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  • Building the Red Earth Nation:The Civilian Conservation Corps–Indian Division on the Meskwaki Settlement
  • Eric Steven Zimmer (bio)

“THIS TRACT OF LAND, upon which my tribe dwells,” John Tataposh wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1938, “is communally owned by the [Meskwaki] Indians, purchased with their ancestors’ own money. Therefore, we have the right to, through the right of ownership, decide how our affairs should be handled. Every member of my tribe has a right, a right of ownership of the land on which we live, to the disposal of our affairs as he sees fit.”1 Tataposh penned this letter in protest of the Meskwaki Nation’s new constitution, which his community had ratified the previous November. Because he and others believed it a deviation from their rightful form of governance, Tataposh asked Roosevelt to annul the document. This request, of course, strikes a starkly political tone. But questions about land ownership and environmental control lay at its core. Indeed, when read within the context of the widespread political and environmental action that took place across Native America in the 1930s, Tataposh’s letter reveals the close link between Meskwaki land and its people’s vision of tribal sovereignty.

This essay examines the ways in which the members of the small Meskwaki Nation used the Civilian Conservation Corps–Indian Division (CCC–ID) to act on the political changes embedded within the Indian New Deal and improve their most valuable asset—the land they call home.2 It exposes the ways in which a small Native community gleaned more than dollars from New Deal programs. In the CCC–ID, for example, the Meskwaki found opportunities to develop their environment and affirm their tribal sovereignty. The tribe used the CCC–ID to strengthen their cash economy as well as the natural and built environments on their land. They also worked within the Indian Division, leveraging political authority and influencing Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) decision making in environmental projects and personnel matters.3 Until only recently, historians of Native America have tended to overlook tribal political maneuvering in the twentieth century.4 Indeed, the Meskwaki experience offers a case study for understanding how oft-ignored federal programs afforded even small Native communities opportunities to assert themselves politically and capitalize on the national policy shifts of the 1930s. [End Page 106]

The dramatic changes in federal Indian policy that came about in this decade—collectively known as the “Indian New Deal”—have received a great deal of scholarly attention. For generations, the federal government forcibly removed Native peoples from their homelands; engaged in duplicitous treaty making and breaking; and advocated aggressive assimilation and allotment of tribal peoples. All of this aimed to eradicate Indian economies, lifeways, and forms of governance. But the tide of U.S. Indian policy started turning in the late 1920s.5 Rampant poverty in Indian Country spurred a federally sponsored, two-year study of reservation conditions that was published in 1928. This document, called the “Meriam Report,” detailed the many systemic failures of Indian policy. The report “recommended badly needed changes in virtually every aspect of Indian policy,” according to Virginia Davis, “and advocated for increased funding of Indian programs.”6 In 1933 the newly inaugurated Roosevelt appointed John Collier as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. During his twelve-year tenure at the Indian Office, Collier oversaw the implementation of Indian New Deal programs that mirrored the broader shifts toward social welfare brought on by the Roosevelt administration.7 The core component of the Indian New Deal was the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), which abolished allotment, emphasized tribal cultural autonomy, and offered Native communities a return to self-governance through the development of tribal constitutions. It thus marked a watershed in federal Indian policy.8

Scholars, though, have largely ignored programs like the CCC–ID, which had a significant impact in Indian Country. When historians mention the CCC–ID at all, they have tended only to emphasize the program’s economic benefits and the professional training Native enrollees received from their work.9 Indeed, the CCC–ID was one of the most successful programs of the Indian New Deal, insofar as it made gains toward ameliorating...

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