Photo: Seminole Chairman James E. Billie and Family in Florida, 1985, Florida Memory, Wikimedia Commons
Analysis. After centuries of occupation, Native Americans who maintain traditional-cultural values may draw strength as centuries of cultural occupation falter throughout the Americas.
Chief among such values is reciprocity for any losses. When compensation has not been offered, native communities, families, or even individuals may take direct action to secure just compensation under traditions of reciprocity.
Applying reciprocity clarifies contemporary developments during the present crisis in empowerment destabilizing modern governments, the United States, not excepted. A few examples from recent books can reveal advantages when empowered by values-based understandings. Lessons can reveal advantages across the fields of human knowledge, the human story in the humanities, science, and technology in the world, and from the social and behavioral sciences.
Read the review by Charles King titled “The Antiliberal Revolution: Reading the Philosophers of the New Right” (Foreign Affairs, July/August 2023). Then follow up with a study by the late Nobel-Prize winning economist, James Buchanan, in Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean (Viking, 2017). The hidden nature and bases for the current dismantling of the constitutional system in the United States uses Buchanan’s own words, drawn from his archives. While Native relations with the US government will alter, Native responses may become a source of empowerment, instead of disempowerment.
Shifting focus to the natural sciences, the next recommended book breaks down the question, what is life? In doing so, readers can observe the benefits of narrowing the focus in each chapter, as they focus on one aspect of the question. Journalists in repressive societies who also narrow their focus may avoid repression by heeding the following examples:
Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive by Carl Zimmer (Dutton, 2021).
Finally, for our purposes, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle (Harper, 2024).
This story describes the trails of broken promises and the path to the landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court confirming Native rights and sovereignty, where reciprocity directs Native citizens to depend on the commitments and courage of Native peoples themselves.
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