This Indian Country

by Frederick Hoxie

  The ideas embodied in the 1954 conference resolution emerged out of the experiences of the men and women who framed them. They were born of the unprecedented range of political activism that had been made possible by the New Deal, and they were to live on in a new generation of Native leaders who would repeat the emergency conference’s central themes in the decades to come. Acting in local Indian communities as well as within the federal bureaucracy and before Congress and the courts, activists in the late twentieth century demanded that Native people be consulted as citizens and recognized as representatives of communities with distinctive claims on the nation. After the 1954 conference, their views would no longer be “crushed like an eggshell.” They instead became the explicit core of the activists’ agenda as they pressed their case in the new millennium.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  INDIAN AMERICAN OR AMERICAN INDIAN?

  Vine Deloria, Jr., Sioux

  When Vine Deloria, Jr., died in 2005, the New York Times announced that a “Champion of Indian Rights” had passed from the scene.1 A man whose prominence had initially been due as much to accident as to talent, Deloria had become a central figure in most of the major confrontations and Indian policy debates of the late twentieth century. This unlikely leader, a bookish graduate of an eastern prep school and a Lutheran seminary, had become a bestselling author, an internationally recognized university professor, and the confidant of countless tribal leaders and government officials. Deloria began his public career in obscurity, but by the time of his death he was credited with shaping the legal and political environment Native Americans now occupied in the United States while inspiring and mentoring countless Native activists who were to carry his ideas on into the twenty-first century.

  Deloria left his stamp on the shape of modern tribal governments as well as on academic debates over Native culture and public discussions of the Indians’ place in the American political system. His wide-ranging activities—lobbying, lecturing, writing, and teaching—were often controversial. His career offers a unique window onto the tumultuous moment when the struggles of earlier activists converged to produce a stunning era of reform and cultural transformation. At the same time, his vision of both the possibilities and the limits of reconciliation between Indian America and the United States marks a fitting end to this narrative of political activism. In the end Deloria taught that the ultimate resolution of the centuries-long conflict between the continent’s Native peoples and their American dispossessors—what D’Arcy McNickle called “the Indian war that never ends”—would be both uncertain and difficult to identify. He taught that if such a resolution were to be achieved, it would require great intellectual imagination, enormous powers of persuasion, and a generous portion of luck.

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  VINE DELORIA’S CAREER as an activist and thinker began in an unlikely and unpromising setting, the troubled 1964 convention of the National Congress of American Indians. Barely a decade after the organization had stood up to Arthur Watkins and his fellow terminationists and galvanized support for the right of Indians to maintain tribal governments and be consulted prior to the enactment of major reforms, the NCAI appeared politically adrift and on the verge of bankruptcy. The tribal politicians, lawyers, and activists who gathered that year in Sheridan, Wyoming, for the annual meeting were deeply divided over both tactics and goals. Beginning five years earlier, when Joe Garry stepped down from the NCAI presidency, regional tensions and personal rivalries had triggered a succession of bitterly fought elections. The San Carlos Apache leader Clarence Wesley had succeeded Garry in 1959, but in 1961, after two earlier unsuccessful attempts, Walter Wetzel from the Blackfeet reserve unseated Wesley and replaced the veteran executive director Helen Peterson, a principal organizer of the 1954 conference, with the Rosebud Sioux tribal chairman Robert Burnette. Wetzel set out to minimize the role of former leaders like Garry, Peterson, and D’Arcy McNickle and to cultivate the support of reservation-based figures like Burnette.

  Wetzel’s tactics further polarized the organization. He managed to beat back efforts to replace him as president but failed to reverse a decline in both membership and morale. When Burnette announced his resignation from the executive director post in the middle of 1964, no one clamored to succeed him.2 The group’s malaise also extended to its political agenda. As D’Arcy McNickle had noted in 1959, the NCAI’s initial achievement had been conceptual and ideological: it had stalled the termination campaign by persuading the public that Native Americans had a right to maintain their tribal governments and that those governments should be a permanent feature of American life. A decade later tribal politicians had not made much progress defining the specific role these governments would play. The NCAI had saved the tribes from termination, but now what? Activists were unsure how to imagine modern tribal governments. Were they primarily local associations of needy people whose goal was to lobby Congress on behalf of their members? Certainly there were desperate needs in their communities for better schools, health care, and economic opportunities. Were tribes primarily in the business of generating federal dollars and improving living conditions? Or alternatively, should modern tribes be viewed as embryonic states, similar to Europe’s newly free overseas colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific? Should American Indians pursue a broader, more ambitious agenda that would include some form of political independence and economic self-sufficiency? What was their principal desire? A better life in an increasingly affluent American nation or a fuller restoration of tribal institutions and the apparatus of Native sovereignty?

  The troubled mood among the delegates at the Sheridan convention soon grew darker when they learned that the NCAI was broke. With the threat of termination receding and partisan bickering on the rise, several tribes had let their memberships lapse. The philanthropic groups that had been helpful in recent years were reconsidering their support. It appeared that much of the projected annual budget would have to be cut. President Wetzel’s supporters managed to reelect him, but the annual meeting ended in an atmosphere of indecision. Several members pledged their help with fund-raising, but no one stepped forward to lead the effort.3 Once the public meeting had ended, the executive council turned to the selection of a new executive director.

  It was at this moment that Vine Deloria, Jr., stepped forward as a candidate. Previous executive directors had been prominent activists or tribal officials allied with the NCAI president. But in 1964 the choice was between two untested unknowns: Nelson Jose, an NCAI member from Gila River, Arizona, and Deloria, then a thirty-one-year-old former seminarian who was attending his first annual meeting.

  Deloria was the weaker candidate. His knowledge of reservation life was limited to a childhood spent in Martin, South Dakota, on the edge of the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation, where his father had served as an Episcopal priest. Deloria had grown up as part of a distinguished family of Sioux religious leaders, but he spoke only English and had few contacts of his own among tribal leaders. After a childhood spent in South Dakota and Iowa, he had come east to attend the Kent School, a prestigious New England boarding establishment affiliated with the Episcopal Church. He then enrolled at Iowa State University but, uncertain of his future path, soon left to join the Marines. Following his military service, he returned to Iowa State, from which he graduated with a degree in general science in 1958. While drawn to religious questions, the young graduate remained without clear career goals. He entered the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Rock Island, Illinois, but exhibited little of his father’s missionary zeal. After he graduated from the seminary in 1963, he took a job with a nonprofit organization that provided scholarships to promising young Native Americans.

  Deloria’s Indian roots were unusual. The Delorias were enrolled as members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. His grandfather had been a mission priest at Standing Rock, but Vine junior had never lived there. Instead, he spent his early childhood near the Pine Ridge Reservation, watching his father, Vin
e senior, minister to the impoverished but proud descendants of Crazy Horse and Red Cloud. Deloria’s father was a charismatic, bilingual preacher admired by parishioners and tribal leaders across the High Plains, but he too lacked a strong base on a single reservation. The Delorias’ tribal origins were actually among the Yanktonais, a Sioux band whose homeland lay hundreds of miles east of Pine Ridge on the Missouri River.4 So when he presented himself to the reservation politicians and hardened tribal leaders among the NCAI leadership, the young candidate had little to offer beyond his pedigree and wit.

  Apparently uncertain how to proceed, the executive committee asked Deloria “to review his background” for them.5 Everyone in the room certainly knew his father and namesake. Vine senior had appeared at the NCAI’s sixth annual meeting in Rapid City in 1949 as well as the 1954 emergency conference in Washington, D.C. But no one appeared to know anything about the young man or his views. Vine junior began with his educational résumé. He told them about his experience at the New England prep school and his two years in the Marines. He went on to describe his seminary training but assured the committee that he had not focused exclusively on religious topics there; he had “also studied anthropology.”6 Deloria had obviously prepared for this interview. While the record of his statements is thin, it is clear that he had come to Sheridan with the hope of leading the organization out of its present divisions and indecision. The meeting minutes indicate that “Mr. Deloria stated that he had given much thought as to whether one should assimilate or stand up and be counted as an Indian. He has chosen Indian life.” The candidate pressed on: “Social scientists wish us to be Indian Americans[,] not American Indians.” Asked to explain the distinction, he declared, “American Indians [are] a definite and separate group with roots in this country [and] a definite identity. Indian Americans would be an assimilated group.”

  The committee asked Deloria to expand on this theme. What did this distinction between Indian Americans and American Indians imply for the future of the beleaguered organization? Deloria was vague but assertive. “Indians have been on the defensive,” he replied. “Let’s propose legislation we want[,] not just fight legislation we do not want.” 7 President Wetzel followed by asking if Deloria “stood for protection of treaties and against termination and state jurisdiction.” The interview notes indicated only that “Mr. Deloria answered yes.” The committee apparently had heard enough. Asking nothing of Mr. Jose, it proceeded to a ballot. There were eighteen votes for Deloria and five for Jose. On August 1, 1964, the NCAI not only had acquired a new employee but also, perhaps more than anyone present realized, had chosen a leader who would alter the course of Indian activism for the remainder of the twentieth century.

  WHO SPEAKS FOR THE INDIANS?

  Vine Deloria, Jr.’s Sheridan interview suggests that the new executive director had studied the issues that had divided tribal leaders in the decade since they had stood together to oppose termination. His analysis—that Indians must choose between identifying themselves as a definite and separate group (American Indians) or an assimilated group (Indian Americans)—captured a central dilemma that had lain dormant during the termination crisis but was becoming a pressing public concern. His call to action—to “propose legislation we want”—marked an important shift to a new era of assertiveness and political self-confidence.

  Ever since the Eisenhower administration announced that it would not force termination on tribes without first gaining their approval, Indian leaders had wrestled with the question of how to define the tribal governments they now insisted should be a permanent feature of the American political system. Because poverty and social dislocation were such pressing realities, tribal leaders at first focused their attention on short-term needs. Years later, while recalling the attitude of Native lobbyists in the early 1960s, Deloria noted grimly that “the slogan of some of these people was, ‘It doesn’t matter what you get, but if you go to Washington, get something for somebody. If you can’t get what you want, then take whatever they’ll give you and we’ll send another delegation later.’”8

  At the national level leaders of the NCAI were more ambitious, but they remained uncertain about how to frame their long-term goals. The organization lobbied for assistance on the model of the State Department’s aid to the developing world, but it spent little time defining the place of tribal governments in either the federal bureaucracy or national politics. D’Arcy McNickle, who had been advocating expanded technical assistance for tribes since the 1930s, couched this appeal in modern cold war terms, arguing that prosperous tribes could be models of American progress. He outlined this approach in a 1951 address in which he called for “a domestic Point 4 Program” modeled on President Truman’s aid projects in underdeveloped countries overseas.9

  Several western politicians, including Montana’s Senator James Murray and the South Dakota congressman George McGovern, had been receptive to this appeal. Congressional support for tribal development only begged the question Deloria had made the focus of his interview. On the one hand, congressional leaders and some Indian advocates united around the call for a national community development initiative that would enable Indians to stand on their own two feet. These supporters of reservation development rallied behind John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign and hoped that a Democratic victory would produce a new era of federal largess. NCAI officials met with Robert F. Kennedy during the summer of 1960, and President Wesley attended the Democratic Party’s nominating convention in Los Angeles. Following Kennedy’s victory in November, the NCAI leadership was encouraged when the president-elect nominated Stewart Udall, a forty-year-old Arizona congressman with a good record of engagement with southwestern tribes, to be the secretary of the interior. To them, Udall’s appointment signaled that tribal community development would be part of the incoming administration’s energetic New Frontier.

  Tribal leaders were also encouraged in January 1961, when the Fund for the Republic, a foundation established by the Ford Foundation, released “A Blueprint for Indian Citizens,” a report that sketched out a road map for the new administration. The fund had charged a blue-ribbon commission that included the Cherokee chief W. W. Keeler, an oil company executive, to recommend what should be done to “facilitate [the Indians’] entry into the mainstream of American life.”10 Keeler and his colleagues concluded that federal programs should emphasize cooperation and technical assistance, but they avoided discussing tribal governments. They recommended a focus on “the Indian individual, the Indian family, and the Indian community. . . .”11

  Still, the optimism surrounding Kennedy’s victory and Udall’s appointment did not end internal divisions over the future. At the end of 1960, just as momentum was building for a pragmatic program to help Indians gain “entry into the mainstream of American life,” a separate group of activists came forward to advocate a broader, more Indian approach to the future. In the wake of John Kennedy’s election, Sol Tax, an anthropologist at the University of Chicago who had been a confidant of McNickle’s since his tenure at the Indian Office during World War II, suggested that the NCAI leadership sponsor a national gathering of Native community leaders to frame the Indian policy agenda for the incoming administration. Tax was an idealist, not a pragmatic politician. Over the course of his career he had developed the field of action anthropology, an approach to the discipline that emphasized the idea that the revival of cultural traditions could animate and consolidate community consensus. He did not support any particular policy goal, declaring instead his “fundamental faith . . . that the people involved are better able to solve their own problems . . . than anyone else.”12 With McNickle’s help, Tax received the NCAI’s endorsement, and in late 1960 he convened a working group that included the NCAI president Clarence Wesley, the executive director Helen Peterson, and McNickle to draft a preliminary statement of conference principles.

  On the surface, Tax’s approach seemed compatible with the Fund for the Republic
’s call for federal assistance and the ambitious plans of the New Frontier. But as plans for the NCAI-sponsored conference took shape, a number of the Indian community’s elected leaders and their traditional allies among non-Indian reform groups began to worry that the meeting planned for Chicago in June 1961 would become a sounding board for extremists. Foremost among the non-Indian worriers was Oliver La Farge, the powerful president of the Association on American Indian Affairs, who maintained close ties to both the former commissioner John Collier and a wide network of Indian Office administrators. La Farge made it clear that he considered the Chicago conference organizers naive upstarts who threatened to upset the positive policy shifts he expected would soon occur under Kennedy and Udall. In a confidential letter to the association’s executive director, La Farge rejected Tax’s “woolly” ideas out of hand and predicted that the upcoming conference would “likely produce a great deal of discord as well as wild demands.”13

  Indian leaders who shared La Farge’s pragmatic outlook were even more critical. Cherokee Chief Keeler met with the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes in January 1961 and warned that Professor Tax was manipulating Indian leaders in an effort to accomplish some dark, radical objective. A conservative cold war Republican, Keeler also suspected that the former New Dealer McNickle was a Communist. “I am not saying he is a communist,” Keeler told the Inter-Tribal Council, “but I am saying that it worries me.”14 Several of Keeler’s Oklahoma colleagues also expressed their reservations about Tax’s politics and voiced their opposition to the anthropologist’s plan to include urban, eastern, and nonrecognized tribes in the Chicago gathering. They argued that questionable Indians would dilute the conference’s political influence and provoke terminationists in Congress.15