What

6

CHAPTER OUTLINE
Early European Contacts Treaties and Warfare
A Global View
Australia’s Aboriginal People

Reservation Life and Federal Policies Collective Action American Indian Identity
Listen to Our Voices
Powwows and Karaoke

Native Americans Today
Research Focus
Learning the Navajo Way

Healthcare Religious and Spiritual Expression

WHAT WILL YOU LEARN?
How Did Early Contact with European Culture Impact Native Americans? What Role Have Treaties Played? How Do Federal Policies Effect Reservation Life? What Collective Action Has Been Taken? What Is American Indian Identity? Is Economic Development Happening? What Are the Challenges with Education? What Contributes to Health Care Problems? How Are Religion and Spirituality Expressed? What the Environmental Issues Are for Native Americans?
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Native Americans: The First Americans
The original inhabitants of North America were the first to be subordinated by the Europeans. The Native Americans who survived contact with the non-Indian people usually were removed, often far away, from their ancestral homes. The U.S. government weakened tribal institutions through a succession of acts, beginning with the Allotment Act of 1887. Even efforts to strengthen tribal autonomy, such as the 1934 Reorganization Act, did so by encouraging Native Americans to adopt White society’s way of life. More recent relations between Native Americans and non-Indians have been much the same, as shown by such measures as the Termination Act and the Employment Assistance Program. Today, the pan-Indian movements speak for a diverse Native American people with many needs: settlement of treaty violations, economic development, improved educational programs, effective healthcare, religious and spiritual freedom, control over natural resources, and greater self-rule.
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148 Chapter 6

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hen Ryan Wilson enters the Hinono’ Eitiino’ Oowu’—that is, the Arapaho Language Lodge—in Riverton, Wyoming, he is on a survival mission. His task is to teach both children and adults their native language. Because the Arapaho language is no longer spoken fluently by anyone under the age 55, it is in danger of dying out with its few surviving speakers. Ryan Wilson is one face of native peoples in the United States. William Blackie’s money ran out near midnight on a June day in 2006 in Farmington, New Mexico. A 46-year-old Navaho, he made his way home on foot only to encounter three White youths who offered to give him a ride if he would buy them beer with their money. Actually, as they admitted later, they were looking for a victim. Soon the boys headed out of town, dragged him out of the car, and beat him while shouting racial epithets at him. Eventually, the attackers tired of hitting Blackie and left him in the desert. Fortunately, he was able to soon contact the police who eventually found the attackers through anonymous tips. The attackers were eventually all convicted of felony assault and kidnapping, although hate crime charges were dropped. The rate of reported violent crime among American Indians and Alaska Natives is 100 per 1,000 persons, meaning one out of 10 has been a victim of violence. That rate is twice as high as the rate for Blacks, two and a half times higher than Whites, and four and a half times higher than Asians. William Blackie is also one face of the native peoples of the United States. Dustina Abrahamson Edmo (pictured below) has reason to be happy. A member of the Shoshone–Bannock tribe, she is graduating from Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas. She had participated the year before in a student exchange program in Siberia. After graduation, she traveled to Siberia again and participated in a program sponsored by the National Science Foundation to monitor water quality in the U.S. Southwest. Along the way she has been a champion women’s traditional dancer and in 2008 served on the school board of Shoshone–Bannock High School on the Fort Hill Indian Reservation, Idaho. Hers is one face of native peoples in the United States (Buchanan 2006; EdmoSuppah 2008; Frosch 2008; Saunders 2007). Although our focus in this chapter is on the Native American experience in the United States, the pattern of land seizure, subjugation, assimilation, and resistance to domination has been repeated with indigenous people in nations throughout the world. Indeed, in Chapter 16, we consider the experiences of the tribal people in Brazil, Mexico, and Canada. Hawaiians, another native people who fell under the political, economic, and cultural control of the United States, are considered in Chapter 12. Later in this chapter we consider the experience of the Aboriginal people of Australia. Indigenous peoples on almost every continent are familiar with the patterns of subjugation and the pressure to assimilate. So widespread is this oppression that the United Nations (1997) and even its precursor organization, the League of Nations, have repeatedly considered this issue. The common term American Indians tells us more about the Europeans who explored North America than it does about the native people. The label reflects the initial explorers’ confusion in believing that they had arrived in “the Indies” of the Asian continent. However, reference to the diversity of tribal groups either by American Indians or Native Americans comes as a result of the forced subordination to the dominant group. Today, most American Indians’ preference for self-identification is to use their tribal affiliation such as “Cherokee” or affiliations such as “Cheyenne Arapaho” if one has mixed ancestry. For collective reference to all tribal people, we use Native Americans and Dustina Abrahamson Edmo (Shoshone–Bannock) American Indians interchangeably.
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FIGURE 6.1
Native American Population
Source: Bureau of the Census 2010b.

An estimated 2,475,956 Native Americans and Alaskan natives lived in the United States in 2010. This represents an increase of about 9 percent over 2000 compared to a growth of about 1 percent among White non-Hispanics. In addition to this 2.5 million people who gave American Indian or Alaskan Native as their sole racial identification, another 2.3 million people listed multiple responses that included American Indian. As is shown in Figure 6.1, Native Americans are located throughout the United States but most present in the areas of the Southwest, Northwest, northern Great Plains, and Alaska (Humes et al. 2011).

Early European Contacts
Native Americans have been misunderstood and ill treated by their conquerors for several centuries. Assuming that he had reached the Indies, Christopher Columbus called the native residents “people of India.” The European immigrants who followed Columbus did not understand them any more than the Native Americans could have anticipated the destruction of their way of life. But the Europeans had superior weaponry, and the diseases they brought wiped out huge numbers of indigenous people throughout the Western hemisphere. The first explorers of the Western hemisphere came long before Columbus and Leif Eriksson. The ancestors of today’s Native Americans were hunters in search of wild game, including mammoths and long-horned bison. For thousands of years, these people spread through the Western hemisphere, adapting to its many physical environments. Hundreds of cultures evolved, including the complex societies of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec (Deloria 1995, 2004). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to describe the many tribal cultures of North America, let alone the ways of life of Native Americans in Central and South America and
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Native Americans: The First Americans the islands of the Caribbean. We must appreciate that the term Indian culture is a convenient way to gloss over the diversity of cultures, languages, religions, kinship systems, and political organizations that existed—and, in many instances, remain—among the peoples referred to collectively as Native Americans or American Indians. For example, in 1500, an estimated 700 distinct languages were spoken in the area north of Mexico. For simplicity’s sake, we refer to these many cultures as Native American, but we must be always mindful of the differences this term conceals. Similarly, we refer to non–Native Americans as non-Indians, recognizing in this context that this term encompasses many groups, including Whites, African Americans, and Hispanics in some instances (J. Schwartz 1994; Swagerty 1983). The number of Native Americans north of the Rio Grande, estimated at about 10 million in 1500, gradually decreased as their food sources disappeared and they fell victim to diseases such as measles, smallpox, and influenza. By 1800, the Native American population was about 600,000; by 1900, it had been reduced to less than 250,000. This loss of human life can only be judged as catastrophic. The United States does not bear total responsibility. The pattern had been well established by the early Spaniards in the Southwest and by the French and English colonists who sought to gain control of the eastern seaboard. Native Americans did have warfare between tribes, which presumably reduces the guilt for European-initiated warfare. However, their conflicts differed significantly from those of the conquerors. The Europeans launched large campaigns against the tribes, resulting in mass mortality. In contrast, in the Americas, the tribes limited warfare to specific campaigns designed for very specific purposes such as recapturing a resource or avenging a loss. Not all the initial contacts led to deliberate loss of life. Some missionaries traveled well in advance of settlement in efforts to Christianize the Native Americans before they came into contact with other less-tolerant Europeans. Fur trappers, vastly outnumbered by Native Americans, were forced to learn their customs, but these trappers established routes of commerce that more and more non-Indians were to follow (Snipp 1989; Swagerty 1983; Thornton 1991). Gradually, the policies directed from Europe toward the indigenous peoples of North America resembled the approach described in the world systems theory. As introduced in Chapter 1, the world systems theory takes the view that the global economic system is divided between nations that control wealth and those that provide natural resources and labor. The indigenous peoples and, more important to the Europeans, the land they occupied were regarded as targets of exploitation by Spain, England, France, Portugal, and other nations with experience as colonizers in Africa and Asia (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1998).

Treaties and Warfare
The United States formulated a policy during the nineteenth century toward Native Americans that followed the precedents established during the colonial period. The government policy was not to antagonize the Native Americans unnecessarily. Yet if the needs of tribes interfered with the needs, or even the whims, of non-Indians, then Whites were to have precedence. Tribes were viewed as separate nations to be dealt with by treaties arrived at through negotiations with the federal government. Fair-minded as that policy might seem, it was clear from the very beginning that the non-Indian people’s government would deal harshly with the tribal groups that refused to agree to treaties. Federal relations with the Native Americans were the responsibility of the secretary of war. Consequently, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1824 to coordinate the government’s relations with the tribes, it was placed in the Department of War. The government’s primary emphasis was on maintaining peace and friendly relations along the frontier. Nevertheless, as settlers moved the frontier westward, they encroached more and more on land that Native Americans had inhabited for centuries. The Indian Removal Act, passed in 1830, called for the relocation of all Eastern tribes across the Mississippi River. The Removal Act was very popular with non–American Indians because it opened more land to settlement through annexation of tribal land. Almost all non-Indians felt that the Native Americans had no right to block progress—which was defined as movement by White society. Among the largest groups relocated were the five tribes of the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Seminole, who were resettled in what is now Oklahoma. The movement, lasting more than a decade, has been called the Trail of Tears because the tribes left their ancestral lands under the harshest conditions. Poor planning, corrupt officials,

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world systems theory a view of the global economic system as divided between nations that control wealth and those that provide natural resources and labor

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little attention to those ill from a variety of epidemics, inadequate supplies, and the deaths of several thousand Native Americans characterized the forced migration (Hirsch 2009). The Removal Act disrupted Native American cultures but didn’t move the tribes far enough or fast enough to stay out of the path of the ever-advancing non-American Indian settlers. After the Civil War, settlers moved westward at an unprecedented pace. The federal government negotiated with the many tribes but primarily enacted legislation that affected them with minimal consultation. The government’s first priority was almost always to allow the settlers to live and work regardless of Native American claims. Along with the military defeat of the tribes, the federal government tried to limit the functions of tribal leaders. If tribal institutions were weakened, it was felt, the Native Americans would assimilate more rapidly. The more significant federal actions that continue up to the present are summarized in Table 6.1.

The Case of the Sioux
The nineteenth century was devastating for every Native American tribe in the areas claimed by the United States. No tribe was the same after federal policy touched it. The treatment of the Great Sioux Nation was especially cruel and remains fresh in the minds of tribal members even today. In an effort to safeguard non-Indian settlers, the United States signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 with the Sioux, who were then led by Red Cloud. The government agreed to keep non-Indians from hunting or settling on the newly established Great Sioux Reservation, which included all of the land that is now South Dakota, west of the Missouri River. In exchange, the Sioux relinquished most of the remaining land they occupied at that time. The first few years saw relative peace, except for some raids by warrior bands under the leadership of medicine man Sitting Bull. Red Cloud even made a much-publicized trip to Washington and New York in 1870. A flood of non-Indian people eventually entered the Sioux territory, spurred on by Colonel George Custer’s exaggerated 1874 reports of gold in the Black Hills. Hostilities followed, and bands of Native Americans were ordered to move during the winter, when

TABLE 6.1
Major Federal Policies Year 1830 1887 1934 1934 1946 1952 1953 1971 1974 1975
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Policy Removal Act Allotment Act Reorganization Act Johnson-O’Malley Act Indian Claims Commission Employment Assistance Program Termination Act Alaska Native Settlement Act Indian Financing Act Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act Indian Gaming Regulation Act Native American Graves and Repatriation Act Indian Arts and Crafts Act American Indian Religious Freedom Act

Central Feature Relocated Eastern tribes westward Subdivided tribal lands into individual household plots Required tribes to develop election-based governments and leaders Aided public school districts with Native American enrollments Adjudicated litigation by tribes against the federal government Relocated reservation people to urban areas for jobs Closed reservations and their federal services Recognized legally the lands of tribal people Fostered economic development Increased involvement by tribal people and governments Allowed states to negotiate gaming rights to reservations Returned Native remains to tribes with authentic claims Monitored authenticity of crafts Sought to protect tribal spirituality including use of peyote

1986 1990 1990 1994

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Native Americans: The First Americans travel was impossible. When the Sioux failed to move, Custer moved in to pacify them and the neighboring Cheyenne. Relying on Crow scouts, Custer underestimated the strength of the Sioux warriors under the leadership of Crazy Horse. The ensuing Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 was the last great Sioux victory. After the battle, the large encampment of warriors scattered throughout the plains into small bands and were defeated one by one by a Congress and an army more determined than ever to subdue the Sioux. In 1876, the Sioux reluctantly sold the Black Hills and agreed to the reduction of the Great Sioux Reservation to five much smaller ones. Unable to hunt game as they traditionally had, the Sioux found life unbearable on the reservation. They sought escape through the supernatural Ghost Dance, a religion that included dances and songs proclaiming the return of the buffalo and the resurrection of dead ancestors in a land free of non-Indian people. The religion soon became what social scientists call a millenarian movement, a movement founded on the belief that a cataclysmic upheaval would occur in the immediate future, followed by collective salvation. The movement originated among the Paiutes of Nevada and, ironically, spread northward to the Plains Indians via the cornerstone of the government’s assimilationist policy: the schools. The English that Native Americans learned in the mission or government schools gave them the means to overcome the barriers of tribal languages and communicate with one another. By 1890, about 65 percent of the tribes in the West, according to sociologist Russell Thornton (1981), were involved in this movement. From a functionalist perspective, this millenarian movement can be viewed as a means of coping with the domination of non-Indian intruders. Although the Ghost Dance was harmless to non-Indians, they feared that the new tribal solidarity encouraged by the movement would lead to renewed warfare. As a result, more troops were summoned to areas where the Ghost Dance had become popular. In late December 1890, anticipating that a massive Ghost Dance would be staged, a cavalry division arrived at an encampment of Teton Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge, South Dakota, reservation. When the soldiers began to disarm the warriors, a random shot was fired at the soldiers, touching off a close-range battle. The cavalry then turned its artillery on men, women, and children. Approximately 300 Sioux and 25 government soldiers were killed in the ensuing fighting, which is now called the Battle of Wounded Knee. One Sioux witness later recalled, “We tried to run, but they shot us like we were a buffalo. I know there are some good white people, but the soldiers must be mean to shoot children and women” (D. Brown 1971:417). For the federal government, what it considered the Indian problem remained. Despite the effects of disease and warfare, nearly 250,000 Indians still lived, according to the 1890 census. The reservation system constructed in the last decades of the nineteenth century to provide settlements for Native American peoples has formed the basis of the relationship of Native Americans to the government from then until the present.

millenarian movement movements, such as the Ghost Dance, that prophesy a cataclysm in the immediate future, to be followed by collective salvation

The Allotment Act
The Allotment Act of 1887 bypassed tribal leaders and proposed to make individual landowners of tribal members. Each family was given as many as 160 acres under the government’s assumption that, with land, Native Americans would become more like the White homesteaders who were then flooding the not-yet-settled areas of the West.

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Source: © Jeff Kerr
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The effect of the Allotment Act, however, was disastrous. To guarantee that they would remain homesteaders, the act prohibited the Native Americans from selling the land for 25 years. Yet no effort was made to acquaint them with the skills necessary to make the land productive. Many tribes were not accustomed to cultivating land and, if anything, considered such labor undignified, and they received no assistance in adapting to homesteading. Much of the land initially deeded under the Allotment Act eventually came into the possession of White landowners. The land could not be sold legally, but it could be leased with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) serving as the trustee. In this role, the federal government took legal title that included the duty to collect on behalf of the tribal members any revenues generated by non-Indians through mining, oil, timber operations, grazing, or similar activities. The failure of the government to carry this out has been an issue for well over a century. Large parcels of land eventually fell into the possession of non-Indians. For Native Americans who managed to retain the land, the BIA required that, upon the death of the owner, the land be divided equally among all descendants, regardless of tribal inheritance customs. In documented cases, this division resulted in as many as 30 people trying to live off an 80-acre plot of worthless land. By 1934, Native Americans had lost approximately 90 million of the 138 million acres in their possession before the Allotment Act. The land left was generally considered worthless for farming and marginal even for ranching (Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund 2006; Deloria and Lytle 1983).

The Reorganization Act
The assumptions behind the Allotment Act and the missionary activities of the nineteenth century were that it was best for Native Americans to assimilate into the White society, and each individual was best considered apart from his or her tribal identity. Very gradually, in the twentieth century, government officials have accepted the importance of tribal identity. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, known as the Wheeler-Howard Act, recognized the need to use, rather than ignore, tribal identity. But assimilation, rather than movement toward a pluralistic society, was still the goal. Many provisions of the Reorganization Act, including revocation of the Allotment Act, benefited Native Americans. Still, given the legacy of broken treaties, many tribes at first distrusted the new policy. Under the Reorganization Act, tribes could adopt a written constitution and elect a tribal council with a head. This system imposed foreign values and structures. Under it, the elected tribal leader represented an entire reservation, which might include several tribes, some hostile to one another. Furthermore, the leader had to be elected by majority rule, a concept alien to many tribes. Many full-blooded Native Americans resented the provision that mixed-bloods were to have full voting rights. The Indian Reorganization Act did facilitate tribal dealings with government agencies, but the dictation to Native Americans of certain procedures common to White society and alien to the tribes was another sign of forced assimilation. As had been true of earlier government reforms, the Reorganization Act sought to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant society on the dominant group’s terms. In this case, the tribes were absorbed within the political and economic structure of the larger society. Apart from the provision about tribal chairmen who were to oversee reservations with several tribes, the Reorganization Act solidified tribal identity. Unlike the Allotment Act, it recognized the right of Native Americans to approve or reject some actions taken on their behalf. The act still maintained substantial non–Native American control over the reservations. As institutions, the tribal governments owed their existence not to their people but to the BIA. These tribal governments rested at the bottom of a large administrative hierarchy (Cornell 1984; Deloria 1971; McNickle 1973; Washburn 1984; Wax and Buchanan 1975). In 2000, on the 175th anniversary of the BIA, its director, Kevin Guer, a Pawnee, declared that it was “no occasion for celebration as we express our profound sorrow for what the agency has done in the past.” A formal apology followed. The United States is not the only country expressing regret over past actions with its indigenous peoples, as we see in A Global View (Stout 2000).
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A Global View
Australia’s Aboriginal People
The indigenous people of Australia have continuously inhabited the continent for at least 50,000 years. Today, they constitute about 2.4 percent of the total population and, although small in number, their presence based on this long legacy is highly visible. The terms Aboriginal and indigenous people are used here interchangeably. Aboriginals make up many clans, language groups, and communities with little interconnections except those that are occasionally created through kinship or trade. The cultural practices of these indigenous peoples have historically been very diverse. At the time Europeans arrived, an estimated 600–700 groups spoke 200–250 separate languages as distinct from one another as French is to German. In addition, there were many more dialects of a language that could be more or less understood by others. Reflecting this diversity is the spirituality of the people. Although belief systems vary in ways that reflect the changing terrain from the Outback to rainforests, Aboriginals see themselves as having arisen from the land itself and ultimately returning to the land. Collectively, these beliefs are commonly referred to as Dreaming or Dreamtime and sometimes take on a style that Westerners view or label as a cosmology or oral folklore. As was the case with American Indians, the size of Australia’s indigenous population declined dramatically after European settlement as a result of the colonialism. The impact of new diseases, some of which were not life threatening to Europeans, had devastating effects on indigenous communities because they lacked immunity. The number of indigenous people also decreased as a result of their mistreatment, the dispossession of their land, and the disruption and disintegration of their culture. Legally, there historically was little recognition of indigenous people. Only in 1967, Australian citizenship and voting rights were extended to the indigenous people, allowing them access to welfare and unemployment benefits. It would be misleading to view Aboriginal people as passive either in colonial days or more contemporary times with respect to their position in Australia. They have taken an active part in efforts to secure their rights. Reflecting the low regard that White Australians had for the indigenous people, thousands of Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their families and raised by Whites because it was thought that bringing them into the dominant society’s culture was best for them. The government program affected somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of all Aboriginal children from 1910 to 1970. Finally in 2008, the Australian government expressed its regret for the “Stolen Generations” and committed to improve the living conditions and future prospects of all Aboriginal people.
Sources: Anderson 2003; Attwood 2003; Schaefer 2008a.

Reservation Life and Federal Policies
Today, more than one-third of Native Americans live on 557 reservations and trust lands in 33 states, which account for a bit more than 2 percent of the land throughout the United States. Even for those Native Americans who reside far away from the tribal lands, the reservations play a prominent role in their identities (Figure 6.2). More than any other segment of the population, with the exception of the military, the Native American living on the reservation finds his or her life determined by the federal government. From the condition of the roads to the level of fire protection to the quality of the schools, the federal government through such agencies as the BIA and the Public Health Service effectively controls reservation life. Tribes and their leaders are now consulted more than in the past, but the ultimate decisions rest in Washington, D.C., to a degree that is not true for the rest of the civilian population. Many of the policies instituted by the BIA in the twentieth century have been designed with this purpose in mind. Most Native Americans and their organizations do not quarrel with this goal. They may only wish that the government and the White people had never gotten into the Indian business in the first place. Disagreement between the BIA and
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Deer Creek Bois Forte Lummi Red Cliff Vermillion L. Stillaguamish Bad River Swinomish Kalispei Blackfeet Ontonagon Nooksack Ozette Makah Grand Turtle Mt. Red Lake Lac du Flambeau Quileute Upper Skagit Kootenai Portage Rocky Boys Ft. Berthold Hoh River Sauk Sujattle Keweenaw Bay Ft. Peck Spokane Tulalip Flathead Quinault Lac Vieux Desert Prairie Island Malecite Standing Port Gamble Micmac White Earth Sokaogon Lower Elwha Northern Rock Bay Mills Leech Lake Houlton Muckleshoot Jamestown Klallam Coeur D’Alene Ft. Belknap Cheyenne Sandy Lake Sault Ste. Marie Maliseets Puyallup Suquamish Crow Sisseton Cheyenne Ottawa and Chippewa Yakima Mille Lacs Picuris Nez Perce Mohawk Shoalwater Bay Penobscot Lac Courte Hannahville River Upper Sioux Grande Ronde San Juan Skokomish Grand Traverse Oreilles Lower Brule Warm Umatilla Pojoaque Squaxin Island Siletz Lower Isabella Winnebago Wind River Flandreau Tonawanda Springs Passamaquoddy Nambe Chehalis Ogalala Sioux Brotherton St. Croix Burns Palute Tuscarora Yankton Oneida Tesuque Sioux Alsea, Molalla, Prior Lake Umpqua Summit Lake Stockbridge Potawatomi Cattaraugus Cayuga Onodaga Rosebud Shosone-Bannock Menominee Nipmuc Umpqua, etc. Klamath Ft. McDermitt -Munsee Pequot Seneca Santee Sioux Omaha Winnebago Pit River Umpqua-Siuslaw Shoeshone-Paiute Sac and Fox Allegany Washakie Shagticoke Wampanoag Winnemucca Te-Moak Hoopa Valley Uintah and Skull Paugusett Miami Narragansett Reno-Sparks Southern Ute Ouray Valley Pyramid Mohegan Round Valley Sauk and Fox Iowa San Iidefonso Goshute Modoc Lake Montauk Moor Kickapoo Santa Clara Palute Wyandotte Pawnee Shinnecock Potawatomi Ely Fallon Otoe-Missouri Chippewa and Munsee Delaweare Iowa Nanticoke Poosepatuck Ute Yomba Havasupai Kaw Rappahanock Ponca Peoria Numerous Mountain Duckwater Upper Mattaponi Tonkawa Pamunkey CheyenneEastern Shawnee small Ute Walker R. Palute Picuris Amherst Arapaho Ottawa rancherias Taos Yerrington Mattaponi Kalbab San Juan Chickahominy Shoshone Washoe Caddo Osage Quapaw Navajo Pojoaque Cuban Kiowa Wyandotte Nambe Hopi Haliwa Moapa YavapaiHualapi Cherokee Canoncito Tesuque Seneca-Cayuga Ft. Mojave Apache Coharie Tule River Catawba Cochiti Yavapai Miami Delaware White Chemeheuvi Lumbee Santa Ynez MohaveSanto Domingo Cherokee Mt. Waccamaw Palute Ft. Sill Apache Santa Ana Creek San Mission Indians Comanche Quechan Choctaw Carlos San Felipe Sac and Fox Summerville Apache Jamul Diegueño Sandia Creek Tonto Wichita PimaYsleta Isleta Colorado River Apache Seminole Choctaw Maricopa Kickapoo Cocopah Yaqui Chickasaw Mescalero Creek Potawatomi O’odhkam Tunica-Biloxi Choctaw Tohono Choctaw Alabama-Coushatta Coushatta (Papago) Chitimacha Inuit Acoma Laguna Zuñi Houma Texas Shawnee Rumah Navajo Kickapoo Alamo Navajo Athabascan Seminole

Federal Indian reservations Federal Indian groups without reservations

State Indian reservations Other Indian groups

Inuit
Tling it

Not all small groups in the lower 48 states are shown. Many Indians now live in urban areas such as Baltimore, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Miccosukee

Terminated (only Klamath shown)

Aleu

t

Annette Island (Tsimshian) Alaska has more than 200 Native communities. Shown are the general locations of the Inuits (Eskimos), Aleuts, and Athabascan and Tlingit Indians.

FIGURE 6.2
Native American Lands and Communities
Source: Bureau of Indian Affairs 1986:12–13.

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the tribes and among Native Americans themselves has focused on how to reduce federal control and subsidies, not on whether they should be reduced. The government has taken three steps in this direction since World War II. Two of these measures have been the formation of the Indian Claims Commission and the passage of the Termination Act. The following section shows how the third step, the Employment Assistance Program, has created a new meeting place for Native Americans in cities, far from their native homelands and the reservations.

Native American Legal Claims
Native Americans have had a unique relationship with the federal government. As might be expected, little provision was ever made for them as individuals or tribes to bring grievances against the government. From 1863 to 1946, Native Americans could bring no claim against the government without a special act of Congress, a policy that prevented most charges of treaty violations. Only 142 claims were heard during those 83 years. In 1946, Congress created the Indian Claims Commission and gave it authority to hear all tribal cases against the government. The three-member commission was also given a 5-year deadline. However, the commission’s term was extended and extended again, until abolished in 1978, with its cases now being heard by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. In 2011, both the Court and Congress was trying to settle cases. In 1986, Eloise Corbell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe in Montana, brought a class-action lawsuit on behalf of a half-million American Indians, charging that the government had cheated them of billions in royalties under the trust arrangements created by the Allotment Act of 1887. The courts ruled that the BIA and other government agencies had extremely poor records even from recent times, much less going back in time. How difficult had been the federal government defense in the Corbell case? The BIA shut down its Web site over fear that any information it gave out about almost anything could be wrong. The Department of Interior, by its own accounts, is spending more than $100 million annually in attempts
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Native Americans: The First Americans to clean up the record keeping in a manner that will allow it to defend itself in court eventually. In late 2009, the federal government agreed to a settlement of $3.4 billion including individual payments of at least $1,500 to 300,000 individual American Indians (Capriccioso 2011a). In specific land issues apart from the Corbell class action lawsuit, Native Americans often express a desire to recover their land rather than accept any financial settlements. After numerous legal decisions favoring the Sioux Indians, including a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress finally agreed to pay $106 million for the land that was illegally seized in the aftermath of the Battle of the Little Big Horn described earlier. The Sioux rejected the money and lobbied for measures, such as the 1987 Black Hills Sioux Nation Act in Congress, to return the land to the tribe. No positive action has yet been taken on these measures. In the meantime, however, the original settlement, the subsequent unaccepted payments, and the accrued interest brought the 2011 total of funds being held for the Sioux to more than $1 billion. Despite the desperate need for housing, food, healthcare, and education, the Sioux still would prefer to regain the land lost in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and have not accepted payment (Streshinsky 2011).

In this famous Alexander Gardner photograph at the time of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty talks, the military leaders are identified by name, shown sitting on chairs, and facing the camera. Reflecting the hierarchy of the situation, tribal leaders are not identified, seated on the ground and with their backs to the camera.

The Termination Act
The Termination Act of 1953 initiated the most controversial government policy toward reservation Native Americans in the twentieth century. Like many such policies, the act originated in ideas that were meant to benefit Native Americans. The BIA commissioner, John Collier, had expressed concern in the 1930s over extensive government control of tribal affairs. In 1947, congressional hearings were held to determine which tribes had the economic resources to be relieved of federal control and assistance. The policy proposed at that time was an admirable attempt to give Native Americans greater autonomy while at the same time reducing federal expenditures, a goal popular among taxpayers. The services the tribes received, such as subsidized medical care and college scholarships, should not have been viewed as special and deserving to be discontinued. These services were not the result of favoritism but merely fulfilled treaty obligations. The termination of the Native Americans’ relationship to the government then came to be viewed by Native Americans as a threat to reduce services rather than a release from arbitrary authority. Native Americans might be gaining greater self-governance, but at a high price. Unfortunately, the Termination Act as finally passed in 1953 emphasized reducing costs and ignored individual needs. Recommendations for a period of tax immunity were dropped. According to the act, federal services such as medical care, schools, and road equipment were supposed to be withdrawn gradually. Instead, when the Termination Act’s provisions began to go into effect, federal services were stopped immediately, with minimal coordination between local government agencies and the tribes to determine whether the services could be continued by other means. The effect of the government orders on the Native Americans was disastrous, with major economic upheaval on the affected tribes, who were unable to establish some of the most basic services—such as road repair and fire protection—which the federal government had previously provided. The federal government resumed these services in 1975 with congressional action that signaled the end of another misguided policy intended to be good for tribal peoples (Deloria 1969; Fixico 1988; Tyler 1973; Wax and Buchanan 1975).

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Employment Assistance Program
The depressed economic conditions of reservation life might lead us to expect government initiatives to attract business and industry to locate on or near reservations. The government could provide tax incentives that would eventually pay for themselves. However,
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such proposals have not been advanced. Rather than take jobs to the Native Americans, the federal government decided to lead the more highly motivated away from the reservation. This policy has further devastated the reservations’ economic potential. In 1952, the BIA began programs to relocate young Native Americans to urban areas. One of these programs, after 1962, was called the Employment Assistance Program (EAP). The EAP’s primary provision was for relocation, individually or in families, at government expense, to urban areas where job opportunities were greater than those on the reservations. The BIA stressed that the EAP was voluntary, but this was a fiction given the viable economic alternatives open to American Indians. The program was not a success for the many Native Americans who found the urban experience unsuitable or unbearable. By 1965, one-fourth to one-third of the people in the EAP had returned to their home reservations. So great was the rate of return that in 1959 the BIA stopped releasing data on the percentage of returnees, fearing that they would give too much ammunition to critics of the EAP (Bahr 1972). The movement of Native Americans into urban areas has had many unintended consequences. It has further reduced the labor force on the reservation. Those who leave tend to be better educated, creating the Native American version of the brain drain described in Chapter 4. Urbanization unquestionably contributed to the development of an intertribal network, or pan-Indian movement, which we describe later in this chapter. The city became the new meeting place of Native Americans, who learned of their common predicament both in the city and on the federally administered reservations. Government agencies also had to develop a policy of continued assistance to nonreservation Native Americans; despite such efforts, the problems of Native Americans in cities persist.

Collective Action
Native Americans have worked collectively through tribal or reservation government action and across tribal lines. As we noted in Chapter 1, the panethnic development of solidarity among ethnic subgroups has been reflected in the use of such terms as Hispanic, Latino, and Asian American. Pan-Indianism refers to intertribal social movements in which several tribes, joined by political goals but not by kinship, unite in a common identity. Today, these pan-Indian efforts are most vividly seen in cultural efforts and political protests of government policies (Cornell 1996; Jolivette 2008). Proponents of this movement see the tribes as captive nations or even colonies. They generally see the enemy as the federal government. Until recently, pan-Indian efforts usually failed to overcome the cultural differences and distrust between tribal groups. However, some efforts to unite have succeeded. The Iroquois made up a six-tribe confederation dating back to the seventeenth century. The Ghost Dance briefly united the Plains tribes in the 1880s, some of which had earlier combined to resist the U.S. Army. But these were the exceptions. It took nearly a century and a half of BIA policies to accomplish a significant level of unification. The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), founded in 1944 in Denver, Colorado, was the first national organization representing Native Americans. The NCAI registered itself as a lobby in Washington, D.C., hoping to make the Native American perspective heard in the aftermath of the Reorganization Act described earlier. Concern about “White people’s meddling” is reflected in the NCAI requirement that non-Indian members pay twice as much in dues. The NCAI has had its successes. Early in its history, it played an important role in creating the Indian Claims Commission, and it later pressured the BIA to abandon the practice of termination. It is still the most important civil rights organization for Native Americans and uses tactics similar to those of the NAACP, although the problems facing African Americans and Native Americans are legally and constitutionally different. A later arrival was the more radical American Indian Movement (AIM), the most visible pan-Indian group. The AIM was founded in 1968 by Clyde Bellecourt (of the White Earth Chippewa) and Dennis Banks (of the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux), both of whom then lived in Minneapolis. Initially, AIM created a patrol to monitor police actions and document charges of police brutality. Eventually, it promoted programs for alcohol rehabilitation and school reform. By 1972, AIM was nationally known not for its

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pan-Indianism intertribal social movements in which several tribes, joined by political goals but not by kinship, unite in a common identity

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Native Americans: The First Americans neighborhood-based reforms but for its aggressive confrontations with the BIA and law enforcement agencies.

fish-ins tribes’ protests over government interference with their traditional rights to fish as they like

Protest Efforts

Fish-ins began in 1964 to protest interference by Washington State officials with Native Americans who were fishing, as they argued, in accordance with the 1854 Treaty of Medicine Creek, and were not subject to fine or imprisonment, even if they did violate White society’s law. The fish-ins had protesters fishing en masse in restricted waterways. This protest was initially hampered by disunity and apathy, but several hundred Native Americans were convinced that civil disobedience was the only way to bring attention to their grievances with the government. Legal battles followed, and the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the treaty rights in 1968. Other tribes continued to fight in the courts, but the fish-ins brought increased public awareness of the deprivations of Native Americans. These fishing rights battles continue today with the Chippewas in Wisconsin and Nez Perce in Idaho, among others (Bobo and Tuan 2006; Johnson 2005). The fish-ins were only the beginning. After the favorable Supreme Court decision in 1968, other events followed in quick succession. In 1969, members of the San Francisco Indian Center seized Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. The 13-acre island was an abandoned maximum-security federal prison, and the federal government was undecided about how to use it. The Native Americans claimed the “excess property” in exchange for $24 in glass beads and cloth, following the precedent set in the sale of Manhattan more than three centuries earlier. With no federal response and the loss of public interest in the demonstration, the protesters left the island more than a year later. The activists’ desire to transform it into a Native American cultural center was ignored. Despite the outcome, the event gained international publicity for their cause. Red Power was born, and Native Americans who sympathized with the BIA were labeled “Uncle Tomahawks” or “apples” (red on the outside, white on the inside). The most dramatic confrontation between Native Americans and the government came in what came to be called the Battle of Wounded Knee II. In January 1973, AIM leader Russell Means led an unsuccessful drive to impeach Richard Wilson as tribal chairman of the Oglala Sioux tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In the next month, Means, accompanied by some 300 supporters, started a 70-day occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, site of the infamous cavalry assault in 1890 and now part of the Pine Ridge Reservation. The occupation received tremendous press coverage. However, the coverage did not affect the outcome. Negotiations between AIM and the federal government on the occupation itself brought no tangible results. Federal prosecutions were initiated against most participants. AIM leaders Russell Means and Dennis Banks eventually faced prosecution on a number of felony charges, and both men were imprisoned. AIM had less visibility as an organization then. Russell Means wryly remarked in 1984, “We’re not chic now. We’re just Indians, and we have to help ourselves” (Hentoff 1984:23; see also Janisch 2008; Nagel 1988, 1996). The most visible recent AIM activity has been its efforts to gain clemency for one of its leaders, Leonard Peltier. Imprisoned since 1976, Peltier was given two life sentences for murdering two FBI agents the year before on the embattled Sioux reservation of Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Fellow AIM leaders such as Dennis Banks organized a 1994 Walk for Justice to bring attention in Washington, D.C., to the view that Peltier is innocent. This view was supported in two 1992 movie releases: the documentary Incident at Oglala, produced Most reservations today have a measure of selfby Robert Redford, and the more entertaining but fictionalized government through an elected tribal council. Thunderheart. To date, clemency appeals to the president to lift the Pictured is the Navaho tribal council at work.
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federal sentence have gone unheeded, but this issue remains the rallying point for today’s remnants of AIM (Matthiessen 1991; Sandage 2008).

Collective Action: An Overview
Protest activities have created a greater solidarity among Native Americans as they seek solutions to common grievances with government agencies. Research shows that tribal people born since the collective action efforts of the 1960s are more likely to reject negative and stereotypic representations of American Indians than those born before the self-determination efforts. Whether through moderate groups such as the NCAI or the more activist AIM, these pan-Indian developments have awakened Whites to the real grievances of Native Americans and have garnered the begrudging acceptance of even the most conservative tribal members, who are more willing to cooperate with government action (Schulz 1998). However, the results of collective action have not all been productive, even when viewed from a perspective sympathetic to Native American self-determination. The national organizations are dominated by Plains tribes, not only politically but also culturally. Powwow styles of dancing, singing, and costuming derived from the Plains tradition are spreading nationwide as common cultural traits (see Figure 6.3 for the 10 largest tribes). The growing visibility of powwows is symbolic of Native Americans in the 1990s. The phrase pau wau referred to the medicine man or spiritual leader of the Algonquian tribes, but Europeans who watched medicine men dance thought that the word referred to entire events. Over the last hundred years, powwows have evolved into gatherings in which Native Americans of many tribes come to dance, sing, play music, and visit. More recently, they have become organized events featuring competitions and prizes at several thousand locations. The general public sees them as entertainment, but for Native Americans, they are a celebration of their cultures (Eschbach and Applebaum 2000).

American Indian Identity
Today, American Indian identity occurs on two levels: macro and micro. At the macro level is the recognition of tribes; at the micro level is how individuals come to view themselves as American Indian and how this perception is recognized.

powwows Native American gatherings of dancing, singing, music playing, and visiting, accompanied by competitions

Cherokee Navajo Latin American Indian Choctaw Sioux Chippewa Apache Blackfeet
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729,533 281,069 298,197 269,202 180,940 104,354 158,774 87,349 153,360 108,272 149,669 105,907 96,833 57,060 85,750 27,104 80,822 45,212 74,085 59,533
0 100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 600,000 700,000 800,000

American Indian tribal grouping alone or in any combination American Indian tribal grouping alone

Iroquois Pueblo

FIGURE 6.3
Ten Largest American Indian Tribal Groupings, 2000
Source: Ogunwole 2002:10.

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160 Chapter 6 sovereignty tribal self-rule

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While it is easy and common to focus on problems with Native Americans, the vibrancy of native cultures should not be ignored. In Listen to Our Voices, film director and producer Chris Eyre (Cheyenne and Arapaho) speaks to the vibrancy of spirit he sees among Native Americans, especially among the youth.

Sovereignty
Sovereignty refers in this context to tribal self-rule. Supported by every U.S. president since the 1960s, sovereignty is recognition that tribes have vibrant economic and cultural lives. At the same time, numerous legal cases, including many at the level of the Supreme Court, continue to clarify to what extent a recognized tribe may rule itself and to what degree it is subject to state and federal laws. In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7–2 in United States v. Lara that a tribe has the inherent right to prosecute all American Indians, regardless of affiliation, for crimes that occur on the reservation. However, other cases in lower courts continue to chip away at tribal self-government. This legal relationship can be quite complex. For example, tribal members always pay federal income, Social Security, unemployment, and property taxes but do not pay state income tax if they live and work only on the reservation. Whether tribal members on reservations pay sales, gasoline, cigarette, or motor vehicle taxes has been negotiated on a reservation-by-reservation basis in many states.

Listen to Our Voices
“OOOOH, look at that!” “Yes!” she lied, lovingly. Or Shaela exclaims. perhaps she had the foresight My daughter and I watch 30 years ago to think there in fascination as an enormous would be a minority president. grayish-purple cloud sweeps As a Native American over the golden-brown rolling raised in a white environhills of the plains, cascades ment, I have never seen things through the expansive sky in black and white but always and merges with the yellow in many colors and shades of horizon. gray. I love singing country At that moment, I’m aweand western songs at karaoke, struck by the power of the seabut I also love a good powwow son changing from winter to and fry bread. Over the years, spring, and I realize the specmy work as an artist has always Chris Eyre tacle would not be as beautiful been about bridging the gap without the dark gray cloud between the white world and on the horizon. the Native world. I then realized that it had I’m always inspired by the rebirth of the already been done. There have been “Indian seasons. After I was born to my biological rednecks” for years. mother, Rose, of the Southern Cheyenne and I came to appreciate through my work Arapaho tribes, I was reborn within days to that there are good people in both the my adopted parents, Barb and Earl, in a white Native and non-Native world. Though I middle-class home in Klamath Falls, Oregon. also found that the American dream usually As a dark-skinned 5-year-old, I would ask my didn’t include my people, the Natives. For mom what I was going to be when I grew up. example, religious freedom for Natives to “Anything you want!” she said. practice their own traditions was not legally “A fireman?” upheld until 1994. “Yes!” In the next 40 years, the greatest threat to “What about the president?” Native tribal culture and tradition will be the
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Focused on the tribal group, sovereignty remains linked to both the actions of the federal government and the actions of individual American Indians. The government ultimately determines which tribes are recognized, and although tribal groups may argue publicly for their recognition, self-declaration carries no legal recognition. This has always been an issue, but given the rise of casino gambling (discussed shortly), the determination of who constitutes a sovereign tribe and who does not may carry significant economic benefits. The federal government takes this gatekeeping role of sovereignty very seriously—the irony of the conquering people determining who are “Indians” is not lost on many tribal activists. In 1978, the Department of the Interior established what it called the acknowledgment process to decide whether any more tribes should have a government-to-government relationship. They must show that they were a distinct group and trace continuity since 1900 (Light and Rand 2007).

Individual Identity
Most people reflect on their ancestry as a way to find roots or to self-identify themselves. For an individual who perceives themselves to be an American Indian, the process is defined by legalistic language. Recognized tribes establish a standard of ancestry or what some tribes call “blood quantum” to determine who is a tribal member or “enrolled” as on the “tribal rolls.” Understandably, there is some ambivalence about this procedure

American consumer ethic of personal economic gain at all costs. It runs deeply counter to the spirit of giving and codependence that is central to what we are as people. As more Native Americans participate in the wider economy through business initiatives such as gaming, we will also struggle with assimilation, a force that we have fought over the years. It was only about 20 years ago that the public at large allowed Indian gaming as a way to give back to the Indians. Ten years ago, I remember seeing a Native kid at a Southern California powwow driving his parents’ Hummer. A minority of tribes and their reservations have prospered from Indian gaming, but most still live in the same dire conditions. Marginal cultures in the past have rightfully entered the mainstream through business, taking money from the majority and infusing it into their own tribes. It happened with Latinos, Asians and now Natives. It’s the American way. My greatest fear is that after all these years largely as non-participants in the American dream, our inclusion will ultimately kill off tribal languages, traditions and our knowledge. Today, it is inspiring to see the number of strong Native American youth eager to learn more of our ancient traditions and cultures

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from the elders, who are more than happy to share with those who respect them. The youth renaissance is rooted, I think, in the elders’ tenacity, 1970s activism and a backlash against the mass media’s depiction of Native Americans. The dismal portrayal of Native reservations is inaccurate and harmful. The media focus solely on poverty and the cycle of oppression. What most outsiders don’t see is the laughter, love, smiles, constant joking and humor and the unbreakable strength of the tribal spirit that is there. Some reservations are strongholds of community, serving the needs of their people without economic gain but with traditions leading the way. My hope is that Native evolution will be driven by a reinforced traditionalism passed down from one to another. There is a calling not taught in religion or school; it is in one’s heart. It is what the tribe is about: to give to the cycle; to provide for those older and younger. My daughter knows it, just as she knows the natural beauty of seeing the clouds coming in the spring. I love the gray rain.
Source: Eyre 2010.

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Native Americans: The First Americans because it applies some racial purity measures. Still, tribes see it as an important way to guard against potential “wannabes” (Fitzgerald 2008). This process may lead some individuals or entire extended families to be disenrolled. For these people, who perceive themselves as worthy of recognition by a tribe but are denied this coveted “enrollment” status, disputes have resulted that are rarely resolved satisfactorily for all parties involved. This has been occurring for generations but has become contentious recently for those tribes who profit from casino gambling and must determine who is entitled to share in any profits that could be distributed to those on tribal rolls.

Native Americans Today
The United States has taken most of the land originally occupied by or deeded to Native Americans, restricted their movement, unilaterally severed agreements, created a special legal status for them, and, after World War II, attempted to move them again. As a result of these efforts and generally poor economic conditions of most reservations, substantial numbers of Native Americans live in the nation’s most populated urban areas. Watch on mysoclab.com How are Native Americans being treated today? A very public insult is the continuing use of American Indian names as mascots for athletic teams, including high schools, colleges, and many professional sports teams in the United States. Almost all American Indian organizations, including AIM, have brought attention to the use of Native Americans as the mascots of sports teams, such as the Washington Redskins, and to such spectator practices as the “Tomahawk chop” associated with the Atlanta Braves baseball team. Many sports fans and college alumni find it difficult to understand why Native Americans take offense at a name such as “Braves” or even “Redskins” if it is meant to represent a team about which they have positive feelings. For Native Americans, however, the use of such mascots trivializes their past and their presence today. This at best puzzles if not infuriates most Native people, who already face a variety of challenges today. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which oversees college athletics, has asked colleges to “explain” their use of mascot names, nicknames, or logos such as “savages,” “braves,” “warriors,” “chieftains,” “redmen,” and “Indians,” to name a few. In some cases, the NCAA has already banned the appearance of students dressed as such mascots in tournaments. Typically, college alumni and most students wonder what the fuss is about, while most Native people question why they should be so “honored” if they don’t want to be (NCAA 2003a, 2003b; Weiberg 2006). Any discussion of Native American socioeconomic status today must begin with an emphasis on the diversity of the people. Besides the variety of tribal heritages already noted, the contemporary Native American population is split between those on and off reservations and those who live in small towns or central cities. Life in these contrasting social environments is quite different, but enough similarities exist to warrant some broad generalizations on the status of Native Americans in the United States today. The sections that follow summarize the status of contemporary Native Americans in economic development, education, healthcare, religious and spiritual expression, and the environment.

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Economic Development
Native Americans are an impoverished people. Even to the most casual observer of a reservation, poverty is a living reality, not merely numbers and percentages. Some visitors seem unconcerned, arguing that because Native Americans are used to hardship and lived a simple life before the Europeans arrived, poverty is a familiar and traditional way of life. In an absolute sense of dollars earned or quality of housing, Native Americans are no worse off now. But in a relative sense that compares their position with that of non-Indians, they are dismally behind on all standards of income and occupational status. Bureau of Indian Affairs (2005) surveys show that overall unemployment is about 50 percent. Given the lower incomes and higher poverty rates, it is not surprising that the occupational distribution of Native Americans is similarly bleak. Those who are employed are less likely to be managers, professionals, technicians, salespeople, or administrators. This pattern of low-wage employment is typical of many racial and ethnic minorities in the

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United States, but Native Americans differ in three areas: their roles in tourism, casino gambling, and government employment. Tourism Tourism is an important source of employment for many reservation residents, who either serve the needs of visitors directly or sell souvenirs and craft items. Generally, such enterprises do not achieve the kind of success that improves the tribal economy significantly. Even if they did, sociologist Murray Wax (1971:69) argued, “It requires a special type of person to tolerate exposing himself and his family life to the gaze of tourists, who are often boorish and sometimes offensively condescending in their attitudes.” Tourism, in light of exploitation of tribal people, is a complex interaction of the outside with Native American. Interviews with tourists visiting museums and reservations found that, regardless of the presentation, many visitors interpreted their brief experiences to be consistent with their previously held stereotypes of and prejudices toward Native Americans. Yet, at the other extreme, some contemporary tourists conscious of the historical context are uncomfortable taking in Native foods and purchasing crafts at tribal settlements despite the large economic need many reservations have for such commerce (Laxson 1991; Padget 2004). Craftwork rarely realizes the profits that most Native Americans desire and need. The trading-post business has also taken its toll on Native American cultures. Many craft workers have been manipulated by other Native Americans and non-Indians to produce what the tourists want. Creativity and authenticity often are replaced by mechanical duplication of “genuine Indian” curios. There continues to be concern and controversy surrounding art such as paintings and pottery that may not be produced by real Native Americans. In 1935, the federal government had created the Indian Arts and Crafts Board to promote tribal arts. The influx of fraudulent crafts was so great that Congress added to its responsibilities the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, which severely punishes anyone who offers to sell an object as produced by a Native American artisan when it was not. The price of both economic and cultural survival is very high (McCoy 2004). Casino Gambling A more recent source of significant income and some employment has been the introduction of gambling on reservations. Forms of gambling, originally part of tribal ceremonies or celebrations, existed long before Europeans arrived in the Western hemisphere. Today, however, commercial gambling is the only viable source of employment and revenue available to several tribes. Read on mysoclab.com Under the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, states must negotiate gambling agreements with reservations and cannot prohibit any gambling already allowed under state law. By 2009, 237 tribal governments in 28 states were operating a variety of gambling operations, including off-track betting, casino tables such as blackjack and roulette, lotteries, sports betting, video games of chance, telephone betting, slot machines, and high-stakes bingo. The gamblers, almost all non–Native Americans, sometimes travel long distances for the opportunity to wager money. The actual casinos are a form of tribal government enterprise as opposed to private business operations. The economic impact on some reservations has been enormous, and nationwide receipts amounted to $26.4 billion in 2009 from reservation casino operations—more than Las Vegas and Atlantic City combined. However, the wealth is uneven: about two-thirds of the recognized Indian tribes have no gambling ventures. A few successful casinos have led to staggering windfalls, but reliance on a single industry can prove deadly as in the recent recession when the gaming industry in general, and on reservations, took a major hit (Meister 2011). The more typical picture is of moderately successful gambling operations associated with tribes whose social and economic needs are overwhelming. Tribes that have opened casinos have experienced drops in unemployment and increases in household income not seen on nongaming reservations. However, three important factors need to be considered:

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Shown here is the Spanish language version of a promotion for New Moon released in 2009. Perhaps one of strangest tourist developments has been people seeking to relive the Twilight book and movie series by seeking out the Quileute Nation in Washington State. Numbering only 750, this tribe is the subject of the fictionalized account of Native Americans who shapeshift into wolves as enemies of vampires. Those arriving receive a hospitable welcome as tribal members show off their picturesque rainforest location and have now mounted a museum exhibit called “The Real Wolves of the Quileute.”

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First, the tribes do pay taxes. They pay $10 billion in gambling-generated taxes to local, state, and federal governments. That still leaves significant profits that can be paid out to tribal members or reinvested in collective tribal operations. Second, nationwide the economic and social impact of this revenue is limited. The tribes that make substantial revenue from gambling are a small fraction of all Native American people. Third, even on the reservations that benefit from gambling enterprises, the levels of unemployment are substantially higher and the family income significantly lower than for the nation as a whole. (Bartlett and Steele 2002; Katel 2006:365; Meister 2011; National Indian Gaming Association 2006; Sahagun 2004; Taylor and Kalt 2005) Criticism is not hard to find, even among Native Americans, some of whom oppose gambling both on moral grounds and because it is marketed in a form that is incompatible with Native American cultures. Opponents are concerned about the appearance of compulsive gambling among some tribal members. The majority of the gamblers are not Native Americans, and almost all of the reservation casinos, though owned by the tribes, are operated by non-Indian-owned businesses. Some tribal members feel that the casinos trivialize and cheapen their heritage. The issue of who shares in gambling profits also has led to heated debates in some tribal communities about who is a member of the tribe. In addition, established White gaming interests lobby Congress to restrict the tribes, which account for about 29 percent of total gaming revenue, so they do not compete with nonreservation casinos (Toensing 2011). Native Americans’ voting clout is very weak compared to that of even African Americans and Latinos, but their lobbying power has become significant. Casino money fueled the 2006 scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who cheated several tribes by pretending to lobby on their behalf. Although many of the political donations Native Americans make are aimed at protecting reservation casinos, tribes’ political agendas include obtaining federal grants for education, roads, housing, and other projects. By the 2007–2008 election cycle, tribes with casinos accounted for four of the top donors nationwide (Capriccioso 2011b). Although income from gambling has not dramatically changed the lifestyle of most Native Americans, it has been a magnet of criticism from outsiders. Critics question the special status being afforded to Native Americans and contend that there should be an even playing field. This view certainly would have been endorsed by tribal members, because most of what passed for government policies over the last 200 years placed tribes at a major disadvantage. Attention is drawn to some tribes that had made contributions to politicians involved in policies concerning gambling laws. Although some of these

By either name, gaming or gambling has become big business for a few of the nation’s tribes. Shown here are patrons at Mystic Lake Casino, which is operated by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux outside Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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contributions may have been illegal, the national media attention was far more intense than was warranted in the messy area of campaign financing. It is another example of how the notion that Native Americans are now playing the White man’s game of capitalism “too well” becomes big news (Drinkard 2006a, 2006b; Glionna 2004). We have examined the sources of economic development such as tourism and legalized gambling, but the dominant feature of reservation life is, nevertheless, unemployment. A government report issued by the Full Employment Action Council opened with the statement that such words as severe, massive, and horrendous are appropriate to describe unemployment among Native Americans. Official unemployment figures for reservations range from 23 percent to 90 percent. It is little wonder that census data released in 2010 showed that the poorest county in the nation was wholly on tribal lands: Ziebach County, South Dakota, of the Cheyenne River Reservation, had a 62 percent poverty rate. Two of the other poorest six were defined by the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservation. The other poor counties were either in the devastated Gulf coast area or defined largely by a prison facility (Joseph 2010). The economic outlook for Native Americans need not be bleak. A single program is not the solution; the diversity of both Native Americans and their problems demands a multifaceted approach. The solutions need not be unduly expensive; indeed, because the Native American population is very small compared with the total population, programs with major influence may be financed without significant federal expenditures. Murray Wax (1971) observed that reformers viewing the economically depressed position of Native Americans often seize on education as the key to success. As the next section shows, improving educational programs for Native Americans would be a good place to start.

Education
Government involvement in the education of Native Americans dates as far back as a 1794 treaty with the Oneida Indians. In the 1840s, the federal government and missionary groups combined to start the first school for American Indians. By 1860, the government was operating schools that were free of missionary involvement. Today, laws prohibit federal funds for Native American education from going to sectarian schools. Also, since the passage of the Johnson-O’Malley Act in 1934, the federal government has reimbursed public school districts that include Native American children. Federal control of the education of Native American children has had mixed results from the beginning. Several tribes started their own school systems at the beginning of the nineteenth century, financing the schools themselves. The Cherokee tribe developed an extensive school system that taught both English and Cherokee, the latter using an alphabet developed by the famed leader Sequoyah. Literacy for the Cherokees was estimated by the mid-1800s at 90 percent, and they even published a bilingual newspaper. The Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole also maintained school systems. But by the end of the nineteenth century, all these schools had been closed by federal order. Not until the 1930s did the federal government become committed to ensuring an education for Native American children. Despite the push for educational participation, by 1948 only one-quarter of the children on the Navajo reservation, the nation’s largest, were attending school (Pewewardy 1998). Educational Attainment and Quality A serious problem in Native American education has been the unusually low level of enrollment. In Figure 6.4, we compare educational attainment of the largest tribal groups with all-White non-Hispanics. Nationwide about 15 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds were high school dropouts compared to 6.4 among Whites of a similar age. The term dropout is misleading because many tribal American schoolchildren have found their educational experience so hostile that they have no choice but to leave. In 2005, the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled that a school serving the Lakota Sioux tribe was routinely calling in the police to deal with the slightest misbehavior. The youth soon developed a juvenile record leading to what was termed a “school-to-discipline pipeline” (Dell’Angela 2005; DeVoe et al. 2008). Rosalie Wax (1967) conducted a detailed study of the education among the Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. She concluded that terms such as kickout or pushout are more appropriate. The children are not so much hostile toward school as they are set apart from it; they are socialized by their parents to be independent and not

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kickouts or pushouts Native American school dropouts who leave behind an unproductive academic environment

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Total non-Hispanic White population American Indian and Alaska Native

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to embarrass their peers, but teachers reward docile acceptance and expect schoolchildren to correct one another 29.1 29.2 30.2 11.5 in public. Socialization is not all that separates home from school. TeachAmerican Indian 27.4 29.0 31.5 12.1 ers often are happy to find parents not 31.0 29.0 31.5 8.5 Apache “interfering” with their job. Parents do not visit the school, and teachers avoid 23.4 28.3 32.6 15.7 Cherokee the homes, a pattern that only furthers 22.1 31.7 35.9 10.3 Chippewa the isolation of school from home. This 20.4 30.6 33.0 16.3 Choctaw lack of interaction results partly from the predominance of non–Native Amer18.1 30.1 34.6 17.1 Creek ican teachers, many of whom do not rec20.4 30.3 33.0 16.3 Iroquois ognize the learning styles of American Lumbee 35.3 29.0 23.2 12.5 Indian students, although the situation is improving (Hilberg and Tharp 2002). 37.3 27.7 28.1 6.9 Navajo The quality of Native American edu23.7 33.4 33.3 9.6 Pueblo cation is more difficult to measure than 23.8 30.5 34.9 10.8 Sioux the quantity. How does one measure excellence? And excellence for what? White society? Tribal life? Both? There Alaska Native 25.4 39.3 27.9 7.4 is evidence neither is working very well. Alaska Athabascan 24.6 39.6 28.6 7.2 For example, Native American chil22.5 39.6 29.9 7.9 Aleut dren are much less likely to complete advanced academic courses in English, 29.7 40.9 23.4 6.0 Eskimo science, mathematics, or foreign lan17.6 34.6 37.3 10.6 Tlingit-Haida guages than Whites or, for that matter, significantly less than any other racial High school Some college or Bachelor’s Less than high or ethnic minority. graduate associate’s degree degree or more school graduate Do Native Americans see a curricuFIGURE 6.4 lum that, at the very least, considers the Educational Attainment 2000 unique aspects of their heritage. HopeSource: Ogunwole 2006:8. fully things have changed since Charles Silberman (1971:173) reported visiting a sixth-grade English class in a school on a Chippewa reservation where the students were all busily at work writing a composition for Thanksgiving: “Why We Are Happy the Pilgrims Came.” Evidence of having Native cultures in the curriculum is uneven. Among teachers of eighth-graders about one in four report such presentations more than once a month in any subject among those attending schools at least one-fourth American (DeVoe et al. 2008). In Research Focus, we consider the importance of incorporating native teachings and cultures on the largest American Indian reservation.
11.4 33.1 26.8 28.7

Higher Education The picture for Native Americans in higher education is decidedly mixed, with some progress and some promise. Enrollment in college increased steadily from the mid-1970s through the beginning of the twenty-first century, but degree completion, especially the completion of professional degrees, may actually be declining. The economic and educational background of Native American students, especially reservation residents, makes the prospect of entering a predominantly White college a very difficult decision. Native American students may soon feel isolated and discouraged, particularly if the college does not help them understand the alien world of American-style higher education. Even at campuses with large numbers of Native Americans in their student bodies, only a few Native American faculty members or advisors are present to serve as role models. Another encouraging development in higher education in recent years has been the creation of tribally controlled colleges, usually two-year community colleges. The Navajo Community College (now called Diné College), the first such institution, was established in 1968, and by 2011 there were 33 tribal colleges in 14 states, with more than 16,000 students enrolled. Besides serving in some rural areas as the only educational institution for many miles, these colleges also provide services such as counseling and childcare. Tribal
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Research Focus
Learning the Navajo Way
What leads to academic success? Often the answer is a supportive family, but this has not always been said about Native Americans. Educators rooted in the European education traditions often argue that American Indian families whose children are faithful to the traditional cultures cannot succeed in schools. This assimilationist view argues that to succeed in larger White-dominated society, it is important to begin to shed the “old ways” as soon as possible. Interestingly, research done in the last 10 years has questioned the assimilationist view, concluding that American Indian students can improve their academic performance through educational programs that are less assimilationist and use curricula that build on what the Native American youth learn in their homes and communities. Representative of this growing research is the study completed by sociologist Angela A. A. Willeto among her fellow Navajo tribal people. She studied a random sample of 451 Navajo high school students from 11 different Navajo Nation schools. She examined the impact of the students’ orientation toward traditional Navajo culture on their performance. The prevailing view has been that all that is inherently Navajo in a child must be eliminated and replaced with mainstream White society beliefs and lifestyles. The Navajo tradition was measured by a number of indicators, such as participating in Navajo dances, consulting a medicine man, entering a sweat bath to cleanse oneself spiritually, weaving rugs, living in a traditional hogan, and using the Navajo language. School performance was measured by grades, commitment to school, and aspirations to attend college. Willeto found that the students who lived a more traditional life among the Navajo succeeded in school just as well and were just as committed to success in school and college as high schoolers leading a more assimilated life. These results are important because even many Native Americans accept an assimilationist view. Even within the Navajo Nation, where Navajo language instruction has been mandated in all reservation schools since 1984, many Navajos still equate learning only with the mastery of White society’s subject matter.
Sources: Reyhner 2001; Willeto 1999, 2007.

colleges enable the students to maintain their cultural identity while training them to succeed outside the reservation (American Indian Higher Education Consortium 2011). At higher levels, Native Americans largely disappear from the educational scene. In 2008, of the over 46,000 doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens, 272 went to Native Americans, compared with over 17,000 that went to citizens of foreign countries. This production of doctorates among Native Americans has not changed significantly since at least as far back as 1981 (Bureau of the Census 2010a:187). Overview “Diné bizaad beeyashti!” Unfortunately, this declaration of “I speak Navajo!” is not commonly heard from educators. Gradually, schools have begun to encourage the preservation of native cultures. Until the 1960s, BIA and mission schools forbade speaking in the native languages, so it will take time to produce an educated teacher corps that is knowledgeable in and conversant with native cultures (Linthicum 1993). As we have seen, there are many failures in our effort to educate, not just assimilate, the first Americans. The problems include: underenrollment at all levels, from the primary grades through college; the need to adjust to a school with values that are sometimes dramatically different from those of the home; the need to make the curriculum more relevant; the underfinancing of tribal community colleges; the unique hardships encountered by reservation-born Native Americans who later live in and attend schools in large cities; and
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168 Chapter 6

Native Americans: The First Americans the language barrier faced by the many children who have little or no knowledge of English. Other problems include lack of educational innovation (the BIA had no kindergartens until 1967) and a failure to provide special education to children who need it.

Healthcare
For Native Americans, “healthcare” is a misnomer, another broken promise in the long line of unmet pledges the government has made. Compared to other groups, Native Americans are more likely to have poorer health and unmet medical needs and not be able to afford the care. They are more likely to have higher levels of diabetes, trouble hearing, and activity limitations and to have experienced serious psychological distress (Frieden 2011). In 1955, amidst criticism even then, the responsibility for healthcare through the Indian Health Service (IHS) transferred from the BIA to the Public Health Service. Although the health of Native Americans has improved markedly in absolute terms since the mid-1960s, their overall health is comparatively far behind all other segments of the population. With a new administration in 2009, there was yet another call for the overhaul of healthcare provided to Native Americans. With the pressure to assimilate Native Americans in all aspects of their lives, there has been little willingness to recognize their traditions of healing and treating illnesses. Native treatments tend to be noninvasive, with the patient encouraged to contribute actively to the healing benefits and prevent future recurrence. In the 1990s, a pluralistic effort was slowly emerging to recognize alternative forms of medicine, including those practiced by Native Americans. In addition, reservation healthcare workers began to accommodate traditional belief systems as they administered the White culture’s medicine (Belluck 2009). Contributing to the problems of healthcare and mortality on reservations are often high rates of crime, not all of which is reported. For tribal people along the Mexico–U.S. border, the rising amount and associated violence in the drug trade has only furthered their vulnerability. Poverty and few job opportunities offer an excellent environment for the growth of youth gangs and drug trafficking. All the issues associated with crime can be found on the nation’s reservations. As with other minority communities dealing with poverty, Native Americans strongly support law enforcement but at the same time contend that the very individuals who have been selected to protect them are abusing their people. As with efforts for improving healthcare, the isolation and vastness of some of the reservations make them uniquely vulnerable to crime (Eckholm 2010).

Religious and Spiritual Expression
Like other aspects of Native American cultures, the expression of religion is diverse, reflecting the variety of tribal traditions and the assimilationist pressure of the Europeans. Initially, missionaries and settlers expected Native Americans simply to forsake their traditions for European Christianity, and, as in the case of the repression of the Ghost Dance, sometimes force was used to do so. Today, many Protestant churches and Roman Catholic parishes with large tribal congregations incorporate customs such as the sacred pipe ceremony, native incenses, sweat lodges, ceremonies affirming care for the Earth, and services and hymns in native languages. Whether traditional in nature or reflecting the impact of Europeans, Native people typically embrace a broad world of spirituality. Whereas Christians, Jews, and Muslims adhere to a single deity and often confine spiritual expression to designated sites, traditional American Indian people see considerably more relevance in the whole of the world, including animals, water, and the wind. After generations of formal and informal pressure to adopt Christian faiths and their rituals, in 1978 Congress enacted the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which declares that it is the government’s policy to “protect and preserve the inherent right of American Indians to believe, express, and practice their traditional religions.” However, the act contains no penalties or enforcement mechanisms. For this reason, Hopi leader Vernon Masayesva (1994:93) calls it “the law with no teeth.” Therefore, Native Americans are lobbying to strengthen this 1978 legislation. They are seeking protection for religious

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worship services for military personnel and incarcerated Native Americans, as well as better access to religious relics, such as eagle feathers, and better safeguards against the exploitation of sacred lands (Deloria 1992; Garroutte et al. 2009). A major spiritual concern is the stockpiling of Native American relics, including burial remains. Contemporary Native Americans are increasingly seeking the return of their ancestors’ remains and artifacts, a demand that alarms museums and archeologists. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 requires an inventory of such collections and provides for the return of materials if a claim can be substantiated. In 2010, this was revised to cover all Native American remains—even those that do not have identified ties to a Spirituality among American Indians takes many different forms. tribe (J. Smith 2011). Shown here is a Native American Church peyote ceremony on the In recent years, significant publicity has been given Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. to an old expression of religion: the ritual use of peyote, which dates back thousands of years. The sacramental use of peyote was first observed by Europeans in the 1640s. In 1918, the religious use of peyote, a plant that creates mild psychedelic effects, was organized as the Native American Church (NAC). At first a Southwestbased religion, the NAC has spread since World War II among northern tribes. The use of the substance is a small part of a long and moving ritual. The exact nature of NAC rituals varies widely. Clearly, the church maintains the tradition of ritual curing and the seeking of individual visions. However, practitioners also embrace elements of Christianity, representing a type of religious pluralism of Indian and European identities. Peyote is a hallucinogen, however, and federal and state governments have been concerned about its use by NAC members. Several states passed laws in the 1920s and 1930s prohibiting the use of peyote. In the 1980s, several court cases involved the prosecution of Native Americans who were using peyote for religious purposes. Finally, in 1994, Congress amended the American Indian Religious Freedom Act to allow Native Americans the right to use, transport, and possess peyote for religious purposes (J. Martin 2001). Today’s Native Americans are asking that their traditions be recognized as an expression of pluralist rather than assimilationist coexistence. These traditions are also closely tied to religion. The sacred sites of Native Americans, as well as their religious practices, have been under attack. In the next section, we focus on aspects of environmental disputes that are anchored in the spiritualism of Native Americans (Kinzer 2000; Mihesuah 2000).

Environment
Environmental issues bring together many of the concerns we have previously considered for Native Americans: stereotyping, land rights, environmental justice, economic development, and spiritualism. First, we can find in some of today’s environmental literature stereotypes of Native peoples as the last defense against the encroachment of “civilization.” This image tends to trivialize native cultures, making them into what one author called a “New Age savage” (Waller 1996). Second, many environmental issues are rooted in continuing land disputes arising from treaties and agreements more than a century old. Reservations contain a wealth of natural resources and scenic beauty. In the past, Native Americans often lacked the technical knowledge to negotiate beneficial agreements with private corporations—and even when they did have this ability, the federal government often stepped in and made the final agreements more beneficial to the non–Native Americans than to the residents of the reservations. The Native peoples have always been rooted in their land. It was their land that became the first source of tension and conflict with the Europeans. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is not surprising that land and the natural resources it holds continue to be major concerns. Some Plains American Indian tribes are starting to create wind farms that not only provide power for their own needs but also even allow them to sell extra power (Standen 2010). Racial and Ethnic Groups, Thirteenth Edition, edited by Richard T. Schaefer. Published by Pearson. Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.

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Third, environmental issues reinforce the tendency to treat the first inhabitants of the Americas as inferior. This is manifested in environmental justice—a term introduced in Chapter 3 to describe efforts to ensure that hazardous substances are controlled so that all communities receive protection regardless of race or socioeconomic circumstances. Reservation representatives often express concern about how their lands are used as dumping grounds. For example, the Navajo reservation is home to almost 1,100 abandoned uranium mines. After legal action, the federal government finally provided assistance in 2000 to Navajos who had worked in the mines and were showing ill effects from radiation exposure. Although compensation has been less than was felt necessary, the Navajos continue to moniThe Hualapai (WALL-uh-pie) located in the remote Grand Cantor closely new proposals to use their land. Few reservations yon area outside the National Park have long suffered extreme have escaped negative environmental impact, and some economic poverty. In an effort to overcome this, they commissioned to build this Skywalk for tourists over the canyon observers contend that Native American lands are targeted wall offering an amazing view. However, to some observers it for nuclear waste storage. Critics see this as a de facto polrepresents an assault on the environment. In response, Native icy of nuclear colonialism, whereby reservations are forced Americans say they should be able to take advantage of the to accept all the hazards of nuclear energy, but the Native land at times, just like the White man has for centuries. American people have seen few of its benefits (Frosch 2009). Fourth, environmental concerns by American Indians environmental justice often are balanced against economic development needs, just as they are in the larger sociefforts to ensure that ety. On some reservations, authorization by timber companies to access hardwood forests led hazardous substances to very conflicted feelings among American Indians. However, such arrangements often are are controlled so that the only realistic source of needed revenue, even if they mean entering into arrangements all communities receive that more affluent people would never consider. The Skull Valley Goshute tribe of Utah protection regardless of race or socioeconomic has tried to attract a nuclear waste dump over state government objections. Eventually, the circumstances federal government rejected the tribe’s plans. Even on the Navajo reservation, a proposed new uranium mine has its supporters—those who consider the promises of royalty payments coupled with alleged safety measures sufficient to offset the past half-century of radiation problems (Pasternak 2010). Fifth, spiritual needs must be balanced against demands on the environment. For example, numerous sacred sites lie in such public areas as the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Canyonlands National Parks that, though not publicized, are accessible to outsiders. Tribal groups have sought vainly to restrict entry to such sites. The San Carlos Apaches unsuccessfully tried to block the University of Arizona from erecting an observatory on their sacred Mt. Graham. Similarly, Plains Indians have sought to ban tourists from climbing Devil’s Tower, long the site of religious visions, where prayer bundles of tobacco and sage were left behind by Native peoples (Campbell 2008; Martin 2001).

Conclusion
Native Americans have to choose between assimilating to the dominant non-Indian culture and maintaining their identity. In the figure on the next page we revisit the Spectrum of Intergroup Relations as it relates to Native Americans. Recently there is evidence of pluralism, but the desire to improve themselves economically usually drives them toward assimilation. Soare now being respected? People cheered on May 1, 2011 on hearing that Osama bin Laden has been found and killed. However, the always patriotic American Indian people were very troubled to learn that the military had assigned the code name “Geronimo” to the operation to capture the terrorist. The Chiricahua Apache of New Mexico were particularly disturbed to learn the name of their freedom fighter was being associated with a global terrorist. In response, the U.S. Defense Department, which said no disrespect was meant to Native Americans. But, of course, one can imagine that it would have never named the operation “Operation Lafayette” or “Operation Jefferson”. Maintaining one’s tribal identity outside a reservation is not easy. One’s cultural heritage must be consciously sought out while under the pressure to assimilate. Even on a reservation, it is not easy to integrate being Native American with elements of contemporary society. The dominant society needs innovative approaches to facilitate pluralism. The reservations are economically depressed, but they are also the home of the Native American people

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SPECTRUM OF INTERGROUP RELATIONS

EXPULSION
INCREASINGLY UNACCEPTABLE

SEGREGATION

ASSIMILATION
MORE TOLERABLE

EXTERMINATION or genocide

SECESSION or partitioning

FUSION or amalgamation or melting pot

PLURALISM or multiculturalism

Indian– Cavalry Wars (1800s)

Indian Removal Act (1830)

Reservation system (1830–present)

Allotment Act Indian Reorganization Act (1934) Employment Assistance Program (1952) Termination Act (1953–1975) Missionaries BIA reservation schools

Red Power Pan Indianism American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978) Powwows Native American Graves and Protection Act (1990) Tribal colleges

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spiritually and ideologically, if not always physically. Furthermore, the reservation isolation means that the frustrations of reservation life and the violent outbursts against them do not alarm large numbers of Whites, as do disturbances in urban centers. Native Americans today, except in motion pictures, are out of sight and out of mind. Ever since the BIA’s creation in 1824, the federal government has had much greater control over Native Americans than over any other civilian group in the nation. For Native Americans, the federal government and White people are virtually synonymous. However, the typical non-Indian tends to be more sympathetic, if not paternalistic, toward Native Americans than toward African Americans. Subordinate groups in the United States, including Native Americans, have made tremendous gains and will continue to do so in the years to come. But the rest of the population is not standing still. As Native American income rises, so does White income. As Native American children stay in school longer, so do White children. American Indian healthcare improves, but so does White healthcare. Advances have been made, but the gap remains between the descendants of the first Americans and those of later arrivals. Low incomes, inadequate education, and poor healthcare spurred relations between Native Americans and non-Indians to take a dramatic turn in the 1960s and 1970s, when Native Americans demanded a better life in America. As Chapter 7 will show, African Americans have achieved a measure of recognition in Washington, D.C., that Native

Americans have not. Only 5 percent as numerous as the Black population, Native Americans have a weaker collective voice even with casino money fueling lobbying efforts. Only a handful of Native Americans have ever served in Congress, and many of the non-Indians representing states with large numbers of Native Americans have emerged as their biggest foes rather than their advocates. The greatest challenge to and asset of the descendants of the first Americans is their land. More than 130 years after the Allotment Act, Native American peoples are still seeking what they feel is theirs. The land they still possess, although only a small slice of what they once occupied, is an important asset. It is barren and largely unproductive agriculturally, but some of it is unspoiled and often rich in natural resources. No wonder many large businesses, land developers, environmentalists, and casino managers covet their land for their own purposes. For Native Americans, the land they still occupy, as well as much of that occupied by other Americans, represents their roots, their homeland. One Thanksgiving Day, a scholar noted that, according to tradition, at the first Thanksgiving in 1621 the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag ate together. The descendants of these celebrants increasingly sit at distant tables with equally distant thoughts of equality. Today’s Native Americans are the “most undernourished, most shortlived, least educated, least healthy.” For them, “that long ago Thanksgiving was not a milestone, not a promise. It was the last full meal” (Dorris 1988:A23).

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Summary
1. Early European Americans usually did not intend to antagonize the Native peoples unnecessarily, but the needs of the settlers always ruled. 2. Policies of the reservation era such as the Allotment, Reorganization, and Termination acts and the Employment Assistance Program reflected a treatment of tribal people inferior to that of the White Europeans. 3. Native Americans have consistently resisted mistreatment through their tribes and reservation organizations and collectively across boundaries through pan-Indian efforts. 4. American Indians’ identity issues emerge today through sovereignty questions at the macro level and self-identification and tribal enrollment at the micro level. 5. Despite gains over the last couple of generations, Native Americans trail the rest of the country in economic development, employment levels, and access to quality healthcare. 6. Quality education continues to be a challenge to American Indians. Efforts to bring native cultures to the curriculum and bolster tribal colleges seek to overcome a century of neglect. 7. Diversity of American Indian cultures is reflected in religious and spiritual expression. 8. Despite the loss of so much of their historical settlement areas, Native Americans struggle to achieve environmental justice.

Key Terms environmental justice / 170 efforts to ensure that hazardous substances are controlled so that all communities receive protection regardless of race or socioeconomic circumstances. fish-ins / 158 tribes’ protests over government interference with their traditional rights to fish as they like. kickouts or pushouts / 165 native American school dropouts who leave behind an unproductive academic environment. millenarian movement / 152 movements, such as the Ghost Dance, that prophesy a cataclysm in the immediate future, to be followed by collective salvation. pan-Indianism / 157 intertribal social movements in which several tribes, joined by political goals but not by kinship, unite in a common identity. powwows / 159 native American gatherings of dancing, singing, music playing, and visiting, accompanied by competitions. sovereignty / 160 tribal self-rule. world systems theory / 150 a view of the global economic system as divided between nations that control wealth and those that provide natural resources and labor.

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Native Americans: The First Americans 173

Review Questions
1. Identify three policies or actions taken by the federal government that have significant impact today in the daily lives of Native Americans. 2. How have land rights been a continuing theme in White–Native American relations? 3. How much are Native Americans expected to shed their cultural heritage to become a part of contemporary society? 4. Do casinos and other gaming outlets represent a positive force for Native American tribes today? 5. What challenges are there to reservation residents receiving effective healthcare?

Critical Thinking
1. Consider Independence Day and Thanksgiving Day. How do these national holidays remind Native Americans today of their marginal status? 2. Chronicle how aspects of leisure time, from schoolyard games to Halloween costumes to team mascots, trivialize Native Americans. What experience have you had with such episodes, or what have you seen in the mass media? 3. Why do you think that many people in the United States hold more benevolent attitudes toward Native Americans than they do toward other subordinate groups such as African Americans and Latinos?

MySocLab®
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Watch on mysoclab.com Video clips feature sociologists in action, exploring important concepts in the study of Ethnicity. Watch: American Outrage Explore on mysoclab.com Social Explorer is an interactive application that allows you to

explore Census data through interactivemaps. Explore the Social Explorer Report: Social Explorer Activity: The Displacement and Dissipation of Native Americans
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MySocLibrary includes primary source readings from various noted sociologists from around the world. Read: Playing the Political Slots: American Indians and Casinos

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