Native American Cultural Pluralism

Cultural pluralism is the “means valuing and maintaining cultural and linguistic differences within a society” (Tozer, 2013, p. 196). While assimilation is the “process by which diverse cultures—immigrants, racial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities—alter their customs, habits, and languages to allow absorption into a dominant culture, both positive and negative” (Tozer, 2013, p. 196). As the European American expansion to the West began to take root, it was in the best interest of the American Indian to be educated and civilized. As Tozer states “if the Indian couldn’t be eliminated, their Indianess could” (Tozer, 2013, p. 201). It was the American federal government's main focus to wipe out Native American culture and replace it with what
was thought to be less barbarian. Tozer notes that “education thus became the primary ingredient in the federal government’s policy of Indian assimilation after the Indian Wars of the 19th-century” (Tozer, 2013, p. 201). Though these schools it was intended to educate the Native Americans with not only how to read and write, but other values of European Americans. As Tozer points out “literacy, domesticity, Christianity, agriculture, the dignity of labor, personal wealth, hygiene, manners—these standards became the first line of attack in the effort to eliminate the tribal Indian presence” (Tozer, 2013, p. 201). It was this line of thinking that shows that the European Americans wanted to completely assimilate or have the Native Americans absorb European culture.