Hilary C. Tompkins.
In today’s world, we are bombarded daily with dueling, political narratives from the left and right of the political spectrum. In my view, the current culture clash is a product of young America’s growing pains, where the painful, destructive origins of America’s founding are catching up with the ethos of “America, the land of the free.” Some Americans desperately want to hang onto the cultural myth that America is one-hundred percent “great” with no shortcomings, while others want to redefine it for the future with an acknowledgement of past mistakes. Political commentators have described this divisiveness as a regression into “tribalism.” Yet ironically, this label of “tribalism” does not include the first domestic Indian nations of this country, nor is there an acknowledgement that the pejorative use of the term “tribalism” reduces tribes’ stature in the American political system.