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The effects of culture are subtle but omnipresent. I have been around Indians all of my life and it is difficult to discern the familiar. I have farmed with Cherokee, drank with Souix, hunted with Apache and ridden with Navajo. Most are, at best, an ungainly fit in cubicleland. Put them in the back country, though, and they fit seemlessly with the ages. I am, or I was, a very good tracker. I could match them with skills but they made it seem easy. They did effortlessly what I had to work hard at. They are five generations away from the necessity but the culture that developed to foster the skills still fosters them.

I do not share your enamorment with Indian culture. The people who we now refer to as "raiders" and "warriors" were nothing more than brutes who would bash your brains out with a rock, cut your pecker off and stuff it in your mouth or torture you for hours with fire. Look what happens on FR when some moron barbecues a cat. Yet we ideolize a people who did a thousand times worse with human beings.

Still, Indian culture is distinct and at some time in the future our society may find a need for their cultural attributes. Indian kids run much freer than our suburban
kids. (This is a characteristic which draws every scumbag pedofile to reservation schools.) There is a certain charming naivete to their Huckleberry Finn upbringing but someday we may find a need for these kind of people to compensate for our cultural lapses. They can improvise and think and act independently where our kids can't. If they can find that niche then Indian culture will survive and thrive in our world. If they can't find that niche, Indian culture is a dead end street.