This thesis presents a historiography of classifying schemes of Native American
language groups, compares several of the most prominent models, and examines these models with current cultural data. This research doesn’t attempt to classify or group languages, but rather the intention is to use modern non-linguistic data (specifically, questionnaire data) to bolster one or more of the more prominent classification schemes.
In 1989-90, a survey was sent out to tribes throughout North America, inquiring about tribal beliefs and policies pertaining to reburial issues. The respondents were researched and sorted according to five different linguistic and cultural classificatory schemes. Also the survey questions were sorted into genres, policy, cultural, and analysis, to examine the differences between genres and between classifications. These classifications and question genres were compared several ways, including testing for solidarity, variability, and deviation in answering. Several noticeable trends were found which have implications for sorting variability in Native America and for relations with modern tribes on the complicated issues of reburial and repatriation.
