The New Trail of Tears

by Naomi Schaefer Riley

  The final area of reform – education – holds the most potential for improving the lives of American Indians. With few exceptions, the schools that Indian children attend look no different from the schools in our worst inner cities. They’re plagued by a lack of discipline, under-qualified teachers, crumbling facilities, and a lack of parental involvement. Despite spending more per pupil than schools nearby, they produce graduates who are unprepared for college or a career. Again, there’s nothing surprising about this. The school administrations and teachers serve the whims of tribal leadership. The education system has been politicized. Not only do parents typically have no choice about where to send their kids, but because many Indian communities are so isolated, parents may not even be aware that a better option exists.

  Because education reform is currently happening all over the country, it’s possible to find different models for success. Just as teachers’ unions and the politicians they support don’t want to see fundamental changes in failing public school systems, so the tribal powers that be may not want to see these kind of reforms.

  But there’s tremendous potential here. A few Catholic schools have long been an alternative to the public-school models on these reservations. But they depend on outside donations. And it’s hard to imagine that they’ll be able to replicate themselves any time soon. Still, their stories need to be told, so that more parents on reservations can begin to understand there are alternatives.

  Young men and women who come to reservations through Teach for America have clearly been a boon to reservation schools. Parents, more often than not, are thrilled to see these teachers at the front of their children’s classrooms. But tribal leaders view outsiders such as TFA corps members with suspicion, and principals will fire them at the drop of a hat. It’s hard to imagine that TFA is anything but a temporary fix for a crippling problem.

  Still, when parents do see how much a qualified teacher can really offer their kids, it may whet the community’s appetite for reform. The most promising alternatives for education reform in Indian communities are probably charter schools. Only by witnessing high-performing charter schools educating impoverished kids hundreds of miles away can parents on reservations even begin to understand what they’re missing. If states like South Dakota had the support of Indians in passing a charter law, the results would be obvious immediately. The increase in competition would have an immediate impact even on children who didn’t attend the new schools. What these communities need are schools that are truly disconnected from the political process, where jobs and grades are awarded not on the basis of family connections but on the basis of merit. Creating a generation of well-educated adults might go a long way toward fixing problems that seem intractable now.

  While touring America in the 1830s, French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville spent time observing the state of American Indians, particularly their moves to reservations and the resulting deprivations:

  It is impossible to conceive the frightful sufferings that attend these forced migrations. They are undertaken by a people already exhausted and reduced; and the countries to which the new-comers betake themselves are inhabited by other tribes, which receive them with jealous hostility. Hunger is in the rear, war awaits them, and misery besets them on all sides. To escape from so many enemies, they separate, and each individual endeavors to procure secretly the means of supporting his existence by isolating himself, living in the immensity of the desert like an outcast in civilized society. The social tie, which distress had long since weakened, is then dissolved; they have no longer a country, and soon they will not be a people; their very families are obliterated; their common name is forgotten; their language perishes; and all traces of their origin disappear.21

  Tocqueville warns his 19th-century readers that he’s not overstating the case: “I should be sorry to have my reader suppose that I am coloring the picture too highly; I saw with my own eyes many of the miseries that I have just described, and was the witness of sufferings that I have not the power to portray.”

  Despite his obvious sympathy for their plight, or perhaps because of it, he went on to predict a dire fate: “I believe that the Indian nations of North America are doomed to perish, and that whenever the Europeans shall be established on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, that race of men will have ceased to exist. The Indians had only the alternative of war or civilization; in other words, they must either destroy the Europeans or become their equals.”

  This seems to be one of the few cases in which the great French traveler was proved wrong. Indians have not perished. Nor, obviously, did they destroy the Europeans. But they’ve been left in a kind of limbo, their communities existing in a kind of suspended animation. The reservation system didn’t destroy them, but it did render them powerless over their own economic and political destiny. Non-Indian Americans like to think of themselves as much more enlightened than their predecessors when it comes to Indians, but our current policies aren’t much better than those of almost 200 years ago. Indians, as any visitor to a reservation can see, have chosen civilization; now it’s time for America to make them equal Americans.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When people ask me how I came to write a book about American Indians, I can only say anger. For years, I had read about the poverty, suicide, abuse, and alcohol and drug problems on reservations with a deep sense of sadness. I had assumed, as many readers had, that little could be done about these problems. But when I attended a conference at the Property and Environment Research Center in 2013, it became clear that things were both more and less hopeless than I had imagined.

  The people I met there – a group of incredibly smart, tenacious professors, leaders, and reformers – had spent their lives fighting for their people to fix a broken system in the face of long odds. I am indebted to Terry Anderson for allowing me to be a part of that group.

  Meeting and getting to know Ivan Small, Ben Chavis, Manny Jules, and André Le Dressay has been a rare privilege, and I cannot thank them enough for the time they spent with me and the efforts they expended to show me their hardest problems and their best solutions. I can only hope I have told their stories with the care they deserve.

  This project would not have been possible without the support of the Searle Trust and the Randolph Foundation. I am deeply grateful to Kim Dennis and Heather Higgins, who trusted me with this sensitive and vexing topic.

  And I am deeply grateful to my family. This book has been informed by a deep love and respect for American history, politics, and culture that my parents instilled in me from a young age. I hope that I can pass on some of that to my children. In the meantime, I thank Emily, Simon, and Leah for their patience and love. And thanks above all to my husband Jason, my best critic and my best friend.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1Suzanne Macartney, Alemayehu Bishaw, and Kayla Fontenot, Poverty Rates for Selected Detailed Race and Hispanic Groups by State and Place: 2007–2011 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 2013), http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf.

  2Center for Native American Youth, Native American Youth 101: Information on the Historical Context and Current Status of Indian Country and Native American Youth (Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute, n.d.), http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/upload/Native%20American%20Youth%20101_higres.pdf.

  3Karen Chartier and Raul Caetano, “Ethnicity and Health Disparities in Alcohol Research,” http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh40/152-160.htm.

  4Center for Native American Youth, Native American Youth 101.

  5Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Rape Victimization: Findings from the National Violence against Women Survey (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, 2006), https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/210346.pdf.

  6Lawrence A. Greenfield and Steven K. Smith, American Indians and Crime (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999), http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/aic.pdf.

&n
bsp; 7Jane Palmer, “Native Americans,” in Sexual Violence and Abuse: An Encyclopedia of Prevention, Impacts, and Recovery, ed. Judy Postmus (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2012).

  8Chris Edwards, “Indian Lands, Indian Subsidies, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/interior/indian-lands-indian-subsidies.

  9National Center for Education Statistics, “How Much Money Does the United States Spend on Public Elementary and Secondary Schools?” https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66.

  10Edwards, “Indian Lands.”

  11Emma Brown, “Washington Is Taking Notice of Crumbling Native American Schools,” Washington Post, May 19, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/native-american-schools-long-have-been-crumbling-but-now-washington-is-paying-attention/2015/05/19/717560fe-fd6c-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html.

  12Alysa Landry, “‘All Indians Are Dead?’ At Least That’s What Most Schools Teach Children,” Indian Country Today Media Network, November 17, 2014, http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/11/17/all-indians-are-dead-least-thats-what-most-schools-teach-children-157822.

  13“The Navajos: The Long Walk and the Escape to Utah,” http://www.utahindians.org/Curriculum/pdf/HSnavajo.pdf.

  14Fergus M. Bordewich, Killing the White Man’s Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 132.

  CHAPTER ONE

  1United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs Field Oversight Hearing, Crow Agency, MT, Empowering Indian Country: Coal, Jobs, and Self-Determination, April 8, 2015, http://www.indian.senate.gov/sites/default/files/upload/files/4.6.2015%20SCIA%20Witness%20Testimony%20-%20Eric%20Henson.pdf.

  2Timothy Williams, “Higher Crime, Fewer Charges on Indian Land,” New York Times, February 20, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/us/on-indian-reservations-higher-crime-and-fewer-prosecutions.html.

  3Edwards, “Indian Lands.”

  4Terry L. Anderson, Sovereign Nations or Reservations? An Economic History of American Indians (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1995), p. 14.

  5Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, abridged ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), p. 243.

  6David H. Thomas, Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. 42.

  7Ibid.

  8Charles Glenn, American Indian/First Nations Schooling: From the Colonial Period to the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 26.

  9Bordewich, Killing the White Man’s Indian, p. 280.

  10Ibid., p. 117.

  11Ibid., p. 120.

  12Ibid., p. 121.

  13An Act to Provide for the Allotment of Lands in Severalty to Indians on the Various Reservations (General Allotment Act or Dawes Act), Statutes at Large 24, 388-91, NADP Document A1887, http://public.csusm.edu/nadp/a1887.htm.

  14“Dawes Act (1887),” http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=50.

  15Indian Land Tenure Foundation, “History of Allotment,” https://www.iltf.org/resources/land-tenure-history/allotment.

  16Anderson, Sovereign Nations or Reservations? p. 97.

  17John Koppisch, “Why Are Indian Reservations So Poor? A Look at the Bottom 1%,” Forbes, December 13, 2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoppisch/2011/12/13/why-are-indian-reservations-so-poor-a-look-at-the-bottom-1.

  18Ibid.

  19Terry Anderson, “Self-Determination – The Other Path for Native Americans,” PERC Report 4, no. 22 (2006), http://www.perc.org/articles/self-determination.

  20Ibid.

  21Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (New York: Knopf, 2005), pp. 308–9.

  22United States v. Washington, 384 F. Supp. 312 (W.D. Wash. 1974), http://dspace.library.colostate.edu/webclient/DeliveryManager/digitool_items/cub01_storage/2012/10/22/file_1/172443.

  23Bordewich, Killing the White Man’s Indian, p. 118.

  24Leonard A. Carlson, Indians, Bureaucrats, and Land: The Dawes Act and the Decline of Indian Farming (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), p. 174.

  25Anderson, Sovereign Nations or Reservations? p. 108.

  26Ibid., p. 97.

  27Ibid., p. 106.

  28Bordewich, Killing the White Man’s Indian, p. 124.

  29PLACE Advocacy, Guide to Homesite Leases (Bozeman, MT: Author, n.d.), http://placeadvocacy.org/lease.pdf.

  30Shawn E. Regan and Terry L. Anderson, “The Energy Wealth of Indian Nations,” LSU Journal of Energy Law and Resources 3, no. 1 (2014), p. 2. http://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/jelr/vol3/iss1/9.

  31George W. Bush Institute, Executive Summary of “The Energy Wealth of Indian Nations” by Shawn E. Regan and Terry L. Anderson, http://www.bushcenter.org/sites/default/files/GWBI-EnergyWealthIndianNations.pdf3 LSU J. of Energy L. & Resources (2014), http://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/jelr/vol3/iss1/9.

  32Edwards, “Indian Lands” (see introduction, n. 8).

  33Dan Frosch, “Pulling Aid Away, Shutdown Deepens Indians’ Distress,” New York Times, October 13, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/us/pulling-aid-away-shutdown-deepens-indians-distress.html.

  34Ibid.

  35First Nations Tax Commission, “Research: Expanding Commercial Activity on First Nation Lands,” http://www.fiscalrealities.com/uploads/1/0/7/1/10716604/expanding_commercial_activity.pdf.

  36“Remarks by the First Lady at White House Tribal Youth Gathering,” The White House, Office of the First Lady, July 9, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/09/remarks-first-lady-white-house-tribal-youth-gathering.

  37Larry Schweikart, “Buffaloed: The Myth and Reality of Bison in America,” Freeman, December 1, 2002, http://fee.org/freeman/buffaloed-the-myth-and-reality-of-bison-in-america.

  38Ibid.

  39Jen St. Denis, “Manny Jules: Taxing Times,” Business in Vancouver, April 29, 2013, https://www.biv.com/article/2013/4/manny-jules-taxing-times.

  40Kathy Brock, “One Source, Two Tributaries of Aboriginal-State Relations,” in Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, 4th ed., ed. David M. Thomas and David N. Biette (North York, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2014), p. 364.

  41Ibid, p. 365.

  42“Calder v. Attorney General of British Columbia (1970).” American Indian History Online. Facts on File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/History/MainPrintPage.asp?iPin=ind6552&DataType=Indian&WinType=Free.

  43Thalassa Research Associates, “The Douglas Reserve Policy,” http://gsdl.ubcic.bc.ca/collect/specific/index/assoc/HASH9161.dir/doc.doc.

  44Mark Milke, Incomplete, Illiberal, and Expensive: A Review of 15 Years of Treaty Negotiations in British Columbia and Proposals for Reform (Vancouver, BC: Fraser Institute, 2008), http://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/15_Years_BC_Treaty_NegotiationsRev2.pdf.

  45Fraser Institute, “Flawed Process for BC Treaty Negotiations Costing Billions of Dollars with No End in Sight,” (press release), July 28, 2008, http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/fraser-institute-flawed-process-bc-treaty-negotiations-costing-billions-dollars-with-883131.htm.

  46Ibid.

  47Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44, [2014] 2 S.C.R. 256, https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/14246/index.do.

  48Tom Flanagan, Christopher Alcantara, and André Le Dressay, Beyond the Indian Act: Restoring Aboriginal Property Rights (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), p. 3.

  49U.S. Census Bureau, “American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month: November 2011,” https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb11-f22.html.

  50Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Aboriginal Demographics from the 2011 National Household Survey (N.p.: Author, 2013), https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1370438978311/1370439050610#chp2.

  51Mark Kennedy, “First Nations: ‘Time Bomb’ Is Ticking, New Book Argues,” Ottawa Citizen, December
6, 2014, http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/first-nations-time-bomb-is-ticking-new-book-argues.

  52“To Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Premier of the Dominion of Canada, From the Chiefs of the Shuswap, Okanagan and Couteau Tribes of British Columbia. Presented at Kamloops, B.C. August 25, 1910” (letter), http://shuswapnation.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1910-SIR-WILFRID-LAURIER-MEMORIAL.pdf.

  53Flanagan, Alcantara, and Le Dressay, Beyond the Indian Act, p. 41.

  54S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), p. 319.

  55Ibid.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1Michael Sokolove, “Foxwoods Is Fighting for Its Life,” New York Times Magazine, March 14, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/magazine/mike-sokolove-foxwood-casinos.html.

  2Ronald Johnson, “Indian Casinos: Another Tragedy of the Commons,” in Self-Determination: The Other Path for Native Americans, ed. Terry L. Anderson, Bruce L. Benson, and Thomas E. Flanagan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 238.

  3Glenn Blain, “Gov. Cuomo Says Casinos Will Bring Jobs to Upstate Communities,” New York Daily News, December 18, 2014, http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/gov-cuomo-casinos-bring-jobs-upstate-blog-entry-1.2050110.

  4Niels Lesniewski, “Begich Slams McCaskill in Feud over Alaska Native Corporations,” #WGDB (blog), Roll Call, July 2, 2014, http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/begich-mccaskill-spar-over-alaska-native-corporations-again.

  5Paul C. Rosier, “Dam Building and Treaty Breaking: The Kinzua Dam Controversy, 1936–1958,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 119, no. 4 (1995): pp. 345–68, https://journals.psu.edu/pmhb/article/view/45031/44752.