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Chapter Six John Collier and the Tribal Alternative The views of John Collier on Indian policy before he became commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1933 are of central importance to this inquiry. He was the most important figure in creating the consensus that prevailed at the end of the 1920s that Indian policy had failed, and he was the most important single actor in the adoption and implementation of the Indian Reorganization Act. This chapter examines his basic ideas, with emphasis on his views in the early 1930s. Collier was a highly sophisticated and intellectual person, the sort of person most likely to think in ideological terms, in the sense used here. Clearly the structure of his thought constitutes the most coherent and systematic form that the tribal alternative ideology had assumed before passage of the ira. The attempt to make overall sense of Collier’s views is not, however, a simple task. Partly this is because there is so much material to examine. He was wholeheartedly devoted to pursuing Indian interests, as he saw them, for forty-six years; for half of this time—between 1922 and 1945—he played leading roles in national government policy-making in this area. At all times he wrote extensively—articles, statements, and ghostwritten official documents on Indian policy during the period of his life covered here. In addition, he often testified before Congress. As Lawrence C. Kelly has noted, “Wherever he went during the 1920s and 1930s, he always carried with him a portable typewriter . Whenever there was an idle moment, he dashed off a newspaper or a magazine article, a press release, or a newsletter.”1 After his retirement as commissioner Collier remained energetically involved in various kinds of activities on behalf of Indians for another twenty-three years and wrote even more voluminously. Another difficulty in determining Collier’s viewpoints is that as someone who tried to carry his ideas into action, he must be judged by what he did as well as what he said, whether considering his efforts in working with others to discredit existing policy and/or develop alternatives to it or his actions as the principal officer of the national government with responsibility for Indian policy . Action in a complex system requires cooperation with others. Certainly Collier was never in a situation, after he became involved in Indian affairs, in which he could act solely in terms of his views about what should be done. His actions, therefore, sometimes were based on compromise—judgments of 137 06-N1289 6/21/2000 4:52 PM Page 137 what was possible at the time—or responses to events or ideas that he would have preferred not to address at that moment. It is also the case that his ideas were complex and multifaceted, difficult to state all at once. Because observers could not or did not always fit what he said into these wider structures, Collier was sometimes misunderstood. At times he took advantage of this fact to win support for views that might not have received approval if the broader context had been present. There is no convincing evidence, however, that Collier was ever dishonest in stating something to be true that he knew was not.2 Compounding this problem is the undoubted fact that his views changed as he learned more from others and from actual experience with Indian life and government policy. Although he was driven to an unusual extent (for persons primarily involved with public policy) by complex ideas that he had developed at an early age, he was not so rigid that he found himself unable to grow intellectually. Collier was often contentious and difficult to deal with. Kelly, in an excellent and thorough account of Collier’s early life and the first four to five years of his involvement with Indian affairs, has noted that he was often intolerant of opponents , a trait that appeared to be a basic aspect of his character and was undoubtedly related to his being both an extremely able person and intensely committed to living according to his principles. It is easy to see how he could have assumed that people who did not agree with him or who took actions he thought unwise were profoundly wrong in some sense. In spite of this shortcoming , he was extraordinarily effective overall in dealing with many different kinds of people for more than two decades of leadership in this area of public policy...

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