by Vine Deloria
Hippies, at least initially, appeared to throw off the white man’s prestige symbols while refusing to accept the Indian prestige symbols. Hence there was no way in which tribalism, in its most lasting form, could take root in the hippie movement. What prestige they had, came with publicity. Quickly the media turned them into a fad and the hippie with something to say became no more than Batman or the Hoola Hoop.
Additional to hippie failure to tribalize was their inability to recognize the existence of tribal capital, particularly land. Tribal existence has always been predicated upon a land base, a homeland, within which tribal existence could take place. The primary concern of Indian tribes has been the protection of the land to which they are related. Once landless, a people must fall back upon religion, social values, or political power. But with a land base, nationalism in a tribal setting is more possible.
Only a very few hippies made an effort to develop a land base. A few communes are beginning to spring up around the country. But most of the flowers, unfortunately, have yet to be planted.
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Inter-corporate competition has revealed the necessity of banding together for political purposes to defend hunting grounds, be it oil import quotas, tariffs, or subsidies. In this respect white corporations are more aware of the inevitability of conflict than are Indian tribes. Whites know how to best use the corporate structure in an infinite variety of ways. And they know how to manipulate the governmental structure to obtain the goals of their corporations.
Some corporations, particularly social corporations such as those listed annually in the various United Fund appeals, have already mastered the technique of taxing the rest of society to support their ventures. They are thus one step beyond even the profit-making corporations which offer a substantial number of fringe benefits to their employees.
The United Fund agencies have achieved a status comparable to the Magi of yesteryear. The Magi, conquered by the Persians, promptly set themselves up as religious experts and soon exercised incredible control over Persian society. They burrowed right into the fabric of Persian life and dominated it. In the same way, United Fund agencies have captured the priesthood of social activity and now exact their pound of flesh as necessary organizations upon which the lifeblood of the community depends.
Examine, if you will, the agencies listed in the United Fund appeal the next time you are called upon to give. By and large they all do what everyone else is doing. Only, they appear to be doing it somehow differently. Had they been active in a meaningful programmatic manner, it would have been unnecessary for the government to conduct a War on Poverty. But should the government win its War on Poverty tomorrow, United Fund agencies would continue on their merry way.
What then is the genius of the United Fund agency? We called them above, the priesthood of our society and they are priests in the mediating sense. Where fraternities, sororities, and service clubs have the same basic clientele, United Fund agencies have developed a mediating role between diverse segments of society. They collect from one set of clientele and distribute to another set. Thus, as intermediaries they cannot be eliminated because they would leave two diverse sets of clients with peculiar needs—those who need to give and those who need to receive.
As the fortunes of agencies and foundations like the United Fund rise and fall, so do tribalism and tribal existence. These agencies are the weathervane of our society. We can tell at a glance how our society is responding to the expansion of tribal corporations by their progress and setbacks. As tribal corporations meet the challenges of modern life, there will be less use for United Fund agencies and their revenues and programs will decline. But if the tendency is away from tribalized existence on the corporate level, these agencies will expand and their revenues will increase. People will need to become more meaningfully involved and will seek out both services and recipients for their funds. Thus such agencies are an accurate indicator of giving and receiving in our society. From them we can take one cue as to what the future holds.
There is another aspect of modern society to which Indian society relates and that is law. The evolution of law is as fascinating as it is complex. The manner in which Indians and law can combine in the modern world depends upon an understanding of the nuances of law.
We first come across law in its original cradle of tribalism in the Old Testament. Torah, law, comes from a root word meaning to extend one’s hand as if pointing the way. A careful reading of the Old Testament and its concern for law can reveal—as it does for the Jews—a standard of behavior by which a person can be fulfilled. Thus originally law was not confining or regulating but indicating the way to a better life.
In feudal days law once again rose from the ruins of Roman codification as customs gradually became the laws of England and western European civilization. Only in certain aspects were early laws regulatory or confining. In most cases they were indicative of inter-personal relationships.
The history of America has shown the gradual replacement of custom and common law with regulatory statutes and programs so that law today is more a case of legalizing certain types of behavior and penalizing other types of behavior. We are just passing through the most radical period of law as a confining instrument of social control.
The programs initiated by President Johnson are sometimes looked at as the logical extension of the New Deal concept of government as development agent for social welfare programs. It has been said that the War on Poverty was simply a rehash of the WPA projects and the CCC camps. But close examination of the Economic Opportunity Act, the Economic Development Act, the Model Cities programs, Urban Renewal, and other Great Society programs will reveal a basic foundation completely foreign to New Deal concepts. All of these programs are founded upon the premise that the federal government must help local efforts to accomplish certain things, but that government itself cannot do those things for local people. Law has thus begun a new cycle of existence as a means to social fulfillment.
Programs of the Great Society point the way toward experimentation by local people in various ways and means of creating a more meaningful existence. They therefore become vehicles for change and fulfillment of potential, rather than payoffs to certain groups who would otherwise refuse to participate in modern economic ventures. While there is no doubt that Great Society programs have political overtones, within certain limits most American citizens can participate in them.
The great fear of minority groups in the 1968 elections was that law and order meant a return to the conception of law as an instrument of confinement and away from the idea of law as an expansion of opportunities. Regulated existence has rarely been able to provide the stability and potential which societies need to survive. When codification has been emphasized, societies have tended to decline because law has traditionally been a means of confinement and oppression.
When law takes on its most creative aspect, customs develop to operate internally within the social structure. The vacuum created by expanding and developing programs and laws gives rise to the need for internal controls by which men can govern themselves. Customs naturally arise to fill this need and custom depends upon participation by all members of society.
A good example of custom is the American system of two political parties as an undefined adjunct to the Constitution. Nowhere does the Constitution outline the need or the structure for political participation. No parties are mentioned. They have arisen through customs which filled in the missing pieces of the Constitution. No one had to follow one path or another. But over the years a significant number of citizens adopted the same customs and the great political processes of our nation took shape.
As the political parties became structured with rules and regulations, additional customs arose which by their solution gave meaning to the unarticulated problems of the process. Thus, for example, for a while the candidate remained at home awaiting the demand of the people that he become a candidate. This custom was overcome by Roosevelt’s daring visit
to the convention in 1932 and the rise of primaries in the various states.
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As we become aware of our customs we will become more able to live in a tribalizing world. Tribal society does not depend upon legislative enactment. It depends heavily in most areas upon customs which fill in the superstructure of society with meaningful forms of behavior and which are constantly changing because of the demands made upon them by people.
One of the chief customs in Indian life is the idea of compensation instead of retribution in criminal law. Arbitrary punishment, no matter how apparently suitable to the crime, has had little place in Indian society. These customs have by and large endured and many tribes still feel that if the culprit makes a suitable restitution to his victim no further punishment need be meted out by the tribe.
Contrast this outlook with the highly emotional appeals to “lawnorder” over the last year and it is easy to see that the white man’s conception of criminal law has changed little from the harsh codes of the ancient eastern despots. America’s prison population continues to climb as society attempts to punish those guilty of violating its mores. Little is done to restore the victim to his original state. The emphasis is on “getting even” on the victim’s behalf by imposing a term of imprisonment on the offender.
With the passage of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, Indian tribes fell victim to the Bill of Rights. The stage is now set for total erosion of traditional customs by sterile codes devised by the white man. Some tribes are now fighting to get the law amended because the law allows reliance on traditional Indian solutions only to the extent that they do not conflict with state and federal laws.
Although the Bill of Rights is not popular with some tribes, the Pueblos in particular, I do not believe that it should be amended. With the strengthening of tribal courts Indian tribes now have a golden opportunity to create an Indian common law comparable to the early English common law.
Many national leaders have encouraged Indian judges to write lengthy opinions on their cases incorporating tribal customs and beliefs with state and federal codes and thus redirecting tribal ordinances toward a new goal. Over the next decade the response by Indian judges in tribal court may well prove influential in the field of law. Perhaps the kindest thing that could be said of non-Indian law at present is that it combines punishment and rehabilitation in most instances. With an additional push for compensatory solutions Indian people could contribute much to the solution of the problem of crime in the larger society.
The stage is now being set, with the increasing number of Indian college students graduating from the universities, for a total assault on the non-human elements of white society. Ideologically the young Indians are refusing to accept white values as eternal truths. Such anomalies as starvation in the midst of plenty indicate to them that the older Indian ways are probably best for them.
Movements to re-educate Indians along liberal lines only serve to increase the visibility of the differences between their own backgrounds and the backgrounds of the non-Indians. Yet the bicultural trap, conceptually laid for Indians by scholars, does not appear to be ensnaring the most astute young Indian people. Accommodation to white society is primarily in terms of gaining additional techniques by which they can give a deeper root to existing Indian traditions.
The corporation serves as the technical weapon by which Indian revivalism can be accomplished. At the same time it is that element of white culture closest to the tribe and can thereby enable it to understand both white and Indian ways of doing business. As programs become available, tribal councils should simply form themselves as housing authorities, development corporations, and training program supervisors, continuing to do business according to Indian ways. The tribe is thus absorbing the corporation as a handy tool for its own purposes.
Of all the schemes advocated today for the solution of poverty, the guaranteed annual income appears to be the most threatening to ultimate tribal progress. Guaranteed annual income would merely accelerate the inertia which continues to nip at the heels of reservation development. Yet the humanistic basis of the guaranteed annual income is solidly within Indian traditions.
In the old days a tribe suffered and prospered as a unity. When hunting was good everyone ate, when it was bad everyone suffered. Never was the tribe overbalanced economically so that half would always starve and half would thrive. In this sense all tribal members had a guaranteed annual income.
With the basic necessities guaranteed by tribal membership, means had to be devised to grade the tribe into a social ladder. Exploits in hunting, warfare, and religious leadership effectively created status necessary to structure the interpersonal relationships within the tribe. A man was judged by what he was, no by what he owned.
Society today has largely drifted away from accomplishments. Concern is focused instead on “image”—what a man appears to be, not what he is. Thus the 1968 elections saw Richard Nixoi cautiously refuse to face any issues which might have taken votes away from him. In previous years the Kennedys made even greater use of image and it will probably never be known exactly what the Kennedys accomplished on behalf of their constituency. People will rather remember Jack and Bobby as they appeared on television.
As Indians continue to appear in modern society other issues will come to be drawn in certain areas. Some tribes have zoned their reservations so that the land is used primarily for the benefit of reservation people. Gradually planners in the white society will come to recognize the necessity of reserving land for specific use rather than allow helter-skelter development to continue unchecked.
Education must also be revamped; not to make Indians more acceptable to white society, but to allow non-Indians a greater chance to develop their talents. Education as it is designed today works to destroy communities by creating supermen who spend their lives climbing the economic ladder. America is thus always on the move and neighborhoods rarely have a stable lasting residency. In the future, minority groups must emphasize what they share with the white society, not what keeps them apart. Black may be beautiful but such a slogan hardly contributes to the understanding of non-blacks. Intensity turns easily to violence when it has no traditions and customs to channel it into constructive paths of behavior. The powwow serves as more than a historical re-enactment of ancient ways. In a larger sense it provides an emotional release heavily charged with psychological and identity-absorbing tensions. This is perhaps one reason why “red is beautiful” has not become a necessary slogan.
Non-Indians must understand the differences, at least as seen in Indian country, between nationalism and militancy. Most Indians are nationalists. That is, they are primarily concerned with development and continuance of the tribe. As nationalists, Indians could not, for the most part, care less what the rest of society does. They are interested in the progress of the tribe.
Militants, on the other hand, are reactionists. They understand the white society and they progress by reacting against it. First in their ideas is the necessity of forcing a decision from those in decision-making positions. Few militants would be sophisticated enough to plan a strategy of undermining the ideological and philosophical positions of the establishment and capturing its programs for their own use.
Nationalists always have the option of resorting to violence and demonstrations. Militants shoot their arsenal merely to attract attention and are left without any visible means to accomplish their goals. Hence militancy must inevitably lead on to more militancy. This is apparent in the dilemma in which the SCLC found itself after the 1966 Civil Rights Bill. Demonstrations had proved successful and so SCLC found itself led on and on down that path, never satisfied. Even after Kings death, when SCLC could have changed its goals and techniques, it continued to the disaster of Resurrection City.
But Indian tribes riding the crest of tribal and nationalistic waves will be able to accomplish a great many things previously thought impossible by Indian and non-Indian alike. There is every indication that as Indians
articulate values they wish to transmit to the rest of society, they will be able to exert a definite influence on social developments.
At present the visible poverty of Indian tribes veils the great potential of the Indian people from modern society. But in many ways the veil is lifting and a brighter future is being seen. Night is giving way to day. The Indian will soon stand tall and strong once more.
11 A REDEFINITION OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
IN MARCH OF 1966 the executive committee of the National Congress of American Indians met in El Paso, Texas, to discuss its program for the future. During the meeting a man named Tom Diamond appeared before us with a ragged little group of people. Fervently he made his plea for NCAI support and assistance for the Tigua Indian tribe of Isleta, Texas. The modern era of Indian emergence had begun.
The year 1688 saw the end of the Spanish rule of New Mexico for nearly a generation. The Pueblos of New Mexico revolted against Spanish rule and pushed the Spanish out of New Mexico back to their river fortress of El Paso del Norte, now Juarez, Mexico. With the retreating soldiers a number of Indians from the Isleta Pueblo were taken. Like human mules they carried the stolen treasures of New Mexico south.
Once at El Paso del Norte, the Tiguas were of no further use to the Spanish and therefore assigned a piece of land on the north bank of the Rio Grande River, where it was expected they would provide a buffer zone against the warlike Mescalero Apaches who dominated eastern New Mexico and western Texas.
Centuries passed. The little group was forgotten. The Bureau of Indian Affairs listed them as a Pueblo group under the jurisdiction of the New Mexico office but little was done for them. Some of the Tiguas attended the government boarding school in Albuquerque and occasionally bureau officials stopped by, but the tendency was to ignore them.
In 1936 President Roosevelt was made an honorary Tigua warrior when he visited Texas. There was no doubt that the Tiguas deserved federal recognition, having once received services from the federal government and having been listed as one of the tribes eligible for such services. But since they were secreted away in the middle of El Paso, Texas, they were soon forgotten. They had not been heard from since the visit by Roosevelt and people assumed they no longer existed.