---
title: "Cultural Retention | Native American Studies"
description: "Cultural Retention is the preservation of Indigenous language, beliefs, and practices amid pressure to assimilate, especially in Native American urban migration."
canonical: "https://fiveable.me/hs-native-american-studies/key-terms/cultural-retention"
type: "key-term"
subject: "Native American Studies"
unit: "Unit 18"
---

# Cultural Retention | Native American Studies

## Definition

Cultural retention in Native American Studies is the ongoing preservation of Indigenous language, beliefs, and practices despite colonization, relocation, and urban migration. It describes how communities keep identity alive while adapting to new settings.

## What It Is

Cultural retention in Native American Studies means keeping Indigenous ways of life, identity, and community ties alive even when outside forces push people to change. That can include speaking a Native language, following ceremonial practices, joining tribal organizations, teaching children clan or kinship knowledge, or staying connected to home communities after moving away.

The term matters because Native communities have often faced policies and conditions that tried to weaken those ties. Boarding schools, forced relocation, termination policy, and city life could separate people from land, elders, and daily cultural routines. Cultural retention is the answer to that pressure, not by freezing culture in time, but by keeping it active and meaningful in changing conditions.

In the context of urban migration, cultural retention often becomes a deliberate effort. A person in a city might attend a tribal gathering, participate in a language class, or travel home for ceremonies when possible. Community centers, powwows, churches, student groups, and family networks can all become places where culture is practiced outside reservation boundaries.

It is not the same as copying the past exactly. Indigenous communities adapt traditions to new settings, and that adaptation is part of retention too. For example, a family may use technology to organize a virtual language circle or share songs and stories across distance. The core idea is continuity, not stasis.

A good way to think about cultural retention is that it measures how people keep belonging alive under pressure. In Native American Studies, that often means looking at how identity survives through everyday practice, community support, and intentional cultural work, especially after migration to cities reshapes where and how Native people live.

## Why It Matters

Cultural retention shows up whenever Native American Studies looks at survival, adaptation, and identity after colonization. It gives you a way to explain why migration to cities did not simply erase Indigenous cultures, even though urban life could weaken access to language, ceremony, and extended family networks.

This term also connects history to lived experience. When you study relocation policies or the postwar movement of Native people into urban areas, cultural retention explains what happened next: people built new spaces for Native life instead of letting culture disappear. That might mean a boarding house network, a tribal association, a neighborhood gathering, or a home visit that keeps ties to the reservation strong.

The concept also helps you avoid a common misunderstanding that culture only exists in one place. Native identity does not vanish when someone leaves a reservation, and cultural retention shows how community can travel, adapt, and remain recognizable. That idea comes up a lot in essays about urban Indigenous life, sovereignty, and the effects of federal policy.

In class discussion or writing, this term gives you a sharper lens for describing resilience without making it vague. You can point to specific practices, specific pressures, and the specific ways people responded.

## Connections

### Cultural Assimilation

Cultural assimilation is the pressure to adopt the dominant society's language, habits, and values, often at the expense of Indigenous identity. Cultural retention is the response that keeps Native practices alive even when assimilation pressures are strong. The two ideas are often studied together because one explains the force that disrupts culture and the other explains how communities resist that disruption.

### Indigenous Knowledge

Indigenous knowledge includes the teachings, skills, stories, and place-based understanding passed through Native communities. Cultural retention helps keep that knowledge moving from one generation to the next. When you see language use, oral history, land-based practice, or traditional ecology in a Native community, that is often cultural retention in action.

### [Indian Relocation Act](/hs-native-american-studies/key-terms/indian-relocation-act)

The Indian Relocation Act encouraged Native people to move to cities, which made cultural retention more difficult and more necessary. Urban relocation could separate people from tribal land and daily ceremonial life, but it also led to new Native community spaces in cities. This term gives historical context for why cultural retention became such a major issue in the mid-20th century.

### Transculturation

Transculturation describes cultural exchange where groups borrow, blend, and reshape practices over time. Cultural retention is related, but it focuses more on keeping Indigenous identity and traditions intact rather than just mixing cultures. In Native American Studies, the two can overlap when communities adapt traditions to city life without losing their core meaning.

## On the AP Exam

A short-answer question might ask you to explain how Native communities maintained identity after relocation to cities. That is where cultural retention fits, because you can name the practices that kept culture active, like language classes, powwows, tribal associations, and family teaching. In an essay, use it to connect federal relocation policy with community response instead of treating migration as simple loss.

If you get a passage, photograph, or oral history excerpt, look for evidence of continuity, such as references to ceremony, kinship, language, or return trips home. Then explain how that evidence shows culture being carried forward in a new setting. For discussion prompts, it is a strong term for comparing pressure to assimilate with Indigenous strategies for staying connected.

## Cultural Retention vs Cultural Assimilation

These are easy to mix up because both deal with cultural change. Assimilation means giving up distinct Indigenous practices to fit the dominant culture, while cultural retention means holding onto those practices and identity. If a source shows Native people losing language or traditions under pressure, that points toward assimilation. If it shows them keeping those traditions alive, that points toward retention.

## Key Takeaways

- Cultural retention is the maintenance of Indigenous language, beliefs, and practices even when outside forces push for change.
- In Native American Studies, the term is especially useful for understanding what happened when Native people moved to cities or faced federal relocation policies.
- Cultural retention is not about freezing culture in the past, because Native communities often adapt traditions to new settings while keeping their meaning.
- Look for concrete signs of retention, like language programs, community gatherings, ceremonies, family teaching, or tribal organizations in urban areas.
- The term helps explain Indigenous resilience, because it shows how identity can survive through pressure, distance, and change.

## FAQs

### What is Cultural Retention in Native American Studies?

Cultural retention is the preservation and continuation of Indigenous culture, especially language, ceremony, kinship, and community identity. In Native American Studies, it often comes up when people discuss how Native communities kept traditions alive under colonization, relocation, and urban migration.

### How is cultural retention different from cultural assimilation?

Cultural assimilation is pressure to adopt the dominant culture and lose distinct Indigenous practices. Cultural retention is the opposite response, where Native people keep language, traditions, and identity active. A city-based Native community gathering is an example of retention, while forced schooling that suppresses Native language reflects assimilation.

### What are examples of cultural retention in urban Native communities?

Examples include language revitalization programs, powwows, tribal community centers, family storytelling, and visits home for ceremonies. These practices help people stay connected to their nations even when they live far from reservation land.

### Why does cultural retention matter after the Indian Relocation Act?

Relocation pushed many Native people into cities, where access to land-based practices and community networks could be harder to maintain. Cultural retention explains how people responded by rebuilding Native spaces in urban areas and keeping ties to their home communities alive.

## Related Study Guides

- [18.1 Historical factors leading to urban migration](/hs-native-american-studies/unit-18/historical-factors-leading-urban-migration/study-guide/mnq0pU1FBI9xtgeR)

## About This Document

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- [llms.txt](https://fiveable.me/llms.txt): index of Fiveable's sections and URL patterns
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