This document summarizes a case study of Jean, a Native American adolescent, and how her experiences developing her identity differed from mainstream models. Jean's identity was highly linked to her family relationships, as she came from a traditional Native American family. While she struggled to fit in at her private school surrounded by privileged white students, she ultimately reaffirmed her Native American identity and heritage. The document analyzes how Jean's experiences navigating racial identity do not align with typical models and were further complicated by the severe marginalization of Native American culture. It argues her story provides valuable lessons for teachers on supporting students from non-typical backgrounds.

1. Caitlin Bergan
EPSY 430
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Much focus has been placed on a typical adolescent who would qualify as a
member of mainstream American society. While this has uses, many teachers also come
from that background. Where the learning for teachers needs to occur is in looking at
situations that are not so typical or are not the situations that they experienced as an
adolescent. These situations would not be intuitive or solvable by thinking back over the
teacher’s past experiences. The value comes in seeing the perspectives of people who you
were not.
In the case study of Jean in “Someday my Elders Will be Proud,” we see an
adolescent who does not follow many of the patterns outlined for adolescents in America,
largely because she is from a minority population with more traditional structures. Her
case study has much to teach, as she comes from one of the most marginalized ethnicities
in the nation. She is Native American.
For Jean, the development of her identity was highly linked with her family
relationships. She comes from a Native American family who are her base, her root. She
is held up by them as a chance to be something better. Even though she was abused as a
child by an uncle, she still feels highly attached to her family, and highly supported by
her mother. All of the ideas she discusses comes back to her family. She does not want to
let down the people supporting her, she wants to be a good example for other kids from
her community and other communities like hers.
While all this is on her mind, and while she holds her family so close, her
relationships with her family are still not perfect. In particular, this seems to come up as a

2. side effect of her conflicts with majority culture. She gets a scholarship to a private
school filled with privileged white students who have no idea what to make of her. Jean
gets tired of being looked down on because of her second hand clothes. She goes so far as
to start shoplifting and stealing from kids at school. But rather than blowing up at her
mom with outrage about “you can’t understand what I’m going through” after she gets
caught, Jean understands why her mom is disappointed in her. She also begins to
understand how much her mom is going through trying to support her and her brothers.
While this situation brought her in conflict with her mother and probably got her in
significant trouble with the school, it is still an experience that ties her to her family in its
resolution, and it is one that she grows from.
Even though the discussion with her mother gives her some perspective on what
her family is capable of and what she needs as a person, she still tries to fit in with the
majority culture, making up lies about her life, and about her family, saying she was part
Greek instead of Native American. When someone asks about her “Greek” grandmother,
Jean again feels disappointed in herself and that she was letting down her family and her
heritage. But in going through this process of trying to be someone else and being
disappointed about not being who she is, she reaffirms her identity. She tried a identity
and found that it was not her. While her life was not like those around her, it still made up
who she was, providing important definition of herself.
Even as she knows that her family is important and a defining characteristic of her
self, perhaps even because of this, she still struggles in conflict with the elite faction of
the majority culture she faces at school. She says, “It seemed that we had to learn to be
one way at school and another at school . . . ” and “School was easier because it was

3. shallow. I could handle talking about classes, but I couldn’t do anything to help Mom or
not make us poor.” This continues to be a problem through college as she battles also
with a drinking problem, not being able to meet the expectations of college, and not
having her college experience meet her expectations. It is through her job as tutor in an
inner-city program for Native Americans that she sees that her experiences are a cultural
way of life – abuse, poverty, and alcoholism had become the norm for these kids, and
they could expect nothing better. They did not deserve that lifestyle, just as she had not
while she was growing up either. It made it all the more real that she could be an
instrument of change, and now as an adult, she dicides to try college again, this time with
a purpose.
All of her experiences relate back to her family – how she did and did not want to
feel in front of her family. She was most happy there and within her church culture, and
she felt the most fake when forced among the majority culture. She did make friends with
her peers, but only a few peer relationships are mentioned, and not with the weight that
her family relationships are mentioned. This is unlike the patterns discussed Arnett,
where peer relationships become more important than family. While peer relationships
seem to become more important to her in high school, Jean still focuses most of her
energy on her family relationships and those from her church and powwows.
Arnett suggests that more traditional cultures have more of an emphasis on family
and that their expression of difficulties in adolescence can be different than that in
mainstream American culture. However, comparing Jean’s story to Tatum’s musings on
the development of African American identity shows that that is not an accurate
representation of other minority experiences. Cross’s model of racial identity

4. development is in particular not helpful, as does not apply to a broad racial experience,
but only to the limited scope of African Americans.
The Native American culture that Jean describes is rejected on levels far above
and beyond African American culture. It is far more politically convenient for it the
reaction to be severe and for it to stay that way. I will also point out that the Native
American community does not have the national advocacy and leverage to institute
change. All of this means that experiences of Native Americans trying to navigate
mainstream culture is very different and much more difficult. Jean and her brothers never
had a pre-encounter stage. She describes her childhood and school experiences from the
beginning as having to endure bullying and discrimination due to her Native American
background. They were always aware of how they were stigmatized by mainstream
culture. There is no period of integration and understanding. Instead, Jean and her family
have always been marginalized.
By the Cross model, Jean’s whole life has been an encounter phase. The problem
became more acute as she enters the private school, where students were not only white,
but from a drastically different socio-economic background. They had no appreciation for
her heritage and her ways of life, seeing only that they do not match up to their own.
Quite frankly, they were too busy figuring out how they could be misunderstood and
overly pressured by their parents, as the Luthar and Shawn article outlines, for them to be
sympathetic to Jean’s problems.
While much of the analysis done by Tatum does not apply to a different minority,
Tatum also advances the idea of racelessness, which might be a useful concept in looking
at Jean’s case. She discusses case where an adolescent will de-emphasize the

5. characteristics that would firmly align them with the rejected group. Jean does try to do
this by trying to get clothes that would make her fit in more – or stand out less. Also her
series of lies about her life in an attempt to make it sound more like the lives of her peers.
These attempts leave her feeling ashamed, though. Rather than embracing this
racelessness as part of her identity, Jean chooses to continue the struggle to fine
ownership in her identity as part of the Native American community, and more
particularly as a member of her family.
Tatum’s discussion of being an emissary might also apply to Jean’s case after she
returns to college. She is more settled in who she is than in middle school or high school,
or even in her first attempt at college. She has a goal – to make life better for children
who live in similar circumstances to her own. She goes back into the majority society
with the intention of making life, particularly the school experiences, better for other
Native American kids. She seeks to better the community, in her reception at school and
what she does with it after. This is similar to the idea of emissary. Tatum also remarks on
the influence that southern Black teachers might have had in being role-models of
academic achievement and effort to their students; this is exactly the goal that Jean comes
back to college with.
Jean’s experiences show what it is like to be at the bottom of the bottom and try to
make something of it. Even with a good attitude and the support of her family, she still
struggles mightily with the social stigma attached to her ethnicity and how that
challenges the formation of her identity. However, the more her identity was challenged,
the more she had to think about who she was, and the stronger it was when it did
crystallize. The process was vastly different from what many mainstream youths face,

6. being based more on her family and her links to her traditional culture. But it is these
differences that make reading about her experiences all the more valuable for teachers
who could have someone as marginalized, as tortured and confused, as Jean in their
classroom.