space” contributes to the formation of a cooperative identity and context to multicultural association

National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF): Analyzing Performance of Top 50 Management Schools

The present study aims to examine the statistical differences in performance across different categories of management schools in India against the five major NIRF performance parameter heads viz., Teaching, Learning & Resources (TLR); Research and Professional Practices (RP); Graduation Outcomes (GO); Outreach and Inclusivity (OI); Peer Perception (PR); and Total Ranking Score (TRS). NIRF announced first ranking results in the year 2016 on the data of 2014-15. We have used the available NIRF ranking results of the top 50 ranked management schools for each of the six announcing years from 2016 to 2021. The study divided management schools into four categories as per their regulatory identity in India. Based on the relative performance and standing of four categories of management schools across five parameters of NIRF, the schools can strategize their efforts to retain and enhance their performance for achieving a higher NIRF ranking in the future. The findings are also pertinent to those management schools which are not ranked by NIRF for taking actionable decisions. This study claims its uniqueness as assessing the relative performance of institutions in the higher education sector in India. The theoretical underpinning of rankings can be a relevant addition to the existing literature of ranking systems for higher educational institutions.

INDIAN-AMERICANS IDENTITY IN “THIS BLESSED HOUSE” SHORT STORY

This research discusses the identity of indian immigrants especially the main characters, Sanjeev and Twinkle, in the short story “This Blessed House” by Jhumpa Lahiri. The theory used in this research is cultural studies theory by Stuart Hall and combining with character and characterization theory of fiction. This research focuses on the habits of an indian immgirants who lived in Connecticut, the United states, and also the factors that made the main characters have different identity. The husband has a stable identity and trying to maintain Indian culture while his wife acting like an American. As Twinkle shows that she loses her origin identity, which is indian, because she does not preserve her identity strongly and Sanjeev succeeds to carry his Indian identity to their household because Sanjeev has a strong Indian culture. Compared to Twinkle, Sanjeev was more recently living in America. So Twinkle has been exposed to American culture longer than Sanjeev.

Indigenous Access to Social Assistance and Identity: A Gendered Relational Reading of Settler Colonial Containment in Shubenacadie Indian Band v. Canada

Abstract In Canada, the settler colonial state uses the regulation of the so-called Indian identity as a dispossessive strategy, a racialized and gendered means of controlling access to resources and attempting to contain Indigenous human, nonhuman, and land-based relations. This regulation is informed by Western patriarchal ideals and mechanisms. We examine settler accounts of “Indian” identity and their effects through a gendered reading of Shubenacadie Indian Band v. Canada, a legal case centering on the provision of social assistance. Our critique is grounded in a relational approach to Indigenous self-recognition, an approach that transcends the false dichotomy between individual (women’s) rights and group (cultural) rights, critiqued by Joyce Green. This case exemplifies individualized approaches to identity that obscure the relational practices seeking to retain, reproduce, and revitalize Indigenous modes of life, an ongoing terrain of de/colonizing struggle.

Social Identity Crisis in India: A Comparative Analysis of BJP Administrations

This research examines the Hindutva synonymous with the Hindu nationalism, discusses its various aspects and explains its mainstreaming under the BJP or Bharatiya Janata Party-led Hindu nationalist governments through the lens of Social Identity theory. The paper aims at addressing the social identity crisis in modern Indian society, given the prevalence of Hindutva under the auspices of BJP. Additionally, it holistically highlights the role of the Vajpayee and Modi governments in propagating Hindutva in social, legal, and political domain, as well as creating the ‘Otherisation’ rhetoric. The research is significant as it develops a nexus between the social aspects of group identity and the politics, in order to develop a conceptual discourse on the Hindutva in building up Hindu identity and mobilizing masses in political realm. Theoretical framework employed is Social Identity theory in order to assess the vital role of social identity in Indian polity. The methodology used is qualitative method and the type of social research is comparative analysis. This research endeavor concludes that ‘Hindutva under BJP administrations has generated polarization process in the society which has dual ramifications: prevailing ‘national identity crisis, with assertive ‘Hindu identity’ on one side and accumulated Indian identity on other, coupled with hovering religious extremism across the country.

Geeli Pucchi

Geeli Pucchi

Sweet Tassa: Music of the Indian Caribbean Diaspora

Sweet Tassa: Music of the Indian Caribbean Diaspora details the history, repertoire, and socio-political significance of tassa drumming in Trinidad & Tobago. The film profiles the life and work of noted tassa drummer Lenny Kumar and his family while also developing the notion of tassa performance practice as a metaphor for Indian Trinidadian cultural and national identity. In the process, the film traces tassa’s movement from India to the Caribbean, summarizes its transformation in diaspora, and speculates about its future.
 Proceeding from analysis of tassa repertoire in Muslim and Hindu performance contexts, the film explores tassa’s physical and conceptual transformations in diaspora and the ongoing push to make tassa a co-national instrument alongside steel pan. In this regard, interviewees discuss the implication of tassa as “foreign”—despite more than 150 years of Indian presence in the Caribbean—and therefore unsuitable as a co-national instrument alongside steel pan. The film’s conclusion emphasizes tassa as an encapsulation of Indian identity: tassa’s performance contexts and performance practice signal India as a place of origin. Yet these very same aspects, by virtue of their persistence in diaspora, equally signal Trinidad and Tobago as home.

Capricious opinions: A study of polarization of social media groups

Experts claim that the world is increasingly polarized by emerging social media platforms. The political actors amplify the polarization through their agents' user-generated content. The extreme political ideologies sway the people sitting on the fence on these social media platforms. Using tweets on a recent policy change on identity in India, the present study seeks to perform a scientific analysis of the polarization of the debates within ordinary citizens' groups from a theoretical lens. We further highlight some of the crucial trends that triggered these polarized discussions in general. Through the lens of Echo chambers and Herd behavior, this study provides valuable insights surrounding the influencers and individuals involved in this discussion where the polarization of preferences is witnessed. Proposing a novel design of a root-level influencer, this study establishes them as polarization actors on a social media platform (Twitter). Through various engagement metrics, we also identify the role of targeted communication (hashtags) and similarity in the users' discussion across the political domain as potential behavioral explanations for opinion polarization on Twitter.

K.C.S. Paniker's Words and Symbols: A Formalist Approach

Formalism developed from the 19th century aesthetic of “Art for art’s sake.” The Formalist exponents believed in the evaluation of a artwork solely based on its form rather than its content. They reacted to an artwork on its formal and aesthetic qualities. Understanding the depth of Formalism is crucial in appreciating modern abstract art both of the West as well Indian. K. C. S. Paniker, being one of the most important figures in the abstractions of post-independence India, and had many influences from western artists, although he always maintained his Indian identity in his works. His series of ‘Words and Symbols’ is one of his most important contribution to modern Indian art in which he was interested in the formal structure of the ancient Indian texts and symbols. Therefore, this paper aims at understanding the more complex nature of Formalism and how that can be used to reassess Paniker’s works.

Mücadele burada mı, ebediyette mi? Sherman Alexie'nin The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven romanı

Confined within the borders of reservations Native identity suffers not only from the traumatic experiences of poverty, unemployment, broken families, alcoholism and oppression but also from systematic racist practices and stereotyping, which reduce the American Indian identity to noble savages, bloodthirsty warriors, prophetic shamans, or drunken outcasts. In resistance to Anglo-American attempts to erase Native identity many American Indian writers such as N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, James Welch, and Gerald Vizenor tried to preserve Native American tribal culture and history, and remedy the traumatized Native identity. This paper focuses on how Sherman Alexie in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, standing apart from other Native American writers, portrays the Spokane Indian reservation life with a critical and cynical viewpoint on contemporary Native American’s problems such as poverty, unemployment, hunger, drug addiction, alcoholism, and violence. The paper also discusses the insight Alexie brings to the Native identity problem through his critical reading of both the Native history/tradition and the white culture, and his critique of both the ‘positive’ and the negative stereotyping of the American Indian. The study is based on the premise that Sherman Alexie creates, borrowing from Homi Bhabha’s terms, an ‘interstitial space’ in his answer to the question: how will the Native identity be constructed, based on the American Indian tribal culture, or the dominant Anglo culture, or is there an alternative way?

Democratic Socialism a Solution to Colonial Tourism Structures

The Caribbean’s environmental diversity and tourism products have been a longstanding source of income leading many to argue that the detriments of tourism outweigh its beneficial, economic effects. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic changed the course of travel- and by extension, tourism, countries have been forced to re-evaluate travel structures, means of income and longstanding Clientelist relationships with their North American neighbours. In this commentary, I discuss the socio- economic effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism- in the context of Jamaica; as well as the possibility of re-engineering Democratic Socialism for implementation in the post-pandemic environ- ment as a way to psychologically decolonize the region and alleviate the potentially lingering, devastating effects of the pandemic. Furthermore, while there are other prevalent issues that threaten tourism and have plagued the region for years including and not limited to pollution, environmen- tal degradation, climate change, crime and natural disasters, this analysis is simply intended to focus on identity, economy and the seemingly never-end- ing cycle of Western Imperialism threatening West Indian identity.

Relational Ecological Model of Identity

Abstract. Although some scholars have extended the discussions on privilege and marginalization to include markers of identity that go beyond race/ethnicity, gender, and disability status, these attempts are still in their preliminary stages ( Black & Stone, 2011 ). Commonly accepted models for understanding identity (e.g., Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, Hays' ADDRESSING framework) have been developed by scholars in the West, with limited applicability for the unique aspects of identity development in other cultures. Additionally, these models are limited in their ability to account for complexities that have been brought about as a result of processes, including, but not limited to, globalization, urbanization, and affluence. This paper describes the different types of privileged and marginalized identities that operate in the Indian society and proposes a theoretical model for exploring identity development in India using a relational lens. Borrowing elements from existing models of identity formation and development, we highlight the commonalities as well as the unique aspects of identity in India that do not get completely captured by existing models. Therapists and trainees in the field of mental health could use the proposed model to explore the intersectionality of identities for themselves and their clients in therapy, and for their clients in their unique sociocultural and political contexts. Implications for education, training, and clinical practice are discussed.

A Veterans’ Talking Circle: Urban Indian Peoplehood and Re-Indigenizing Places

While the boundaries of Indigeneity as a category are generally contested in Indian country, urban spaces provide opportunities for affinity and multiple expressions of Indigenous identity to coexist and even thrive. In Albuquerque, like many major cities, inter-tribal Indian identity centered on grassroots political activity increasingly recognizes Indigeneity as transnational and hemispheric, meaning that Indigenous peoples migrating from other parts of the Americas or around the world contribute to its greater Indigenous diversity (Ramirez 2007). Urban Indians in Albuquerque are composed of multiple peoples from diverse national and tribal identities, however, their points of convergence in the city, such as in ceremonial, sovereignty, and stewardship contexts enables a transnational expression of peoplehood to emerge. Indigenous sovereignty has been theorized as an articulation of peoplehood, defined by scholars as the persistence of a people who share a sacred history, religion, language, and land (Holm, Pearson, and Chavis 2003). In this article, I explore the ways urban Indian peoplehood emerges from the re-Indigenizing praxis of material life, such as talking circles, ceremony, and pottery-making, reflecting the generative culture making Native studies scholars call resurgence (Simpson 2011) and that moves away from essentialist and static definitions of Native identity that rely on blood quantum (Smith 2015).

MEDIA, SOCIAL NETWORKS AND DIGITALIZATION AS MEANS FOR NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY PROMOTION

The article deals with the ways of actualizing one of the most powerful concepts of the modern world - that of ethnicity, which stands out as a constituent of the basic Native American identity concept originated at the end of XX - beginning of the XXI century. Actuality of the research is conditioned by importance of a more profound study of the concept that went through the objective stages of conceptualization and got fixed in the Indigenous Studies. Identity is manifested as a subjective feeling of belonging to a particular social group and at the same time is a source of inspiration and continuity of each individual. The existence of the very phenomenon of identity is determined by the social context and the inviolability of social ties in society. The study of the North American identity has been and remains to this day a problem with inexhaustible potential for researchers. Identity becomes a form of discourse, causing self-discovery, self-interpretation, and the opportunity to transform into the “other” in one's own country. Native American identity can be presented as a theory of social proximity and distance or as an interpretive scheme of gradual and direct discovery of oneself and the surrounding social reality through media and social network communication. Anyhow interpretation of indigenous identity must be largely determined by a set of political, philosophical, historical, cultural, religious, ethnic concepts that dominate in a given circumstance, determining the originality of indigenous identity in these circumstances. Today makes us witness a progressive development of American Indian identity in both cultural and civilizational and psychological dimensions through media, social networks and digitalization.