Acculturation and Narcissism: A Study of Culture Contact among the Makah Indians

This study examines the sociocultural, sociopsychological, and sociolinguistic responses of the Makah Indians to acculturation. The Makah are a Nootkan people who have lived in the isolated village of Neah Bay, Washington, since the signing of the Treaty of Neah Bay in 1855. - This study suggests that acculturative changes in Makah ideology, and in the community's socio-political dynamics had two effects: they reinforced the replacement of the Makah language by American English; and facilitated the expression of narcissistic behavior in a culturally uncontrolled, social environment. - This study is founded in Kohut's psychoanalytic theory: the dynamic principal is that individuals, and groups as collective expressions of individuals, will attempt to restore and maintain self-cohesion in response to changes in their sociocultural environment.