Native Americans and the United States Government.

The history of the interaction between American Indians and the American Government has been characterized by a number of conflicting policies. On the American Government side there have been policies of separation by which the American Indians were to be removed from the lands that the expansionist whites coveted. At the same time there was recognition of the Indians' sovereign rights to their new territories. This policy was historically followed by one of coercive assimilation in which Indian ways were to be replaced by the culture of white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. An insight into this policy can be gleaned from the educational philosophy institutionalized in the boarding schools for Indians established in the 19th century. The techniques of coercive assimilation were stated in 1908 by Richard II. Pratt who founded the Carlisle Indian boarding school in Pennsylvania:

The multiplicity of tribes represented enabled a mixing of tribes in dormitory rooms. The rooms held three to four each and it was arranged that no two of the same tribe were placed in the same room. This not only helped in the acquirement of English but also broke up tribal and race clannishness, a most important victory in getting the Indian toward real citizenship.

In the 1930's there was a New Deal reversal of coercive assimilation initiated by among others John Collier who was appointed Commissioner for Indian Affairs in 1932. This policy sought to protect and nourish selected aspects of Indian ways and can be summarized as one of tribal restoration. The main drift of this policy in the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 can be seen in a memorandum of Collier's in which he stated:

I see the broad function of Indian policy, to be the development of Indian democracy. Through the continued survival, through all historical change and disaster, of the Indian tribal group, both as a reality and a legal entity.

The next broad phase of federal policy was one of termination by which all the special arrangements made by the government for the American Indian in the field of education, welfare etc., that in the eyes of the supporters of termination had created a system of virtual dependency implemented by a top heavy system of administrative bureaucracy, were to be ended. The idea that the Indian was a special case was considered to be 'un-American' in theory and practice, particularly in the 1950's. The supporters of termination argued that if the Indians were treated like any other ethnic group and not shielded and removed from the ideology of competitive individualism, they would soon be ' Americanized', to their ultimate benefit.

Termination was not popular in Kennedy's 'New Frontier' society or in Johnson's 'Great Society'. The arguments against termination and the outline of this second phase of tribal restoration, can be gleaned from President Nixon's message on Indian Affairs of July 13th, 1970:

'Because termination is morally and legally unacceptable...because it tends to discourage greater self-sufficiency among Indian groups, I am asking the Congress... to renounce, repudiate and repeal the termination policy. (Federal policy should) affirm the integrity and rights to continued existence of all Indian tribes and Alaskan Native governments, recognizing that cultural pluralism is a source of national strength.' In accordance with this spirit the Congress passed the Indian Self-determination Act of 1975, which reinforced the transfer of decision-making from the bureaucrats of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the tribal councils.

To pass liberal legislation in the Congress is one thing, to implement policies in the hurly-burly of competitive capitalism is another. An example of this contradiction is the workings of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act signed on August 11th, 1978 by President Carter. The Act states that

'Henceforth it shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise...traditional religions. . Including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites.'

A whole range of sites, sacred to the Indians, became controversial; particularly those that commercial interests wished to develop. Point Conception, a rocky headland in California, sacred to the Californian Indians as the place where all new life entered the world and from where the dead departed, became the proposed location for a huge liquid natural gas terminal that would obliterate the tranquility of the area. A giant power consortium led by Pacific Gas and Electric with political support from many Californian-based politicians pushed for the building of the $60 million terminal. The scheme was finally cancelled in 1981 but there had to be a mass protest by Native American groups and an occupation of the site before the commercial group who wished to develop the site withdrew. Then it was probably the gas price deregulation of 1980 which quickly led to profitable domestic production thereby making the building of a terminal to store imported Indonesian gas redundant, that caused the change of heart, rather than an acknowledgement of Point Conception’s spiritual significance.

The same; issue arose over the flooding of sites sacred to the Cherokee by the Tennessee River Valley authority's Tellico Dam whose floodgates were opened on November 29th, 1979. It was argued that it was crucial to bring to this depressed area of western Appalachia, the enhanced benefits that would flow from the flooding, such as recreation, flood control, and an increase of hydroelectric power. The scheme went ahead despite the findings of a report prepared for the T.V.A by Interior Department archaeologists which ascribed 'world-wide significance to the sites that would be flooded, declaring that' the physical records of American prehistory present in Tellico cannot be matched in any other area this size in the continent.' The skeletal remains of over a thousand Cherokee buried in land that was to be flooded, were dug up by the University of Tennessee in order, in the words of John Crowe, Principal Chief of the Eastern Cherokee, 'to sack up their bones and toss them into a basement at the University of Tennessee.' This issue shows signs of becoming a major tension in federal - Native American relations. The 1989 hearings on the new Senate bill to build a national Museum of the American Indian not only touched on the question of how to handle the rehabilitation of the many sacred burial grounds that have been destroyed, or raided by collectors, but there were also signs that there would be a fairly abrasive conflict between the Smithsonian's management and the demands of Native Americans that the new Museum should be largely staffed by Indians. The strategies adopted by successive generations of Indian leaders is an important feature of the history of relations between Native Americans and the American government and needs to be identified as a background for current developments.

© copyright 2003-2004