Making a Middle Way: Problems of Monhegan Identity

Abstract

Investigations into the adaptation of racially mixed people calling themselves American Indian have been confined for the most part to the Southeastern United States, where a hierarchical order of Whites and Blacks has traditionally been most explicit. Using the perspective of recent studies of ethnicity and boundary maintenance, this paper examines the "retribalization" of a similarly mixed group, pseudonymously called the Monhegans, located in New England. Neither cultural nor structural continuity adequately accounts for the means by which the Monhegans assert their identity and maintain their group boundaries.