AFGHANISTAN- Canada's Military, Militia, Reservists honour our First Peoples brothers and sisters- they helped to fight 1812 to form our Canada- they identify who we are as Canada
A National Crime-The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986 books
IDLE NO MORE CANADA- One Billion Rising- Breaking the Chains- Global abuse of Aboriginals First Peoples- Canada/USA/Australia/New Zealand/Latin America - UNITED NATIONS SHAME- all politicans have betrayed Canadians 10,000 year peoples
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/07/idle-no-more-canada-one-billion-rising.html
from Nova Scotia- we love our environment... our land... our nation and most of all our children- this is 4 the children of the future... and theirs... and don't put ur political bullshit and beans in it.... millions of us crossed over and voted tory 2 support Peter MacKay and our troops... and NO POLITICAL PARTY IS WITHOUT SHAME ON THIS DAY.... nor any politician..... it's our Canada- the everyday people... poor, disabled, broken hearted, soaring, educated, aged, crippled, disabled- visible and invisible, strong, vibrant- alive.... smart.... and aware- it's our Canada- and we will protect her... 36 million strong....
THE WOLVES- SAVE OUR ENVIRONMENT- 4 the future of our children and theirs....
The Gray Wolf (Canis lupus; also spelled Grey Wolf, see spelling differences; also known as Timber Wolf or Wolf) is a mammal in the order Carnivora. The Gray Wolf shares a common ancestry with the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris), as evidenced by DNA sequencing and genetic drift studies. Gray wolves were once abundant and distributed over much of North America, Eurasia, and the Middle East. Today, for a variety of human-related reasons, including widespread habitat destruction and excessive hunting, wolves inhabit only a very limited portion of their former range. Though listed as a species of least concern for extinction worldwide, for some regions including the Continental United States, the species is listed as endangered or threatened.
IF U LOVE WOLVES PLZ ENJOY IT!! SAVE THEM!!
COMMENT:
THIS WAS ON MYSPACE PROFILE - NOVA0000SCOTIA- 4 over 7 years..... and it will never change...our environment matters- and all politicians need 2 get off their butts and work 2gether..... the FIRST NATIONS, METIS, INUIT, NON-STATUS... say all politicians just talk, talk, talk, year in and year out and basicly do NOTHING!!!!! - looking back over 50 years- ain't that the damm truth
AND....
I own 8 incredible old books on North American Indians from the 70s.... and they tell incredible stories of the brilliant American Native Indians of Canada USA- brilliant, beautiful and as structured as the ancient Romans- I adore our First Nations, Metis and Inuit and North American People...
THE FIRST PEOPLE OF NORTH AMERICA- always... used to have almost a hundred in my younger days...
THIS LAND AND THESE PEOPLE- An Illustated History of Canada-1977 W.L Morton & L.F. Hannon
Heather Robertson- 1970 (original) Reservations are 4 Indians
Mi'kmaq Fisheries - Netukulimk -Towards a Better Understanding
CHARLES DICKENS SON- Francis Dickins who served 1874- 1886s in Canada's
DICKINS OF THE MOUNTED... North West Mounted Police1989
THE NEW WORLD- The First Pictures of America-Stefan Lorant 1965 -First Revised Edition
DESIGNS OF THE ANCIENT MIMBRENOS- with a Hopi Interpretation -Fred Kabotie 1982 2nd Edition
AMERICAN INDIAN- Oliver LaFarge- 1956 First Edition- A pictorial history of the American Indian
CANADA- A Portrait of Faith-1998-2nd Edition
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A man loved by so many around the world- have read his books over and over and over again.... we love u Elmore Leonard- and will miss u terrible....
Laughs and tears at funeral for crime novelist Elmore Leonard
By Staff
BIRMINGHAM, Mich. – Friends, family and fans remembered award-winning crime novelist Elmore Leonard during a funeral service in suburban Detroit that was equal parts laughter and tears.
Son Christopher Leonard joked about the "biting sarcasm" that his father had genetically bestowed upon his kids and grandkids.
Author, sports writer and friend Mike Lupica said Leonard himself would have appreciated the tone of Saturday’s Mass at Holy Name Church in Birmingham.
The 87-year-old Leonard died Tuesday in his Bloomfield Township home from complications from a stroke.
His novels include "Out of Sight," "Get Shorty" and "Freaky Deaky." More recently, he served as executive producer of the FX drama "Justified."
Show star Timothy Olyphant, who attended the funeral, said afterward that he "felt very blessed to have known" the author.
http://globalnews.ca/news/799910/laughs-and-tears-at-funeral-for-crime-novelist-elmore-leonard/
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IDLE NO MORE- CANADA- USA- AUSTRALIA, MEXICO, NEW ZEALAND-AMERICAS
UNITED NATIONS WANTS- FIRST PEOPLE- AMERICAN INDIAN LANDS RETURNED TO THEM IN USA 10,000 years indian-land
IDLE NO MORE CANADA- oh sheeeeeeeeeeeeeet- our friends from America sent us a share...
Johnny Cash WAS Native American. Cherokee
The Trail of Tears as Told by Johnny Cash - pt 1
Uploaded on Nov 10, 2008
Removal of the Cherokees
Birthday Story of Private John G. Burnett, Captain Abraham McClellan's Company, 2nd
Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry, Cherokee Indian Removal, 1838-39.
Children:
This is my birthday, December 11, 1890, I am eighty years old today. I was born at Kings Iron
Works in Sulllivan County, Tennessee, December the 11th, 1810. I grew into manhood fishing
in Beaver Creek and roaming through the forest hunting the deer and the wild boar and the
timber wolf. Often spending weeks at a time in the solitary wilderness with no companions but
my rifle, hunting knife, and a small hatchet that I carried in my belt in all of my wilderness
wanderings.
On these long hunting trips I met and became acquainted with many of the Cherokee Indians,
hunting with them by day and sleeping around their camp fires by night. I learned to speak their
language, and they taught me the arts of trailing and building traps and snares. On one of my
long hunts in the fall of 1829, I found a young Cherokee who had been shot by a roving band
of hunters and who had eluded his pursuers and concealed himself under a shelving rock.
Weak from loss of blood, the poor creature was unable to walk and almost famished for water. I
carried him to a spring, bathed and bandaged the bullet wound, and built a shelter out of bark
peeled from a dead chestnut tree. I nursed and protected him feeding him on chestnuts and
toasted deer meat. When he was able to travel I accompanied him to the home of his people and
remained so long that I was given up for lost. By this time I had become an expert rifleman and
fairly good archer and a good trapper and spent most of my time in the forest in quest of game.
AMERICA'S FIRST PEOPLES- EXTERMINATED, RAPED, PILLAGED, DESTROYED-
AFI-The Leaving Song part 1- Evil America's "Trail Of Tears"
"Evil America" will always sing the sorrow.
The early 1800s was one of the most disgraceful periods in American history. President Andrew Jackson supported a course of legislation that led to what is known as the "Trail of Tears."
FIRST PEOPLE OF NORTH AMERICA
presents
FIRST PEOPLE OF NORTH AMERICA
When the Ice Age began two million years ago, people and animals were much different than they are now. Paleontologists, scientists who study fossil animals, and Paleoanthropologists, paleontologists who specialize in studying the fossil ancestors of modern humans, tell us that the distribution of many common mammals and the ancestors of modern humans was much different than it is today. The ancestors of modern humans, for example, were much more primitive than they are today and were confined to southern, warmer climates. It was only by about 50,000 years ago that people had evolved cultures capable of supporting them in more northern, colder climates, in northern Europe and Asia, for example.
Many mammals that are familiar today were also different in the past. In the areas south of the glaciers, open, savanna-like conditions prevailed that allowed herds of large herbivores to flourish. The ancestors of modern horses and camels had evolved in North America and practically dominated the northern landscape along with ultra-large ancestors of beaver. In Asia and Europe, the familiar Woolly Mammoth and Mastodon similarly developed to exploit these northern reaches.
During the advance of the glaciers, modern humans crossed the Bering Land Strait, probably while hunting the large game animals which would have found the conditions there ideal. This crossing was probably a leisurely one, made by hundreds or even thousands of people, and could have occurred any time after 50,000 years ago and probably before 25,000 years ago. Indeed, the "crossing" could have been so gradual that people need not have travelled more than one or two kilometres in their lifetimes. The extent of the Beringia Refugium, or the unglaciated continent of Beringia, would have included most of Alaska and the northern Yukon, before the way was blocked by glaciers coming down from the Rocky Mountains. It is the manner that these first immigrants to North America made their way from the Beringia Refugium into the interior of North America south of the glaciers that remains a mystery.
Two routes have been proposed for the passage of people into continental North America. One suggestion has been that, as the glaciers first began to recede, a corridor opened between the glaciers originating in the Rocky Mountains and the glaciers originating from Hudson's Bay. This corridor would have run from just north of modern-day Edmonton to south of modern-day Calgary and the first peoples may have travelled this route into the New World.
Opponents to this hypothesis suggest the climate along this corridor may have been too severe to accommodate people for the period it would have taken them to travel it. As an alternative, it has been suggested that the first peoples might have travelled down the coast of British Columbia, along shore lines now inundated by higher sea levels. Opponents to this hypothesis argue that there is no evidence among the earliest groups of technology capable of producing water craft and, perhaps most importantly, it leaves open the question of how these people would then cross the Rocky Mountains, which would then have been glaciated as well.
Clearly much additional research is required before these questions can be answered. Archaeologists in Alberta, for example, have been exploring the proposed inland corridor for early archaeological sites but it may be many years before answers are found under erosional debris from the mountains.
We do know, however, that the First Nations people had arrived in interior North America before 20,000 years ago and had rapidly spread as far as South America in a short period of time. The evidence available indicates the Paleo-Indians were primarily hunters of big game. Archaeological sites in the southwest of the United States have produced clear evidence of Paleo-Indians hunting and scavenging mastodons and extinct species of bison. This evidence usually consists of diagnostic artifacts, such as distinctively shaped projectile points (stone tips of arrows, spears, javelins, etc.), in association with the bones of these animals. Kill sites appear to have been natural traps such as canyons or low cliffs which small groups of animals were stampeded over. Other animals may have been scavenged after natural deaths such as winter starvation.
In addition to these large game animals, Paleo-Indians probably also relied on smaller game and plant foods.
Changes in styles of projectile points are used as one method of determining the relative ages of sites. Early Paleo-Indian sites are easily recognized by the presence of distinctive forms of projectile points called "fluted points", characterized by a channel flake, or "flute", which runs up the centre of the tool, probably to aid in hafting as well as thinning. Two styles of Paleo-Indian projectile points are "Clovis" and "Folsom". Variant forms of the former type are found in Ontario.
Later forms of Paleo-Indian projectile points are not fluted but have a similar shape and are characterized by parallel ribbon flaking which refers to the final shaping of the biface by extremely careful removal of flakes from the sides of the tool.
As mentioned above, during the late Paleo-Indian period, the glaciers which covered the northern half of the continent began to gradually melt, exposing new land for occupation. At the same time as this was occurring, world wide extinctions among the large mammals also occurred. Mastodons, Woolly Mammoths, giant beavers, giant bison and many other important species disappeared. In North America, camels and horses also died off, the latter not to reappear on the continent until the Spanish brought them at the end of the 15th century A.D.
http://www.ontarioarchaeology.on.ca/summary/first.htm
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First Arrivals (50 000 B.C.- 1000 B.C.)
According to the evolution theory, the human species in Asia, Europe and Africa has, over millions of years, evolved from ape-like creatures to Homo sapiens, modern man. But there is no evidence of such an evolutionary process in the Western Hemisphere. There are, in fact, no apes at all, living or fossil found in the Americas. The first people who set foot on the new land, those who followed and their descendants, were all Homo sapiens, men and women like ourselves, with the same mental and physical capabilities today’s people have.
Carbon-14 tests, developed in the 1940s, have provided archeologists with a very precise way of dating their finds that existed in the past. With this method they can measure the age of organic artifacts with a fair degree of precision up to the age of 50 000 years. C-14 tests prove that oldest traces of man in North America are about 12 000 years old.
After decades of guesswork and unfounded theories of lost European tribes and lost continents, it is now held as conclusive that mankind first arrived in North America from Asia during the Pleistocene age via the Bering Strait land bridge, also known as Beringia. C-14 tests also prove this theory with dental evidence. Those who made the crossing - either by land or by water - were neither explorers nor settlers nor adventurers. They were simply hungry men and women following the game on which their livelihood depended. They were the Paleo-Siberians, the real discoverers of the New World. By all scientific evidence the first Americans entered a land quite different from the America of today. The climate of those glacial times was cooler and rainier. Lakes and swamps existed where no water exists today - i.e. in the deserts.
Increasing archeological evidence has pushed the estimated date for human arrival in North America further and further back, to about 50 000 B.C. The migration from Asia continued from this time over many millennia in many waves.
There were three major waves of migrants.
Geological and archeological evidence points to an ice-free corridor for several thousand years between about 40 000 B.C. and 10 000 B.C. along the spine of the Rockies. Immigrants could come during this time period to the New World. During the Late Wisconsinan Glaciations, about 18 000 years ago, however, the ice was at its maximum and covered most of Canada and much of northern United States. There was no migration at this time.
A second corridor was formed further east along the Alberta - Saskatchewan plains during another melt.
Finally, a third passageway developed around 10 000 B.C. to 8000 B.C. along the Yukon, Peace and Liard rivers.
From these routes early immigrants could have dispersed eastward along the river valleys of the Great Plains, westward through the South Pass of the Rockies to the Great Basin, southwestward around the heel of the Rockies to southern California, or southward into Middle America all the way to Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost tip of the New World (South America). The people moved about as climate changed and the food supply increased or decreased. Changing climate was always, and still is, a fact of life. As each pioneer group reached a new area, they came upon a wide variety of animals, many of which they had never seen before. But never once did they encounter another human being who had preceded them - a true native. The reason? There was a blank page in the natural history of the New World.
Later migrations to the New World occurred long after the final submersion of Beringia, about 3000 to 1000 B.C. Eskimos were one of the latest migrants of the ancient Americas, they came around 3000 B.C.
http://www.american-indians.net/first.htm
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The Trail of Tears - American Indians
After the American Revolution the newly established states of Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi took the lead in forcing the Southeastern Indians into exile. By then the white populations of these states already greatly outnumbered the Indians, who now were living in relatively small enclaves. Yet even these domains were to be denied the Indians. The state governments, under pressure from their citizens, demanded the removal of the tribesmen to the regions far to the west. One rationale for their demands was that the tribes were uncivilized and therefore unworthy of maintaining their hold on land desired by white Christian farmers. Ironically, the Indians had, by then, adopted "civilization" and all its works. The remaining major tribes of the Southeast - the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee - were known as the Five Civilized Tribes, and many of the natives had adopted both European agricultural methods and Christianity.
Many Americans, appraised of this assimilation by publicists from the tribes themselves and by missionaries who had long lived among them, championed the cause of the Five Civilized Tribes. But the real power to dispose of the Indians’ lands remained with the state governments, and they were adamant for removal. These governments, in the early 19th century, passed laws that "legalized" the eradication of the Indian communities and opened their lands to settlers. Such legislation even denied the Indians any right of appeal by depriving them of standing in court.
It was this denial of the Indians’ most fundamental rights that led to a celebrated confrontation between two branches of the federal government in the persons of the venerable chief justice of the United States, John Marshall, and the president, Andrew Jackson (served 1829 - 1837). A Georgia law depriving the Indians of their rights was argued up to the Supreme Court, where it was ruled unconstitutional. Jackson, who was determined to rid the eastern part of the nation of its Indian population, was reputed to have said of the decision: "John Marshall has rendered his decision; now let him enforce it."
Without the power of the federal executive behind him, Marshall’s decision in favor of Indian right was, in effect, null and void. And on May 28, 1830 Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act, a bill requiring all Indians living east of the Mississippi to leave their homes and be relocated far to the west in what was called Indian Territory. Now the federal government moved swiftly and brutally to enforce the new legislation. The first to feel the impact were the Choctaws of Mississippi. Bribed by agents of the government, a minority of Choctaw leaders in 1830 signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. All of the Choctaw land in Mississippi was ceded in exchange for territories in Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Only eastern Choctaws managed to evade federal authorities and escape removal by scattering in small bands throughout the backwoods of Mississippi and Louisiana, there to live for decades on the periphery of non-Indian society. Early in the 20th century the federal government finally abandoned effort to expel those who remained. The Bureau of Indian Affairs established an agency among them in central Mississippi and purchased land there for a reservation.
In successive marches from 1830 to 1833, thousands of Choctaws set out on foot, under the watchful eyes of soldiers. These long, cold marches, difficult at best, were made worse by shortages of wagons, horses, blankets and food. Woefully inadequate funds were quickly exhausted, and along the way people began to die. By the time Oklahoma was reached, more than a quarter of the migrants had succumbed to hunger, disease, or exhaustion.
The journey was equally horrible for the other Southeastern tribes when their turn came. Between 1834 and 1838 most of the Creeks, Cherokees and Chickasaws suffered removal, as did many of the Seminoles. Some of the eastern Seminoles forged themselves into a guerrilla army and waged bloody warfare against federal troops to retain their foothold in the East. One war lasted for seven years, from 1835 to 1824; a second war, in the 1850’s, was much shorter. For almost 30 years after the fighting stopped in 1856, the remnants of the eastern Seminole peoples lived in isolation.
Like the Seminoles, a minority of Cherokees remained in their region by fleeing to land that was inaccessible to the outside world and generally considered worthless. Before the 19th century ended, the eastern Cherokees were all living legally on reservation lands purchased for them by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the mountains of North Carolina.
Although the tribes in their new Oklahoma territories never recovered the vitality of the old days, they did reassert their former way of life, albeit in somewhat diminished form. They established farms, built schools and churches, revived their political institutions, and the Cherokees resumed publication of their newspaper.
http://www.american-indians.net/facts.htm
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US should return stolen land to Indian tribes, says United Nations
UN's correspondent on indigenous peoples urges government to act to combat 'racial discrimination' felt by Native Americans
Share 188
Chris McGreal in Washington
theguardian.com, Friday 4 May 2012 23.46 BST
A Native American at his home on Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, which has some of the US's poorest living conditions. Photograph: Jennifer Brown/Star Ledger/Corbis
A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combatting continuing and systemic racial discrimination.
James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes.
Anaya said that in nearly two weeks of visiting Indian reservations, indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawaii, and Native Americans now living in cities, he encountered people who suffered a history of dispossession of their lands and resources, the breakdown of their societies and "numerous instances of outright brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination".
"It's a racial discrimination that they feel is both systemic and also specific instances of ongoing discrimination that is felt at the individual level," he said.
Anaya said racism extended from the broad relationship between federal or state governments and tribes down to local issues such as education.
"For example, with the treatment of children in schools both by their peers and by teachers as well as the educational system itself; the way native Americans and indigenous peoples are reflected in the school curriculum and teaching," he said.
"And discrimination in the sense of the invisibility of Native Americans in the country overall that often is reflected in the popular media. The idea that is often projected through the mainstream media and among public figures that indigenous peoples are either gone or as a group are insignificant or that they're out to get benefits in terms of handouts, or their communities and cultures are reduced to casinos, which are just flatly wrong."
Close to a million people live on the US's 310 Native American reservations. Some tribes have done well from a boom in casinos on reservations but most have not.
Anaya visited an Oglala Sioux reservation where the per capita income is around $7,000 a year, less than one-sixth of the national average, and life expectancy is about 50 years.
The two Sioux reservations in South Dakota – Rosebud and Pine Ridge – have some of the country's poorest living conditions, including mass unemployment and the highest suicide rate in the western hemisphere with an epidemic of teenagers killing themselves.
"You can see they're in a somewhat precarious situation in terms of their basic existence and the stability of their communities given that precarious land tenure situation. It's not like they have large fisheries as a resource base to sustain them. In basic economic terms it's a very difficult situation. You have upwards of 70% unemployment on the reservation and all kinds of social ills accompanying that. Very tough conditions," he said.
Anaya said Rosebud is an example where returning land taken by the US government could improve a tribe's fortunes as well as contribute to a "process of reconciliation".
"At Rosebud, that's a situation where indigenous people have seen over time encroachment on to their land and they've lost vast territories and there have been clear instances of broken treaty promises. It's undisputed that the Black Hills was guaranteed them by treaty and that treaty was just outright violated by the United States in the 1900s. That has been recognised by the United States supreme court," he said.
Anaya said he would reserve detailed recommendations on a plan for land restoration until he presents his final report to the UN human rights council in September.
"I'm talking about restoring to indigenous peoples what obviously they're entitled to and they have a legitimate claim to in a way that is not devisive but restorative. That's the idea behind reconciliation," he said.
But any such proposal is likely to meet stiff resistance in Congress similar to that which has previously greeted calls for the US government to pay reparations for slavery to African-American communities.
Anaya said he had received "exemplary cooperation" from the Obama administration but he declined to speculate on why no members of Congress would meet him.
"I typically meet with members of the national legislature on my country visits and I don't know the reason," he said.
Last month, the US justice and interior departments announced a $1 billion settlement over nearly 56 million acres of Indian land held in trust by Washington but exploited by commercial interests for timber, farming, mining and other uses with little benefit to the tribes.
The attorney general, Eric Holder, said the settlement "fairly and honourably resolves historical grievances over the accounting and management of tribal trust funds, trust lands and other non-monetary trust resources that, for far too long, have been a source of conflict between Indian tribes and the United States."
But Anaya said that was only a step in the right direction.
"These are important steps but we're talking about mismanagement by the government of assets that were left to indigenous peoples," he said. "This money for the insults on top of the injury. It's not money for the initial problem itself, which is the taking of vast territories. This is very important and I think the administration should be commended for moving forward to settle these claims but there are these deeper issues that need to be addressed."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/04/us-stolen-land-indian-tribes-un
AND...
COMMENT;- but if we followed the comment with honesty- the middle east, Persia and asias would all belong to the Jews..... God's first and chosen people .... right... comment is truly nasty...
UN Wants United States to Give Its Land Back to Indians Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, May 5, 2012, 2:41 PM -
The UN wants America to give its land back to the Indians. (Learner.org) More reason to cut funds to this idiot America-hating organization. The Guardian reported: A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combatting continuing and systemic racial discrimination. James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes. Anaya said that in nearly two weeks of visiting Indian reservations, indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawaii, and Native Americans now living in cities, he encountered people who suffered a history of dispossession of their lands and resources, the breakdown of their societies and "numerous instances of outright brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination". "It’s a racial discrimination that they feel is both systemic and also specific instances of ongoing discrimination that is felt at the individual level," he said. Anaya said racism extended from the broad relationship between federal or state governments and tribes down to local issues such as education. "For example, with the treatment of children in schools both by their peers and by teachers as well as the educational system itself; the way native Americans and indigenous peoples are reflected in the school curriculum and teaching," he said. "And discrimination in the sense of the invisibility of Native Americans in the country overall that often is reflected in the popular media. The idea that is often projected through the mainstream media and among public figures that indigenous peoples are either gone or as a group are insignificant or that they’re out to get benefits in terms of handouts, or their communities and cultures are reduced to casinos, which are just flatly wrong." Isn’t it also time that western Asia rejoined the Mongol horde? And, return Spain to the Muslims. No more ham holidays. Someone needs to ask Elizabeth Warren her thoughts on this. - See more at: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/05/un-wants-united-states-to-give-its-land-back-to-indians/#sthash.vNtpyvac.dpuf
See more at: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/05/un-wants-united-states-to-give-its-land-back-to-indians/#sthash.vNtpyvac.dpuf
---------------------------
Native American History
Pre-European Period
Everything was water except a very small piece of ground. On this were the eagle and the coyote. Then the turtle swam to them. They sent it to dive for the earth at the bottom of the water. The turtle barely succeeded in reaching the bottom and touching it with its foot. When it came up again, all the earth seemed washed out. Coyote looked closely at its nails. At last he found a grain of earth. Then he and the eagle took this and laid it down. From it they made the earth as large as it is. From the earth they also made six men and six women. They sent these out in pairs in different directions and the people separated. After a time the eagle sent the coyote to see what the people were doing. Coyote came back and said: "They are doing something bad. They are eating the earth. One side is already gone." The eagle said: " That is bad. Let us make something for them to eat. Let us send the dove to find something." The dove went out. It found a single grain of meal. The eagle and coyote put this down on the ground. Then the earth became covered with seeds and fruit. Now they told the people to eat these. When the seeds were dry and ripe the people gathered them. Then the people increased and spread all over. But the water is still under the world.
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All humans are interested in their origins and try to account for their existence through creation stories, like the one quoted above which is told by the Yaudanchi (a Yokut-speaking Nation living in the south-central San Joaquin Valley of California). Every native North American society has such stories recounting the actions and deeds of "power" in the past. They commonly explain how people came to live where they do, how they acquired tools and customs, and why one should act, or not act, in certain ways. Most commonly they contain fundamental conceptions of nature, society, and how people ought to relate to the world and to one another.
Like North America's Native People, anthropologists and archaeologists also have creation stories which explain how America's native peoples came to be, though their stories differ markedly from those of most of the Native People. It's not a better story, just a different one. The short, and until a few years ago the standard textbook, version goes like this (for a longer version, click here):
Humans first evolved in Africa some 4 - 5 million years ago. Over the next 4 million years, through the interplay of evolution and adaptation, survival and extinction, many species of humans evolved. By about 100,000 - 120,000 years ago, people physically like modern humans had evolved in Africa and sometime around 100,000 years ago some of them migrated out into the rest of the world, reaching central and eastern Asia by at least 40,000 to 50,000 years ago. And it was from these "out-of-Africa" populations that the first immigrants into the Americans came, reaching North America about 12,000 years ago by means of a "land bridge" between Asia and North America.
The "land bridge" existed because at various times during the Pleistocene (Ice Ages), vast continental glaciers (in places up to two miles thick) formed over much of the northern half of North America. Each time the glacial masses reached their maximum extent (drawing massive amounts of water out of the ocean and causing a consequent lowering of sea levels worldwide), Alaska and northeastern Siberia were joined by a broad "land bridge" which formed part of a province geologists call Beringia. This land bridge appeared (and disappeared) several times during the Pleistocene (Ice Ages): from about 75,000 to 45,000 years ago, and again from about 25,000 to around 14,000 years ago, when the land bridge was exposed for the last time. And it was during this last emergence that high latitude living nomadic big-game hunters in Northeast Asia crossed into the Americas by way of the "land bridge." These pioneers lived in small bands, hunting large and medium sized game animals such as mammoth, musk ox, and bison which provided them with food, their hides a source of shelter and clothing, and their dung perhaps used in place of firewood. Animated picture showing the retreat of the continental glaciers in North America from about 18,000 years ago to their disappearance at about 6,000 years agoThis map is a looping GIF animation depicting the retreat of glaciers in North America - beginning about 18,000 years ago. If your browser supports animated images, you will see the glacial extent changing on the map. If your browser doesn't support animation, you can view the animation by clicking here.
NOTE: This looping GIF animation was created by the Illinois State Museum and can be found on their website
However, once in Alaska, these big game hunters were blocked from going south or east by the presence of the glaciers, in some places up to two miles thick and stretching from the Atlantic coast to the mountain ranges of Alaska and British Columbia (but not quite all the way to the Pacific coast), and from the southern shores of the Great Lakes to the north polar regions. Then around 12,000 years ago the glaciers began to disappear and an "ice- free" corridor appeared between the receding glaciers of Alaska and British Columbia and those lying eastward in Canada, and opening the door to the Americas for the very first time (so the story went) in human history. And it was by means of this corridor that the hardy Siberian-cum-American pioneers made their way to the south, reaching the Great Plains of North America some 11,400 years ago.
Once the pioneers had traversed the "ice-free" corridor, they fanned out in many directions: some groups moved into the Eastern U.S.; others contined southward into northern Mexcio; while still other groups moved into the Great Basin and Southwestern regions of the U.S. In so doing they became the First Americans, or as the archaeologists call them, the Paleo-Indians, and have been regarded as THE ancestral populations to all of today's Native Americans.
The earliest, and best-known, of these "founders" are called the Clovis people, named after a site in New Mexico where, in the 1930s, large, bifacially flaked stone spear points were found in direct association with mammoth bones (in some instances actually embedded in the rib bones on the mammoths). Clovis hunters left their stone points and butchered animal bones at kill sites scattered across much of North America. When radiocarbon dating was introduced in the 1950s, Clovis sites were shown to range in age from about 11,000 to 11,400 years old - several thousands of years older than any other sites in the Americas (at least that was the thought then), just shortly after the corridor had opened up.
Everything seemed to fit quite nicely: no people in the Americas before 12,000 years ago (because of the ice sheets), the opening of an ice-free corridor beginning around 12,000 years ago, and the "sudden" appearance of Clovis at about 11,400 years ago, and their seemingly rapid spread over much of North America. Thus Clovis were the First Americans.
A simple, persuasive, once might even say seductive, story - several small bands of nomadic big-game hunters from Siberia colonizing a virgin land and over thousands of years their descendants would spread to every corner of the Americas and give rise to most of the native people in the Americas today. This was (and for many archaeologists it still IS) the gospel of American archaeology.
BUT .... it now seems that this scenario is much too simple. All across the Americas, archaeologists and anthropologists, along with geneticists, linguists, geologists, and some of America's native peoples, are assembling new data, reassessing older data, and generating new models that call into question both the single genetic and cultural origin model as well as the Clovis First model. And the answers now emerging to the questions of who were the First Americans, from where did they come, how did they get to the Americas, when did they arrive in the Americas, and what were their lifeways during initial colonization are very different from those of just a few years ago and suggest a picture very different from the standard textbook story of Who the First Americans were.
WHO were the FIRST Americans?
The accumulating skeletal and genetic evidence suggests that the earliest populations to move into the Americas were not Asians whose primary genetic background was that of residents of northeastern Asia and eastern Mongolia (the old view). At the end of 1999 scientists meet in California and New Mexico to mull over the implications of recently discovered or restudied ancient American skeletons, most of which date between 8,600 and 11,000 years ago. And what they discovered has shaken the foundations of the anthropological communities. Instead of resembling the historically known American Indians, the wide range of skull shapes which have come to light so far display affinities with populations as diverse as the Ainu of Japan, peoples of central Asia, Australasia, India, southwest Asia, even the Neandertals of Europe (see Ancestors of the New World Had Multiple Origins for more information about the possible Neandertal connection). Genetic evidence also supports the idea of multiple migrations of people coming from distinctly different genetic poplations: perhaps as many as four or five different genetic populations. For an idea of what some of these earliest Americans may have looked like, go here.
HOW did they GET TO the Americas?
While some populations, perhaps the genetic and cultural forbears of the Clovis people, walked across the "land bridge" and down the ice-free corridor in western Canada, some theorists are beginning to consider the possibility that people migrated to the Americas by walking or boating along the now submerged Beringia and the continental shelves of North, Central, and South America. While older ideas stressed that the late Ice-Age glaciers extended down and into the Pacific ocean, newer studies have shown that this was not the case. Indeed, even our ideas about the environment of the entire "land bridge" have changed markedly in the last several decades. Perhaps the "ice-free" corridor was along the Pacific coast of the Americas, which would help explain why some of the oldest sites in the Americas are in South, not North America. Other scientists have proposed a migration of boat people from Europe, basing their hypothesis on what they perceive as shared technologies and tool types between Clovis and Solutrean people who lived in France around 18,000 years ago. Presumably, European boat people would have used much the same route that the Norse (Vikings) did thousands or years later (around 1,100 years ago), when they settled in Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, and the northeastern U.S.
WHEN did they ARRIVE?
Archaeological evidence suggests that people were already living in the Americas well before the initial appearance of Clovis. For example, people were living at a site called Monte Verde (in Chile) at least 12,500 years ago (and perhaps as much as 30,000-plus years ago). AT some point after the inhabitants left the site, rising creek waters covered the site, laying down a deposit of peat which preserved a wide range of items: animal bones, wood planks, stakes, and animals used to cover rectangular shaped living structures, fireplace ash, a human footprint, and the remains of over 70 kinds of edible plants. At Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, in western Pennsylvannia, there is evidence of nearly continuous human occupation from the Iroquoian Seneca of the early centuries of English and American occupation all the way back to Clovis and beyond. The site's excavator, Dr. James Adovasio, claims he has human-made fire pits dating to more than 14,000 years ago, with indications of some being as old as 17,000 years.A battery of radiocarbon dates puts people at this creekside campsite in south-central Chile around 12,500 years ago.
WHAT were their LIFEWAYS.
Varied and diverse subsistence practices (and by extension, varied and diverse technologies and tools). If the Clovis people (and their immediate genetic and cultural ancestors) came through an "ice-free corridor" and emerged onto the great plains of North America, their subsistence in all probability centered on the taking of mega-fauna, supplimented by familiar plant foods. For those folks who entered the Americas along the Pacific coast, either on foot or by coastal boating, food resources would have run the gamut from shellfish to fish to birds and birds' eggs to sea mammals, plus those plant species which were widely distributed along the coast and with which the pioneering people were well familiar.
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Subdivisions of Native American History - the Pre-European Period
Archaeologists divide North America's past into a number of time periods, both to emphasize features share by cultures at one time as well as highlight their differences from cultures of other times. Unfortunately, there's little agreement on how best to divide the past that is useful and/or consistent across native North America. The one used here divides the period before the coming of the Europeans and Ameropeans (American born descendants of European settlers) into three major time periods: Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and the Formative.
The Paleo-Indian period covers that span of time during which people first came into the Americas. Since there is great controversy surrounding exactly when the first people came to the Americas, no fixed starting point for the Paleo-Indian periods be can be given. Some scientists say humans came into the Americas no earlier than 13,000 years ago, while other scientists believe that people were living in the Americas long before 13,000 years ago. Also, the origin tales of many of the Native American societies state that they were created in essentially those geographical locations where they were when first encountered by Europeans; thus, the Indians have always been in the Americas. The Paleo-Indian period ends with the major climatic changes (and accompaning flora and faunal changes) brought about by the end of the Pleistocene (Ice Ages), some 10,000 years ago.
The Archaic period is an outgrowth of the Paleo-Indian period and spans the time from the end of the Pleistocene until about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. It was during this time that the Paleo-Indians spread out across the Americas, moving into every habitable portion of the continents, adjusting and adapting to regional extremes of temperature and climate, to the mountains and valleys, lush woodlands and dry deserts, verdant prairies and arid tundra, coastal marshlands and inland lakes. Over time, increasingly varied Indian cultures evolved so that by the end of the Archaic, North America was a veritable patchwork of differing cultures, languages, and societies.
The end of the Archaic is difficult to fix. As early as 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, societies in many places in North America began to do things differently: moving away from mainly egalitarian social systems to extremely complex, often highly stratified, soci-political systems; shifting from nomadic to sedendtary settlement patterns and living in large, permanent villages and towns; experimenting with a variety of indigenous North American plants, some of which would be domesticated in the following period; engaging in a wide range of environmental management practices, including the use of fire; manufacturing pottery; engaging in long distance trade. On the other hand, many archaic period societies maintained an archaic way of life until less than 100 years ago.
The Formative period, beginning at various times between 3,000 - 5,000 years ago, witnessed a flowering of native societies. Archaic period trends became dominant themes during the formative. In some geographical regions, people engaged in full-time agriculture, lived in cities of 10,000+ people, and elevated their leaders both architecturally and socially. For example, at the ancient city of Cahokia, leaders, who may have been considered as living embodiments of gods and goddesses, lived on top of giant earthen mounds which soared several hundreds of feet into the air. In what is now the southwestern U.S., societies who are glossed under the term Anasazi, erected multi-room, mulit-storied apartment complexes, built roads to connect their towns and cities with each other, and engaged in long-distance trading with the might empires of Mesoamerica.
The Formative period ends with, or perhaps slightly before, the European colonization of North America. I say "perhaps slightly before" as there are indications that prior to European settlement of North America, European fishers were regularly visiting the rich fishing grounds off of present-day Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Maine. In the process, these fishers often came ashore to acquire water, food, timber, and fuel, and it's possible that they may also have infected the local Indian populations with diseases. Given the near lack of genetic immunity to these diseases, coupled with the dense population in northeastern North America, it's possible that disease were beginning to decimate many of the Formative period societies before actual European settlement.
Additional information on these three periods can be found by selecting from the following topics:
Paleo-Indian Archaic Formative
http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/anth7_hist1.html
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NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS- HOW AMERICA STOLE, RAPED, PILLAGED THE LANDS OF THE FIRST PEOPLES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA....
II. The Claim for Indian Redress: How the West Was Stolen
Concealed behind the benevolent facade of the American mission civilisatrice is the brutal reality of invasion, slavery, forced relocation, genocide, land theft, ethnocide, and forcible denial of the right to self-determination wholly incompatible with contemporary understandings of U.S.-Indian history and with the notions of justice informing the human rights regime. It is perhaps impossible to overstate the magnitude of the human injustice perpetrated against Indian people in denial of their right to exist, on their aboriginal landbase, as self-determining peoples: indeed, the severity and duration of the harms endured by the original inhabitants of the United States may well exceed those suffered by all other groups domestic and international.
A. Genocide: "The Metaphysics of Indian Hating"
1. Conquest
On May 3rd, 1493, Pope Clement called upon Spanish conquistadores to discover and conquer new lands in the Americas in order to draw "barbarous nations" to the Christian faith. The subsequent invasion of the Western Hemisphere, predicated upon a jurisprudential assumption that the indigenous inhabitants were a distinctly inferior species, was governed by the legal principles of discovery and conquest. The latter provided as a matter of international law that a nation became the sovereign of territory its agents "discovered" provided it subjugated the population and annexed its lands. Although prudence restrained pre-eighteenth century aggression in lands that became the United States, conquest was eventually applied in all the Americas, and the period subsequent to first contact is notorious as the "Age of Genocide."
2. Slavery
In the aftermath of conquests, colonizers offered financial incentives to corporate slavers to create bounties between tribes, thereby facilitating a divide and conquer strategy that served territorial objectives while providing free labor to developing economies. The abomination of the Indian slave trade
played a significant role in both colonial trade and in the extermination of most of the southeastern tribes ... [T]he Indian slave trade involved all the colonies and ... involved all the horrors long associated with the worst images of slavery, including beatings, killings, and tribal and family separation. It became routine policy to separate families, sending the Indian men off to the northern colonies while keeping the women and children in the south .... In the east, Indian slaves became a viable component of trade, along with deer skins and furs; in the west, American Indians were enslaved by the Catholic Church in order to build and maintain its missions ... Indian slavery was ... an integral part of the colonial economy.
Although Indian slavery had largely discontinued in favor of African American slavery by the early nineteenth century, Californian Indians, as late as the mid nineteenth century, were regularly raided by slave-hunters looking for men to work in mines and women to work in brothels, and extermination befell many who resisted.
3. Transcontinental Ethnic Cleansing
The precise number of Indian victims of the genocide committed by Euro-American colonizers over the past half-millennium evades quantification. Estimates of the pre-Columbian indigenous population in what later became the United States range from five to ninety four million, yet by 1880 disease, slaughter,slavery, and aggressive wars reduced their number to as few as 300,000 -- and declining. Although luminaries such as President Thomas Jefferson denounced the genocide as it unfolded, the prevailing racial ideology reassured the public that the disappearance of an inferior people before the United States' continental advance was a "historical and scientific inevitability." Initially, a legislative approach effected physical removal of Indian people from ancestral lands; however, when this proved politically inefficient, measures more clearly within the inherent powers of the executive and therefore less susceptible to judicial review were devised: Indian genocide became official policy of the United States and its political subdivisions.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, the might of the U.S. Army was directed toward Indian eradication. Military and civilian contractors induced deliberate starvation by destroying primary food sources such as the buffalo, yet Indian tenacity necessitated more direct applications of force. One by one, the Seminole, Nez Perce, Lakota, Shoshone, Comanche, Apache, and other tribes were hunted, pursued, cornered, and murdered. A series of "massacres" were written in Indian blood on the pages of American history: Blue River (1854), Bear River (1863), Sand Creek (1864), Washita River (1868), Sappa Creek (1875), Camp Robinson (1878), Wounded Knee (1890), and about forty others. Gruesome, shocking, deliberate exterminations of defenseless women and children, were perfectly legal exercises of State and federal authority as the law then stood. By the conclusion of the "Indian Wars" in 1890, the pre- Columbian Indian population was reduced as much 98%, and an Indianrein United States was not beyond possibility. Although radical depopulation of Indian land may have been merely an efficient means to capture and annex territory, the United States nonetheless committed genocide in overtly manifesting a clear intent to kill, and killing, Indians as such.
B. Land Theft
The relationship between the land and Indian people is fundamental to their physical and cultural survival as distinct, autonomous groups. Indian land is constitutive of the Indian cultural identity and designative of the boundaries of the Indian cultural universe. Indian land transmits knowledge about history, links people to their ancestors, and provides a code of appropriate moral behavior. From the moment of first contact with European "discoverers," Indians proclaimed a sacred responsibility to preserve and transmit Indian land, and with it, identity, religion, and culture, to successive generations. The discharge of that responsibility was compromised by federal policies of land acquisition ranging from fraud and deceit to expropriation and outright theft.
Throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, prudence directed Euro-Americans to formally recognize militarily potent Indian tribes as independent societies and accord them diplomatic recognition as sovereigns. Even subsequent to the defeats of France in the Seven Years' War in 1763 and Britain in the War of Independence in 1781, the Euro-American foothold in North America remained tenuous, and ongoing military insecurity stymied territorial ambitions while stifling any notions of conquest. Moreover, the United States' land hunger was largely sated by available space within the original thirteen colonies, and land acquisitions from Indian tribes were of necessity accomplished by treaties of cession after peaceful negotiations. Still, if during its first several decades of existence the fledgling government was obliged to recognize the sovereignty of Indian nations and to respect Indian land titles as a matter of international and domestic law, from the moment of its creation the United States was crafting legal solutions to the "problems caused by the ... fact that the Indians were here when the white man arrived[.]"
1. Fraud and Firewater
The Indian conception of land as utterly incapable of reduction to ownership as property by human beings -- an essential element of pan-Indian cosmology -- crippled tribes in their early negotiations with U.S. representatives operating within an imported common law tradition commodifying land. While Indian tribes generally understood treaties to create sacred kinship ties entitling the United States to share and settle the lands in question, the goverment, disinterested in kinship but desirous of no less than fee simple title, manipulated Indian (mis)appreciations of Western property rights in treaty texts incomprehensible to Indian negotiators not proficient in the English language. Moreover, U.S. negotiators, notwithstanding their claims of moral ascendancy over Indian tribes as the philosophical basis for acquiring dominion over their lands, secured further fraudulent advantage by dulling Indian wits with alcohol. Deliberately faulty translations of treaty text and inaccurate explanations of treaty terms to Indian tribes possessed of limited language skills and a Weltanschauung in which land is a sacred living thing incapable of reduction to ownership exacerbated a fundamentally unequal bargaining position and erased the line between consent and coercion; worse, later treaties simply codified the results of more pronounced forms of coercion, including conquest and genocide. In sum, many, if not all, of the Indian treaties ceding land to the United States are physical embodiments of the fraud, unconscionability, and duress governing their drafting and as such are arguably subject to revisitation, reconstruction, and even renunciation as
2. Conquest by Fiction: Johnson v. M'Intosh
By the early nineteenth century the U.S. population was clamoring for more Indian land even as Indian tribes, increasingly convinced of the insatiability of white land hunger, began to resist. Original legal protections for Indian land grew incompatible with white notions of progress, and pressure mounted to annul the marriage of political convenience and legal principle effected by the discovery doctrine. However, even as the United States waxed ever more militarily potent, Indian tribes retained the capacity to defeat conquest, and thus it fell not to armed force but yet again to law to wrest away additional Indian lands. The seminal case Johnson v. M'Intosh provided the opportunity whereby to expand the Euro-American foothold.
Although he acknowledged both the "impossibility of undoing past events and the fact that the sovereign he represented was born in sin," and although he recognized that Indian tribes were as yet independent political communities in retention of original rights to property and self-governance, Chief Justice John Marshall accepted the extravagant arguments that European discovery, not Indian occupancy, constituted ultimate title to lands in the United States and that purchase or, in the alternative, conquest of territories by the discovering sovereign conferred good title to those lands. While Marshall conceded that such arguments "may be opposed to natural right, and to the usages of civilized nations," he drew from the doctrine of stare decisis, comparisons to the practice of other states, and ultimately a jurisprudential affirmation of the "inferiority" of Indian nations to find that "if [such arguments] be indispensable to that system under which the [U.S.] has been settled, and be adapted to the actual condition of the two people, it ... certainly cannot be rejected by Courts[.]" Although the progressive Marshall intended to impose legal limits on the future conduct of conquerors less charitably disposed toward Indian tribes than he, M'Intosh fueled subsequent claims that "Indians were conquered as soon as John Cabot set foot on American soil," "that it only required the inevitable march of history to carry out this preordained outcome," and that "tribal property rights are not properly understood as rights at all, but merely as revocable licenses, or ... 'permission by the whites to occupy."'
3. Trust Doctrine: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
Subsequent cases further diminished tribal sovereignty over Indian land. In the 1831 case, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, the second in the Marshall Trilogy, Chief Justice Marshall determined that, despite their retention of a set of reserved rights and powers to include occupancy of their lands subject only to voluntary cession, Indian tribes were "domestic dependent nations" and "wards" under U.S. "pupilage," not sovereign foreign nations or states within the meaning of the Constitution, and that as a result the Court could not take original jurisdiction over a case wherein the Cherokee sought to enjoin enforcement of the laws of Georgia on land guaranteed by treaties. Although Marshall held that the United States owed a common-law trust duty to Indian tribes, not only was this duty specifically held to be judicially unenforceable, but an examination of the other justices' opinions, construing the U.S.-Cherokee relationship as that between a conqueror and a subject people, hinted that the "trust doctrine," true to its roots in medieval Christian xenophobism and scientific racism, would serve as yet another legal tool with which to diminish Indian sovereignty. In short order, the United States claimed trust title to all Indian lands within its borders.
Although U.S. federal Indian policy with respect to Indian land under the trust doctrine generated a host of express obligations to ceding Indian tribes undertaken in subsequent treaties, statutes, and executive orders to create and protect permanent land reservations as against States and private parties, popular political pressure ensured that these judicially unenforceable obligations were almost never discharged with "good faith and utter loyalty to the best interests" of the Indian tribes.
4. Plenary Power: Worcester v. Georgia
In Worcester v. Georgia, Marshall interpreted the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution to hold that Congress had "plenary" power over Indian affairs. Although the precise meaning of the term "plenary" was not subject to ready determination, Worcester loosed Congressional plenary power upon Indian tribes, qualifying all remaining tribal powers by express congressional legislation by 1900. Moreover, by the late 1840s, with the military power calculus shifting and gold discovered out West, "whites c[ould] no longer be kept out of Indian country." By adding plenary power to the legal arsenal, Worcester and its progeny ushered in a violent phase of expansion, executed under the rubric "Manifest Destiny."
Over the next several decades the Army prosecuted a sequence of wars to perfect discovery by divesting Indians of their possessory interest and enabling the United States to claim trust title and exercise plenary power. Still other wars were fought to suppress Indian unrest after violations of Indian treaties. After each genocidal campaign, a dwindled, harried, and hungry Indian nation in extremis sued for a peace that surrendered vast tracts of lands and political freedom in exchange for dependence and "civilization." During the first decade after the Civil War, the United States acquired nearly one-fourth of the land within its modern contiguous boundaries entirely free of any legal obligation to pay more than token compensation. Yet despite distribution of millions of cheap acres to settlers, the national greed for space, fueled by an evolving inter-branch compact authorizing takings of Indian land, dictated confiscation of the remainder of Indian country.
5. Sunset of Indian Sovereignty: End of the Treatymaking Era
In 1871 Congress exercised plenary power to strip away the last formal vestiges of Indian juridical sovereignty by providing that "[n]o Indian nation or tribe shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty." No longer compelled as a matter of federal law to treat Indian nations as foreign sovereigns or to regulate Indian affairs by treaty, the government could now acquire Indian land without even the pretense of consent, and Congress, unwilling to allow "(a)n idle and thriftless race of savages ... to stand guard at the treasure vaults of the nation[,]" gave the Army free rein to employ genocide to crush the last obstacles to the orderly march to the Pacific.
6. Allotment to Present: "Mighty Pulverizing Engine"
By 1887 all two billion acres of the U.S. continental landmass had been discovered, conquered, and expropriated save for the 138 million acres apportioned to Indian reservations, which the General Allotment Act of 1887 (Allotment) targeted for further dismemberment and colonization. Allotment, an exercise of plenary power, subdivided large swaths of communally- owned tribal lands into parcels for the private use of individual Indian allottees under a twenty-five-year period of federal guardianship. Upon expiration of the trust period, the United States issued an unrestricted fee patent to allottees who proved "competence," assumed U.S. citizenship, and paid real estate taxes. For most tribes, Allotment was devastating: although tribal governments remained in situs on vestiges of reservations still under trust protection, by encouraging Indian individuals to formally withdraw from the tribe in exchange for a per capita share of tribal land and by meeting the failure of unemployed Indian allottees to pay property taxes with foreclosure, reversion of title, and sale to white speculators at prices far below market value, Allotment abolished Indian reservations as autonomous and integral sociopolitical entities.
Although several Indian tribes attempted to block Allotment, the Supreme Court ruled not only that Indian land was subject to the sovereign right to take for public use upon payment of just compensation, but that takings of Indian land, described as a "legitimate form of 'investing for thetribe"' that did not require either consent or notification, were precluded from judicial review. By 1934, Indian lands had been reduced by a further ninety million acres, with almost twenty-six million lost through fraudulent transfers, and of the two billion acres of formerly contiguous tribal land holdings all that remained was a fragmented, forty-seven million acre mosaic of reservation lands under trust, plots owned in fee simple by whites, and plots held by Indian individuals no longer members of any tribe. Moreover, 95,000 Indians were now landless. In sum, the synergy of discovery, the trust doctrine, and plenary power as manifested in Allotment perfected the legal theft of Indian land.
Despite infrequent restitution and compensation for Indian land, the Constitution affords no protection to Indian tribes, and what remains of their landbase continues under siege. In light of the progressive evolution of rights regimes it is surreal that the United States continues to wield:
[a]bsolute, unreviewable power to continue the conquest of Indian nations that have not yet been forced to sign a treaty ... [and to] take land held under original Indian title as it pleases, ... without any constitutionally mandated obligation to pay compensation for the taking of land possessed by Indian nations for thousands of years, and despite the fact that the members of such tribes are United States citizens otherwise protected by the Constitution.
C. Ethnocide
With its Manifest Destiny secured, the United States, heretofore oriented toward the physical separation and extermination of indigenous people, changed tacks to follow the prevailing political winds, and U.S. Indian policy adopted a treble action agenda for implementation in conjunction with private actors: liquidation of Indian culture, eradication of tribal self-government, and forced assimilation of "civilized" Indians, shorn of cultural and social attachments, into the body politic. These interrelated policies, along with the specific laws, regulations, practices, and customs developed throughout the late nineteenth and much of the twentith centuries to deny Indians the right to maintain separate and autonomous polities and preserve their culture from interference, painted Indian tribes as targets for a sinister "genocide-at-law." Promising to free "backward" Indians from an "outmoded past" and endow them with "civilization," "education," and "prosperity" whether they desired these "blessings" or not, the BIA, along with religious missionaries, set about dissolving the "glue" of Indian society.
1. Cultural Liquidation
a) "Kill the Indian to Save the Man"
Of all the processes engineered to strip away the Indian sense of self, world view, and tribal identity, perhaps the most nefarious was Congressional funding of religious schools geared toward eradication of Indian culture and the substitution of Euro-American, Christian culture in its stead. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Indian children were taken, often without parental or tribal consent, to boarding schools where their hair was cut, their tribal clothing exchanged for Western garb, forced manual labor was required, and harsh abuses of a physical and sexual nature were meted out for speaking tribal languages or engaging in customary religious practices. During their residence, Indian children were prohibited from visiting their relatives, who, as a result, they often did not see for years. Removed Indian children, and their descendants down through the generations, have typically lost the use of their languages, been denied cultural knowledge and inclusion, and been deprived of opportunities to take on tribal responsibilities.
b) American Crusade: Eradication of Indian Religion
While Indian children were spirited off to forced conversions at distant boarding schools, the United States, exercising its plenary power, posted Christian missionaries to the reservations as Indian agents with orders to ban tribal religions, initiate Christianization of tribal populations, and pacify political and cultural discourse. At the behest of the Indian agents, Congress launched a broad-based assault upon Indian religion with laws that weakened "marriage, family and clan relationships, the distribution of property, and social and political organization." Courts of Indian Offenses ("CIO") enforced these stringent social control mechanisms. In arguing before Congress for the suppression of tribal dancing and feasting, the Secretary of the Interior proclaimed that "[i]f it is the purpose of the [U.S.] to civilize the Indians, they must be compelled to desist from ... savage rites and heathenish customs." For most of the twentieth century, non-Indians played "cultural game warden," circumscribing the legal exercise of Indian religion. Despite passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) establishing the federal policy to "protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise ... traditional religions," in practice Indian religions have proven too enigmatic for non-Indian jurists to admit them within the meaning of "religion" as enunciated in the Bill of Rights. For Indian claimants, who have not won a single case of religious freedom since AIRFA was signed in 1978 and who may not celebrate the sacraments of their faith without threat of prosecution for violation of controlled-substance or species- protection legislation, the American tradition of religious freedom has been a "cruel hoax." With AIRFA ineffectual in the courts and Congress unwilling to strengthen statutory protection, a new millennium reveals only that Indians' freedom to preserve their religious beliefs "amounts to nothing more than the right to believe that their religion will be destroyed." Even as Indians continue to assert that denial of their religious freedom is a deprivation of the highest magnitude, the preservation of teachings, values, objects, and places for which they bear sacred inter generational responsibility is yet diminished by federal law.
2. Suppression of Indian Self-Government
The United States' Indian policy has long disabled autonomous determination of the political organization, economic development, and legal regulation of Indian tribes and people, principally by disintegrating tribal institutions and supplanting them with Euro-American forms of governance. From the dark ages of the Allotment Era to the present, Indian legal institutions have presented an attractive point-of-entry to agents of forced "social evolution" whose labors have wrought the domination and physical assimilation of Indian tribes and people.
a) Legal Imperialism
Although no Indian tribe had codified a body of written law as of 1776, many tribes had "rules of conduct and attitudes of the mind concerning their kinship system." Tribal legal systems conditioned members to adhere to a sacred system of well-elaborated tribal values of order, harmony, interdependence, and peace. Consequently, disputes within the tribe were typically resolved not in formal institutions using adjudicative procedures, but rather with the aid of respected elders who would guide disputants to a restorative compromise. "[T]hough it appeared to the casual white observer that anarchy reigned," spiritual consensus produced a coherent jurisprudence that served Indian tribes well despite the absence of the "paraphernalia of European civilization." In contrast, the Anglo-European model imported by discovering nations focused on individual rights, the placement of the burden of proof on accusers, and the punishment and removal of offenders from the community by imprisonment. Despite retention of nearly exclusive subject matter and personal jurisdiction to the territorial limits of their reservations even as of the late nineteenth century, Indian tribes, with no easily identifiable legal institutions, procedures, or records, were beset by a constellation of religious proselytizers, "friends of the Indian," and BIA agents who, concluding Indians were without law or justice, imposed legal "civilization."
The 1883 case of Ex parte Crow Dog, in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned, for lack of jurisdiction, the federal conviction of an Indian charged with the murder of another Indian, induced Congress to extend the complete coercive power of federal criminal law to thereservations. Determined to rectify the barbarous, "savage quality" of tribal law and mollify public fervor, Congress applied "white man's morality" with the Major Crimes Act of 1885 to expressly establish concurrent federal jurisdiction over major felonies committed by Indians on reservations regardless of the status of their victims. Legal challenges to the Major Crimes Act failed to reestablish tribal legal self-determination but provided the judiciary occasion to further undergird the trust doctrine and plenary power.
The paternalistic assault upon Indian legal sovereignty, joined on the religious front with the adoption of the CIO/CFR courts, intensified during the Great Depression with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ("IRA" or "Dawes Act"). Although the IRA expressly recognized that tribes might create their own courts and enact their own laws, the legislation imposed BIA-drafted boilerplate constitutions that created strange new substantive and procedural obligations. Moreover, after the passage of Public Law 280 in 1954, providing that specified states could unilaterally accept concurrent jurisdiction over Indian territory within their borders, the entire body of state civil and criminal law was extended to classes of cases involving Indians. Fearing that failure to create acceptable tribal courts would result in states taking jurisdiction over all cases occurring on reservations, and understanding that review of plenary power in the exercise of regulatory jurisdiction over Indian affairs was an exercise in futility, the tribes begrudgingly implemented constitutions and adversarial justice systems.
The penultimate blow fell in 1968 with the Indian Civil Rights Act ("ICRA"), which imposed many of the individualist strictures of the U.S. Constitution -- in particular the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment -- on tribal governments and smoothed the way for what Indian activists branded "white-man's justice." Although the ICRA amended Public Law 280 to require tribal consent for the exercise of state civil and criminal jurisdiction and left interpretation of the legislation to the tribes themselves, by the early 1970s the centuries-long federal assault on tribal legal systems had displaced pre- Columbian methods of social control from tribal courts where an Anglo-American adversarial legal system had acquired tenure. BIA-drafted codes permitted tribal court judges to apply tribal statutes, yet federal and state laws were supreme, and federal judicial review steered tribal court jurisprudence into lockstep conformity with the U.S. legal system. Individual reliance on foreign legal concepts and advocacy removed Indian disputes from their natural contexts and compounded growing acrimoniousness in reservation communities. With tribal governments increasingly shackled by American legal hegemony, enforcement of judgments became far more difficult, further damaging tribal harmony. When a landmark 1978 case extended the United States' legal colonization of Indian tribes still further by denying them jurisdiction over the acts of non-Indians occurring on reservations, a new generation of critical legal jurisprudence, influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, began to question the foundations and institutions of federal Indian law.
Although tribal proactivity and federal interposition hold state law partly at bay, at present Indian tribes may exercise jurisdiction solely over consenting tribal members on fragmented remnants of former tribal holdings. Even this vestige of sovereignty is threatened by the plenary power to extend all federal, and, by inaction, state laws to the reservations. Rediscovery of tribal dispute resolution methods after a century of legal imperialism, and their reintroduction in Indian Country as an assertion of legal autonomy, are pressing concerns of Indian scholars and activists, yet reacquisition of Indian law is inadequate by itself to offset the crushing force of federal Indian law, a mechanism "genocidal in both its practice and intent."
b) Political Domination
Although Indian tribes are separate sovereigns in retention of all rights and powers not explicitly ceded to the United States by treaty or abrogated by explicit legislative intent, U.S. Indian policy has been generally hostile to the right of Indian tribes to self-govern as politically distinct communities. If the theme of the nineteenth century was eradication of Indians and the seizure of their land, the motif of the twentieth century was the destruction by law of tribal sovereignty. With the passage of the IRA, Indian tribes, traditionally hyper democratic and consensus-driven institutions, were reconstituted in the image of non-Indian society and subjected to the veto power of the Secretary of the Interior. Subsequent legislative and judicial action has stripped artificially reconstructed Indian tribes of most of their inherent sovereignty over their form, property, and powers. Relations with post-IRA Indian tribes, rather than proceed as if between mutual sovereigns, are conducted largely through a welter of executive agencies. As a result, the terms and conditions of Indian existence are frequently dictated from Washington, rather than debated on the reservations. Federal agencies to which Congress delegates power smother tribes under a blanket of regulation and programming that, although it provides the means of subsistence, suppresses traditional modes of social control and value allocation, and the Secretary of the Interior looms large over every aspect of tribal life.
Driven in part by the Civil Rights Movement, a "dawning recognition that [Indians] must be freed from federal dominance ... and that Indian[s] must have more control over ... their lives and institutions" spurs calls to end the fundamental asymmetry of U.S.-Indian relations. Nevertheless, several decades after official introduction of the federal policy of "Indian Self- Determination," many Indian tribes remain politically subordinate to and, consequently, economically dependent upon the United States Whether political subordination of Indian tribes is the translation of the majoritarian principle of democracy into action or a statist demonstration, by induction, of the inferiority of competing governance structures and philosophies, Indian Self-Determination, absent an ideological revolution spanning from the treetops of the international human rights regime to the roots of federal Indian law, will remain a chimera.
c) Ethnodevelopmental Suppression
Despite significant endowment with resources natural and human, many Indian tribes remain ensnared in a web of economic dependence deliberately fashioned by the United States over centuries from the strands of institutionalized domination, geographic dislocation, gross undercapitalization, and various legal disabilities. Although the non-legal obstacles to Indian economic independence, the first and foremost goal of tribal governments, are very real, the constraints imposed by federal Indian law are even more formidable.
The United States holds trust title to Indian lands and resources, and Indian property owners cannot sell, lease, or borrow against their property without the express approval of the Secretary of the Interior. As the very question of Secretarial approval introduces political uncertainty, trust- based land-tenure constraints diminish the relative output-values of land-intensive enterprises such as agriculture, ranching, and resource development. Moreover, federal management of Indian resources grants the government paternalistic control over Indian economic destiny. Although the United States is under amoral obligation to husband Indian resources, diligently advance Indian land claims against the states, secure adequate funding for Indian social services, and enhance the economic well-being of Indian people, federal agencies have withheld basic subsistence, mismanaged tribal resources, and violated the animating principles of the trust with near-impunity: only in very recent years has the trust doctrine charged the United States with judicially enforceable obligations apart from those incorporated in specific treaties, statutes, or executive orders. Although the protective dimensions of the trust doctrine have broadened, aggrieved Indian beneficiaries still lack effective legal recourse for its breach.
Plenary power, as well as judicial review of its exercise, further stifles Indian economic development by enabling Congress to terminate federal benefits and restrict or even abrogate Indian rights reserved under treaties. Domestic lobbying to induce Congress to allow non-Indian economic interests access to Indian resources threatens tribes with divestiture of sustenance, culture, religion, and income. Furthermore, although Indians, as prior sovereigns, reserved rights in treaties to, inter alia, use water, hunt and fish, and engage in traditional modes of production and worship on customary lands and waters, recent federal jurisprudence suggests that Indian reserved rights are "temporary and precarious" privileges subject to revocation even in the absence of explicit Congressional intent to abrogate them. The synergy of the trust doctrine, plenary power, and judicial review of Indian treaties in derogation of Indian rights are felt most acutely when tribes employ development methods that promote Indian culture, spirituality, and identity. As Indian "ethnodevelopment" threatens the regulatory jurisdiction, market power, and legal sovereignty of the states and the United States, federal Indian law has been carefully crafted to check its expression.
3. Forced Assimilation
Early U.S.-Indian treaties did not contemplate incorporation of Indians as United States citizens, and later treaties incorporated only those individuals who had been objectively "detribalized." Against the force of a clear general preference for a primary affiliation with tribal institutions, federal Indian policy, for more than a century, has subsumed individual Indians within the broader body politic, thereby facilitating seizure of tribal lands and resources, elimination of contending governmental entities, and eradication of a critical mass of practitioners of alien cultures and religions "stand(ing) in the way of progress." The first such assimilative measure, Allotment, divested many Indians of their lands and created great physical and social distance between them and their tribes. The imposition of U.S. citizenship in 1924 added legal momentum to forced assimilation by foisting an awkward dual allegiance upon Indians and pressuring them to transfer loyalties from their tribes to the United States
a) Termination
Although assimilationist pressure abated during the Depression and World War II, with the onset of the Cold War and mounting fears of enemies within, the preservation of distinct political communities within U.S. boundaries became too offensive for many non-Indians to tolerate. House Concurrent Resolution 108, known colloquially as Termination, exercised plenary power to "make the Indians ... subject to the same laws and ... responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the [U.S., and] to end their status as wards[.] Termination, under the direction of the former head of the War Relocation Authority, ended the U.S. trust relationship with over 100 selected tribes, curtailing federal benefits and services, forcing dissolution of tribal governments, and distributing former tribal lands and assets on a per capita basis. By legislatively disappearing Indian tribes, Termination stripped Indian people not only of primary sources of political allegiance and economic sustenance but of sacred sites and other fonts of cultural renewal. Assimilationist pressure mounted, and in 1954 Public Law 280, by according states extensive jurisdiction over Indian tribes and individuals, granted non-Indian institutions of social control the legal authority to adjudge and condemn Indian domestic relations and employment practices.
b) Relocation
Predicated upon the misapprehension that the emerging "Indian problem" was rooted in segregation and parochialism rather than a cascade of assimilative legislation, Public Law 959, dubbed "Relocation," directed federal agencies to create "Indians who were Indian in appearance but not in culture" and sap remaining tribal political strength. At a time when reservations were increasingly unable to provide material necessities, Relocation, by portraying "contented Indian[s] working at good jobs and sitting beside televisions and refrigerators [in Northern cities,]" induced an exodus to magnet urban areas where a generation of the Indian best and brightest were dumped into substandard housing and menial employment and subsumed in the American melting pot.
By 1970 reservation populations had dwindled so far that a final solution to the "Indian problem" appeared to be at hand, and yet the "stubborn [Indian] refusal to ... become simply another American citizen" has sustained Indian tribalism against a malign tide of assimilationism unto the present day. Although Indian individuals currently possess both tribal and federal citizenship, federal Indian law treats Indian tribes as subordinate governments, and thus meaningful "dual citizenship" -- predicated upon the assumption that tribal and federal governments exercise separate, if overlapping, spheres of authority in "good faith" -- is a legal fiction. For many Indians, this forced "split identification of citizenship" was a genocidal act destructive of tribal political identities, and few believe that tribal and national political participation can coexist when Indian self-determination is construed to threaten U.S. territorial integrity.
D. Summary: The Claim for Indian Redress
More than two centuries of genocide, land theft, and ethnocide, implemented by the brutal instrument of federal Indian law, have depopulated and seized Indian land and eliminated rival polities within the colonial state constructed thereon. The historical review of U.S.-Indian relations has revised a mythical account in order to prepare the intellectual terrain for contemporary remediation. Although the role of the United States in the deliberate destruction of Indian populations, property rights, and cultural patrimonies is for most Americans a hidden history, it presents an archetype for the contemporary exposition, analysis, and redress of a gross human injustice. However, even if re-envisioning history instructs the non-Indian majority in its moral and legal obligations to redress Indian claims, unless two fundamental, transformative principles guide and inform redress, it is foreordained to fail.
First, because a set of institutionalized legal impediments runs through the domestic order and trammels Indian rights, it falls to a process of legal reform to make the nation safe for the peaceful coexistence of basic value-differences between people as well as between peoples. Necessary reforms will include legislation to strengthen protection of Indian religious, cultural, and property rights; create specific remedial programs; tighten judicial canons of construction to resolve ambiguities and construe treaty terms in favor of tribal reserved rights; and incorporate those principles of conventional and customary international law protective of the rights of indigenous peoples. A Constitutional amendment may be necessary to renounce plenary power and restore Indian tribes to a position superior to states in the federalist hierarchy. Proposed reforms will "portend changes in power and well-being for specific persons or groups" and may compromise the universalist approach to conceiving of, promoting, and protecting rights. Redress thus invites contestation over its form, pace, and scope.
Consequently, the second principle, a corollary to the first, is that the non-Indian majority must assist in the infusion of "Indian Self-Determination" with genuine meaning. The United States and Indian tribes are not only intertwined geographically and historically, they are interdependent. Indian autonomy and prosperity on the one hand, and U.S. legitimacy and global leadership on the other, are inseverable, with each a necessary condition for the full realization of the other. Enhancement of the positive externalities of reciprocal transactions will serve both Indian and non-Indian peoples. If U.S.-Indian relationships advance on the basis of a recognition of, and respect for, mutual sovereignties, with differences and disputes attended not by coercion and domination but by negotiation and harmonization, a new era of domestic peace with justice, more worthy of emulation and export than earlier periods of American history, will follow.
The next section defines and contrasts the theories, procedures, assumptions, and remedies that distinguish reparations and reconciliation, the dominant contending modes of redress available to group victims of human injustice; bring each mode to bear upon the Indian claim; and evaluate the relative utilities and disutilities of each.
[1]. The Lakota Indian, "American Horse," commented on the December 29, 1890, Massacre at Wounded Knee where U.S. Army troops of the 7th Cavalry slaughtered over 300 peaceful Indian women and children after a fruitless search for weapons in their encampment:
The women as they were fleeing with their babes were killed together, shot right through, and the women who were very heavy with child were also killed. All the Indians fled in these three directions, and after most all of them had been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys who were not wounded came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there. Of course we all feel very sad about this affair. I stood very loyal to the government all through those troublesome days, and ... being so loyal to it, my disappointment was very strong, and I have come to Washington with a very great blame on my heart ....
WHEN SORRY ISN'T ENOUGH: THE CONTROVERSY OVER APOLOGIES AND REPARATIONS FOR HUMAN INJUSTICE 253 (Roy L. Brooks ed., 1999) [hereinafter BROOKS].
[a1]. Chiricahua Apache. LL.M., 2001, Harvard Law School; Ph.D., 1995, Northwestern University; J.D., 2000, University of Miami. Assistant Professor of Law, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana.
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This Land Is Ours- AMERICAN INDIANS
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Native Americans resist the U.S. government's policy of forced removal in the 19th century.
Native Americans' identities have always been closely linked to the land. Tecumseh, Osceola, Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Chief Joseph are just a few of the Native resistance leaders who fought to hold onto their ancestral homes and their cultures during the European American land grab of the 18th and 19th centuries. But outnumbered and outgunned, Native Americans stood little chance against the surging White population. Eventually, the U.S. government would seize two billion acres of their territories.
In the late 1800s, however, a small band of American Indians, determined to keep their homeland, brought their case to the federal courts. Their legal victory was the first to recognize Native rights to personal freedom and legal protection under the U.S. Constitution. The case would pave the way for other legal challenges to U.S. Indian policy in the decades that followed.
On a biting cold day in February 1877, Chief Standing Bear's heart chilled with misgivings. He surveyed a land barren of trees, littered with rocks, the river dry. This land, labeled "Indian Territory," was where the United States government intended his people, the Ponca, to live. But it could never replace their home near the mouth of the Niobrara River on the High Plains, where the Ponca had farmed and hunted buffalo for almost 200 years.
Nineteen winters had passed since the Ponca had ceded thousands of acres to the government. In return, officials assured the Ponca they'd keep their lands on the Niobrara, the "swift running water," for their permanent home. But, as always, the U.S. government wanted more.
Like other tribes, the Ponca watched the years pass while Whites poured onto Native American lands, accompanied by soldiers, followed by the railroads. They destroyed the buffalo and other game the Plains people depended upon. The Whites spread new diseases that killed thousands of Native Americans. And the Indian people forced onto government reservation lands often went hungry, dependent on food rationed by government agents.
Some Plains cultures like the Sioux, Cheyenne and Comanche fought for their homelands. But the Ponca were not a warrior people; resistance to an endless wave of well-supplied soldiers seemed certain death.
Hoping to ensure their nation's survival, the Ponca welcomed a mission church and school on their reservation, in what is present-day Nebraska. They worked their fields with reapers and mowers and other farming tools used by White people. Many families abandoned earth lodges for the log houses of the settlers. By adopting White ways, and by not raising arms against U.S. soldiers or settlers, the Ponca sought leverage to hold the government to treaty promises and, more importantly, to keep their homelands.
But the government rewarded the Ponca's peaceful cooperation by disbursing only a trickle of the money and supplies promised in the 1858 treaty. Ten years later, in another treaty, the government mistakenly granted the Ponca's "permanent" homeland to the Sioux. Ponca cries for justice fell on deaf ears.
The last bitter stroke for Standing Bear's people came in January 1877, when U.S. Indian Inspector Edward Kemble arrived at the Ponca agency. The government had decided to remove the Ponca from the Niobrara to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.
Stunned voices rose in protest. "This land is ours," Standing Bear objected. "We have never sold it. Here we wish to live and die. We have harmed no man. We have kept our treaty."
Kemble promised that no decision would be made until a delegation of chiefs looked over the new land. If the Ponca did not favor southern lands, they could speak to the "Great Father" -- President Ulysses S. Grant -- and stay along the Niobrara.
Now, as they stood on those very lands and gazed across the bleak expanse before them, the Ponca chiefs shared their impressions in hushed voices. They asked to telegraph the Great Father and tell him they were not satisfied with the Indian Territory lands. Kemble's agreeable manner changed; he refused their request. The Ponca, he informed the chiefs, would be moved. When the chiefs said they only wanted to return north to their homeland, Kemble replied, "Walk there if you want to."
The delegation debated what to do. Chief White Eagle recalled, "We thought we should die, and [I] felt that I should cry, but I remembered that I was a man."
Kemble denied the chiefs any money or a pass they could show if stopped by Whites. The February winds howled outside, scouring the plains of Kansas and Nebraska with snow. The Ponca, each wrapped in a blanket, began the 500-mile trek back to their home on the Niobrara. To survive, the men ate raw corn they found drying in fields. At night, they slept in haystacks to stay warm. Before long, the Ponca's moccasins wore out, and they trudged through the snow barefoot. Each step stiffened their determination to contest the government's demand that they move south.
Forty days later, starving and weak, the Ponca delegation arrived back in Nebraska, only to be met by Kemble, who had hurried there ahead of them. The government agent had already pressured about 170 Ponca into relocating. The chiefs, including Standing Bear, protested. "I will harm no White man," he said, "but this is my land, and I intend to stay here." Kemble had the outspoken chief arrested and taken to Fort Randall, in Indian Territory near the Nebraska border.
Soon another government agent, E. A. Howard, arrived. As a gesture of goodwill, he released Standing Bear and settled in to convince the Ponca they had to move. But the chiefs stood firm. Finally, after a four-hour council meeting on May 15, Howard issued a weary ultimatum: "Will you go peaceably or by force?"
The chiefs stared at Howard in stony silence. Then a boy ran up and cried, "The soldiers have come to the lodges!" The Ponca, it turned out, had never had a choice. Fighting was useless, and the chiefs sadly relented before the show of military power. "The soldiers came with their guns and bayonets," recalled Standing Bear, "... our people and our children were crying."
On May 16, 1877, blue-coated soldiers surrounded the village of 700 people. The soldiers drove the Ponca "as one would drive a herd of ponies" across the Niobrara. Howard kept a diary of the march south, a journey rife with suffering as the Ponca battled constant torrential rain, camped in mud, crossed swollen rivers, even endured a tornado. People broke down in cold, hunger and illness. Many died along the way. Among the dead were children weakened by exposure. Even so, Howard noted their fortitude and wrote more than once: "The Indians during the day behaved well, and marched splendidly."
On July 9, fighting swarms of biting flies, the Ponca reached their new home in Indian territory. "The people were all nearly worn out from the fatigue of the march," Howard wrote, "and were heartily glad that the long tedious journey was at an end, that they might ... rest." They joined the first group of 170 Ponca removed earlier and now existing in a miserable camp of tents.
The government had provided no supplies, tools or food for the Ponca; their own farm tools and most of their belongings had been confiscated by the soldiers back in Nebraska.
"This was all different from our own home," Standing Bear later recalled. "There [in the north] we raised all we needed. Here there was no work to do. We had nothing to work with, and there was no man to hire us. ... All my people were heart-broken. I was like a child. I could not help even myself, much less help them."
How were they to feed and clothe themselves? That first year, the adverse climate, poor nutrition and malaria left many sick and dying; some 158 people had died since they'd left the banks of the Niobrara. In July 1878, the government allowed the Ponca to trudge another 150 miles west to new lands along the Arkansas River. The land was better, but, again, with few supplies it was hard to make a go of things.
Chief White Eagle recalled, "The land was good. But in summer we were sick again. We were as grass that is trodden down, we and our stock. Then came the cold weather, and how many died we did not know."
Standing Bear had already lost two children when his oldest son died. "He begged me to take him, when he was dead, back to our old burying ground," said the chief.
In January 1879, Standing Bear and about 30 others fled the reservation and headed north. They avoided settlements and eluded soldiers, arriving in March at the Nebraska reservation of their friends, the Omaha tribe. Gen. George Crook, stationed in Omaha as commander of the army's Department of the Platte, received orders to send soldiers to the Omaha reservation and arrest Standing Bear. As soon as possible, the renegade Ponca would be shipped back to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.
Gen. George Crook, as a good soldier, followed orders. But after years of fighting Native Americans, he'd come to admire and sympathize with many of the tribes. More than once in official correspondence with the War Department, Crook voiced complaints over the government's inhumane treatment of Native Americans. This time, Crook contacted Thomas Henry Tibbles, an editor with the Omaha Herald. Was there a way to use the power of the press to aid the Ponca?
On March 31, 1879, Crook met with the imprisoned Ponca at the Fort Omaha guardhouse. For their interview, Standing Bear stood before Crook dressed as a leader of his people in the full regalia of a Ponca chief. "I thought God intended us to live," he addressed the General. "But I was mistaken. God intends to give the country to the White people, and we are to die."
Standing Bear's eloquence and demeanor impressed Crook. The General promised he would try and wait until the Ponca and their horses had time to recover before taking them back to Indian Territory. "It is," said Crook, "a very disagreeable duty."
Meanwhile, Tibbles kept the telegraph wires sizzling with word of the Ponca's plight. Churches in Omaha pledged support. A young lawyer, John L. Webster, volunteered aid. He was soon joined by Andrew Poppleton, another Omaha lawyer.
The lawyers, working for free, rushed to find a way to prevent the removal of Standing Bear and his people back to Indian Territory. "The Indians have been held by the courts as 'wards of the nation,'" noted Poppleton, "but it does not follow ... [that] the guardian can imprison, starve, or practice inhumane cruelty upon the ward."
Webster and Poppleton gained the support of Judge Elmer S. Dundy, and, with Crook's compliance, the Judge issued a writ of habeas corpus against Crook. A writ of habeas corpus requires that a prisoner be brought before the court to decide the legality of his imprisonment. The General had to show by what authority he held the Ponca under arrest.
Crook presented the court with his military orders. U.S. District Attorney G.M. Lambertson appeared before Judge Dundy and denied the Ponca had any right to a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that Indians were not citizens; they were not even "persons within the meaning of the law." Therefore, Standing Bear could not bring a case against the government. The judge elected to hear arguments, and the case of Standing Bear v. Crook began on April 30, 1879.
The trial lasted two days. Webster and Poppleton argued that in times of peace, no Native American could be forced from one place to another without his consent. More importantly, the lawyers asserted that Native Americans were indeed "persons" before the law. Under the Constitution, Standing Bear possessed some of the same rights and freedoms as White men. Government lawyers, however, insisted that the Ponca had to live by rules the government established just for Indian nations.
Over Lambertson's objection, Judge Dundy granted Standing Bear permission to speak. All eyes were riveted on the Ponca chief as he described, through an interpreter, the ill treatment his people had received.
With hands raised to the judge, Standing Bear made his case. "That hand," he said, "is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be of the same color as yours. The same God made us both. ... If a White man had land, and someone should swindle him, that man would try to get it back, and you would not blame him.
"Look on me," cried the chief. "Take pity on me, and help me to save the lives of the women and children. My brothers, a power, which I cannot resist, crowds me down to the ground. I need help." Many people wept at Standing Bear's words; the judge and General Crook were visibly moved.
Judge Dundy took several days to write his legal opinion. He then ruled that "an Indian is a person within the meaning of the laws of the United States" and could not be forcibly moved or confined to a reservation without his consent.
"The Poncas are amongst the most peaceable and friendly of all the Indians tribes ... ," Judge Dundy wrote. "If they could be removed to the In[dian] Territory by force, and kept there in the same way, I can see no good reason why they might not be taken and kept by force in the penitentiary. ... I cannot think that any such arbitrary authority exists in this country."
The Judge's decision brought the courtroom spectators cheering to their feet. The 60-year-old Ponca chief had gained recognition that Native Americans had rights of human dignity under the laws of the land. General Crook was the first to reach Standing Bear and shake his hand.
Standing Bear and his handful of Ponca followers were allowed to return to the Omaha reservation. Eventually, in another small victory, they were granted a slice of their old homelands to live upon. The rest of the Ponca living in Indian Territory were not permitted to return north. Standing Bear's hard-won return to his beloved Niobrara carried the cost of dividing his tribe.
Congress set up a commission, which included Crook, to further examine the Ponca's situation. The commission held hearings in Washington, D.C., and traveled to the Ponca reservation in Indian Territory, as well as to Standing Bear's small clan in Nebraska. Congress officially recognized that the Ponca had been moved "without authority or law" and appropriated funds as compensation.
The southern Ponca, under the leadership of Chief White Eagle, decided to avoid further turmoil and remain on the new lands. Fresh money and supplies had helped them build homes and schools and buy tools to start life anew. So the Ponca remained a divided people, with the majority living in Indian Territory and Standing Bear's small band of followers in Nebraska.
For its time, the trial of Standing Bear was a landmark court decision. The judge's ruling represented a huge symbolic victory for Native peoples. For centuries, Whites had labeled Indians "savages" and used a belief in Native inferiority to justify broken treaties, land theft, even mass murder. The notion that Indians were people entitled to protection under the law reflected a growing change in public opinion.
However, Standing Bear's victory actually raised more questions than it answered. How would Native interests be represented and protected within the U.S. political system? Many White people, including Chief Standing Bear's supporters, hoped for Indian policy reform. Yet most Whites believed the only way Indians could survive was to adopt White ways.
During the court case, Standing Bear's lawyers tried to show that the Ponca were attempting to live within the White definition of "civilized": They had built homes, sent their children to schools; many had become Christians. Therefore, the Ponca deserved the same protection as U.S. citizens. White recognition of Indian "personhood," it seemed, came with a condition: Give up your culture and become like us.
In addition, Judge Dundy did not question the authority of the United States over Native American nations. While his decision suggested that Native peoples had the same rights to personal freedom and legal protection as U.S. citizens, it did not acknowledge that Indian tribes had any rights to self-government.
In time, American Indians themselves raised these issues as they continued the struggle to preserve their lands and cultures. The Ponca's challenge of the U.S. government marked a turning point on the long path of Indian resistance. Increasingly, after Standing Bear v. Crook, the fight for Native rights would shift from the battlefields to the courtrooms of the growing nation.
Discussion Questions
What factors contributed the U.S. government's policy of forcibly removing Native Americans from their ancestral lands?
Important factors included greed for land, desire for control of natural resources, and the belief that Native Americans were uncivilized and therefore incompatible with the expanding White culture. The belief that U.S. expansion to the Pacific was an inevitable event, necessary and benevolent, came to be known as Manifest Destiny in the 19th century.
Explain the title of this story, "This Land is Ours." What are some other possible interpretations? Do you see a possible irony in the title? If so, explain.
Native Americans and Whites each claimed possession of the Western lands in the story. The title can encompass both of these contradictory claims, as well as the all-encompassing vision of an inclusive America.
How did the legal principal of habeas corpus advance the cause of the Ponca? What arguments did the government use against it?
Against his own conscience, Gen. George Crook followed the orders of his commander to have Standing Bear arrested. Crook went along with a plan by the lawyers for the Ponca, John L. Webster and Andrew Poppleton, to request that Judge Dundy issue a writ of habeas corpus against Crook. The judge complied. This meant that Crook had to show by what authority he was holding the Ponca chief. The government lawyers argued that the Ponca had no right to habeas corpus because they were not U.S. citizens and were not even "persons under the law." Judge Dundy's decision marked the first time Native Americans were officially considered "persons under the law."
How much did you know about the story of Chief Standing Bear and the Ponca before you read "This Land is Ours"? What reasons can you give for your answer? What do you know about the other Native American chiefs and leaders mentioned in the story?
Answers will vary.
How has our society's understanding of the phrase "all men are created equal" changed since it was first written into the Declaration of Independence? How does the Ponca's story contribute to that understanding? Are there limits to our understanding of the phrase today? Explain.
Answers will vary. The founders of the United States envisioned a democracy of free White property-owning men. Over the decades and centuries, that understanding has broadened to include members of other groups -- poor people, African Americans, women, Native Americans and others -- once left out of public life. Future definitions of "equality" will probably differ from our own.
Writing Prompts
• You are a reporter for Harper's Weekly magazine in the year 1879. You are on assignment in the Great Plains, covering the return of Standing Bear and his followers from the Indian Territory to their homeland in Nebraska. Report your observations to the magazine's nationwide audience.
• Imagine you are being forcibly removed from your home to a place hundreds of miles away. What reasons do the authorities give for your relocation? Locate your "destination" on a map and study the route. Write a series of journal entries that record your feelings and impressions as you make this journey. Will you resist the orders and turn back? Why?
Project Ideas
• In four groups, research one of the following places mentioned in the chapter -- Alcatraz Island, the Indian Territory in Oklahoma, the Walloma Valley or the Omaha Reservation. Locate each area on a U.S. map. Develop a timeline of your site's story, stemming from European settlement to present. List the inhabitants and/or owners of this property at different periods. In class discussion, compare and contrast the histories of these four areas. How do they compare today?
• Explore the role of oral tradition in Native cultures. Using the library or Internet, research Native American storytelling. Native American Wisdom is a good place to start. In groups of three or four, choose a traditional tale to tell to the class. Document the following: the Native culture that originated the tale; the original homeland of that culture; and the present tribal headquarters. Divide the tale so that each person in your group will recite a portion of the story to the class. Enhance your presentation with authentic visual representations of the tale or its cultural origins.
• The trial of Standing Bear was a landmark legal victory for Native Americans. Still, Native Americans in the years following found the courts and the federal government ignoring their concerns. Research how activists used different methods to advance their cause during the 1960s and '70s. What events and issues compelled many Native Americans to give up on the government and take issues into their own hands? Create a timeline or mural depicting important episodes in the recent history of Native Americans.
• Contact a Native American organization in your community, state or region. Explain what you have been studying and invite a representative from the group to visit your class and speak about tribal history and culture. Be prepared to ask questions.
Research Project
In 1890, a Sioux elder described the history of U.S. government dealings with the Indians this way: "They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land and they took it."
Indeed, since the arrival of European colonists, Native peoples' land base has shrunk from 2 billion acres to 56 million acres -- barely 2 percent of the United States. In recent decades, however, Native Americans have waged successful battles in the courts to reclaim some of their lost lands.
Have students investigate one of more of the following events:
• For thousands of years, Blue Lake, in present-day New Mexico, has been the Taos Pueblo's holiest shrine. In 1906, the U.S. government adjoined the lake, without the Taos peoples' consent, to the Carson National Forest. For the next 65 years, the Taos Pueblo tirelessly lobbied Congress and appealed to the American public for the return of this sacred site. Finally, in 1972, the U.S. government restored Blue Lake and 48,000 acres of land surrounding it to the Taos people.
• In 1971, Alaska's Native peoples won the largest land settlement in American history, attaining federal recognition of their title to 44 million acres of the state. In addition, they were awarded $962.5 million as compensation for other lands that they lost when Alaska was made a state in 1959.
• In 1980, the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes were able to prove that they held legal title to nearly two-thirds of the state of Maine. The tribes accepted a multi-million dollar settlement and the return of 300,000 acres of land.
• In the longest unresolved Indian land claim in the country, the Lakota -- also known as the Western Sioux, a name now considered derogatory -- have demanded the return of their sacred Black Hills in South Dakota. Under treaties made in 1851 and 1868, the Lakota were guaranteed title to the Black Hills, but the government opened the land to White settlement when gold was discovered in the area. This led to military conflicts with the United States, including the famous 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn. Ultimately, the U.S. government ceded the lands, and the Lakota have fought for more than a century to get them back. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the Lakota claim to the Black Hills and awarded the tribes $105 million as compensation for the land they lost. But the Lakota -- who live in the poorest county in the U.S. -- rejected the cash settlement. Today they continue to fight for the return of the Black Hills, which they consider central to their cultural and spiritual identity.
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You might also like:
•Against the Current
•Native American Influences in U.S. History and Culture
•Discovering Lewis and Clark
•The Alcatraz Proclamation: Background Handout
•The Alcatraz Proclamation: Background Sheet
http://www.tolerance.org/activity/land-ours
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U.S. Voting Rights
When the Constitution was written, only white male property owners (about 10 to 16 percent of the nation's population) had the vote. Over the past two centuries, though, the term "government by the people" has become a reality. During the early 1800s, states gradually dropped property requirements for voting. Later, groups that had been excluded previously gained the right to vote. Other reforms made the process fairer and easier.
1790 Only white male adult property-owners have the right to vote.1810 Last religious prerequisite for voting is eliminated.1850 Property ownership and tax requirements eliminated by 1850. Almost all adult white males could vote.1855 Connecticut adopts the nation's first literacy test for voting. Massachusetts follows suit in 1857. The tests were implemented to discriminate against Irish-Catholic immigrants.1870 The 15th Amendment is passed. It gives former slaves the right to vote and protects the voting rights of adult male citizens of any race.1889 Florida adopts a poll tax. Ten other southern states will implement poll taxes.1890 Mississippi adopts a literacy test to keep African Americans from voting. Numerous other states—not just in the south—also establish literacy tests. However, the tests also exclude many whites from voting. To get around this, states add grandfather clauses that allow those who could vote before 1870, or their descendants, to vote regardless of literacy or tax qualifications.1913 The 17th Amendment calls for members of the U.S. Senate to be elected directly by the people instead of State Legislatures.1915 Oklahoma was the last state to append a grandfather clause to its literacy requirement (1910). In Guinn v. United States the Supreme Court rules that the clause is in conflict with the 15th Amendment, thereby outlawing literacy tests for federal elections.1920 The 19th Amendment guarantees women's suffrage.1924 Indian Citizenship Act grants all Native Americans the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote in federal elections.1944 The Supreme Court outlaws "white primaries" in Smith v. Allwright (Texas). In Texas, and other states, primaries were conducted by private associations, which, by definion, could exclude whomever they chose. The Court declares the nomination process to be a public process bound by the terms of 15th Amendment.1957 The first law to implement the 15th amendment, the Civil Rights Act, is passed. The Act set up the Civil Rights Commission—among its duties is to investigate voter discrimination.1960 In Gomillion v. Lightfoot (Alabama) the Court outlaws "gerrymandering."1961 The 23rd Amendment allows voters of the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections.1964 The 24th Amendment bans the poll tax as a requirement for voting in federal elections.1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., mounts a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama, to draw national attention to African-American voting rights.1965 The Voting Rights Act protects the rights of minority voters and eliminates voting barriers such as the literacy test. The Act is expanded and renewed in 1970, 1975, and 1982.1966 The Supreme Court, in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, eliminates the poll tax as a qualification for voting in any election. A poll tax was still in use in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia. 1966 The Court upholds the Voting Rights Act in South Carolina v. Katzenbach.1970 Literacy requirements are banned for five years by the 1970 renewal of the Voting Rights Act. At the time, eighteen states still have a literacy requirement in place. In Oregon v. Mitchell, the Court upholds the ban on literacy tests, which is made permanent in 1975. Judge Hugo Black, writing the court's opinion, cited the "long history of the discriminatory use of literacy tests to disenfranchise voters on account of their race" as the reason for their decision.1971 The 26th amendment sets the minimum voting age at 18.1972 In Dunn v. Blumstein, the Supreme Court declares that lengthy residence requirements for voting in state and local elections is unconstitutional and suggests that 30 days is an ample period.1995 The Federal "Motor Voter Law" takes effect, making it easier to register to vote.2003 Federal Voting Standards and Procedures Act requires states to streamline registration, voting, and other election procedures.
Read more: U.S. Voting Rights | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/voting.html#ixzz2cvZE6prI
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American Indians won the right to vote in 1924, but some officials still haven't gotten the message
Sun Jun 23, 2013 at 06:00 PM PDT.
byMeteor BladesFollow forDaily Kos.
At this year's Netroots Nation, I was fortunate to be able to participate on a panel—Native Vote: Why Winning Indian Country Matters to You—with two inspiring young women: Prairie Rose Seminole, an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara bands of Indians at Fort Berthold, North Dakota, and Peggy Flanagan of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota. Both are seasoned political activists. Seminole is North Dakota’s Native Vote director and works with the Native American Leadership Program at Wellstone Action. Flanagan is director of External Affairs at Wellstone Action. A video of the session will be posted soon at the Netroots Nation site. The following commentary is a alternative version of my panel presentation.
Attempting to keep American Indians away from the ballot box has been going on ever since the majority of Indians gained the right to vote 89 years ago. In court, Indians have often prevailed in their efforts to stop this racist discrimination. In fact, just last Monday, a Supreme Court ruling was made in favor of the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, an organization of the state's 20 tribes.
But defeating discriminatory laws and actions requires going to court in the first place. That can an expensive and difficult task for many tribes or individual Indians.
The Indian vote matters. In all but seven states, Indians constitute fewer than 5 percent of the eligible voters. In only two states—Alaska and New Mexico—do they account for more than 10 percent of the total population. But even in some cases where they count for no more than 1 or 2 percent of the population, Indian voters have been critical to the success of candidates for public office, and Democrats have usually been the beneficiaries.
In North Dakota in 2012, thanks in part to the work of Seminole, challenger Heidi Heitkamp squeaked by to win a Senate seat in 2012. Indians, among whom she had campaigned heavily, provided her margin of victory. She now sits on the Committee on Indian Affairs. In 2008, in what turned out to be the longest vote count in Minnesota history, Al Franken won a Senate seat thanks in part to the efforts of Flanagan, who had previously volunteered for Paul Wellstone. As with Heitkamp, Indians gave Franken his margin of victory. He now sits on the Committee on Indian Affairs.
Mobilization of the Indian vote was also crucial in the 2000 defeat for reelection of Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, the anti-Indian former attorney general of Washington state. Maria Cantwell won that contest by an extremely narrow margin. She is now chairwoman of the Committee on Indian Affairs. In 2002, the Indian vote gave the margin of victory to South Dakota Democrat Tim Johnson in a squeaker Senate race against John Thune. Johnson is a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs.
Today, throughout the nation, some 85 Indians serve in elected office. There are two congressmen, numerous state senators and representatives, local sheriffs, county commissioners and city council members. Indians now have more authority to influence budgets and policies than at any time in U.S. history.
So what's the problem?
Getting the right to vote was hard. But getting the right enforced and keeping it from being diluted by various shenanigans so that Indians get a real voice at the polls has not been easy.
From the founding of the Republic, American Indians had been denied citizenship except when they became naturalized, or under special statute or treaty. But to become a citizen and exercise the franchise required Indians to renounce their tribal citizenship, give up their culture and language and assimilate into the dominant culture. In other words, they had to stop being Indians.
The Fourteenth Amendment, which gave citizenship and the vote to any male born in the territory of the United States, specifically excluded Indians, just as the original Constitution had done. But the phrase "Indians not taxed" was taken by many legal scholars and politicians at the time the amendment was ratified to exclude only tribal Indians. That is, those whose land was held in trust by the U.S. government and therefore not taxed. But, in the case of Elk v. Wilkins (1884), the Supreme Court held that Indians who voluntarily severed all ties to their tribes and paid taxes did not automatically gain citizenship.
More about the Indian vote can be found below the fry-bread squiggle.
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It was not until after World War I that the situation began to change. More than 7,000 Indians served in the military during the war. In recognition of that, in 1919, Congress passed legislation that all Indians who had served honorably in the armed forces were granted American citizenship. That, plus the suffragists' hard-won success at gaining the vote for women, spurred a movement to extend the franchise to all Indians. And under the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, all Indians were theoretically granted citizenship.
That should have ended debate on the subject. But it didn't.
Some states continued to deny Indians the right to vote by means of poll taxes, literacy tests and pure intimidation, much like the Jim Crow laws of the South were used to keep blacks from voting.
The courts did not affirm the right of reservation Indians in Arizona and New Mexico to vote until 1948. The laws in those two states fell to the anger of Miguel Trujillo, a member of the Pueblo of Isleta in New Mexico and a veteran of the Marine Corps during World War II, and Frank Harrison, another Marine veteran and member of the Yavapai tribe in Arizona. Both had gone to register to vote in their respective counties and were told that because they were Indians living on tribal land they weren't allowed to vote. They sued and won.
But other states continued used various justifications for keeping Indians from voting. Colorado, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Utah, Washington and Wyoming all found means to blocking or diluting the Indian vote.
Although it's not widely known, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 included American Indians in its mandate. Because of the act, Indians on the Ute reservations of southwestern Colorado finally obtained guaranteed voting rights in 1970. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (the teeth-filled section of the law likely to be overturned by the Supreme Court sometime in the next few months), certain states or selected counties of states that previously employed discriminatory means to restrict voting by people of color are required to get federal approval in advance of any changes in voting laws or practices before they can be implemented. "Pre-clearance," it's called.
This isn't ancient history. Section 5 has been used in the 21st Century to force state and local authorities to change racist practices curtailing the Indian vote. Here are two instances:
While lawmakers have squelched the Indian vote in several states in spite of federal law, none has been quite as bad over the years as South Dakota, a state where there are seven Sioux reservations, collectively the Oceti Sakowin, the words in Lakota meaning the "seven council fires." Slightly more than 8 percent of the population is Indian, concentrated in a few counties.
Having ignored the 1924 citizenship act, South Dakota did not repeal until 1951 its 1903 law requiring a culture test for Indians to prove they had abandoned their identity as Indians, their culture, their language and their homeland in order to vote or hold office. As late as 1975, authorities prohibited Indians from voting in elections in Todd, Shannon and Washabaugh counties, whose residents were overwhelmingly Indian. The state also prohibited residents of these counties from holding county office until as recently as 1980.
But South Dakota continued suppressing Indian voting rights decades later.
As a result of the 1975 amendments of the Voting Rights Act, the counties of Shannon and Todd, home to the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian reservations respectively, became subject to pre-clearance. Eighteen other counties, because of their large Indian populations, were required to conduct bilingual elections. The state's Republican attorney general and notorious Indian-hater, William "Wild Bill" Janklow, was infuriated.
In a formal opinion addressed to the secretary of state, he derided the 1975 amendment and called the Voting Rights Act itself an unconstitutional federal encroachment that rendered state power "almost meaningless." He quoted Justice Hugo Black’s dissent in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (which held the basic provisions of the Voting Rights Act constitutional), saying that Section 5 treated covered jurisdictions as "little more than conquered provinces." A remarkably ironic assertion given the history of U.S. and South Dakota double-dealing with the tribes.
Meanwhile, Janklow advised the secretary of state in 1977 not to comply with the pre-clearance requirement. He said, "I see no need to proceed with undue speed to subject our state’s laws to a ‘one-man veto’ by the United States Attorney General." When a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report confirmed that South Dakota had violated the civil rights of Native Americans, Janklow called the report "garbage."
State officials went along with him. From 1976 until 2002, they passed more than 600 election-related statutes and regulations that affected Shannon and Todd counties, including a state redistricting plan. But fewer than 10 of these changes were submitted for pre-clearance. After two lawsuits in 1978 and 1979, the federal Department of Justice simply ignored South Dakota's Section 5 scofflaws. You read that right. Nobody from the Department of Justice did squat to stop the racist application of voting laws in South Dakota for nearly 23 years.
Finally, in 2002, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal court challenge to these laws on behalf of four Lakota voters. Most of the 600 laws passed without pre-clearance were not objectionable. But the ACLU identified a dozen that were discriminatory. The lawsuit sought a court order prohibiting the state from implementing any of the statutes until South Dakota complied with Section 5. The federal court entered a consent order in December 2002 that directed South Dakota to develop a comprehensive plan "that will promptly bring the State into full compliance with its obligations under Section 5." That process was completed in 2006.
Such slaps in the face haven't stopped South Dakota from trying other shenanigans, such as restrictions on the days allowed for early voting in reservation-dominated counties and limiting the number of polling stations.
Another recent instance of institutionalized racial discrimination involved Fremont County, Wyoming. The county has five commissioners. Even though the people of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes of the Wind River reservation make up 22 percent of the population of the county, none had ever been elected to a county commissioner post because at-large elections favored the non-Indian majority. An ACLU lawsuit was launched in 2005.
The county was represented by the right-wing Mountain States Legal Foundation, founded in 1977 by James Watt, the crooked Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan. MSLF has a long history of suing over protections for sacred sites, opposing subsistence rights for Alaska Natives and representing clients who oppose tribal sovereignty. The Fremont case took five years to wind its way through the courts.
Before it was resolved, the negative publicity around it helped elect Keja Whiteman, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa whose husband is Arapaho, to the Fremont board of county commissioners.
In 2010, U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson ruled that the at-large system effectively diluted the votes of the county’s Indian population. He ordered the county to adopt a district system for its commissioners, with one district created in a way so that members of the two tribes are in the majority. Fremont County appealed the case and argued for a hybrid system of districts instead. The court threw that idea out. All five commissioners, who serve staggered four-year terms, have now been elected by district, with Whiteman having been reelected in 2010.
There are a score of other cases undertaken because of redistricting plans designed to water down voting strength, unfounded allegations of election fraud on reservations, burdensome identification and registration requirements, lack of language assistance, distant polling stations and noncompliance with the Voting Rights Act. The fight for Indian voting rights is not over.
••• •••
Some sources:
An excellent book on the subject is Laughlin MacDonald's American Indians and the Fight for Equal Voting Rights (2011).
Voting Rights in Indian Country: A Special Report of the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (2009)
A history of U.S. voting rights and why it is important to vote.
U.S. vs. Blaine County Montana.
Fremont County Case.
Native Voting Rights/Fort McDowell.
.
Originally posted to Daily Kos on Sun Jun 23, 2013 at 06:00 PM PDT.
Also republished by Native American Netroots.
Tags
American Indians
Elections
Indian Citizenship Act (1924)
Indians
Native American
Racism
Vote
Voting Rights Act (1965)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/23/1218267/-American-Indians-won-the-right-to-vote-in-1924-but-some-officials-still-haven-t-gotten-the-message#
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8.05 Native Americans and Chinese Get the Vote- IDLE NO MORE AMERICA
Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado is the only American Indian in teh Senate. He is one of forty-four chiefs of the Northern Cheyenne Indians.
The United States has historically excluded groups based on race, gender, and nationality from voting. African Americans and women were not allowed to vote by state laws. Native Americans and Chinese have also been excluded.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1831 that "Indians" were a "domestic dependent nation." As such, Native Americans lacked citizenship rights as long as they remained within their nation. In 1906, the Burke Act granted citizenship to those Native Americans who privately farmed their land and left the jurisdiction of the reservation. But it would not be until 1924 that Congress would pass the Indian Citizenship Act granting all Native Americans, on or off the reservation, citizenship and the possibility of suffrage. In 1956 Utah was the last state to give Native Americans the vote.
Chinese Americans faced similar barriers to voting. Three hundred thousand Chinese arrived in the U.S. between 1854 and 1882, drawn to the California gold rush and jobs in mining and railroad construction. Chinese immigrants quickly became targets for white workers, who blamed them for driving down wages. Riots against Chinese in California were commonplace in the 1870s and 80s. Pressure for action grew so great that the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the first anti-immigrant act in U.S. history. The law ended Chinese immigration and prevented Chinese and later other Asian immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens, thus disfranchising that population.
This flier for a Tacoma, Wash., anti-Chinese mass meeting shows the great fear of Chinese and their purported threat to American civilization.
Children of Chinese born in the United States were also excluded from citizenship until an 1896 law established their rights as citizens. Not until 1926 would California's suffrage provision, allowing "no native of China" to vote be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Chinese Exclusion Act would remain in effect until 1943, when the United States lifted the immigration ban.
http://www1.cuny.edu/portal_ur/content/voting_cal/americans_chinese.html
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Culture & Traditions
History of American Indian Voting Rights
By Mary Sam, former Mille Lacs Band Local Government and Community Relations Coordinator
Excitement has long been building for this year’s Election Day – November 4, 2008 –when we’ll choose representatives for numerous local, state and federal offices. This is a time when we get to cast our ballots and exercise our right to vote as American citizens.
However, the right to vote has not always been granted to all Americans.
While the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (passed in 1868) states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" are American citizens, many groups of people were denied citizenship – and with that the right to vote. This led Congress to pass the 15th Amendment in 1870, which banned states from limiting voting based on race.
However, governments still found ways to impose voting restrictions and deny citizenship to certain groups of people. For example, African American men were given citizenship in 1870 following the Civil War, but encountered threats, literacy tests, and poll taxes that prevented them from voting. Suffragettes struggled for years to secure women’s right to vote, which was granted in 1920.
American Indians also faced difficulties in obtaining voting rights. When the Mille Lacs Band negotiated the 1855 treaty with the U.S. government, the Band wanted its members to be given the right to vote, but was denied this until nearly 70 years later. Minnesota, among other states, had laws that limited Indian voting.
In 1917, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in Opsahl v. Johnson that Indians did not have the right to vote because they lived on reservations and were not part of the "civilized" population. The court determined that "civilized" referred to American Indians who were living off reservations and pursuing the customs and traditions of white Americans.
During this time, thousands of American Indians were fighting overseas in World War I. Upon their return, many Indian soldiers were granted citizenship because of their military service. Other American Indians obtained citizenship for other reasons, such as marriage to white Americans, or through treaties or special statutes. By the early 1920s, however, about one-third of American Indians still did not have citizenship. Without the right to vote, American Indians didn’t have a voice in electing the leaders who made decisions affecting them, such as policies to assimilate them into American society.
Then in 1924, Congress granted all American Indians the right to vote through the American Indian Citizenship Act, largely due to the high number of American Indians who served the country during World War I. With the passage of the act, American Indians now had "dual citizenship," which means they are American citizens and members of their respective tribes, allowing them to vote in their tribal elections and in local, state and federal elections. While the act gave American Indians voting rights, states governed their own voting requirements and often passed laws that limited this right. In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which prohibited states from using discriminatory voting practices (further enforcing the 15th Amendment).
The country has come a long way in granting voting rights to all its citizens, but cases still arise today over voters’ rights. When we head to the polls this Election Day, it is important to remember the significance of our right to vote and the challenges some have faced in obtaining this right.
Mary Sam is the former Local Government and Community Relations Coordinator for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. She is also the former chair and the current treasurer of the Mille Lacs Area Human Rights Commission and a member of the Native Vote Alliance of Minnesota.
http://www.millelacsband.com/Page_culture.aspx?id=270
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Native American Voting Rights
October 8, 2012 By Elizabeth Couchum Leave a Comment
Elizabeth CouchumResearch Project PlanOctober 8, 2012
Native American voting rights in New Mexico, Arizona vs. Nevada…..what was going on in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah for Native Americans vs. the State of Nevada?
Thesis:
With the current political climate, the right to vote has been challenged in many swing states. With many in arms about their right to vote in this very important election year, many are standing their ground to have their voices be heard, while some are working very hard to suppress the vote for those who may vote for the right candidate. While many think that this is something very new, to have many votes challenged, sadly this has happened before. Native Americans were not allowed to vote in this country based on their race. It was not until the 19th Amendment that Native Americans were given the right to vote. However, many states did not agree with this amendment and did not allow Native Americans to vote for many reasons. There were three states in particular that fought the Native Americans who were determined to vote. Even though the Indian Citizenship Act was signed into law, when it came to voting, Native Americans did not get the right to vote in many states due to various reasons. The last states to hold out were Arizona and New Mexico and Utah. What was going on with these states that they took so long to grant the right to vote to Native Americans? When did Nevada’s Native Americans get the right to vote? Compared to the State of Nevada, what was the political climate in Arizona and New Mexico and Utah?
Section 1:
The 19th Amendment and the Native Americans got the right to vote. How and when did the 19th Amendment came about? What influences did the 19th Amendment have in the United Sates?
1. The Nineteenth to the United States Constitution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution, Wikipedia, (Modified on September 25, 2012) (accessed website September 29, 2012)
a. In August 1920 the 19th Amendment was ratified to allow women the right to vote. According to the United States Constitution the 19th Amendment states that, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
2. "Native American Citizenship 1924, Indian Citizenship Act,"
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0700/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0700/stories/0701_0146.html, Nebraskastudies.org 1900-1924, (Accessed website September 29, 2012)
a. Native Americans who are indigenous to the United States did not get the right to vote until much later than women. In 1924, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act. This Act proclaims, "BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and house of Representatives of the United States of
America in Congress assembled, That all non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided That the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property. (Approved June 2, 1924)"
3. Daniel McCool, Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights to Act, and the Right to Vote, University of Utah 2007.
a. United States Constitution gives the states "the power to prescribe rules for the times, places, and manner of holding elections." However, Congress has the power to "alter regulations". This has led to conflict between the Federal Government and states. pg. ix
b. There were major efforts to "define" the Native Americans and their place in the United States and whether or not they were a part of the country’s landscape. Also, who had sovereignty? Was it the Native Americans or "Indians"? No. So since they were not considered citizens, they were not allowed to vote. According to the U.S. attorney general, Caleb Cushing, in 1856:
"The simple truth is plain that the Indians are the subjects of the United States, and therefore are not, in mere right of home-birth, citizens of the United States…This distinction between citizens proper, that is, the constituent members of the political sovereignty, who are not therefore citizens, are recognized in the best authorities of public law. (Official Opinions of the Attorneys General 1856, 749-50)" pg. 2
3. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865. Congress began putting together the 14th Amendment in 1866.
a. "That all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." (Civil Rights Act of 1866) pg. 3
i. Note: Wisconsin’s Senator James Doolittle, while debating on the senate floor, proposed to add "Indians not taxed". He made two arguments regarding the Native Americans. One was that they were an "inferior race, and therefore were simply not good enough to hold the title of citizen." Doolittle’s second argument was that, "if granted citizenship, and implicitly the right to vote, they could vote in sufficient numbers to change the power structure and overwhelm their white neighbors." pg. 3-4
ii. Note: Another senator made the argument that "Indians were not under the jurisdiction of the United States, and therefore were excluded from the provisions of the proposed amendments." pg. 4
4. Solving the "Indian Problem" in the Nineteenth Century.
a. Genocide. As stated by Senator Doolittle, "put…out of the way." In other words, "all Indians should be exterminated." pg. 5
b. Another solution was to put the "Indians" away until they became "civilized" and were able to socialize with the white people. So reservations were "set aside for Indians" until they were ready to be with white people. pg. 5
i. Treaties were worked out with Native American tribes to create reservations in 1868.
ii. The treaties came with provisions so that Native Americans can gain "citizenship by receiving a patent for land….. and be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of such citizens, and shall, at the same time retain all rights to benefits accruing to Indians under this treaty," (Treaty of Fort Laramie 1868, Article 6). pg. 5
iii. Note: Policymakers also wanted Native Americans to give up citizenship if they could not give up their tribal affiliations and culture. "Citizenship and the right to vote would be contingent upon abandoning one culture and adopting another." pg. 5
iv. The Native Americans needed another statute to obtain citizenship.
5. The Dawes Act
a. The Dawes Act is a statute that passed in 1887. It divides up reservation land into individual holdings for members of the tribe. Later, the remainder of the land was sold to white settlers.
"And every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States to whom allotments shall have been made provisions of this act, or under any law or treaty, and every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States who has voluntarily taken up, within said limits, his residence separate and apart from any tribe of Indians therein, and has adopted the habits of civilized life hereby declared to be a citizen of the United States….(Dawes Act 1887, 390). pg. 6
6. Office of Indian Affairs, citizenship to Indians, 1922
a. In a letter to Congress, Office of Indian Affairs identified eight legal procedures or conditions of what will enable the Native Americans to become citizens of the United States. This will be known as the "Universal Indian Citizenship" or the Indian Citizenship Act, June 24, 1924. pg. 7
i. The letter states, "legitimate children born of an Indian woman and a white citizen father are born to citizenship," (Office of Indian Affairs 1922). pg. 7
ii. "Indians would not have to give up being an Indian in exchange for citizenship."
iii. "An Indian could be an enrolled member of a tribe."
iv. "Live on a federally recognized reservation."
v. "Practice his or her own culture, and still be a U.S. citizen." pg. 7
7. Judith Nies, Native American History, A Chronology of the Vast Achievements of a Culture and their Links to World Events, Ballantine Books, 1996 (e-book)
a. Native Americans were excluded from the economy and the political system because they were "segregated within reservations". Native Americans were not allowed to vote in the United States. pg. 224
b. Religion and education among Native Americans were "outlawed". "Indian children were compelled to attend white run boarding school, cut their hair, wear citizen clothing, learn English, and adopt Christianity." pg. 224
Section 2:
Did the 19th Amendment Change anything in the United States? If not, why? What happened in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, compared to Nevada?
1. Daniel McCool, Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights to Act, and the Right to Vote, Daniel McCool, Cambridge University Press, University of Utah 2007.
a. The Department of the Interior had no idea that the western states would have "opposition" to Native Americans voting. pg. 8
b. A statement was made in 1928 in regards to the Indian voting because there were so many that interpreted the Indian Citizenship Act differently. pg. 8
c. In 1936, attorney general of Colorado stated that the Native Americans had no right to vote due to the fact that they were "not citizens of the state."
d. During World War II, Chief Choctaw wrote to the President in the United States. "Our white friends here say we are not allowed to vote. If we are not citizens, will it be right for the Choctaws go to war?" Simply put, yes. They were expected to fight for their country even if they are not allowed to vote. pg. 10
e. Fifteenth Amendment 1870 states "limiting voting on account of race." States found other ways to "limit Indian voting." pg. 10
f. There were six ways to limit voting:
i. Residency
ii. Self-Termination
iii. Taxation
iv. Guardianship
v. Literacy
vi. Protecting the Status Quo
2. "Chavers: No Voting Right in Indian Country," http://www.nativetimes.com/life/commentary/3613-chavers-no-voting-rights-in-indian-country, Native American Times, Today’s Independent Indian News, Dr. Dean Chavers, May 17, 2010, (accessed September 30, 2012)
The author writes about conspiracies of why Native Americans did not have the right to vote. There were many involved in keeping Native Americans from voting and there were also quite a few schemes involved. The Native Americans who fought in World War II were faced with many problems.
a. Native American veterans still were not allowed to vote, buy a home, get a job, or buy a car.
b. Native Americans faced opponents of the Voting Rights 1965. Example: Former governor from South Dakota made comments, wanted to keep Native Americans on the reservation and also raped girls. He never faced prosecution.
c. Other states to stop Native Americans from voting and were discriminatory against Native Americans were Arizona, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Washington.
3. "Voting Rights History, Two Centuries of Struggle," http://www.crmvet.org/info/votehist.htm, Civil Rights Movement Veterans, copyright 2004, 2010 (Labor Donated) (accessed September 30, 2012)
a. This website gives a timeline in regards to voting rights. There were two dates that were important to Native Americans.
i. 1924 – All American aboriginal people (Native Americans) were given the right to vote by US Congress.
ii. 1948: State laws denying the vote to Native-Americans are overturned. In one of the post-war period’s few successful legal challenges, the Federal courts overturn the last state laws (Maine, Arizona, New Mexico) that explicitly prevent Indians from voting. Violence, economic retaliation, and different kinds of legal tricks continue to be used to prevent Native-Americans from voting.
4. "Indian Citizenship Act of 1924?, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act_of_1924 Wikipedia, modified October 3, 2012, (accessed September 30, 2012)
a. "According to a survey by the Department of Interior, seven states still refused to grant
Indians voting rights in 1938. Discrepancies between federal and state control provided loopholes in the Act’s enforcement. States justified discrimination based on state statutes and constitutions. Three main arguments for Indian voting exclusion were Indian exemption from real estate taxes, maintenance of tribal affiliation and the mistaken notion that Indians were under guardianship, or lived on lands controlled by federal trusteeship (Peterson 121). By 1947 all states with large Indian populations, except Arizona and New Mexico, had extended voting rights to Native Americans who qualified under the 1924 Act. Finally, in 1948 these states withdrew their prohibition on Indian voting because of a judicial decision (Bruyneel). "
4. Schusky, Ernest, Political Organization of Native North Americans, Washington D.C., University Press of America, 1980.
a. President John F. Kennedy had a task force for Indian Affairs, three objectives.
i. Maximum Indian economic self-sufficiency
ii. Full participation in American life
iii. Equal citizenship privileges and responsibilities. pg. 286
5. Nies, Judith, Native American History, A Chronology of the Vast Achievements of a Culture and their Links to World Events, Ballantine Books, Random House Publishing Group, 1996 (e-book)
a. President Kennedy in 1961 recommends the head of Phillips Petroleum Company,
W. Keeler, who recommended the policy of termination. Under Keeler, there were many others who were
appointed and the "responsiveness to the needs of energy companies continued to be the overriding policy of the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs)." pg. 276.
6. "Arizona Native American Voting Rights History," www.nativevote.org/photo/arizona-voting?Sarah Gonzales, September 30, 2010 (accessed September 29, 2012)
a. In 1928, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans did not have
the right to vote because they were under federal Guardianship.
b. World War II veteran, Frank Harrison, appealed that decision. He believed
Native Americans had the right to vote and on July 15, 1948, court ruled in his favor. Native Americans were able to vote in Arizona.
7. "One Man, Many Votes, Native Americans struggle with the first freedom," http://alibi.com/feature/23805/One-Man-ManyVote, Santa Ana Star Center, Jes Abeita, v. 17 no. 27, July 3 – 9, 2008
a. A century ago, Native Americans living in New Mexico were not allowed to vote.
A young marine, Miguel Trujillo, in 1948 brought about a case, Trujillo vs. Garley to decide whether or not Native Americans in New Mexico could vote.
b. "He was a person who always felt that Indian people should be recognized,"
said his daughter, Josephine Waconda.
c. August 3, 1948, a panel of three federal judges ruled that Native Americans
living in New Mexico are allowed to vote. They also ruled that New Mexico violated Amendments 14 and 15.
8. Chronological History of Nevada, www.shgresources.com/nv/timeline/, 2012 (accessed September 29, 2012)
a. By the looks of this website, Native Americans were allowed to vote in the State
of Nevada when the United States Congress passed the law that all "aboriginal" people, meaning Native Americans, are allowed to vote.
9. Daniel McCool, Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights to Act, and the Right to Vote, University of Utah 2007.
a. Case in Utah, Allen vs. Merrell, 1956. The case was brought to the Utah Supreme
Court that had proved a method of stopping Native Americans in voting. The Native Americans had to choose to either give up their heritage and being able to vote. If Native Americans were unable to give up their affiliations with the tribe, they were unable to have their voices heard in the elections. pg. 11
10. Judith Nies, Native American History, A Chronology of the Vast Achievements of a Culture and their Links to World Events, Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine Books, 1996 (e-book)
a. After World War II, it was discovered that the land that was given to the Native
Americans had mineral resources though the Native Americans did not realize this. pg. 234
b. There was an effort to "dismantle" the reservations. According to Nies, "Senator
Watkins from Utah argued in 1950 that while America was spending billions of dollars to fight communism, it was fostering socialist environments on Indian reservations." This point was brought back up during the Reagan administration. pg. 234
11. "Voting Rights Act of 1965," http://www.crmvet.org/info/votehist.htm, Wikipedia, modified September 25, 2012, (accessed October 7, 1965)
a. The Act states, "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice,
or procedure … to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
b. Outlawed discriminatory voting practices against African Americans.
Section 3:
Where are we now in the Right to Vote for Native Americans and as Native Americans as a whole in the United States?
1. "Chavers: No Voting Rights in Indian Country," http://www.nativetimes.com/life/commentary/3613-chavers-no-voting-rights-in-indian-country, Native American Times, Today’s Independent Indian News, Dr. Dean Chavers, May 17, 2010, (accessed September 30, 2012)
a. Native Americans are now hold office including state legislature in states such as Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina, and South Dakota.
b. Even though there have been huge steps in Native American voting, there are still problems with voter discrimination.
2. "Voting Rights in Arizona 1982- 2006," http://www.protectcivilrights.org/pdf/voting/ArizonaVRA.pdf, Protect Voting Rights: Renew the VRA.org, Dr. James Thomas Tucker and Dr. Rodolfo Espino, March 2006
a. This report shows that the State of Arizona has a long way to go when it comes to the Voting Rights Act for Native American Indians as well as the Latino community. The State of Arizona still has signs of discriminatory effects toward those who have been fighting for their right to vote.
b. This report is a 92 page report that takes you through the history of voting not only in Arizona, but throughout the country to the representation in Arizona and where the state stands today.
3. Judith Nies, Native American History, A Chronology of the Vast Achievements of a Culture and their Links to World Events, Ballantine Books, The Random House Publishing Group,1996 (e-book)
a. During the 1960s and 1970s all the way through the 1990s, a "new national Indian resistance" came about. pgs. 234 – 235
b. Native Americans created their own programs to deal with their own problems such as "alcoholism on the reservation and prison rehabilitation." pg. 235
c. Councils were also created for young Native Americans. pg. 235
4. Judith Nies, Native American History, A Chronology of the Vast Achievements of a Culture and their Links to World Events, Ballantine Books, The Random Publishing Group, 1996 (e-book)
a. From 1995- 2005, United Nations declared that this decade was "The Decade of Indigenous Peoples". The United Nations announced that this was declared because in part, "Allowing Native languages, cultures, and different traditions to perish through ‘nonassistance’ to endangered cultures must henceforth be considered a basic violation of human rights." pg. 302
5. "Tea party groups work to remove names from Ohio voter rolls," http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/26/nation/la-na-ohio-voting-fight-20120927, Los Angeles Times, Michael Finnegan, September 26, 2012 (accessed October 8, 2012)
a. Activists say they’re challenging some names to ensure ‘election integrity.’ Others say it’s an effort to suppress the votes of likely Obama supporters.
b. A citizen in Ohio received notification that her right to vote "was challenged by a stranger."
c. A Tea Party organization in Ohio is challenging 2,100 voters in Ohio to "remove their names from voter rosters."
6. "Ohio Challenges Legitimate Student Voters," http://www.projectvote.org/blog/2012/09/ohio-group-challenges-legitimate-student-voters/, Project Voting Matters, September 28, 2012, (accessed October 8, 2012)
a. "Ohio Voter Integrity Project, the state arm of the Tea Party-affiliated True the Vote group, submitted the challenges, according to the Columbus Dispatch. Most of the challenged voters were Ohio State University students who she said should be removed from the rolls ‘because they did not provide address details such as apartment or dorm room numbers’."
Conclusions
The Native Americans or "Indians" as they were called for many decades, faced countless obstacles regarding their life, heritage, religion, education, home, land, and the right to be seen as human beings in their native land. Native Americans were given the option to give up their cultural for the chance to vote. Native Americans were told that they had to fight in World War II, but when they returned to the United States, they still faced obstacles, including the right to vote. Thanks to the United States Congress, the 19th Amendment, the Indian Citizenship Act, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, made it possible for Native Americans to vote. However, many states opposed Native Americans to vote and came up with many schemes to stop them. With many cases and points that were brought by the Native Americans, the courts sided with them stating that the states’ voting rights for Native Americans were, in fact, illegal.
Now, with many Native Americans in the legislature and on many boards in their own towns and cities, there is still discrimination in many states. Now with the political climate, there has not only been discrimination against Native Americans, but for others such as African Americans, Latinos, students, and the poor, by those who are challenging their vote by many schemes. The Right to Vote in this country is a privilege that many have fought for in court cases, demonstrations, and war, and looks like that we, as a country, will continue to fight for, because nothing is more important that to have your voice heard.
Reflections
Initially, I thought that the search online for this topic would be daunting. However, once I started to do the search and figuring out the proper "search words", I was able to find articles regarding this topic. The problem though was that many articles repeated each other. There was no new real information. The challenge was to do a different "word search" to find articles that presented the information in a different and engaging way. Another problem that I found was trying to find narratives online of those whose votes were challenged. I was able to find one article about a daughter who discussed her father and his fight not only for him to vote, but to allow all Native Americans to vote in Arizona.
I had much better luck with books that unfortunately are not online nor in e-books. There have been several authors who did extensive research in this topic and many others that have plagued Native Americans throughout history. One of the best online research I was able to do what a chronological history of the states that I was particularly interested in to see the timeline of what was going on in the history of the state and when Native Americans were allowed to vote. The western states as well as the southern states in the United States had issues with voting rights. In the south, it was all about the African Americans, but in the west, it was about Native Americans. With the exception of Nevada who allowed Native Americans to vote as soon as the 1924 Voting Rights was passed, the surrounding states opposed the Native Americans with every turn. Though I did not look at the State of California, I did find that the state had allowed Mexicans the right to vote before Native Americans. In New Mexico, some women were given the right to vote before Native Americans as well. In all of my research, I found that the main reason all states, with the exception of Nevada, many lawmakers were afraid of the same thing, by giving Native Americans the right to vote will cause a shift in the power of balance for these states. Then there was the land, which has always been a major source of entitlement in the United States. When it was found that the reservations had source of minerals, such as water and gas, the fight for land was on even though it was the Federal Government gave that land to the Native Americans. Even today, water rights are still being fought for between the government and Native Americans.
While researching this topic and reading up on the voting rights in the United States, I have been watching the political race of 2012. I could not help noticing when it came out that many voter rights in Florida, Ohio, and South Carolina were being challenged. Many citizens, like the Native Americans, are angry. The right to vote in this country is a guaranteed right. The voting According to the 19th Amendment, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." With organizations such as the Tea Party and their affiliations, voter rights are being challenged today without any regard to the 19th Amendment or the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All of this challenging of votes are done to get the person that these organizations want into the White House. It seems that history is repeating itself. I felt that I should add to this paper a little of where we are as a nation when it came to voting rights. I wanted to show that when Native Americans were fighting for the right to vote, how politicians in many states made it almost impossible even though the Native Americans had the Federal Government to back them up. Now in 2012, many organizations and a few politicians in certain swing states are making it hard for anyone who may vote for the "wrong" candidate to vote in the general election this November. My reflections are that as we make progress for equality, down the road there will continue to be obstacles for everyone and anyone who may challenge the beliefs of a group who still believe that this country should be seen as a certain way.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
"Arizona Native American Voting Rights History," www.nativevote.org/photo/arizona-voting?Sarah Gonzales, September 30, 2010 (accessed September 29, 2012)
"Chavers: No Voting Right in Indian Country," http://www.nativetimes.com/life/commentary/3613-chavers-no-voting-rights-in-indian-country, Native American Times, Today’s Independent Indian News, Dr. Dean Chavers, May 17, 2010, (accessed September 30, 2012)
Chronological History of Nevada, www.shgresources.com/nv/timeline/, 2012 (accessed on September 29, 2012)
"Indian Citizenship Act of 1924?, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act_of_1924 Wikipedia, modified October 3, 2012, (accessed September 30, 2012)
Nies, Judith, Native American History, A Chronology of the Vast Achievements of a Culture and their Links to World Events, Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine Books, 1996 (e-book on Nook)
"Native American Citizenship 1924, Indian Citizenship Act,"
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0700/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0700/stories/0701_0146.html, Nebraskastudies.org 1900-1924, (accessed website September 29, 2012)
The Nineteenth to the United States Constitution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution, Wikipedia, (Modified on September 25, 2012) (accessed website September 29, 2012)
"Ohio Challenges Legitimate Student Voters," http://www.projectvote.org/blog/2012/09/ohio-group-challenges-legitimate-student-voters/, Project Voting Matters, September 28, 2012, (accessed October 8, 2012)
"Tea party groups work to remove names from Ohio voter rolls," http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/26/nation/la-na-ohio-voting-fight-20120927, Los Angeles Times, Michael Finnegan, September 26, 2012 (accessed October 8, 2012)
"Voting Rights Act of 1965," http://www.crmvet.org/info/votehist.htm, Wikipedia, modified September 25, 2012, (accessed October 7, 1965)
"Voting Rights History, Two Centuries of Struggle," http://www.crmvet.org/info/votehist.htm, Civil Rights Movement Veterans, copyright 2004, 2010 (Labor Donated) (accessed September 30, 2012)
"Voting Rights in Arizona 1982- 2006," http://www.protectcivilrights.org/pdf/voting/ArizonaVRA.pdf, Protect Voting Rights: Renew the VRA.org, Dr. James Thomas Tucker and Dr. Rodolfo Espino, March 2006
Secondary Sources
McCool, Daniel, Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights to Act, and the Right to Vote, Cambridge University Press, University of Utah 2007.
Schusky, Ernest L, Political Organization of Native North Americans, Washington D.C. University Press of America, 1980.
http://digitally.doinghistory.com/native-american-voting-rights/
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Culture Areas, Tribes
In the study of Native Americans, it is more evident to divide the
Americas into geographic regions. Since environment determines
many ways of life, tribes within each division share a significant
number of cultural traits. The different geographic regions therefore
define and delineate culture areas.
There are 12 divisions (Culture Areas) for North and Middle America:
Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Great Plains, Great Basin, Plateau,
California, Northwest Coast, Arctic, Subarctic, Mesoamerica and
Circum-Caribbean.
Northeast Culture Area
This area covers the territory from the Atlantic seaboard across the Appalachians to the Mississippi Valley, and north to south, from the Great Lakes to the Tidewater region of present-day Virginia and North Carolina, and beyond the Cumberland River in Tennessee.
The tribes of this region at the time of Contact, when the explorers came, can be organized into five subgroups, based on variations in lifeways, and their regions: 1) the Nova Scotia, New England, Long Island, Hudson Valley and Delaware Valley Algonquian-speaking tribes, 2) the New York and Ontario Iroquoian-speaking tribes, 3) the Great Lakes Algonquians, 4) the Prairie Algonquians, 5) and the southern fringe tribes, both Algonquians and Iroquoians.
Both the Iroquois and Algonquians had strong tribal identities above and beyond the basic nuclear families. For the Indians of the Northeast area, the trees of the forest were the primary material for shelter, tools and fuel, and the animals of the forest were the primary food source. But the Northeast Woodland Native Americans were not solely hunters and gatherers, but also fishermen and farmers.
Southeast Culture Area
The Southeast culture area stretches from the Atlantic Ocean westward to the arid lands beyond the Trinity River in present-day Texas, and from the Gulf of Mexico northward to varying latitudes in the present-day states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.
The majority of Native Americans in the Southeast made their homes along river valleys in villages which served as the dominant form of social organization. In general, it can be said that the people of the Southeast were farmers first and hunters, gatherers, and fishermen second.
The larger tribes of the area include the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole (an offshoot of Creek), referred to by whites as the Five Civilized Tribes. (Also see "The Trail of Tears")
Southwest Culture Area
The Southwest culture area extends from the southern fringes of present-day Utah and Colorado southward through Arizona and New Mexico (including parts of Texas, California and Oklahoma) into Mexico. The constant in this vast region is aridity.
Two essential Indian life-styles developed in the region: agrarian and nomadic. Agriculture north of Mesoamerica reached its highest level of development in the Southwest. The people of this culture area can further be organized as follows: 1) the agrarian Pueblo peoples, including the western Pueblos (Hopi and Zuni), and the Rio Grande Pueblos (Keres, Tewa, Tiwa, and Towa); 2) the agrarian Desert peoples (Hualapai, Havasupai, Yavapai, Mojave, Yuma, Cocopa, Maricopa, Pima and Papago); 3) the Athapascans, late arrivals in the region from the north (A.D. 800 to 1000), including the Apaches, nomads and raiders, as well as the Navajos, who eventually adopted a pastoral life-style; and 4) the southwestern Texas and northern Mexico tribes, mostly nomadic hunters, with some farmers among them.
Great Basin Culture Area
The Great Basin culture area, as its name implies, comprises a huge natural desert basin comprising practically all of Utah and Nevada, parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and California, as well as the northern fringes of Arizona and New Mexico. Death Valley, situated below sea level and reaching summer temperatures as high as 140ยบ F, represents the Basin’s geographic extreme. Because of that harsh environment, Great Basin Native Americans at the time of Contact were primarily gatherers who foraged and dug for anything edible - seeds, nuts, berries, roots, snakes, lizards, insects and rodents - and thus have been referred to as "diggers". They were also hunters, as well as, to a lesser extent, fishermen.
Because of the meager food supplies, people traveled for the most part in small family groups, with minimal tribal identity and few community rites. The major groupings of peoples are Paiute, Ute and Shoshoni, with various subdivisions and offshoots. By the 18th and 19th centuries, some bands had become horse-mounted hunters on the Great Plains to the east.
Plateau Culture Area
The Columbia Plateau and its rivers define the Plateau culture area of eastern Washington, northern Idaho, western Montana, northeast and central Oregon, southeast British Columbia and a tiny portion of northern California. For the Native Americans of the area at the time of Contact, the fast-flowing rivers offered sustenance - salmon, the dietary staple, as well as trout and sturgeon. They also provided avenues of travel and trade.
The Plateau culture area was not as densely populated as the Pacific coastal areas to the west. Nevertheless, more than two dozen distinct tribal groups inhabited the Columbia Plateau. Villages, usually located along riverbanks, became the main political units, with headmen as leaders. Some of the most well-known tribes of the area are: Chinook, Nez Perce, Flathead, and Spokane. The earliest ancestors settled the area before 6000 B.C. In later years, people from the Great Plains influenced Plateau inhabitants. The Nez Perces, for example, became excellent horse trainers and breeders in Postcontact times.
Northwest Coast Culture Area
The Northwest Coast culture area extends more than 2,000 miles from the northern limits of California to the panhandle of Alaska, including western Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The widest part in this long coastal strip is only about 150 miles across. For the native inhabitants of the Northwest Coast at the time of Contact, the oceans, rivers, and forests offered up plentiful fish and game. Even without agriculture other than some cultivation of tobacco, the Northwest Coast Native Americans had more than enough food to support a dense population. Because of the readily available sustenance and building materials for roomy houses and seaworthy boats, the Native Americans had time to achieve an affluent and highly complex society, much of it revolving around the custom of the potlatch, in which an individual’s prestige and rank were determined by the quantities of material possessions he could give away. Some of the most well-known tribes of the area are: Haida, Chinook, Tillamook, Chimakum.
California Culture Area
The California culture area corresponds roughly to the present-day state of California, in addition to Baja California in Mexico, except along the state’s eastern border; there the Native Americans at the time of Contact demonstrated life-styles more typical of the Great Basin, Southwest and the Columbia Plateau. Along the eastern edge of the California culture area, the Sierra Nevada and the Gulf of California provided natural barriers for differing life-styles. To the north, however, no such barrier blocked interaction among peoples, making the dividing line between the California and Northwest Coast areas especially arbitrary, with many shared cultural traits. The heart of the cultural area is the natural basin of San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers.
The California region supported the densest population north of Mesoamerica. The basic social unit was the family, and groups of related families formed villages. Some of the most well-known tribes of the area are: Shasta, Chumash, Costano. In Postcontact times, various California natives came to be jointly known to the Spanish as the Mission Indians. Different peoples also came to carry the names of particular missions, i.e. Diegueno, Serrano, etc.
Great Plains Culture Area
The Great Plains culture area stretches west from the Mississippi River Valley to the Rocky Mountains, and south from varying latitudes in present-day Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta to southern Texas. This vast region is predominantly treeless grassland. The Great Plains culture area is unique in the sense that the typical Indian subsistence pattern and related ways of life evolved long after Contact. It was the advent of horses, brought to North America by whites - the first horses since the post-Pleistocene extinction of the native species - that made the new life on the Plains possible. With increased mobility and prowess, former village and farming tribes of the river valleys became nomadic hunters, especially of the buffalo. Some other tribes migrated onto the Plains from elsewhere to partake of this life-style. With time, varying tribal customs blended into what is sometimes referred to as the Composite Plains Tribe, shaped by the horse and buffalo culture. At the time of the Contact, it is believed that most of the tribes were villagers and farmers, or at least semi-nomads, with settlements located especially along the Missouri River. Some of the most well-known tribes of the area: Sioux, Pawnee, Blackfoot, Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho.
Subarctic Culture Area
The Subarctic culture area spans the entire North American continent, all in all, it covers most of Canada as well as much of Alaska’s interior.
The scattered and few aboriginal peoples of the Subarctic had to cope with long, harsh winters, as well as summers that were all too short and plagued with mosquitoes and black flies. Most peoples were nomadic, hunting, fishing, and foraging in small bands united by dialect and kinship. For many bands, life revolved around the seasonal migrations of the big game between the tundra and the taiga. The fur of the mammals was as valuable to the peoples for warmth as the meat was for sustenance. Subarctic peoples can be organized linguistically into two groups - the Athapascans and Algonquians. The westernmost Athapascans lived near and influenced by the Eskimos.
Arctic Culture Area
The Arctic culture area runs for more than 5,000 miles from eastern Siberia across the northern stretches of Alaska and Canada all the way to Greenland.
The peoples who settled the upper regions of North America out of Siberia came relatively late to the continent, circa 3000 B.C. They came in skin and wooden boats, or perhaps by riding the ice floes. They were of a different stock than other Native Americans, generally of a shorter and broader stature, rounder face, lighter skin, and with the epicanthic eye fold, the small fold of skin covering the inner corner of the eye and typical of Asian peoples. They are known historically as the Eskimos and the Aleuts.
The Inuits and Aleuts adapted remarkably well to the harsh Arctic environment, with hunting as the primary means of subsistence and supplemented by fishing. Those parts of their catch they didn’t eat, they used to make clothing, housing, boats, different tools, weapons, and even heating and cooking fuel. There were several Eskimo groups in the area. The Central Eskimos demonstrated what is considered typical "Eskimo" ways of life - igloos (houses made of ice), kayaks, sleds, and dog teams.
Mesoamerica Culture Area
The first major civilization of Mesoamerica (what stretched from Mexico’s central plateau south to Costa Rica) was that of the Olmecs, the enigmatic people who inhabited the jungles along Mexico’s Gulf Coast as long ago as 1200 B.C. Their rulers built impressive temples and spread their influence throughout Middle America, among them to the Maya, Toltec, Aztec, as well as other peoples far to north and south.
Agriculture, as part of the milestones of cultural improvements, was invented in Mesoamerica circa 7000 to 1500 B.C. and began to spread northward. To aid in the process of human geographic distribution, agriculture arrived to North America from Mesoamerica and possibly also the Caribbean between 1000 and 2000 years ago. Areas suitable for agriculture were suitable for humans. Mesoamerica, along with the Andes region of South America, where agriculture also developed, is therefore sometimes referred to as "Nuclear America".
Circum-Caribbean Culture Area
The Caribbean - predominantly tropical rain forest - resembles that of South America, and the native population was to a large extent under the sphere of influence of South American as well as Mesoamerican peoples. In fact, a primary route of migration onto the Caribbean islands was northward from South America along the Antilles chain.
The peoples of the Circum-Caribbean cultural area were agriculturists, as well as hunters, fishermen, and gatherers. The palm trees served as the primary building material. The dominant form of social organization was the chiefdom - a collection of autonomous bands united politically and religiously under supreme rulers and with social classes. Circum-Caribbean peoples, however, never attained the high levels of social organization or the advanced technologies of the Mesoamerican and Andes cultures.
People of pure Indian stock do remain, many of them living as poor peasant villagers in highland areas.
Tribes
In the Southwest area most of the Native Americans live isolated from the modern world, in reservations. In other areas of the United States most of the Native Americans have chosen to live in cities. (See also "Indians Today")
Some reservations are not oriented to tourism, however most welcome visitors who show respect for their culture, privacy and property. Tribal authorities may pass and enforce their own laws. Visitors are subject to tribal regulations, as well as state and federal laws. The strictest regulations regard invasion of privacy: never photograph an Indian or his possessions without permission. Cameras are prohibited in some villages, others charge fees or require advance arrangements for photography, sketching or painting.
The use of the term "tribe" creates a disagreement among the Indians. Many contemporary Indians prefer the term "nation", because it implies the concept of political sovereignty.
Social and political structures were diverse in different tribes. Many Indians felt intense tribal loyalty, but the concern of others did not extend beyond the family unit. There were areas where hierarchy exercised near-absolute power, and regions where there was a total absence of centralized authority. Many groups observed complete equalitarianism. In others, all individuals were rigidly ranked by lineage and wealth, with no two persons on exactly the same level.
For most Native Americans, in fact for most peoples throughout human history, there existed no institutionalized forms of social or political power - no state, no bureaucracy, and no army. Native American societies, as a rule, were egalitarian, without the kinds of centralized authority and social hierarchy typical of modern societies. Custom and tradition rather than law and coercion regulated social life. While there were leaders, their influence was generally based on personal qualities and not on any formal or permanent status. Authority within a group derived from the ability to make useful suggestions and knowledge of tribal tradition and lore.
http://www.american-indians.net/cultures.htm
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IDLE NO MORE AMERICA-
Voting rights in the United States
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The issue of voting rights in the United States has been contentious throughout the country's history. Eligibility to vote in the U.S. is determined by both federal and state law. Currently, only citizens can vote in U.S. federal elections.[1] Who is (or who can become) a citizen is governed on a national basis by federal law. In the absence of a federal law or constitutional amendment, each state is given considerable discretion to establish qualifications for suffrage and candidacy within its own jurisdiction.
When the country was founded, in most states, only white men with real property (land) or sufficient wealth for taxation were permitted to vote. Freed slaves could vote in four states. Unpropertied white men, women, and all other people of color were denied the franchise. At the time of the American Civil War, most white men were allowed to vote, whether or not they owned property. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and even religious tests were used in various places, and most white women, people of color, and Native Americans still could not vote.[2]
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