The website I chose focuses on the Tlingit and Haida people of Alaska. From this page you can tell that they are very proud of their heritage and cultural roots as they give you a short overview of their folklore such as:
"The Haida legend of "The Raven and the First People" expresses how Raven discovered mankind and is responsible for the present order of our universe. Likewise, the Tlingit legend of "Raven and the Creation Story" tells us how the Raven created the world"
It goes on to state that, "Our people take great pride in our ability to cultivate and harvest the resources of the land and sea in a responsible manner. We recognize the value of and retain reverence and respect for all life of the land and sea that we harvest to give us strength and sustenance". As is the case with many other indigenous peoples because they have to live off the land instead of oversaturating it with farming and hunting they respect it and do these activities in a sustainable way.
Actually the first thing they state on this website is that they are a soverign state, "CCTHITA (Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska) is the Tribal Government representing over 24,000 Tlingit and Haida Indians worldwide. We are a sovereign entity and have a government to government relationship with the United States." This makes it sound asthough they are a completely independent entity which maybe due to their geographical positioning in Alaska could be seen as easier and more feaseable than paerhaps some other tribes which are on mainland America.
"Our people have made a transition to a written, formal process to engage in foreign government relationships in order to address issues impacting us. Foreigners continue to attack our rights to self-government as sovereign nations, while continuing the decimation of the Tlingit and Haida population, our traditional homeland, and our access to natural resources." This shows that in order to be able to communicate and "fight for their rights" they have made the transition to western ways of communication and its quite clear that they feel they're still under attack from foreigners.
I still find it strange that even in this day and age that people have a complete disregard for indigenous peoples and destroy their homelands just so that they can reep the benefits of whatever kind of goldmine these people be living on such as Oil, Trees etc. You don't just see this in America but also in Brazil, Northern Russia etc maybe if they took a leaf out of the Native Americans book and were more sustainable then they wouldn't have to go and destroy these peoples homeland.
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