Conflicts Among Cultural Minorities

Class discussion this past week on intercultural training, specifically the Intercultural Conflict from a Multilevel Perspective: Trends, Possibilities, and Future Directions by Oetzel, Dhar & Kirschbaum. In this work, the authors mention that the examination of how cultural values influences interpersonal conflict communication tends to focus on Hofstede's (2001) five dimensions of cultural variability: individualism/collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity, and short/long-term orientation (Oetzel et al, 2007). While the article provides a very skilled breakdown of these concepts within conflicts, my thoughts strayed somewhere else. What about intercultural conflict, conflict among 2 or more people from different cultures, who are both members of a different culturally dominant society?
As most of you are well aware, I worked on the Navajo Reservation over the summer leading a group of high school kids in a cultural exchange program. As a leader, it was a responsibility of mine to brief the kids on the normative "do's and dont's" of entering a different culture, especially as their guest. After our intergroup orientation on culture, the kids attended a separate orientation led by our on-site partners. These partners were a married couple, the man being white and from Florida, and the woman was native, Navajo and Apache. They too listed off points the students needed to be aware of, subjects they were encouraged to engage in, and a few topics that were inappropriate to bring up (but welcomed to talk about if their native hosts did so). WorldLearning, an old and respected organization, prides itself on the multicultural students it selects to represent their programs all around the world. As so, my group of kids represented several different ethnic, cultural, racial and regional members of this country. I was very proud of this. Proud to be with these kids and help them establish relationships with members of the Native community, and in doing so demonstrating that not all "Americans" are white.
In the middle of the orientation, Rob (lets just call him that), looks at the 2 or 3 African American members of the group and says "now don't be surprised that they wont like you. Their only experience with blacks was a long time ago, with the buffalo hunters." My kids looked at me in shock and disbelief. Afterwards, they asked to talk to me and admitted they didn't know how they felt about that. How could the native community not see that they weren't "those blacks?" How could they not see that "those blacks" were brought to this country against their will?
If I had the somewhat articulated knowledge that I do now, I probably could have explained it better to them. Actually, I would have sat them down and shown them the Color of Fear video (had I had access to technology...). But it was definitely an eye opening experience, seeing first hand intercultural conflict among two cultures that had been oppressed by, well, my culture.