University Of California, Riverside
The Importance of Land in Indigenous
Communities.
Alexander Demin
SID: 861071983
Contemporary Native American Literature 120 (001)
Professor Angela Mooney D’Arcy
12/16/2014
As of right now, there are currently 562 officially recognized tribes within the U.S. and
many more unrecognized, according to Professor Angela Mooney D’Arcy. All of these tribes
may have slightly different ideologies ingrained in their respective cultures. However, all Native
tribes share one significant commonality: a special connection to the Land. After Europeans
traveled to North America and enacted the colonization process, Native Americans were
pressured to migrate westward and leave the areas that had been their homeland for generations.
In his inaugural speech, President Andrew Jackson brought up the equality and fairness of rights
of Native Americans had for their land. However, a little more than a year later, congress passed
a bill that made Native Americans move west of the Mississippi River. Ever since then, Native
Americans have had to fight to be on the land that they held sacred and had deep connection to.
This process of Native relocation was heavily practiced throughout history by the United States
government. When white settlers occupied areas near the Pacific Ocean there was no more land
left to push Native tribes to the west. The United States government began the system of Native
relocation to reservations. Indigenous people were put on reservations, where they were forced to
live by the law. Native American author Simon Ortiz, in his book Speaking for the Generations,
said: “Without land there is no life, and without a responsible social and cultural outlook by
humans, no life-sustaining land is possible.” This holds true to all tribes, even in present day
America. Tribes try to preserve their land as much as possible, for instance, the Hualapai tribe,
that is located in the mountains of northwest Arizona, do not let people on some parts of their
land without paying a fee or permission. Indigenous communities understand that land does not
belong to humans; humans owe their survival to the land. In comparison to Euro-American
settlers, who are all immigrants that left their homeland to hope to start a new life free from the
British crown, Native Americans believe that the land and the tribe are interconnected. They
don’t perceive land as a materialistic object, like other cultures do, but rather as a sacred object
from which they get their knowledge, empirical experience, and understanding of a relationship
between everything. To acknowledge and show the Lands significance and importance in their
life, tribes gave spiritual significance and had certain spiritual obligation before the Land,
everyone tries to keep all the stories about the land and tell those stories to non- Indigenous
people, and some tribes even put landmark objects in their tribe names.
The first official attempt of documenting of the many Native tribes living in America was
the “Tribal Nations Map Own Names & Locations” which was made by Aaron Carapella with
the purpose of showing everyone just how many tribes there were in the United States and
documenting their tribal names. After looking at this report, one might ask: What do all these
names mean and how did Natives manage to name so many places without repeating one
another? The answer is actually very simple, all of the names are in different Native American
languages and if translated into English a lot of them are actually repetitive. That happened
because a lot of Indigenous Communities shared the same ideological values. One of these
common values was a high respect for the Land. To show this many Native tribes acknowledge
the geographical locations in the names of their tribes. Although some tribal names mention the
specific diet of the tribe, like Penateka – which translated into English means “Honey Eaters”, or
Kotsoteka – “Buffalo Eaters”, or Arikata – “Corn Eaters”. Other tribes got their names for the
physical characteristics of it’s members, like Clallam – “Strong People”, Osage – “Shaved
Heads”, Ute – “Dark Skinned”. The vast majority of tribe names have roots to the land and
landscape details where these tribes lived. The most common geographical object used in tribe
names was the word river “Little River”, “Those Who Live Along The River” or “River People”.
There were multiple reasons why tribes would develop names that describe the location of
their settlement. The most recognizable use of this was so that it would be easier to identify a
stranger because their name would describe where they were fro where he is from, and what he
is. When an unknown person said that he was from a tribe that is, for instance, called “At The
River Forks”, and the surrounding area is mostly desert like, chances are there is only one fork of
a river anywhere relatively far. Since Native Americans did not have transportation for long
distance traveling, the known area was not to big, so the landmarks were not repeated often. In
case, there were multiple tribes on one river, then tribes would either have to come up with
another name, or make a clarification adjective in the name, for instance “The Narrow River” or
“Southerners”. Another reason is that naming the tribe with the closest landmark, made members
of the tribe subconsciously be more proud of the Land they live on. The tribal name is the same
as the locations they live in, they see the land in front of them every single day, it is sacred for
