DrYouth wrote:
I've given this some thought Bjorn.
I'll give my personal example.
My ethnicity is Spanish on my Dad's side and German on my Mom's.
When I visit Spain I envy my cousin's sense of ethnic identity.
But even this is a hodgepodge. My cousins dance Flamenco which is a gypsy based folk dance. They play Spanish guitar an instrument brought to Spain by the Moors. The culture in Andalucía is heavily influenced by it's Moorish occupation. The Catholic Church is important but currently only women attend church for some reason.
My mother's side has a strong German identity, but as you know that has been watered down post WW2... even that is mixed as my maternal grandmother was Swiss. My German cousins moved from the north of Germany to the south and feel lost in the strong regional identity of Bayern. My Swiss cousins have a very strong Swiss identity... but are struggling with the high degree of social change in that nation... they feel lost in the shuffle between smaller cultural identities within Switzerland.
So what tribe would I identify with? My Canadian identity is what I actually identify with most strongly. I love this country. This hardly seems like a tribal identity... but it fills a strong role for me. I can't even imagine what would happen if that collapsed... Would I start to identify with my regional location... probably over time... but this would not grow deep roots for some time. We've only lived here (interior British Columbia) for just over a decade.
Your tribe is who you feel loyalty and kinship to, who you feel beholden to sacrifice for - besides yourself and your own family. If that's Canadian, your tribe's Canadian. Ethnic identities on this side of the Atlantic and on your side of the Atlantic are different for obvious historical-cultural reasons, but you're as human as everyone else, and so as much a social animal as anyone else. Tribe is community, loyalty, kinship, an alliance of families. If those are sentiments you direct at being Canadian, then it should be obvious what tribe you are. Canadian is more of a tribal federation, technically, but as long as you have a shared identity that isn't simply
judicial, what you have is a tribe.
You are not Spanish unless the Spanish of Spain consider you Spanish, not German unless Germans of Germany consider you German. You are Canadian with a Spanish, German, and Swiss
ancestry. A Canadian or American with Danish ancestors, may count as "ethnically Danish" to other Americans or Canadian, but
only to them, and not to Danes, just like your "Irish" North Americans are not Irish and your Poles not Poles. Not unless they keep alive their culture, language, customs and traditions. If not, they are simply Canadian or American. When they no longer live the life of their old culture, they are no longer
part of the old culture. They're just the descendents of former members of tribesmembers. Who they are instead...? Not my business to figure out.
Fame is not flattery. Respect is not agreement.
So, having an ethnicity, being part of a culture, that's something what... backwards, primitive? And rejecting that is... "progress"? I'm part of the tribe of Danes. Doesn't exclude me from wanting to mass cooperate with any other tribes/nations/ethnicities that exist in the world or the governments that represent them. Doesn't even exclude me from accepting into my tribe those want to become fellow, new tribesmen (provided they accept their new tribe's primacy), no matter where they originally come from. 
- capable of acting civilized to each despite feeling more loyalty to your own group than to the other's group? Amazing how that works, huh? Well, that's how it is for those of who don't actually see our ethnicities, our tribes and our sense of loyalty to it, as "backwards". 
