Robert M. Schwartz
For both the reading intervention and American literature aspects of this curricular unit, a historical backdrop is needed. Students should begin this study with some important background information on the American Indian experience. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of books written on the subject. It can be and is taught as a stand-alone class at many finer institutions of learning. For these purposes, the following background study focuses on experiences where struggle and survival have been apparent and necessary, and evolves into the many historical and modern instances where individuals and groups thrived to catapult the civil and sovereign rights of American Indians to where they are today. The historical experience of American Indians has been one of notable strife – without which the latter-mentioned examples of thriving would lack appropriate context. The following is a study of that struggle for these purposes, and usable in any and all of its parts for both the reading intervention and American literature aspects of this curricular unit.
Early Survivors and Colonization
The classic land bridge lesson is accurate. History dating back about 15,000 years shows us that nomads migrated to the North American continent from Eurasia (a land bridge surfacing after the melting of the ice caps) and are the ancestors of modern American Indians. They mostly hunted until many larger beasts were killed off, creating the need for farming and gathering that led to a renaissance of sorts in population of the Natives, primarily subsisting in much of what is now modern day America on crops such as beans, squash and corn, as well as a dependency on fishing.
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Fast forward to European colonization, and disaster strikes an otherwise well-balanced life on this continent. The settlers, driven by what they believed could be considered an early religious manifest destiny, invaded the North American continent and inflicted centuries of misery upon the Natives. Much of the literature involved in this curricular unit is an example of the modern result of said misery. Colonists introduced disease and alcohol to a people who had never encountered either. Lacking the centuries of experience the Europeans had to acclimate to both extraordinary health hazards, the American Indian population suffered cataclysmic loss. One particular tribe, the Nez Perce, saw particular devastation due to smallpox. Historian Charles Wilkinson, in his book
Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations
, describes their experience:
Although warfare with whites played a role, the germs were far and away the dominant cause in chopping the Nez Perce population from an estimated 6,000 in 1805 (after the first two waves of smallpox had already hit) to 1,500 in 1885.
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Three quarters of the population wiped out in 80 years, and that being only one tribe. Modern scholars generally estimate the loss of population in the continental United States from before the epidemics hit until the 20
th
century to be over 95% - almost total devastation. Alcohol further exacerbated this process. Newly introduced by early settlers to the Native population, it would become what Wilkinson describes as “wholly ruinous,” and remains a rampant problem today.
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But disease and alcohol were not the only factors in the massacring of the Native people – the settlers themselves inflicted countless atrocities that echo into the present. Scalping is commonly misperceived as a practice originating with American Indians, when in reality it was introduced by the English, who offered rewards for Native scalps. A proclamation made by a ranking soldier in 1755 stated of Native peoples, who were thought as animals and enemies and encouraged to be hunted and wiped out:
For every scalp of a male Indian brought in as evidence of their being killed as aforesaid, forty pounds. For every scalp of such female Indian or male Indian under the age of twelve years that shall be killed and brought in as evidence of their being killed as aforesaid, twenty pounds.
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Treatment of Natives in a New Nation: Removal, Allotment and Termination
Once the United States settlers attained their freedom in the revolutionary war, the government treatment of Natives did not improve. The government has since signed and broken over 400 treaties with the Native people; Indians were solicited for support in the War of 1812, and then afterward systematically removed from their homelands to “Indian Territory” in far less hospitable places.
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Most notably, through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, great tribes of the southeast – the Cherokee, Choctaw, Muskogee, Seminole, and Chickasaw tribes – known as the Five Civilized Tribes (defined as “civilized” by their willingness to model colonial culture) were systematically removed. This was facilitated by President Andrew Jackson and is commonly referred to as the Trail of Tears. The removal would continue through the 1900’s based on U.S. government interests in oil, wildlife, minerals, land or any desire of the government for what was originally owned or operated or regulated by Natives. Tribes were removed again and again, their allotments of land becoming smaller and smaller. Later in the 19
th
century, government oppression of Native peoples would continue with the General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act, by which Indian land was taken and appropriated or “allotted” to tribal members. The remaining reservation land was then offered up for procurement by non-Natives. Assimilation from tribal customs to American culture was again cited as a justification by the government; however a clear result was the taking of Native lands.
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The Policy of Termination, another aimed at assimilation, proposed that tribes and reservations be literally terminated and all American Indians become citizens of the United States. Enacted by House Concurrent Resolution 108 in 1953, the policy set out to completely strip the tribal nations of their sovereignty, thereby, it was rationalized, lessening the government expenditure on Indian services. As Wilkinson states: “Termination offered full and final relief from the centuries-old weariness with the refusals of Indians to abandon their political and cultural identity.”
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It was a policy enacted to quickly and finally eliminate American Indian culture, and thereby also eliminate the need for the US government to recognize tribes as sovereign nations and provide services for their continuance. Vine Deloria Jr. compares it to the historic wars waged against Native Americans, Termination simply being the most recent and even more egregious in its bureaucracy. The result was “disastrous” Deloria describes, and carried with it a “deprivation of services” mirroring atrocities of the past, simply in a new form: urgent assimilation. “Federal medical services” were denied to “various tribes, resulting in tremendous increase in disease.”
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The need for survival has plagued American Indians, but also created a need to thrive.
A Thriving People: Reorganization, Self-Determination and the Modern Era
Centuries of horrendous atrocities befell American Indians since the European conquests and colonization of the continent, but while this created the dire need for survival, the resilient and resourceful Native peoples have throughout this history, and ever more effectively in modern times, thrived and succeeded, won back lands and saw Acts reversed. In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act saw some lands restored and/or allotted, and an opportunity for self-governance of reservations. This was a “bright spot” as Deloria describes, in an otherwise still very bleak political landscape. Throughout the 20
th
century, American Indians continued to struggle for sovereignty, and rights to their lands and resources.
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The Self-Determination Policy slowly began to overtake and replace the Termination Policy, whereby American Indians in the 1960’s voiced a new demand for control over their own destiny. And while the policy wasn’t made official in the 1970’s, Wilkinson outlines Robert Yellowtail of the Crow Tribe of Montana speaking of Self-Determination to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs as early as 1919. Mr. Yellowtail stated:
Mr. Chairman, it is peculiar and strange to me [that] . . . you have not upon your statute books nor in your archives of law, so far as I know, one law that permits us to think free, act free, expand free, and decide free without first having to go and ask a total stranger that you call the Secretary of the Interior; in all humbleness and humiliation, “how about this, Mr. Secretary, can I have permission to do this”? and “Can I have permission to do that”? etc. . . .
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Mr. Yellowtail’s statements encapsulate the ethos of the American Indian experience in the 20
th
century: an uphill battle in the American court system, in Washington, D.C., and throughout the US to get back land and resources and pride that was taken from them in the preceding centuries. There were victories and setbacks. It is a valuable lesson to students in perseverance in human resiliency and spirit.
Throughout the course of American history, Native lands have been annexed by the US government and tribal rights taken. This, as should be explained to students, is where the Indian “Reservation” comes into play. Students should develop an understanding that American Indians have been pushed from their native lands and onto what are called reservations – a designated area of land on which American Indian tribes manage and inhabit based upon placement by the federal government (the US Bureau of Indian Affairs). These reservations have historically been, as mentioned, designated by the federal government and not by the tribes themselves, or the states in which they are located. Therefore, there have been struggles throughout American history regarding which rights the Natives maintain as sovereign people, and which are managed by the federal government of the United States. The rights in question vary from very complex, right down to basic human rights – how and whom to worship, which rituals are allowed and which are not, and where and which type of wild fauna can be hunted and harvested. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has been responsible for many of the persecutions that the European “founders” of the continent sought to secede from. They “sought to ‘Christianize’ [native] students” by putting them in schools of their own design. They persecuted religious ceremonies, and formed industries that became the reservations’ soul employer. They even sought to control the trade of natural resources.
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In the 1960’s and 70’s, the “Salmon Wars” of the American northwest carried a deep affect for the significance of relations between the Natives of this country and those who came after them. What came to a head was centuries of oppression, modernized in a battle that had the guise of politics and/or bureaucracy. “Most tribal powers are territorially based within reservations, but Indians can sometimes claim off-reservation rights,” writes Wilkinson. At the forefront was a man named Billy Frank, Jr., who embodied the rebellious spirit of both the oppressed Indian, and the hippy movement that was going on simultaneously. Frank and others in the struggle were assaulted, arrested or worse while fighting for “rights” to fish the waters their people had for centuries, continuing a history of oppression that began with the settlement of the North American continent by Europe. Frank is an example of both a setback and a victory, as his efforts shine through in history as a fight against injustice.
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The movement from Termination to restoration and Self-Determination did not come easily or quickly - but now was a time where determined American Indian delegates to Washington, D.C. had a chance to shine and thrive. In fact, if we say that historically American Indians were faced with many instances where they had no choice but to survive, the following individuals and groups, it could be said, had no choice but to thrive. A foremost example is Ada Deer - a leader of the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin, who was instrumental in seeing her tribe’s restoration. In the early 1970's, many who were determined to achieve restoration were spurned on Capitol Hill. Wilkinson describes Ada Deer's effectiveness in the face of adversity:
Gary Orfield, Harvard political scientist and noted civil rights expert, observed [of Deer], "I have spent a lot of time around Capitol Hill. One of the most remarkable lobbying campaigns I have ever seen was the campaign for Menominee restoration. Nobody was safe from Ada Deer and her supporters. Members of Congress just gave up." Deer's finely tuned sense for the ways of Congress and her shrewd use of experts led her to build a solid record on many fronts: history, demographics, business, law, health. education, and economics. Armed also with her trademark optimism and persistence, which, in Orfield's formulation, just made people "give up," Deer made her case by going to, over, or around, as the case need be, the key players on the Hill, in the White House, and in the Department of the Interior, wherever she could make headway.
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When relaying to students the nature of someone who thrives, Deer is a foremost example regardless of demographic. When studying American Indian history, the heroes are as pertinent as any suffering, and indeed more so. Battles continue to wage for Indian rights. Oppressive policy has been built up over centuries, but is being unraveled thread by thread by powerful advocates like Ada Deer.
Another thriving example in modern day Native America is Vine Deloria, Jr. His book
Custer Died for your Sins: An Indian Manifesto
, is referenced throughout this curricular unit. He is described by Wilkinson as an educated man from an educated family. If anyone in the modern movement for tribal sovereignty can be compared to Martin Luther King, Jr., it is Deloria, Wilkinson asserts. He found the place for the Native peoples’ movement in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, proclaiming “that the tribes just had to be more aggressive. The government was so terrified by civil rights that if we just threatened to act, we could prevail.” Deloria had many achievements in the movement, most notably his book.
Custer
is well-written and insightful, intense and unforgiving. According to Wilkinson, “For whites, it humanized Indians. . .For Indians,
Custer
inspired empowerment and pride.”
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Deloria’s manifesto fueled the movement to end Termination and restore tribal sovereignty. It is a shining example of the power of words to inspire change – how fitting a theme for an English classroom. Continuing the theme of words inspiring change, in modern day, another success and example of thriving is explored in
Sliver of a Full Moon
, the play both aspects of this curricular unit will be utilizing. In the play we are told the dramatic story of the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 2013. In 1978, the
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe case took the rights of tribes to have jurisdiction in prosecuting non-Natives
.
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The result of this was a horrendous misfire of jurisdiction and responsibility that saw non-Natives perpetuating violent crimes against women they knew they would not be prosecuted for, because of the mess revolving around issues of jurisdiction. Surviving this real life nightmare, these brave survivors told their stories as part of a campaign to have Native women included in VAWA. They succeeded. However, the law still does not include rape or murder, or most tribes in Alaska. The battle still wages.
After spending time exploring American Indian history, it is only the limit of the imagination for the educator to formatively assess understanding – quizzes, group work, discussion, analysis, and the activities outlined below are all a powerful step in allowing the knowledge of this history to change our perspectives and inspire at very least the desire for more knowledge. Beyond that, we can only hope that knowledge of the past can prevent us from making the same mistakes again.