The National Council on Indian Opportunity: Quiet Champion of Self-Determination by Thomas A. Britten (review)

In this self-described “bureaucratic history,” Thomas Britten does yeoman’s work to uncover the profound impacts of a short-lived organization with seven employees, a minis-cule budget, and no authority to enforce its initiatives. Despite these limitations, Britten demonstrates how the National Council on Indian Opportunity (nico) worked bureaucratic back channels, corralled a fragmented Indian constituency, and activated its chair, the vice president of the United States, to secure important victories for American Indians in the 1970s. By rescuing this organization from obscurity, the study adds to a growing historiography highlighting the seemingly mundane but crucial role institutional actors played in shaping the Indian self-determination policy without denying the symbolic importance of the Red Power movement.

According to Britten, the ncio’s historical obscurity is rooted in the conditions of its creation. Established by executive fiat with little authority or funding, it coordinated the work of other federal agencies with the power and purse to aid American Indians. But this left the ncio with a “double bind dilemma” (64). It could not take credit for its actions or else risk alienating the parties it coordinated, yet it also had to justify its existence to legislative overseers. Walking a fine line between taking and reflecting credit, the ncio consequently left few clues to demonstrate its influence.

Britten’s approach, then, is to simply open the agency’s files and let the record speak for its importance. Early chapters describe herculean efforts to inventory diffuse federal Indian programs and help tribes secure economic development grants or restore ancestral lands. A compelling case is made for the ncio’s influence on Nixon’s self-determination policy, including a side-by-side comparison of the organization’s proposal and the president’s 1970 message to Congress. And the final chapters describe the ncio’s impossible task of representing both militant urban Indians and reservation leaders, though this material focuses too much on the executive director’s actions at the expense of the institution itself. Still, the picture that emerges is of a highly active organization that fought above its weight class.

What is lost in this exhaustive study is a compelling narrative to make clear the ncio’s most significant work. Thematic chapters group together issues that the council happened to tackle, but the book fails to provide a narrative thread to sift through the chaff. The important contribution to Nixon’s policy pronouncement, for instance, is followed by decidedly less influential work on the 1972 Indian Education Act and the Coushatta Tribe’s recognition efforts. Certainly, the subject matter lends itself to this analytical approach, but the structure also reflects methodological choices to simply survey the archive and write up what was found. To be clear, Britten is no mere reporter. His interviews with historical actors add real depth and the synthesis of secondary material to contextualize ncio actions is masterful. This is a vital contribution. It’s just that more interpretative narration would have left the reader with less of the analytical burden to carry.