by David Treuer
The Indian Education Act and the Indian Religious Freedom Act
Change was coming from other directions as well, perhaps nowhere more so than in the passage of two acts that were to have far-reaching results: the Indian Education Act of 1972 and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978.
In 1967, Congress had convened a Labor and Public Welfare subcommittee chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy to look into the state of Indian education. Working through the assassination of his older brother Robert and its aftermath, Kennedy and the rest of the committee interviewed scores of Indian leaders and educators. In 1969 they delivered a report on the status of Indian education within the United States. The verdict was dismal: Indian education was a “tragedy.” The result was the Indian Education Act of 1972 (IEA), which was designed to treat the pandemic of curricular missteps, low high-school graduation rates, low college attendance (and high dropout rates there as well), and high levels of unemployment. The act mandated that local educational agencies (LEAs) with more than ten Indian students (or more than 50 percent Indian enrollment) develop curricular materials and support services to meet the needs of that population. Initial funding of $18 million grew within a few years to $43.6 million. For the first time, legislation treated Indian education as an American concern, not just the purview of the BIA or tribally run schools. It also required LEAs applying for funding to “use the best available talents, including people from the Indian community,” and to develop their programs “in open consultation with Indian parents, teachers, and where applicable, secondary school students.” At the same time, the scope of the legislation was broad enough to deal with many issues that extended beyond cultural differences and curricular sensitivity: transportation, nutrition, providing eyeglasses and dental work, for example. It’s hard to pay attention in class when you haven’t eaten or your teeth hurt. For the first time, school districts, tribal governments, and parent groups could apply for grants to fund programs in public schools that facilitated Indian education. Public schools—and the vast majority of Indian students attended public schools—started to become something more than a travail. The IEA also recognized that simply completing secondary school wasn’t a brass ring: it was a basic benchmark of a decent education.
By the 1980s, most high schools in Indian country, if not on Indian reservations, had Indian education programs, a dedicated staff of Indian counselors who advised students about everything from home life and drug and alcohol addiction to college (including alerting them to some scholarships specifically for Indian students). Some schools had begun to offer instruction on subjects that emerged from the lives of their students: tribal languages, customs, history, and culture. The act wasn’t a panacea; Indian schooling had a long way to go, and still does. But for me, as a freshman entering the doors of Bemidji High School off the Leech Lake Reservation, it meant something to see my fellow Indians in the roles of teachers and counselors, to know that somewhere in the belly of the beast, there was an undigested kernel of, well, us.
Tribes also began to implement significant changes in Indian college education. The first tribal college in the nation, Navajo Community College, had been established on the Navajo Nation in 1968 and was accredited in 1976. Early on, it faced a dilemma: whether to emphasize “Western” curricula and adhere to the same standards and procedures as non-Indian colleges, or to tailor its offerings, even its whole approach to education, to the needs of the Diné community. The school weathered the dilemma and, now as Diné College, offers a vibrant bouquet of programs, from the technical to the artistic. In the 1980s, many other tribes, recognizing that many Indian high school students—despite the best efforts of some high school teachers and high schools—were not prepared for college, began establishing two-year accredited tribal colleges. Facing the same question the Diné had faced, most committed educators responded similarly: Why not both? By this time, research showed that culture-based bilingual programs greatly increased students’ performance and competence in all subjects. So the tribal colleges set up programs that prepared some Indian students for trades like engine repair, computer technology, and construction and others for the rigors of four-year colleges and universities. All in all, in this period, Indian educational institutions, for so long part of the process of indoctrination and eradication, became places for Indians. In 2013, Montana became the first state to have a fully accredited tribal college attached to or administered by every reservation within its borders.
In 1999, Montana passed the Indian Education for All Act, which mandated that Indian culture and history had to be taught to all Montanans, from preschool through high school. The legislation recognized that a history of the region, if not the country as a whole, was not complete unless it seriously considered the presence of Indians and the relationships not only between tribes and the United States but among the tribes themselves as well. Such a transformation in curriculum was facilitated by the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978.
Until 1978 it was, technically at least, illegal for Indians to practice their various and varied religions. The nineteenth-century laws prohibiting potlatches, giveaways, and drum dances were still on the books, even if they were seldom enforced. But if Indians weren’t prosecuted for religious practice per se, they were often charged with possession of illegal objects and substances, which included eagle feathers, eagle bone whistles, and peyote. In this sense they still lacked one of the most basic of civil rights: the freedom of religion. And because for many tribes religion is tied to place, losing many sacred places to the reservation system, allotment, and subsequent private ownership made Indians also unable to practice their religion legally. Introducing the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, President Jimmy Carter wrote:
I have signed into law S.J. Res. 102, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. This legislation sets forth the policy of the United States to protect and preserve the inherent right of American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiian people to believe, express, and exercise their traditional religions. In addition, it calls for a year’s evaluation of the Federal agencies’ policies and procedures as they affect the religious rights and cultural integrity of Native Americans.
It is a fundamental right of every American, as guaranteed by the first amendment of the Constitution, to worship as he or she pleases. This act is in no way intended to alter that guarantee or override existing laws, but is designed to prevent Government actions that would violate these constitutional protections. In the past, Government agencies and departments have on occasion denied Native Americans access to particular sites and interfered with religious practices and customs where such use conflicted with Federal regulations. In many instances, the Federal officials responsible for the enforcement of these regulations were unaware of the nature of traditional native religious practices and, consequently, of the degree to which their agencies interfered with such practices. This legislation seeks to remedy this situation.
The effect of the act was profound. Ceremonies that had migrated underground and persisted only in what were, in effect, secret societies were performed in the open. Younger and urban Indians had a chance to discover and participate in traditions that had been lost to them. Within a decade, tribes in Northern California—the Yurok, Tolowa, and Karok—used the provisions of the act to file a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service to prevent various bridge and road construction projects from destroying sacred sites. The tribes lost the case, known as Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, and other tribes lost similar lawsuits as well. But the failure of these cases established that the act was too limited to protect the geographical expression of religion.
In 1971, an old cemetery was discovered in the path of a new road being constructed near Glenwood, Iowa. Twenty-six Christian burials were found, so road construction stopped until the remains could be identified. Forensic examinations revealed that two of the skeletons belonged to an Indian
woman and her child (though they, like the rest of the dead, had been buried as—and presumably were—Christians). The remains of the Anglo Christians were reburied with ceremony nearby, while those of the Indian woman and her child were boxed up and sent to a museum in Iowa. Maria Pearson, a Yankton Sioux woman living in Iowa with her family, was incensed. Why should the Indian woman and her child be treated as artifacts while the bodies of the dead white people were treated with the respect they deserved? Dressed in ceremonial regalia, Pearson waited outside the governor’s office until he emerged and asked her what he could do for her. She replied that he could “give me back my people’s bones” and “quit digging them up.” Pearson continued to lobby against the state, museum culture, and academic mind-set that (at best) saw Indian remains as a scientific opportunity rather than as human remains. In Iowa, her work culminated in the passage of the Iowa Burials Protection Act of 1976, the first legislation in the country that sought to protect Indian remains and artifacts from exploitation. Wide-scale looting of burial mounds in Illinois and Kentucky (where skeletons were tossed aside as looters tried to secure burial objects), and subsequent protests, added visibility to the issue. Momentum built through the 1980s, and in 1990 the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed.
NAGPRA was, like a lot of legislation, meant to right historical wrongs and to curtail those ongoing. For instance, it initiated an official process for the return of Indian remains and funerary and non-funerary and religious objects held at state and federal institutions and in any museum or collection that received federal funds or grants. It also established procedures for the treatment of Indian remains and objects discovered during construction on state and federal land. Last, it made the trafficking of Indian remains a federal offense (though possession of remains is still legal). Although imperfect, this legislation has had a profound effect on tribes themselves and on their relationship with the federal government. To date, the remains of more than 57,847 Indian people, 1,479,923 associated funerary objects, 243,198 unassociated funerary objects, and 5,136 sacred objects have been repatriated, in what continues to be a powerful and significant homecoming for tribes across the country. Armed with such legislation, tribes can finally try to make whole, however imperfectly, what has been broken. And coupled with the growth of Indian education and the move to put more and more power in Indian hands, the legislation created a sense that centuries of hostility from the state directed at Indians were at last giving way to some restoration of Indians’ ability to control and protect our cultural patrimony.
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THE WAY BOBBY TALKS ABOUT it, subsistence in practice isn’t some Zen philosophy, a quiet, inward-turning wonder about how we relate to the land. The way Bobby and people like him practice it, it is the ultimate game, a mad, violent pragmatism intent on extracting calories, nutrients, and advantage. Like hunter-gatherers of yore, they know that their lives hang in the balance. In prehistoric times, the extraction was largely in service of directly feeding, clothing, and sheltering oneself and one’s tribe. Today, the heirs to that way of life hunt and gather goods that are coded as money. Maybe what Bobby understands intuitively is the same thing that the German sociologist Georg Simmel posited in The Philosophy of Money: that scarcity, time, difficulty, and sacrifice together determine the value of an object. The Ojibwe understood this perfectly during the fur trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beaver had grown scarce in Europe; the few that remained were not deemed worth the sacrifice to procure. By selling furs to Europeans, the Ojibwe near the Great Lakes could make a killing in pots, cloth, weapons, and other needed goods. Anyone who bemoans the day Indians entered into such exchanges is taking for granted what were, for North American tribes, hugely beneficial technologies. Wool was light, warm, and supple. Metal pots were strong and versatile and made food preparation much more sure. A metal axe lasted for generations and saved the tremendous amounts of energy required to fabricate and use stone or bone axes. In saving time and energy, goods like these saved lives—not particular lives but the life of the tribe, ensuring its survival.
A collective view of survival is markedly different from the survivalist fantasy that, every few years or so, sends some white guy off in search of a New World version of Plato’s cave: a retreat from which he engages with the natural world, often in a self-proclaimed attempt to better understand the human world he left behind. Even Bobby tried this, for his own reasons. “There was a warrant out for my arrest, so I took to the bush. I brought a gun, a fishing rod, a tent, and a knife and went to live off the land. If anyone can do it, I can. And I did. But god, it was terrible! Let me tell you what separates man from beast. Here it is: salt. That’s about the only damn thing that separates us. So if you’re ever in the woods, living off the land, make sure you bring salt. Why? Because everything tastes like shit without salt.” Life begins to look different without the benefits of manufactured goods. How to skin without a knife? How to cut firewood without a saw? How to build without nails? Think boots, gloves, needles, thread, waterproof food storage, bullets, guns, oil, grease, kerosene, matches. Of course, people lived without these things for millennia, but they didn’t live well or long.
So subsistence living is doubly plagued: you have to rely on nature to provide the leeches, cones, bark, fur, and so on. And you have to rely on a market entirely determined by humans and human wants. One could, after all, fill one’s garage with pinecones or leeches. Bobby does this every year. But without a reliable network made up of people to whom one can sell them, they aren’t worth a thing. So Bobby Matthews is just as careful with people as he is with his black books that detail all his “getting places.” “I used to sell my leeches to some guys out of Wisconsin, but I didn’t like how they did business. So, for over twenty years now, I sell to Todd Hoyhtya down south. I won’t go to nobody else. He’s been good to me and I’ve been good to him. He knows my leeches will come to him healthy. I’ll never short him on my count. I always get him the leeches when I say I’m going to. Same with my cones. I put an extra tray in each bushel. So he’s getting a little extra. I do the same with my leeches, I add ten percent. They never count my cones or weigh them. They never adjust the count of my leeches. They know what they’re getting from me. And I tell you what: it saves me time, David! I don’t have to wait around while they count out my stuff. I drop it off, they pay me, and I’m on my way, back in the bush. I don’t get paid to stand around!”
Of all the things that a person can kill, collect, scavenge, trap, or snare in northern Minnesota, leeches might well be the most lucrative. More than balsam boughs, pinecones, furs, cranberry bark, or whatever else, leeches can be a job, a real job. For some, like Bobby, they are the mainstay. Leeches sell for eight to twelve dollars a pound wholesale. As with shrimp, the size of the leech (small, medium, large, and jumbo) determines how many leeches per pound (the “count,” in leecher’s jargon). The bigger the leech, the thinking goes, the bigger the fish, so the higher the price paid per pound. So if a leecher gets a hundred pounds a night, he’ll take in, on average, a thousand dollars. The wholesaler takes the leeches and divides them into dozens, packed in Styrofoam containers with water, and these are sold at bait shops and convenience stores throughout the region. In 1980, the leeching industry took in $1.5 million. In 2010 in Minnesota alone, anglers spent $50 million on bait. A lot, if not the majority, of that money was spent on leeches. Minnesota is the land of ten thousand lakes. It is also the land of twenty thousand ponds and swamps where leeches abound. And as recreational fishing went through a boom in the 1980s and 1990s across the northern United States, the search for bait was fast on its heels. “Back then, leeching was like a gold rush, David. Black gold, wriggling away in the mud in all our lakes and swamps and by god I was going to get that gold out of there.”
Nephelopsis obscura, the common bait leech, is a carnivorous species found in shallow lakes, ponds, and flowages in the Great Lakes regi
on and southern Canada as far west as the Rocky Mountains. It is genetically related to the earthworm. It has a segmented body and is hermaphroditic. It does not suck human blood. Bait leeches eat dead meat: fish, turtles, other leeches, and animals that fall into the water and die. They burrow in the mud during the day and emerge at sunset and hunt. Most lakes without fish (or without many fish) support tremendous populations of leeches for the simple reason that fish eat leeches. To get the leeches out of the lakes and into your boat you must trap them. Leech traps are fairly basic. From top to bottom: a Styrofoam float with the trapper’s name and license number tied to a string, from which hangs the trap (people have used tin cans and plastic buckets with holes drilled in them, perforated plastic bags, and now, more commonly, folded aluminum sheet metal), and below that a weight that keeps the trap from floating away. Traps are baited, usually with meat or, in Bobby’s case, with a very specific kind of meat with other additives (he was perhaps deliberately vague on this). Traps are set at dusk and removed at dawn. It is grueling work.
As with everything else, Bobby has developed a system. “As soon as the ice goes out in April I start looking around. I’ve got all my lakes marked in my books. The ones that were producing the year before, my go-to lakes. And so I test them and I always try and find new territory, new lakes. I’ll throw some traps out, test traps, and see what I come up with. By April eleventh of this year, I had a thousand traps out. My first yield was one hundred and eighty-two pounds. Not too good. By the twenty-third of April, I had twenty-five hundred traps in the water. I got one hundred and sixty-two pounds. That’s about half of what I had two weeks before that with double the traps. What does that tell you? Tells me it’s getting shittier.” His days go like this: Up at four-thirty a.m., picks up his partner, hits the road, and is on the lake by five-thirty. He and his partner pick up the traps by hand, one by one from a canoe with a small trolling motor attached to the back. The traps are stowed in tubs balanced mid-thwart, and then when all two or three thousand traps are picked up, he heads back to his shop. Once there his crew of strippers remove the leeches from the traps, sort them, and drop them into stock tanks. (“I pay ’em fifteen cents per trap. Most guys can strip fifty traps an hour. That’s seven fifty an hour. I’ve never, in over thirty years, beat a man for wages. I pay fair.”) By eleven everything is out of the water, the leeches are swimming in the tanks, and the baiters have begun baiting the traps. The traps are ready by one, and by early afternoon Bobby is back on the water setting the traps. Bobby can set about five hundred an hour. “I can set a lake in one hour. It takes me two hours to pick up all my traps. That’s three hours a lake.” He usually traps two or three lakes at a time and then lays off for a few days and traps different lakes. “We work hard and we work fast. We don’t go to the landing and smoke cigarettes and talk about how much fun it was. A lot of leechers quit. They can’t figure it out. Why is this lake producing and that one isn’t? Why are these traps empty and those other ones full? The biggest thing, the most important thing, is they have to stick to it. Day in, day out. They gotta be on the water.”
