Loving Your Culture is not Tribalism

The Trailside Nature Museum, home of the Deleware Indian Language Center

When I was a child*, I volunteered at the Trailside Nature Museum on Ward Poud Ridge Reservation, a county park in Cross River, New York. It was a wonderful, magical place full of nature and learning.

My parents used to go jogging on the weekends and would leave my brother and I at the museum. Back then, you could do that. When I started, I was about eight; he was about six. It was smaller back then. Just the front part. The rest was built a few years later.

At age eight, I would follow the staff around and do any useful thing they would allow me to do. I remember the first thing they let me do was put straw into slits in cardboard to make a diarama for one of the displays. I was in heaven.

They soon make me a part of the team, let me listen in on all the programs, and help with any tasks appropriate to my age. The people there were wonderful and were very good to my brother and I. We kept this up on many weekends until I went off to college.

When the museum was expanded, a few years after I started there, they added a Deleware Indian Language Center. The curator, the magnificent Nick Shoumatoff, traced the local Lenni Lenape tribe, who had lived in our area, all the way to where they had been relocated in Oklahoma. He and his staff began traveling to Oklahoma and inviting the Lenni Lenape there to come to the museum, so they could record as much as possible of their language and their culture. They brought the last living Medicine Woman to the museum, where I got to see her perform a number of their age-old rituals.

In return, they gave him the name He Who Stands Firm. In his later years, this is the name he used (with friends occasionally calling him He Who.)

This wigwam stands today near the musem. It is similar to one that was built while I was there, but is in a different location.

I have always admired Nick and his staff of employees and volunteers who worked so hard to perserve the language and culture.

At the time, in the 1970s, they were just one of many attempts to preserve specific culture. The 70s and 80s were a very cosmoplitan time—much more so than now, and people loved learning about other cultures and sharing their own culture.

It was never done in a selfish or exclusionary way. It was as if people were saying, “I love your culture! But I love mine, too! Let’s both learn more!”

In a recent discussion here, on another thread, I got into a conversation about whether love of the AI character Amelia and the desire to preserve English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh cultures counted as tribalism.

I believe the answer is a strong No!

Tribalism is an us-them way of thinking. We protect what is ours/we don’t want yours. Us good. You bad.

Tribalism has been part of world cultures for all of time, and the cause of many conflicts.

In small things, we see tribalism in sports, where people get very serious about their sports teams.

In bigger things, we see it in things like the fact that Japan at least used to refuse to import foreigh skis and skiing gear, because they said that Japanese snow is different from other snows.

When my daughter arrived from China at age thirteen, she had been taught that all things Chinese were preferable to other things. It was in no way an arrogant attidue—as bigots are often shown having in movies. She just had been taught it was the case. The sun is yellow. The sky is blue. Chinese things are better than other things.

In my daughter, this was a bit sweet, and she eventually learned to look at things more broadly, but in some, tribalism becomes a very closeminded way of life.

So what about wanting to save your dying culture, or your culture that is being destroyed by a group of people who are tribalistic and want everyone to join their religious tribe or die?

Is that tribalism?

What about being part of a race that used to be 35% of the world and is now only 7% of the world? Is it tribalistic to want to preserve your race?

No, not unless you also want to elimiate other people’s races. If you want all the races to flourish—including your own—that is not tribalism.

What about being part of a people who used to represnt 94% of their island and who now are only 73%. If they wish to hold onto their way of life, save their culture from extinction, or maintain their existance…is this tribalism?

Not necessarily.

It could be. A person in such a situation could think: My tribe (people, culture) is better than yours and I want it to rule everything and your cluture must to be exterminated—as the invaders in England and Europe can be heard saying.

But it doesn’t have to be.

It can be, as in the 70s and 80s, “You’re culture is great, but I love mine, too.”

Both my mother and my grandmother studied in England. I grew up listening to stories, to my mother doing the English accent she learned from a British speech teacher or telling me about the difference between cookies and biscuits, trunks and boots. She also read my stories written by English men based and influenced by British legends and fairytales: The Once and Future King, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Hobbit, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and many more.

When I was in high school, I would have given nearly anything to be Welsh. I thought it the most wonderful place in the world, with the most wonderful language.

When I was in high school, I thought history was boring. What turned it around and made me a fan of history was the book The First Elizabeth. It was so interesting that I began studying English history in earnest. I spent several years reading everything in the library system about Victorian England, for a book I never finished. I even went to the Library of Congress and read things I could not find elsewhere there.

As a fan of things English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh, I have studied these cultures for years. I love their stories, their history, and many things about their way of life.

But these are not the only cultures I have studied and love. Some of the cultures I love involve people who look a lot like me, such as the British ones, some of them do not.

There isn’t anything tribal about it. I don’t love them because I am part of them…in fact none of the cultures I love am I a part of…but I want these cultures to flourish so I and everyone else can enjoy them.

So that they are not lost from the earth.

Whether it is maintaining the Lenni Lenape language, hoping that Japan and South Korea recover from their population decline spiral, or hoping that the English don’t get rid of their dogs, which were everywhere when I visited last fall, I hope for the best for the many cultures I love.

But I don’t wish ill on anyone else’s cultures. I want them to flourish, too. I just don’t want them to replace other people in their own homes.

This is not tribalism.

It is not putting “my” person, my culture, etc. over someone elses, but nor is it cultural suicide, allowing a culture to be stampeded and forgotten.

In Great Britain, there are many cultural things that were almost lost. The English decided to systematically destroy the Highland culture and basically succeeded, as the clan system was entirely destroyed. (One often hears that those outside Scotland still care about it, but in Scotland no one gives a hoot about clans.)

But the efforts to destroy Gaelic and Welsh and some of the other native languages has not entirely succeeded. New initiatives are bringing these languages back, in part, because people like those I worked with at the Trailside Museum have been working to record and save these languages before they were lost.

May they not be lost again.

My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places. (Isaiah 32:18)