Resistance Theory and the Transculturation Hypothesis

28from Standing Rock reservation. His life and college experience were particularlyeventful with many personal triumphs and tragedies. He related how he ventured intothe realization that his ethnic heritage and identity were his real strengths and source ofcourage.After a tumultuous beginning, this student eventually graduated among the top inhis class, was a talented writer, a highly effective campus activist for American Indianand minority rights, and had been offered a graduate fellowship at one of the nation’sleading universities. Yet, his college endeavor almost ended in failure. His first years incollege were filled with bouts with alcoholism and depression. He was intimidated byhis fellow non-Indian classmates and suffered from overwhelming timidity in interactionswith his professors. He struggled daily with the temptation to leave school.With time he began to appropriate traditional American Indian healingapproaches into his recovery efforts. Amid his recovery from alcoholism he soondiscovered that he was an equal academic competitor with non-Indian students. Herecalled coming to the conclusion that he wished to fully embrace his traditional roots.This was a dramatic and defining moment not only in his academic career but in hispersonal life as well. Describing that period of assessment he related:I decided that I was Indian. There were all these walls around me, but they weren’t goingto shrink any less if I were less “Indian” . . . I guess being here [in college] taught me howmuch strength there is in being Indian. When I finally accepted that, I was on my way . . .Eventually this student was academically successful. But this success did not comeuntil after a difficult period of personal, emotional, and cultural assessment.If his was the only case of such cultural accounting, it could be dismissed as an28