Custer Died For Your Sins

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  CONTENTS

  Preface

  1. Indians Today, the Real and the Unreal

  2. Laws and Treaties

  3. The Disastrous Policy of Termination

  4. Anthropologists and Other Friends

  5. Missionaries and the Religious Vacuum

  6. Government Agencies

  7. Indian Humor

  8. The Red and the Black

  9. The Problem of Indian Leadership

  10. Indians and Modern Society

  11. A Redefinition of Indian Affairs

  Index

  PREFACE

  The Indian world has changed so substantially since the first publication of this book that some things contained in it seem new again. In the late sixties American society had yet to hear the voices, demands, and aspirations of the American Indians. The country was embroiled in the Civil Rights movement, and the anti-war protests were just gaining momentum. In some ways the emergence of Indians was a relief from the pressing demands of other, larger groups, but this relief was short-lived when Indians occupied first Alcatraz, then the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., and finally the little hamlet of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Indians raised the question of the American past, and since this bloody past was then being revived in the search-and-destroy missions in Vietnam and in incidents such as that at Kent State, it was apparent that few people in the government heeded the lessons of history.

  In the early seventies Indian tribal sovereignty was tacitly admitted, but it was not the cornerstone of federal policy, and termination under many new disguises was still the official direction toward which the Bureau of Indian Affairs was encouraged to move. A major effort to define a new Indian policy was made with the authorization of the American Indian Policy Review Commission in 1975, but after two years of intense maneuvering and many hearings, the commission report emphasized a number of adjustments of existing relationships and could not reach a consensus on establishing a clear and workable definition of how Indians and the federal government should deal with each other. Excessively aggressive arguments raised by the American Indian Policy Review Commission may, in fact, have helped spawn the many anti-Indian groups who are now agitating for complete abrogation of special tribal status.

  Some of the recommendations made two decades ago in Custer Died for Your Sins did find their way into federal policy, in particular the subcontracting provisions of P.L. 635 which allowed tribal governments to assume responsibility for some of the functions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But, as might have been suspected, the bureau quickly worked out ways to co-opt and frustrate Indian efforts to take over programs and make them more capable of serving the reservation people. The biggest policy change in these intervening years, contained in President Richard M. Nixon’s July, 1970, message to Congress, was the official disavowal of termination as a formal goal of the federal government. Indeed, while Nixon may have failed in spectacular fashion in other aspects of his presidency, in retrospect his administration must be granted very high marks for its Indian policy. In responsiveness to Indian aspirations, it will probably be seen as the best administration in American history, and in terms of its accomplishments it should be ranked close to the New Deal, which radically turned the tide in favor of Indians. In comparison to recent administrations, the Nixon years are exceedingly bright and filled with accomplishments.

  The cast of characters in Indian Affairs has also changed significantly in these past two decades. The Indian political scene in the 1960’s was a fine blend of the first large generation of college-trained Indians and the entrenched veterans of the New Deal who had served most of their lives in tribal government. With the passing of the old guard and the subsequent delivery of tribal councils to the new generation, Indian tribes lost a good deal of their historical perspective. Long-standing Indian leaders such as Frank Ducheneaux of Cheyenne River, Joe Garry of Coeur d’Alene, Cato Valandra of Rosebud, Bob Jim of Yakima, Lucy Covington of Colville, J. Dan Howard of Standing Rock, and Norbert Hill, Sr., of Oneida once formed a group that not only controlled much of Indian policy but also provided sage advice and acted as models for the younger generation. These people had read Felix S. Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law by kerosene light in log cabins and were as competent in the niceties of legal fictions as most attorneys then representing the tribes. Today, unfortunately, few people in tribal government know their legal rights; they simply assume their duties and responsibilities, and it makes the situation worse that there are few models from whom they can take their cues.

  Public attitudes toward Indians, sadly, have changed very little in the intervening years. Assertion of historic rights by the tribes has only produced rabid backlash against Indians in many parts of the United States. Bumper stickers reading, “Save the deer, shoot an Indian,” are prominently featured in Wisconsin and Michigan as treaty hunting and fishing rights are successfully upheld in the courts. State politicians in South Dakota stand adamantly opposed to any just solution of the Sioux land claims in that state. Even in the most enlightened parts of our country there is still controversy over practicing tribal religions, wearing long hair in a traditional manner, and allowing Indians access to national parks and forests for the practice of traditional religion at sacred sites in those areas. The federal government itself, in trying to solve the Hopi-Navajo land dispute, has authorized the largest forcible removal of Indians in more than a century. So, while the attitudes originally identified two decades ago are still rampant among us, it makes good sense to keep Custer in print until enough people come to understand Indians’ attitude toward their treatment and begin to take action on behalf of the tribes.

  Custer got its chance to speak to some of the issues affecting Indians when Stan Steiner published The New Indians, a chronicle of the emerging Indian movement of the mid-1960’s. Steiner later published The Vanishing American as a continuing effort to gather support for Indian aspirations. Stan passed on in January, 1987, sitting at his typewriter working on yet another of his great surveys of the contemporary American West. He is truly missed by his many Indian friends across the country. Whatever fame and fortune Stan achieved with his writings was always shared with his friends, and his passing may have marked the end of an era of isolation and innocence among Indians. Many people writing on Indians today seem only to take; rarely do they seem to share with us.

  The Indian organizational world has also changed radically with the times. In the sixties there were but a handful of national Indian organizations at work. The League of Nations-Pan American Indians went out of existence shortly after Custer was first published, after the death of Verne Gagne, who devoted himself to keeping the cause of traditionalism alive during the thirties, forties, and fifties. The National Tribal Chairmen’s Association came into existence, thrived briefly, and vanished during those years; and the early seventies saw the spread of the American Indian Movement as a tidal wave of protest. AIM now seems to be in a dormant if not comatose stage, but its accomplishments cannot be underestimated. AIM created a feeling of solidarity among Indians which has only increased and entrenched itself during the intervening years. Most important for the long run have been the good
educational organizations that have taken root among Indians in recent years. American Indians in Science and Engineering and the American Indian Community College Consortium have more than proved their worth and value to Indians across the country.

  In the legal field two groups have emerged which deserve special mention. The Native American Rights Fund, organized in the early seventies in Boulder, Colorado, has established itself as an all-purpose organization to defend Indian rights. Its longstanding director, John Echohawk, certainly can lay claim to the title of most stable Indian organizational executive. With remarkable patience and wisdom, John has led an occasionally controversial organization on a path of steady and sustained growth unmatched in Indian history. The Indian Law Resource Center, meanwhile, has courageously taken up the cause of traditional Indians and raised questions about long-standing practices in the field of Indian affairs which needed to be questioned. The Indian Law Resource Center represents the best mixture of intellectual achievement and application of legal theory that we have yet seen enlisted in the cause of the American Indian. Tim Coulter, its director, has tackled gigantic legal problems, and if he has not always resolved them successfully, he has blazed a path along which future advocates of Indian legal rights can more easily travel.

  Interest in Indian culture, particularly in Indian religion, has escalated beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings in recent years. Initially a product of the participation of medicine men in some of the protests, the expansion of the Indian religious traditions into non-Indian society has now become something of a missionary movement with all its accompanying successes, failures, and dangers. Today Indian shamans, medicine men, and snake-oil salesmen follow the lecture-workshop circuit, holding ceremonies and otherwise performing feats of power for their disciples and fellow practitioners. Many Indians object to this commercialization of the Indian tradition, and there is something to be said for their complaints. Nevertheless, it seems beyond dispute that within the tribal religions is a powerful spiritual energy that cannot be confined to a small group in the modern world. It would be hazardous to predict where this movement is headed, but if it influences people to deal more kindly with the earth and the various life forms on it, then there should be few complaints about its impact on people’s lives and practices.

  The state of Indian affairs today is not good, but it contains within it certain strengths which suggest a better future for the people. The poverty programs of the sixties and seventies brought rapid cultural disintegration to the reservations. Housing programs broke up the old living and settlement patterns which had sustained ceremonial life for a century. Educational programs focused the attentions of the younger generation on life beyond the reservation borders, and many talented young Indians left their homes to pursue success in the white world. Tribal governments, attempting to serve the remnant of the tribe on the reservations, have had to devote an increasing percentage of the tribe’s natural resources to creating an income for social service programs, thereby turning some reservations into an economic resource rather than a homeland. The exportation of tribal religious ceremonies beyond the reservation borders has deprived local people of a ceremonial life while providing non-Indians with exotic religious experiences. In some tribes social and sporting events such as golf tournaments, dance contests, and fairs have replaced the old community religious life. These things represent areas of growth and change that life in the modern world requires and extracts from tribal peoples.

  On the positive side, we have seen the appearance of young people who have found a way to blend the requirements of modern industrial consumer life with traditional beliefs and practices. There is an increasing number of young people who prefer to live and work in their own communities, who use the old ways to solve modern social problems, and who deliberately avoid the prestige of national leadership, recognizing its seductive and co-opting nature. Slowly, but with an irresistible power, there is emerging the cadre for serious tribal cultural and religious renewal. This important element, which previously was but a minor distraction in most tribes, had been represented by stubborn traditional elders who refused to surrender to the blandishments of the non-Indian world. As these two groups interact and influence each other, powerful spiritual and cultural forces are being unleashed in the tribes, and a vision for the future is being created. In the next generation we shall see some marvelous things coming from the Indian tribes, assuming that the present generation can successfully defend the reservations against the continuing attacks of racists and corporate exploiters.

  But the Indian task of keeping an informed public available to assist the tribes in their efforts to survive is never ending, and so the central message of this book, that Indians are alive, have certain dreams of their own, and are being overrun by the ignorance and the mistaken, misdirected efforts of those who would help them, can never be repeated too often. Every generation of Indians will have to assume this burden which all divergent minorities bear, and many additional books on this subject will have to be written correcting misconceptions and calling attitudes to account. I hope that this book can continue to make its contribution to the task of keeping American Indians before the American public and on the American domestic agenda.

  VINE DELORIA, JR.

  Tucson, Arizona

  1987

  1 INDIANS TODAY, THE REAL AND THE UNREAL

  INDIANS ARE LIKE the weather. Everyone knows all about the weather, but none can change it. When storms are predicted, the sun shines. When picnic weather is announced, the rain begins. Likewise, if you count on the unpredictability of Indian people, you will never be sorry.

  One of the finest things about being an Indian is that people are always interested in you and your “plight.” Other groups have difficulties, predicaments, quandaries, problems, or troubles. Traditionally we Indians have had a “plight.”

  Our foremost plight is our transparency. People can tell just by looking at us what we want, what should be done to help us, how we feel, and what a “real” Indian is really like. Indian life, as it relates to the real world, is a continuous attempt not to disappoint people who know us. Unfulfilled expectations cause grief and we have already had our share.

  Because people can see right through us, it becomes impossible to tell truth from fiction of fact from mythology. Experts paint us as they would like us to be. Often we paint ourselves as we wish we were or as we might have been.

  The more we try to be ourselves the more we are forced to defend what we have never been. The American public feels most comfortable with the mythical Indians of stereotype-land who were always THERE. These Indians are fierce, they wear feathers and grunt. Most of us don’t fit this idealized figure since we grunt only when overeating, which is seldom.

  To be an Indian in modern American society is in a very real sense to be unreal and ahistorical. In this book we will discuss the other side—the unrealities that face us as Indian people. It is this unreal feeling that has been welling up inside us and threatens to make this decade the most decisive in history for Indian people. In so many ways, Indian people are re-examining themselves in an effort to redefine a new social structure for their people. Tribes are reordering their priorities to account for the obvious discrepancies between their goals and the goals whites have defined for them.

  Indian reactions are sudden and surprising. One day at a conference we were singing “My Country ’Tis of Thee” and we came across the part that goes:

  Land where our fathers died

  Land of the Pilgrims’ pride . . .

  Some of us broke out laughing when we realized that our fathers undoubtedly died trying to keep those Pilgrims from stealing our land. In fact, many of our fathers died because the Pilgrims killed them as witches. We didn’t feel much kinship with those Pilgrims, regardless of who they did in.

  We often hear “give it back to the Indians” when a gadget fails to work. It’s a terrible thing for a people to realize that society has set aside all non-worki
ng gadgets for their exclusive use.

  During my three years as Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians it was a rare day when some white didn’t visit my office and proudly proclaim that he or she was of Indian descent.

  Cherokee was the most popular tribe of their choice and many people placed the Cherokees anywhere from Maine to Washington State. Mohawk, Sioux, and Chippewa were next in popularity. Occasionally I would be told about some mythical tribe from lower Pennsylvania, Virginia, or Massachusetts which had spawned the white standing before me.

  At times I became quite defensive about being a Sioux when these white people had a pedigree that was so much more respectable than mine. But eventually I came to understand their need to identify as partially Indian and did not resent them. I would confirm their wildest stories about their Indian ancestry and would add a few tales of my own hoping that they would be able to accept themselves someday and leave us alone.

  Whites claiming Indian blood generally tend to reinforce mythical beliefs about Indians. All but one person I met who claimed Indian blood claimed it on their grandmother’s side. I once did a projection backward and discovered that evidently most tribes were entirely female for the first three hundred years of white occupation. No one, it seemed, wanted to claim a male Indian as a forebear.

  It doesn’t take much insight into racial attitudes to understand the real meaning of the Indian-grandmother complex that plagues certain whites. A male ancestor has too much of the aura of the savage warrior, the unknown primitive, the instinctive animal, to make him a respectable member of the family tree. But a young Indian princess? Ah, there was royalty for the taking. Somehow the white was linked with a noble house of gentility and culture if his grandmother was an Indian princess who ran away with an intrepid pioneer. And royalty has always been an unconscious but all-consuming goal of the European immigrant.