by Vine Deloria
During 1968 Senator Clinton Anderson announced that the federal government was spending nearly a half billion dollars a year on Indian people and therefore he didn’t think they were so neglected. The general public probably heard the figure and wondered what was happening in the bureau with all those funds.
In reality the funds were probably so earmarked that it was impossible for the bureau to do much with the money to overcome existing problems. Most area offices probably broke about even last year without being able to start new projects.
One glaring example of allocated funds being a detriment to Indian people is the school construction fund which is used to build new schools on the reservations. For years the bureau knew that the Navajo population was exploding and that classroom space would soon be at a premium. Yet nothing was done to reallocate funds for school construction on the Navajo reservations until Philleo Nash became Commissioner and by then it was too late.
For the past several years Navajos have been shipped all over the country in an effort to get the Navajo children in school. This policy resulted in the widespread displacement of children from other Indian tribes in schools near them. Thus northwestern tribes were denied entrance to the school in Chemawa, Oregon, and Nevada Indians were denied school space at Stewart, Nevada, a school they had used for decades.
The Navajo situation has begun to ease now, but the dropout rate of the other tribes who had to send their children to public and parochial schools increased during that period so that nationally the Indian education picture is about the same as it was years ago. The same story exists with regard to roads on several reservations.
In 1966 Commissioner Bennett was sent around Indian country to determine the needs of the tribes in order to plan Udall’s great legislative masterpiece. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, site of the first of the regional meetings, several tribes presented their ideas on welfare. They complained that handouts undermined the educational programs they were conducting to encourage people to work. They asked that all welfare be turned into a work program so that people would not be idle all day long and then spend their welfare and unemployment checks carelessly.
Unfortunately this idea was never adopted. It couldn’t be adopted under the present laws. And when the idea was subsequently discussed, various “liberal”-minded people said that it would be demeaning for people to have to work for welfare. So all possible avenues for development of this idea were blocked from the very beginning. It should be no wonder that the bureau has a hard time getting things done.
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The other agencies working with Indian people—the Public Health Service, the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Labor Department, the Federal Housing Authority, and the Economic Development Administration—have a great deal more flexibility than does the bureau. They operate primarily on the grant basis. Funds are allocated by tribe according to projects. Primary responsibility for programming is on the tribe, and tribes who do not project a well-reasoned feasible plan for development do not get funds.
These agencies have had great success in assisting Indian tribes with their programs. One can hardly visit a reservation today without finding some new project under way. Many people arriving on a reservation for the first time bemoan the apparent lack of progress being made by the Indians. They are horrified by the poverty and living conditions. Automatically people seem to agree that the bureau has been incredibly derelict in its duty. Oh, if they had only seen these same reservations twenty years ago, they would have known what poverty was.
Consider for a moment, when did the reservations ever have the benefit of a program of major investment? Tribes went on the reservations in the late 1870’s. For the most part the people lived in log cabins and tents. Indian Affairs was regarded as merely a matter of administration and record-keeping until the Meriam Report in 1928. Under the Indian Reorganization Act during the 1930’s tribes were finally beginning to move, but World War II stopped all progress and funds were very scarce during those years.
In the 1950’s and early 1960’s tribes had to spend all of their time defending their lands and treaty rights from the whims of the terminationists. Little was done to develop the reservations because all energies went into saving them from obliteration. Finally in the 1960’s, after nearly a century of neglect, funds began to become available for capital improvements such as tribal buildings, community halls, roads, and housing. The past few years have been the first time there has been money available for development of the reservations.
Deploring the lack of modern conveniences on the reservations is like beating your old horse for not being able to fly. If the tribes or the bureau could have developed the reservations any sooner, they would have done so.
In 1966, when the tribes met at Santa Fe, New Mexico, to pressure the bureau for changes, they had a specific idea in mind. The programs of the OEO had taken hold on the reservations and the idea of granting funds directly to the tribes for specific programs was very popular.
At the meeting, Udall wandered around holding a paper written by a superintendent from Arizona who advocated a strict contract method of providing services comparable to the OEO programs. It was a radical departure from traditional policies and no one was sure that it could be sold to higher ups in the administration or Congress but the tribes all felt that it was the wave of the future.
Finally in 1968 the bureau set up a contracting project at the Salt River reservation in Arizona. After some two years in discussion it appeared that the way originally advocated by the tribes at Santa Fe would be tested on one reservation. To date the Salt River project has proved successful and plans are being made to expand the idea to other tribes.
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Tribes today have a good grasp on the future. If they can work out the basic programs for contracting, they may be able to push on into new areas which have been unserviced or only partially serviced in the past. A lot depends upon the reactions within the bureaucracy and Congress as to whether or not the program will be continued.
The role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs must change radically if Indians are to make the progress necessary to keep them abreast of developments in the rest of society. It would be foolish to outline the basic problems of the bureau without offering alternative ideas by which it could be made more responsive.
There are a number of things the bureau could do immediately to completely change the rate and manner of progress of the Indian people. Here are some of them:
1. Programming by Size of Tribe
Too often tribes are simply lumped together as if they had identical profiles and it were merely a matter of tribal response to bureau programs which differentiated the tribes.
In fact there are about thirty-five tribes with sufficient population, land, and resources to make large programs feasible. These tribes average some two thousand people, generally have in excess of 100,000 acres of land, and have a large enough tribal income to provide a basic working budget for development.
These tribes should be given special consideration for funding from the major granting agencies within the federal government. Wherever possible they should be given responsibility for minor services which the bureau now provides. This could be done on a contract basis annually with a declining federal share as tribal income rises.
The rest of the two hundred odd tribes fall below one thousand people, have little natural resources, and have a small land base. As their tribal income ranges from zero to very little, certainly none would have sufficient income for programming.
These tribes should submit projects directly to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The projects would include all areas now served by bureau programs and would be set up on a cost plus fixed-fee basis so that the tribe could conduct its own programs and have a little income for the tribe as well.
Special loan-grant funds would be made available to the tribes for land consolidation programs. In many cases federal lands, of submarginal or public domain character, would be added to tr
ibal holdings to provide a decent land base for development.
These tribes would be encouraged to develop basic community strength and tribal income necessary for ongoing overhead expenses. They would receive declining grants according to projects completed until the basic community development plan had been realized. After that they would become eligible for grants in the same manner as the other larger tribes.
2. Discretionary Funds
Area offices and agencies should be given the bulk of their annual budgets in undesignated funds for total reservation development so that as tribes began to assume responsibilities they could set up immediate contracting arrangements. In addition the tribe and the bureau would set the priorities for expenditures each year instead of having the priorities set in Washington. In that way maximum flexibility in meeting local needs would be possible. Supplemental appropriations, now common to cover emergency situations, would become a thing of the past.
3. Tribal Employment Would Be Civil Service
As the tribes began to take over the programs on their reservations, need of top personnel would become critical as it is now with the various poverty programs on the reservations. Employment within the Bureau of Indian Affairs would be dropping as jobs were displaced through the contracting procedure. People leaving the bureau to seek employment with the tribes would be given Civil Service status. They would thus not lose their time in grade in federal service by leaving the bureau but would continue to work toward retirement while working for the tribe on a program contracted with a government agency.
Under this method of offering tribal employment to people in the bureau the most capable people would soon be hired for tribal programs. The remainder, obviously not in great demand by the Indian people, could be transferred to the Department of Agriculture where they could spend their remaining years in relative retirement.
4. Reorganization of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
As the programs of the tribes began to cut into the superstructure of the bureau the need for supervisory services would radically decrease. Thus there would be a great need for reorganization of the bureau to meet the changing situation.
At that time the bureau should be transferred, not to Health, Education and Welfare, but to Commerce. Since the bureau would be primarily a granting and technical assistance agency, it would need to be in a department where economic development was the primary mission. It could then become merged with the Economic Development Administration in a special Indian section where it would act as a fact-finding agency matching tribal projects with available programs in government and opportunities available in the private business sector.
5. Disposition of Federal Responsibility to Indians
Indian tribes would continue to be eligible for grants from all federal agencies as long as the tribe remained functional. In this way the United States would be meeting its basic responsibilities to assist the Indian people and it would also fulfill now unfulfilled treaty promises of “free and undisturbed use” of reservation areas.
Income from tribal lands and tribal lands themselves would continue to be tax exempt as long as the lands and the income derived from them were used to provide social and community services to reservation residents. When all services had been provided, income could be distributed to enrolled members of the tribe. But then the tribe would no longer have eligibility for grants from federal agencies.
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It remains to be seen what will happen to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the future. Movements to abolish it continually interrupt the basic service programs so that it is very difficult for continuity of program to be achieved. Few people consider what would happen to the Indian people if the bureau were suddenly removed. Indians would be cast adrift in society at the mercy of sharp operators. Eventually they would be dispersed into the cities, having been cheated out of their lands.
Cities would all have ghettos of Indians on welfare. Conditions would rapidly deteriorate in the urban ghettos and eventually the issue would be joined with urban racial problems.
In recent years discussion has been going on in Indian Affairs advocating giving the Indians “more responsibility.” This is useless talk. Designed to cover up a multitude of sins, particularly does it cover up the basic responsibility of the federal government toward the Indian people.
More, less, or no responsibility is irrelevant to the problem. When we talk about responsibility in these terms we are talking about play acting. Responsibility can never be given unless it is welcomed and desired. I could no more give my children responsibility than I could give them the far side of the moon. They must have a real status and stake in the process or they will recognize my overtures as tricks.
That was the primary misunderstanding of the Interior thesis over the past several years. People continued to talk about giving the tribes more responsibility. But they could not define for themselves what that responsibility should be, where it should be exercised, and what limits would be placed on it.
If responsibility is irrelevant, sovereignty is not. States have sovereignty, counties have sovereignty, cities and towns have sovereignty, water districts have sovereignty, school boards have sovereignty. Why shouldn’t tribes have total sovereignty? Originally they did. Treaties recognize this basic fact of legal existence. Tribes agreed to go to the reservations provided they could have their basic community rights of self-government.
As the system of providing services to the tribes grew up, ideas of the government and the tribes grew farther apart. Much of the problem was caused by the agitation of the churches for franchises to hunt souls on the reservations. This demand created the feeling that Indians were to be pawns in the great experiment of civilizing a savage people.
Over the years programs have been designed to accomplish secretly what cannot be accomplished openly, the de-Indianization of the Indian. In 1934, John Collier began to move the Bureau of Indian Affairs in a new direction. He figured that the movement to make white men out of Indians had not succeeded in four centuries and there was no reason to expect it to succeed in his lifetime.
But Collier also realized that Indians were already Indians. It was a simple matter, therefore, for Collier to advocate the creation of a legal status whereby tribes could become competitive in modern society and undertake development programs which would be a result of community desires. So the official tribal status of the Indian Reorganization Act was created and each tribe was given a right to have a constitution and charter under the law. It was then up to the tribe to plan its own development to fit its own needs.
Congressional policy should recognize the basic right to tribal sovereignty. Such sovereignty should include all promises contained in treaties and should recognize the eligibility of tribal governments for all federal programs which are opened to counties and cities. In this way the onus of having failed the Indian people would not be placed on Interior or Congress. Tribes would be free to develop or not, according to the desires of the people in the tribe.
The charge has frequently been leveled at the bureau that it has set up puppet governments on the reservations and somehow mysteriously governs all aspects of tribal life by remote control. As long as policies remain so nebulous with respect to the actual status of tribal governments this charge will continue to be made. Recognition of basic sovereignty would provide a solution for this problem. The integrity of the tribal entity would be guaranteed by Congressional fiat in much the same manner as Congress makes a certain type of soldier an officer and a gentleman by fiat.
Until a new ideological basis is placed under the federal-Indian relationship it seems certain that the bureau will struggle along on one cylinder, carrying the burdens of misinformation and acting as the scapegoat for the collective sins of both red and white. It is unfortunate that one agency has to be designated as the target for the frustrations of people who have not recognized their confusion between culture and technique. Perhaps the future will be brighter.
7 INDIA
N HUMOR
ONE OF THE best ways to understand a people is to know what makes them laugh. Laughter encompasses the limits of the soul. In humor life is redefined and accepted. Irony and satire provide much keener insights into a group’s collective psyche and values than do years of research.
It has always been a great disappointment to Indian people that the humorous side of Indian life has not been mentioned by professed experts on Indian Affairs. Rather the image of the granite-faced grunting redskin has been perpetuated by American mythology.
People have little sympathy with stolid groups. Dick Gregory did much more than is believed when he introduced humor into the Civil Rights struggle. He enabled non-blacks to enter into the thought world of the black community and experience the hurt it suffered. When all people shared the humorous but ironic situation of the black, the urgency and morality of Civil Rights was communicated.
The Indian people are exactly opposite of the popular stereotype. I sometimes wonder how anything is accomplished by Indians because of the apparent overemphasis on humor within the Indian world. Indians have found a humorous side of nearly every problem and the experiences of life have generally been so well defined through jokes and stories that they have become a thing in themselves.
For centuries before the white invasion, teasing was a method of control of social situations by Indian people. Rather than embarrass members of the tribe publicly, people used to tease individuals they considered out of step with the concensus of tribal opinion. In this way egos were preserved and disputes within the tribe of a personal nature were held to a minimum.
Gradually people learned to anticipate teasing and began to tease themselves as a means of showing humility and at the same time advocating a course of action they deeply believed in. Men would depreciate their feats to show they were not trying to run roughshod over tribal desires. This method of behavior served to highlight their true virtues and gain them a place of influence in tribal policy-making circles.