Identity is shaped, in part, by recognition, absence of recognition, or misrecognition by others:"A person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being." This misrecognition has oppressed indigenous people and has imprisoned them within a false "Indian" identity.
-from Indigenous Identity What is it, and Who really has it? by Hilary N. Weaver
American Indian Quarterly/Spring 2001/Vol.25, No.2 page 243
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