he identity-impairing habits that Indians form of self-disparagement because that is the social role the dominant culture expects them to play: "Our situation is caused by the exigencies of a history of invasion, conquest, and colonization whose searing marks are probably ineradicable" (448).
Allen develops the claim of dominant-culture characterization of Indians as savages as justification for colonization and a whole range of forced changes in Indian life, many for the worse. The fact that the changes were forced speaks to the fact of power variability in U.S. society. Allen laments that there is not "much yet in the oral tradition that can enable us to adapt to these inhuman changes" bu
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