Zeke, the answer is that they were only "behind" if you completely ignore social and cultural progress, then look at technological progress as some kind of linear "tech tree" out of Civilization and make no allowances whatsoever for local conditions. Furthermore, trying to talk about "Native American civilizations" as if they were all the same throughout all of history is completely wrongheaded. American Indian and Alaska Native political and social groups changed and adapted just as others have done and continue to do around the world.

So, let's narrow things down. Let's pick a year, 1802, and a single place, Alaska. The date is picked because this is 60 years from the first historic contact between Europeans and Alaska Natives. Most of Alaska is uncharted to European knowledge, and while the Aleutians and Kodiak archipelago have been largely conquered by Russians, Southeast Alaska and the rest of what is now Alaska are almost entirely free of European influence.

If you examine Alaska during this time, you'll find an abundance of cultures, many of which are closer to Western culture today, and in your eyes, more advanced than Western culture in 1802 is. Women could have leading roles in many Alaska Native societies. Some societies had rules regarding the protection of children and animals. You'd be hard-pressed to find much of anything like that in European society. That's not even mentioning the status of LGBTQ people. Many Alaska Native societies fully allowed non-binary marriages and social interactions. Europeans, in a Christian mindset, thoroughly suppressed this permissiveness.

Let's talk diplomacy and nation-states. There were those in Alaska in 1802 as well. When the Russians attempted to expand their fur-trading operations into Southeast Alaska, they established trading posts at Yakutat and Sitka. In 1802, the Tlingit of Southeast Alaska reacted to the Russian incursions, defeating the Russians at Yakutat and Sitka. Only the arrival of Russia's first circumnavigating voyage rescued the Russians when they counterattacked in 1804.

Even with superior artillery, the Russians only won because they destroyed the Tlingit gunpowder reserves, which were being brought to the fort at Sitka. The Tlingit successfully evacuated the fort and conducted an economic blockade of the Russians at Sitka for much of the next 60 years. The many different clans and moieties of Southeast Alaska had differing interests and profited from different trade routes in Southeast Alaska, but through diplomatic maneuvering, they cooperated against the Russians. This was all taking place as Great Britain organized coalitions against Napoleon again and again, and Napoleon tried an economic embargo to compensate.

Unlike Napoleon, the Tlingit embargo was largely successful. The Russians were forced to hunt sea otters off California while the Tlingit traded with the Americans and British for firearms and artillery that they would use to retain most of their independence until the Alaska Purchase.

You seem interested in technology, so let's talk about that. I mentioned the flow of arms to the Tlingit, and there's no denying that firearms were (and are) superior to traditional weaponry. But saying that always happened isn't correct.

In 1802 and the years that followed, the Russians and other Europeans struggled enormously in Alaska because they lacked the clothing, food and cold-weather equipment necessary to survive. Russians were starving to death in Sitka until a ship brought food from California. Let me repeat that: They were starving in a place that now produces much of the world's seafood. They might have had iron cannon and firearms, but Europeans completely lacked the technological adaptations necessary to survive successfully in Alaska.

It's no wonder that so many European and American Arctic explorers died on their expeditions -- even as Alaska Natives and Canadian and Greenland Inuit thrived in similar conditions. It wasn't until these explorers adapted Native clothing and equipment, as Fridtjof Nansen did, that they began to have success.

All of this combined is just a small sliver of one portion of North America, but the pattern was repeated across the continent. Think of the Pilgrims' struggles that you learned about in elementary school (if you grew up in the United States). The traditional Thanksgiving story is that the Pilgrims were saved by the natives of the area, who taught them how to farm and live in a new land. The entire purpose of technology is to mold our surroundings so they better suit our needs.

If the pilgrims starved while the natives lived, who really was more advanced?

I'm sure a flaired user will come along soon to provide a thorough answer, but I'll do my best. As with many questions, the answer varies based on which civilizations you are talking about compared to which others.

It can, and often is, argued that the most technologically advanced nations of the old world were no more technologically advanced than the best of the new world. This is because the idea of linear technogical advancement, is frankly a misunderstanding of why and how technologies are created.

Compare the Aztec triple alliance/Aztec Empire to that of the one which conquered them. The Kingdom of Spain possessed metallurgy, steel, firearms, horsemen, caravels and carracks. These are technologies whose foundations were set over the course of hundreds of years, based on what was useful to their ancestors and what was available. Without iron you cannot have steel, which without you cannot have cannons and caravels and so on.

However if we take the Aztecs, who had technologies such as chinampas (floating farms which grew a large variety of nutritious vegetables), obsidian, rubber, accurate calendrics, etc. These too are technologies that were only created because of what their ancestors had available and what was useful for their situation. Just as Europeans could not farm corn, or produce obsidian or rubber because they either didn't have them or didn't need them; Native Americans (largely) could not produce iron or steel and guns and caravels for the same reasons.

The point is, technology is not linear. They are created to serve a certain purpose for a certain people in a certain place. They may turn out to be universally useful later, like both corn and iron, but earlier people either did not have the means or need to invent it for themselves. Now, some civilizations could be considered backwards compared to the achievements of their neighbors, or because they are poorly adapted to their environment. But to compare transcontinental technologies, of so many various technologies, is like comparing apples and oranges.

So to answer your question, Native Americans were technologically backwards when it comes to having European technologies, such as metallurgy or sailing, because they were not Europeans. They did not have the means or the immediate need to create such things. Likewise the Europeans, who did not have Native technologies, could be considered equally backwards in that field.