[Among the steady procession of amazing articles produced by the American
Socialist in the 1950s is this two-parter dealing with the oppression of
the American Indian from October, 1956. I would love to been able to ask
either Harry Braverman or Bert Cochran what factored into their thinking
when this article was published, since American Indians had either been
completely neglected by the rest of the left, or written off as "dinosaurs"
in social Darwinist fashion. The first part, written by a "Northwest
Anthropologist", deals with theft of mineral and other natural resources, a
subject I have written about myself. The second is by an historian named
William Jaber, who I am not familiar with. It contains a tremendously
courageous defense of the right of the Indian to retain his cultural
identity while enjoying the fruits of American citizenship.]
>From "The Shame of a Nation":
HOW can the power companies exploit the lands of some three hundred
American citizens? By cutting the timber and removing the gas, oil, and
other natural resources. The Montana and Dakota reservation land have rich
oil deposits. The Southwestern Indians own gas reserves. Uranium has been
discovered on the Navaho reservation of New Mexico and Arizona and the
Pueblo land in New Mexico as well as the Wind River reservation in Wyoming,
and the Spokane reservation in Washington. Lead and zinc deposits are
abundant on the Quapaw reservation in Oklahoma while phosphate resources
have been located on the Fort Hall reservation in Idaho. During 1955 alone
the Indians have received from bonuses, rents, and royalties on oil, gas,
and mining leases about $29 million. The profits for the corporations
developing the sites may double or triple this figure.
The American Indians and their white friends have good reason to be
suspicious of "emancipation" moves on the part of the government. History
records this tragic story. In 1873 the Indians held 150 million acres which
the white men promised he could hold "as long as rivers run and the grass
shall grow." In 1887 the Allotment Act was passed which aimed at civilizing
the Indian by making him an independent farm owner. By 1933, the Indian
been emancipated from all but 47 million acres of land. The best land has
passed to whites.
American corporations have likewise feasted on the bones of the Indian
corpse. Before the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 put the brakes on the
gravy train, private interests were stalking Indian wealth. The Salish and
Kootenai tribes on the Flathead reservation in Montana owned a magnificent
power site which, when properly developed, could give the tribe a
supporting income and provide wonderful irrigation for their farm lands.
But Montana Power Company, thirsty for profits, backed legislation in 1925
which would have given them the site. Although the measure was later
defeated, it had full support of the Indian Bureau. In 1930 the powerful
livestock interests of Southern Oregon gained access to Klamath timber and
grazing lands by bribing Indian officials to arrange sales. Even as
recently as 1947 the Tongass Act deprived Alaskan primitives of land and
timber "if two more of them had grandparents who were Indians"! The new
Indian legislation, backed by the Interior Department and the Indian
Bureau, foreshadows a return to such an era of Indian exploitation. The new
bills destroy the protection granted the Indian under the 1934 act.
====
>From "The Red Man's Rights":
WE ought to mention here that the Eastern Indian, in particular, was
communistic in pre-Colurnbus years. He had no obsession with petty
private-property claims. His concept of land-use was based upon his
tangible relationship to his environment. That which he found undivided in
nature could not be permanently divisible among men. Such was land, air and
water. For example, his collective use of water is amusingly illustrated by
the name, Lake Chaubunagungamaug, Massachusetts, translated as: "You fish
on your side, I'll fish on my side, and nobody fishes in the middle!" The
very idea of private ownership of land, air and water was alien to most
Indian cultures, hence, had no history of practice. Therefore, when sudden
proscription falls upon the Indian, without benefit of education or
training, and without means of adaptation, only result is the wholesale
destruction of the economic well as spiritual means of survival.
Some accept the efficacy of enforced assimilation, actually, one must deny,
reject or ignore the most of human rights--equality. Equality does not mean
sameness. Every person in a democratic society is presumed to have a
certain amount of freedom to be different, an immigrant prefers to retain
certain cultural elements his former native land or country of birth, his
right so has never, in this country, been a matter of government
opposition. His religion, even though it may be in the minority, has never
been subjected to governmental suppression, except in the case of Mormons
and Indians, neither of whom were immigrants, per se. We do not mean that
all elements of a given alien culture are accepted, but the greater number
which entered the country have retained or modified, but seldom rejected.
Likewise, Indians' right to belong to a tribe, partake of his adhere to his
own religion is a right of choice, not of compulsion, and to abandon his
tribe and tribal society right of choice, not of compulsion.
The Indian knows that assimilation will come to pass, for he is even now
extracting from white society attributes and commodities which he deems
beneficial to his life, but he must have free choice to accept or reject!
He must enjoy this choice by virtue of his American citizenship. The
movement to exterminate by absorption is a tyranny that has left many
rootless. Unable to live in the dignity and respect of his own people, nor
into white society, the Indian is a prey to prejudice, petition,
debasement, and poverty. He lacks training through education, and stands
somewhere; two civilizations, bereft of both religion and land, spiritually
crippled by three hundred years of subjugation.
RAPID City, South Dakota, is a bustling city where one may view
assimilation first-hand, with its ghettoes of assimilated Indians. In an
area such as this, if an Indian cannot present himself as a museum piece, a
historical freak in full regalia of costumes which are long relegated to
memory and nostalgia, he cannot lay to the dignity of a human being or the
sympathy of the whites.
The destruction of Indian identity as a group has been abetted by
government proscription of occupation. There is the hunter of the Great
Plains, who had always been accustomed to moving about through large tracts
of land, pursuing the oldest occupation in history. He was suddenly and
violently deprived of that land, herded onto a reservation, given a plow
and told to become a farmer. As one Indian put it, "I have always thought
earth as my mother, which it is, and would you hand me a steel blade with
which to gash the breast of my mother?" Such a statement reveals a deep,
abiding love for the land in its natural state. Even those who were farmers
relegated that work to the women. The impact was the same on the Indian as
it would be to us if the Federal government were to suddenly enact a law
requiring all women to become wage-earners and all men to become housewives.
The parceling out of land in individual allotments, a government policy
since 1888, has been stepped up recently. For the Indian to become an
individual landholder, an owner of private property, means the death-knell
to the idea of tribal ownership. Tribal properties have been broken up, as
prescribed by law. Any objection in the abolition of the tribal
constitution, and the immediate elimination of government trusteeship of
tribal funds!
Aboriginal rights, recognized by Federal law, are based premise on the
premise that the original inhabitants of the lands country have been
banished and had their properties expropriated by violent and illegal
means. The United States has reversed its position as of March 1956, upon
which date the Justice Department directly attacked the principle of
Aboriginal rights. However removed this attack may seem to be from the
issue of tribal group existence, it is nevertheless the opening gun to
destroy the Indian is a functioning social and political group.
Under the New Deal's Reorganization Act, the government has been forced to
pay some claims for damages suffered by the Indians in the past. These
funds have been put to work by the Indian to strengthen his cultural unity
and improve his reservation and farm lands. If the government wins the
present issue, it will be almost impossible for the Indian to claim damages
or compensation for loss of treaty-protected lands. These claims are quite
extensive, for the United States entered into 370 treaties with Indian
tribes between 1778 and 1870. The government broke every single one of
these treaties, but one, that which was broken by the Minnesota Sioux in 1862.
STRIKING at aboriginal rights is a blow against tribal finance. In
addition, the United States and several states have extended their taxing
powers over reservations. In the decision of Jones vs Taunah, Tenth Circuit
Court of Appeals, it is maintained that royalties from trust allotment are
subject to taxation. New York State has ruled that all Indians, regardless
of residence, are subject to income tax.
The onslaught continues in the field of local government. Public Law 280 of
the 83rd Congress transferred civil and criminal jurisdiction from many
reservations to the states in which they are located. It authorized any
other state to take the same action. Thus, local self-government is also
under attack. The court decision of Iron Crow vs Oglala Sioux directly
attacks the reservation law-and-order system. These are only a few of the
important issues that are being resolved to the disadvantage of the Indian.
There are, for example, bills passed by Congress since 1952 which abolish
tribal constitutions, abrogate Federal treaties, break up tribal
properties, and eliminate government trusteeship of funds. Other laws have
been passed to destroy the corporate status of the tribe, inaugurated under
the New Deal. The government intends to expropriate Indian funds to finance
the activities of the Indian Bureau.
The United States has, in fact, sought in every way to conceal the obvious
fact that the Indian is a full citizen of the United States and is entitled
to the same rights as any other American. This has enabled selfish
interests to bend the processes of local, state, and Federal government to
the purpose of confiscating land and resources of Indians heretofore under
strict protection of the law. It is the duty of every citizen, when he has
full knowledge that the rights of others are endangered, to register his
disapproval and to work to defeat attempts to destroy basic human rights.
If we allow the Indian to be extinguished as a group, we will have aided in
the most vicious crime that history can record, the crime of genocide--for
whether he is exterminated by absorption or by slow death as a result of
his failure to assimilate, the fact remains that his extinction will have
been brought about by organized illegal methods, against his will, under
the aegis of our government.
Ira Hayes, Pima Indian, one of the men who helped raise the flag at
Surabachi, and appearing in the immortal photo by Joe Rosenthal, was found
dead, in the gutter, in the company of the bottle, degraded, unable to cope
with the barriers raised against his people. He is symbolic of the problem
facing his people. The Indian lacks opportunity for full employment,
because of prejudice, and his own lack of training. His poverty can most
always be attributed to badly neglected lands which were poor even when he
was forced to move to them.
The Indian has proven, however, that, given the opportunity, as among the
Mesqualero Apache, he can produce enough for himself and a surplus for
sale. The Hopi and Navajo have demonstrated that, with intelligent
government supervision and aid, he can build as successfully as the white
farmer with the same supervision and aid.
The white man has an especial responsibility to the Indian whose lands he
conquered and whose culture he destroyed. We should have the same respect
for Chief Joseph, Logan, Cornstalk, Tecumseh, as we hold for all heroes of
a lost cause, and Hollywood's interpretation to the contrary
notwithstanding all were greater as human beings and as leaders than either
Custer or Crockett.
Louis Proyect
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