The Indians’ New Deal?
Assimilation
• Allotment + ‘habits of civilized life’ ->
citizenship for Indians
• Role of federally-funded boarding schools
Carlisle Indian School (1879-1918)
‘kill the Indian and save the man’
http://americanindiantah.com/lesson_plans/ml_boardingschools.html
• 1924 Citizenship for all Indians
• 1928 Meriam Report
• 1930s: The Indians’ New Deal
– John Collier
– Indian Reorganization Act 1934
• End of allottment
• Unallotted land returned to tribal control
WWII and after
• 25,000 native soldiers + 40,000 in industry
• Relocation to cities
– 1940: 8% of N.A. in cities
– 1960: 30% of N.A. in cities
• Attempt to ‘terminate’ special status of
Indians
– From ‘wards’ to ‘citizens’
• 1831 (Justice Marshall): ‘domestic dependent nations’
1960s
• Urban Native Americans: multi-tribal
communities
• American Indian Movement (1968)
(Minneapolis)
• Indians of All Tribes (1969)
(occupied Alcatraz Island 1969-71)
Alcatraz Proclamation (1969)
We, the native Americans, re-claim the land known as Alcatraz
Island in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery. We
wish to be fair and honorable in our dealings with the Caucasian
inhabitants of this land, and hereby offer the following treaty: We
will purchase said Alcatraz Island for 24 dollars in glass beads and
red cloth, a precedent set by the white man's purchase of a similar
island about 300 years ago….We will give to the inhabitants of this
land a portion of that land for their own, to be held in trust by the
American Indian Government for as long as the sun shall rise and
the rivers go down to the sea -- to be administered by the Bureau of
Caucasian Affairs (BCA). We will further guide the inhabitants in
the proper way of living. We will offer them our religion, our
education, our life-ways, in order to help them achieve our level of
civilization and thus raise them and all their white brothers up
from their savage and unhappy state.
Alcatraz is suitable because…
•
1. It is isolated from modern facilities, and without adequate means of transportation.
•
2. It has no fresh running water.
•
3. The sanitation facilities are inadequate.
•
4. There are no oil or mineral rights.
•
5. There is no industry and so unemployment is very great.
•
6. There are no health care facilities.
•
7. The soil is rocky and non-productive and the land does not support game.
•
8. There are no educational facilities.
•
9. The population has always been held as prisoners and kept dependent upon others.
Mobilizing history
• 1972 march on Washington = ‘Trail of Broken
Treaties’
• 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee
– End of ‘Red Power’, but struggle for cultural and
political recognition continued
Toward cultural renewal
and political sovereignty
• Indian Self-Determination and Educational
Assistance Act (1975)
• American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978)
• American Indian Child Welfare Act (1978)
Tribal sovereignty
• Determine membership
• Make and enforce laws
• Regulate gaming activity (casinos)
• Tribal sovereignty limited by the Indian Civil
Rights Act (1968)
Native American population
• 1900: 237,000
• 2010: 2.9 million identified as Native Amerian
+ 2.3 million identified as NA in combination
with another race
=5.2 million total
22% lived on reservations