The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century: American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources, Second Edition

INTRODUCTION TO INDIAN AND WHITE VALUES

PREFACE Like many people, I have often been stuck in traffic jams in large cities and observed countless automobiles wasting gasoline . Then, while driving through industrial centers with tall smokestacks spewing the remains of burning coal or oil, I have been forced to breathe thick, hazy air with a grayish tint. I have read about polluted rivers where dead fish float on the surface and animals avoid drinking the water. Perplexing questions about humanity and the environment have frustrated me:"What is happening and why?""Where willit end?""How can this wastefulness in America be stopped?"Then I think about the land-the homeland of my Native American forebears whose tribes had special relationships with the earth-and how my ancestors and other Indian people have suffered at the hands of American capitalists in this age of greed, the twentieth century. My feelings run deep and have compelled me to write about the suffering of the land and the Indian people-and the government policies that have threatened to change them forever. This book is divided into two parts. Part 1focuses on a theorized internal model of Indian society, emphasizing six essential elements that are being bombarded by federal policies that alter tribal ways of life. Part I1 addresses both the capitalistic pressure on tribal natural resources and the strategies that Native Americans have adopted to defend such resources. The book does not focus on one region or one tribe. Rather, it brings an overall, insider's perspective to Indian life in Indian Country as Native societies were subjected to increasing pressure from federal policies and American capitalists seeking to control and grow wealthy from Indians' natural resources. The underlying thesis is that American capitalism, deriving from x Preface a tradition of Eurocentrism, has continued through the twentieth century to exploit tribal nations for their natural resources, thus forcing Indian leadership to adopt modern corporate strategies to ensure the survival of their nations and people. The following pages present case histories of certain tribes that have been exploited during this era. My logic in selecting these cases was to depict various policy periods affecting certain Indian natural resources, involving different tribes in different parts of Indian Country. The case studies of Part 1 also stress little-known events of Indian exploitation, all sparked by the white society's eagerness to harvest tribal natural resources. My objective is to bring more attention to the struggles of these Indian groups. Furthermore, the book hypothesizes that six fundamental elements -person, family, clan or society, community, nation, and spirituality -are imperative to constituting Indian society in general. This theory proposes an internal model of analysis and demonstrates the ways in which external forces of American capitalism and federalism have threatened this model. Certainly, there are other well-known cases that could be used and other incidents that some people are convinced deserve attention. And to be sure, a number of different cases set important precedents in federal Indian law relating to tribal natural resources. But the case histories explored in the first half of the book have been selected to provide a geographic balance among the various tribes victimized by harmful federal policies. The second half analyzes the Native responses and new methods that Indian leaders have adopted to deal with the accelerating demands for their natural resources and the pressures of capitalism. The situationin each case exemplifies a certain characteristicabout traditional Indian life that is vulnerableto the pressures of mainstream consumption.Chapter1concerns the Indian"individual"and the natural resource of land, or"motherearth,"as it is known to Native Americans . The focus here is a traditional Muscogee Creek elder named Jackson Barnett, who was out of his natural element when dealing with the ambitious mainstream culture. As a group, the Muscogee Creeks were once one of the largest tribes in the Old South, possessing enormous land areas. They underwent allotment-that is, they were allotted small parcels of land on an individual basis-in the early 1900s after surviving the Trail of Tears in the 1830s and reestablishing a relationship with the land in the Indian Territory during the nineteenth century. Chapter 2 demonstrates how one Indian "family" (an extended familywith numerous relatives)was shattered when whites consumed with greed decided these Indians should be murdered for the royalty Preface xi moneys they had received for their oil-rich land. The tragic fate of these Osage--once called the richest people...