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Chapter Eleven "WE HAVE TO BE PART OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM" Redefining Tribal Pluralism "THEcivil rights movement taught us not to be afraid," said John Echo Hawk, great-grandson ofa Pawnee warrior, in 1986.1 Indians had a tradition of resistance to whites from the seventeenth century through the nineteenth, but in the late 194-0S and 1950S, Indians were generally dispirited. Although the Indian Reorganization Act of1934 had signaled recognition by Congress of the failure of assimilationist policies, John Collier resigned as Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in frustration in 194-5 because such policies were gaining favor again in Congress. The new assimilationism called for termination by the federal government of tribal status of several tribes; transfer of federal responsibility and jurisdiction over Indians to state governments; and physical relocation from reservations to urban areas. At the heart ofthe policy were two powerful forces as old as the republic: greed and ideology. Some whites desired land, timber, and other resources that were under Indian control. Many other whites simply could not understand why Indians should have group rights and not have to compete as individual citizens. Following passage by Congress of a 1953 resolution declaring a policy to free Indians from federal supervision and control, statutes from 1954to 1962 authorized termination of more than one hundred tribes, bands, or Indian rancherias. Although most of those affected were small groups on the West Coast, two sizable tribes, the Klamaths in Oregon and the Menominees in Wisconsin, also were terminated. (Both reservations contained important timberlands.) Twelve thousand individual Indians lost tribal affiliations and their special political relationship with the United States, and two and one half million acres of Indian lands were removed from protected status.2 A small group of Native Americans created the National Congress of American Indians in 19# as a mechanism for bringing tribes together to plan political strategy to assert Indian rights. American rhetoric against racism in the Second World War emboldened Indian veterans, and two went to court in 194-8 to challenge Arizona and New Mexico for still 206 REDEFINING TRIBAL PLURALISM 207 denying Indians the right to vote, in the face of 1924 Congressional legislation that declared all Indians born in the u.s. to be citizens, completing a process that had begun when all those who accepted allotments were made citizens. In the past, Indian protest had been expressed largely outside American politics through armed resistance and messianic religious movements. In 1870, a Paiute named Wovoka who announced that he was an incarnation of the messiah preached that dancing could bring back the dead, the buffalo, and the whole way oflife ofthe Paiutes. The messianic movement grew throughout the Great Basin and the plains, with more than a half dozen Indian tribes, including the Oglala Sioux, and Cheyenne, participating in the ghost dance religion.3 By the 1950S, the days of the ghost dance were over, and, in addition, it was no longer possible to fight the u.S. Cavalry. There had been virtually no Indian involvement in American politics outside Oklahoma until the successful battle for the right to vote in Ariwna and New Mexico in 1948. In 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy repeatedly promised that "there would be protection ofthe Indian land base." "Indians," he said, "have heard fine words and promises long enough. They are right in asking for deeds."4 But deeds were not substantial in the early 1960s, despite the efforts of the new secretary of the interior, Stewart L. Udall, and Indian commissioner Philleo Nash. Congress did increase loan authorizations for Native Americans but appropriated only $4 million to assist them in purchasing land. Industrial plants were built on reservations , but their total worth was less than $100 million as late as 1968.5 More influential than Kennedy's rhetoric in stimulating activism was the accelerated movement for civil rights by blacks in the late 1950S. Four hundred and twenty Indians from sixty-seven tribes meeting in June 1961 at the University of Chicago issued a "Declaration of Indian Purpose" and a series ofrecommendations to strengthen the rights ofIndian tribes.6 It was the first major political initiative on behalf of tribal rights since Cherokee leaders lobbied Congress and appealed to the American public and the federal courts to resist President Andrew Jackson's decision to push the tribes of the Southeast to the West out of whites' way. Facilitating Indian Power: The Economic Oppurtunity Act 0[1¢4In 1964, a major...

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