IRVINE — The matter of ethnic salvation is no passing fad for Elizabeth Whipple, born 24 years ago on a desolate reservation in the South Dakota heartland of the Sioux nation.
Her generation was raised to always remember the tragic side of their American Indian legacy--their Wounded Knees, their segregation and lost lands, their descent into cultural oblivion and destitution.
But her generation was also taught never to surrender their American Indian self, never to disown the traditional, closely woven ways of family, tribe, land and spirit.
"I've always felt proud of being an Indian, that our heritage was a special gift," Whipple, a UC Irvine dance major, said as she sat on a campus patio before the weekly parley of the tiny--only 20 active members--but energetic American Indian Council at Irvine.
Now, these Indian council students say, there appears to be a shift in the winds in white American society. It seems that their Indian heritage--after generations of curio status in museums and souvenir shops, after a thousand Hollywood movies that had reduced revered chieftains to stock Injun figures--may be attaining a more favorable image among the masses.
And the timing couldn't be better for celebrations of ethnic pride, such as the UCI council's American Indian Culture and Education Days on Wednesday and Thursday at the UCI Student Center, and a similar open house and college-recruitment event, Friday and Saturday at the federal Sherman Indian High School in Riverside.
The emphasis of these events, the UCI students say, is to underscore this changing mood: That the American Indian experience isn't just social ills and despair but one also of educational achievements and an emerging generation that has never abandoned its native legacy.
"Being an Indian is becoming more acceptable," said Whipple, whose dark, broad, high-cheeked face is a strong reminder of her own direct ancestry--her father is Sioux, her mother Navajo.
With a smile that is slight and fleeting but just enough to underscore the irony of it all, Whipple added, "Indians, at least right now, are trendy."
Attempts to resurrect the American Indian as a commanding cultural presence are hardly new.
The best-known efforts date back to the 1960s, when ethnic-pride movements of all kinds swept the country.
