Native Americans

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Native Americans

Native Americans are the indigenous peoples of the United States. Indigenous peoples are the first or earliest inhabitants of a region. As with indigenous populations in many other parts of the world, indigenous peoples differ in skin color and ethnic customs from the dominant society that assumed control of their lands sometime in the past five hundred years. The term Native American is commonly used to refer to American Indians living within the United States. However, it also includes Hawaiians and some Alaskan Natives not considered American Indians. Therefore, American Indians refers to most Native Americans in the main continental United States plus some native groups in Alaska.

The complex legal standing of Native Americans in the early twenty-first century resulted from governmental laws and policies that built up over centuries. By the twenty-first century over five hundred Native American tribes were officially recognized by the federal government. Although many similarities existed among them, each tribe had its own unique cultural and legal history. Their overall relationship to the U.S. government for over two centuries followed a pattern shifting between periods of support for tribal self-government and economic self-sufficiency to periods of forced Indian inclusion into the dominant white society, known as assimilation.

This relationship began taking shape during the seventeenth century. European colonists, who settled along the Eastern Seaboard, negotiated treaties with the local indigenous groups. These colonists brought with them a long-established international policy that treated individual native groups as politically independent nations. During early colonial settlement natives were dying in large numbers from violent conflicts and diseases their immune systems had no resistance to, which were introduced by the colonists from the Old World (the Eastern Hemisphere). Where native groups were able to persist at their settlements, in the treaties the colonists recognized the Indian right of possession to lands they were occupying and using. In return the colonists received promises of peace and security.

As a result of these treaties, the tribal groups were internationally recognized as nations well before the United States gained its independence as a nation from Great Britain. This process of formal recognition established the basis for future U.S.-Indian relations from the very beginning of U.S. existence into the early twenty-first century as American Indian communities made a strong economic and political recovery from centuries of prejudice and oppression.

The arrival of European settlement

Contact between Western Europeans and Native American societies in North America began in the seventeenth century as the first European colonists settled along the East Coast. The early colonists found numerous Native American settlements across the landscape. Consistent with the European doctrine of discovery used by early explorers in claiming New World lands, the colonists claimed exclusive right for the area they settled to negotiate with peoples who still occupied those lands.

WORDS TO KNOW

assimilation:: Forced inclusion into the dominant society.
indigenous:: The first or earliest inhabitants of a region.
sovereignty:: A nation's ability to govern its own internal affairs.
termination:: A tribe no longer having the U.S. government representing its best interests and providing special social services.
trust:: Holding and managing something of value for the benefit of another person or organization.

At first the small numbers of colonists were outnumbered and vulnerable to hostile attack by the more numerous Indians. Though outnumbered, the colonists carried forward the ethnocentricism (believing one ethnic group's way of life is superior to all others) that dominated Europe for centuries. They intended to carry civilization as known in Europe to the rest of the world's populations while helping themselves to the wealth of natural resources available in native-held lands. At first however, the colonists eagerly signed treaties of peace and friendship with Indian groups to ensure their own safety. However, the balance of strength changed as the number of colonists steadily grew and the Indian population along the coast rapidly declined. By the mid-1700s the coastal native population had been dramatically reduced by war, isolated skirmishes, disease, and starvation. Many surviving Indian peoples moved west of the Appalachian Mountains away from the colonial settlements.

In the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution (1775–83), the newly independent United States gained a claim to lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River from Britain. The United States now had the right to negotiate with tribes residing in this western region for the actual possession of their lands for new American settlement. However, racial prejudices of American citizens toward Indian peoples were strong. Not only were Indians considered uncivilized, they had also sided with the British during the Revolution. Now they were considered a defeated enemy. As a result, settlers poured across the Appalachians to settle the fertile Mississippi and Ohio River valleys regardless if the appropriate treaties acquiring possession of the land were completed or not.

Establishing U.S.-Indian relations

Adding to the growing conflicts on the American frontier, the Articles of Confederation governing the young nation through its first years largely left Indian relations to the individual states. The new and very weak central government could only take actions that did not get in the way of the states' activities. Greater decisiveness to address the chaos came soon when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Northwest Ordinance in 1787. The Ordinance formally established the Northwest Territory from lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. Having no funds to finance military conflicts with Indians, the Ordinance attempted to secure peaceful and orderly relations with Indians. While asserting its claim to the newly gained lands from Britain, the Ordinance recognized existing Indian right of possession to those lands. The Ordinance prohibited private individuals and local governments from negotiating treaties or buying these lands directly from Indians. Only the federal government could now negotiate treaties with tribes in that region and guide overall relations with Indians.

The policies defining U.S.-tribal relations by the Northwest Ordinance were carried forward into the new U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1789. An example of Congress's broad powers over Indian relations was Article I, section 8, clause 3 of the Constitution. This clause gave the federal government sole authority to regulate all trade not only with foreign nations and between individual states, but also with Indian tribes. The Constitution also recognized the importance of treaties with Indians. According to Article VI Indian treaties ratified (approved) by the U.S. Senate have the same legal force as federal laws and have priority over state laws.

One of the first actions of the new U.S. Congress in 1790 was passage of the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act. The act formed the basis for U.S.-Indian relations for the next two centuries. It gave Congress broad powers over Indian peoples including control of all interaction between Indians and U.S. citizens. Like the Ordinance, it prohibited states or private citizens from purchasing land from Indians. In addition, any merchant selling to Indians without first receiving government permission could face criminal penalties.

The 1790 act started a new era of treaties. Their primary purpose was removing Indians out of the way of the constantly expanding U.S. settlement. In 1800 the native population still possessed three-fourths of what would later be the United States. Between 1790 and 1871 the U.S. Senate ratified over 370 treaties with Indian nations. The treaties not only served to acquire lands, but to gain Indian allegiance to the newly formed nation instead of Britain which had maintained friendly relations with many of the tribes prior to American independence.

The treaty process clearly reflected the prejudices of the government negotiators and the society they represented. The treaties largely took place in English and normally in an atmosphere of extreme duress for the tribes. U.S. officials chose which tribal members to negotiate with. Usually those selected had no real tribal authority to sell (cede) tribal lands. The United States always purchased the lands for prices well below fair market value, only a few cents an acre for good farmland. The treaties also promised annual payments to the tribes and delivery of agricultural equipment and other basic necessities, such as blankets to protect against winter cold. These payments and goods frequently never appeared.

The treaty process gave the newly established democratic nation a false sense of fairness in the face of bitter prejudice shown by U.S. settlers toward the Indians and the blatant conquest of Indian lands. The treaty process made this transfer of land appear more peaceful and voluntary. Regardless of whether the U.S. government had negotiated treaties for removal of Indians from their land, the new settlers moved in anyway, clearing the natural woods and plowing agricultural fields. Game and natural foods the Indians had relied upon for centuries vanished. In some cases the settlers moved into areas reserved in treaties for Indian use only. The pioneers of predominantly white European ancestry only wanted the dark-skinned Indians out of the way, either peacefully or not.

Hostile conflicts

U.S.-Indian relations through the nineteenth century involved numerous skirmishes and battles. The Indians peoples suffered a heavy loss in life. Much bitterness developed, particularly owing to the brutal hand-to-hand combat that these battles frequently involved. The U.S. Army possessed more advanced military technology and a larger supply of arms and ammunition making the outcome of U.S. conquest inevitable. Fighting the outnumbered and outmatched Indians produced new American heroes including future U.S. presidents William Henry Harrison (1773–1841; served 1841) and Andrew Jackson (1767–1845; served 1829–37).

The Indian peoples repeatedly stiffened their resistance to the continued loss of their homelands to American settlers. On different occasions new Indian leaders promoted a return to traditional beliefs and ways of life, called revitalization. They rejected American goods including alcohol and other undesirable American habits.

The civilization program

The U.S. government constantly sought ways of avoiding conflicts with Indians and protecting lives of its citizens. In the early nineteenth century the government introduced a program to civilize indigenous peoples. Displaying prejudices toward ethnic lifestyles of natives, the U.S. leaders wanted to turn Indians from hunters into farmers in order to civilize them. The government provided agricultural implements and spinning wheels to encourage the farming lifestyle. The Office of Indian Affairs (later Bureau of Indian Affairs) in 1824 was created to administer government Indian policies. However, surprisingly to the ethnocentric Americans, Indians consistently showed a stronger determination to maintain their traditional economies. Indians did not find this new European way of civilized life acceptable. Many Indians sought wage labor in the newly established frontier towns. However, there exclusion from residing in these communities based on racial prejudice made it difficult.

States mounted legal challenges to U.S. recognition of tribal sovereignty and the exclusive control over Indian relations held by Congress. Sovereignty represents a nation's ability to govern its own internal affairs. States wanted to gain control over Indian relations. As a result, U.S. Indian policy became further defined by three landmark Supreme Court decisions between 1823 and 1832, known as the Marshall Trilogy after legendary Supreme Court chief justice John Marshall (1756–1835). The Court's opinions expressed in Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), and Worcester v. Georgia (1832) reaffirmed the tribal right to occupy and govern its own lands that were free from state jurisdiction (the geographic area over which law enforcement or courts have legal authority) on their own lands, referred to as Indian Country, and defined a U.S. moral trust responsibility to the tribes. Marshall called tribes domestic dependent nations. The trust obligations meant the United States was responsible for Indian health and welfare and their economic well-being.

The Marshall Trilogy established the legal status of the Indian tribes in the United States. Unfortunately for Indian peoples at the time, these legal principles were not well received by the U.S. population. Even President Jackson ignored the Court's rulings and pressed on with harsh Indian policies.

Before long, the U.S. government abandoned efforts to civilize Indian peoples. Instead, it adopted policies to isolate Indian peoples including even forced removal. The 1830 Indian Removal Act led to mass relocations of those surviving Indian peoples still remaining east of the Mississippi River. Under this policy, the United States forcefully removed members of the Five Civilized Tribes (Choctaw, Seminole, Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw) from the Southeastern United States to the newly created Oklahoma Indian Territory. Thousands of deaths directly resulted from initial long-term detention followed by the 1,800-mile, six-month march known as the Trail of Tears.

Reservation period

Through much of the nineteenth century American settlement continued its relentless march westward under the highly prejudiced notion of Manifest Destiny. Under this idea, U.S. citizens believed they had a God-given right to spread its influence across the North American continent to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. This expansion involved removal of Indian peoples they considered uncivilized and not making good use of the land by farming.

Following the acquisition of the Southwest from Mexico and the opening of the Oregon Trail to the Pacific Northwest in the 1840s, Indian removal policies of the 1830s continued into the 1870s. Through more treaties, tribes exchanged land, water, and mineral rights for promises of peace, security, healthcare, and education. The western treaties created a vast reserve system in which surviving Indian peoples could exclusively exercise their inherent (acquired at birth) rights within certain defined territories, called reservations. The reservations were usually located in remote areas judged unsuitable for white settlement. In 1871 Congress officially closed the treaty period with more than 650 treaties signed and 370 ratified into law.

Signing these treaties was one matter for the U.S. government, honoring them was another. Many believed that the dwindling native populations in the late nineteenth century would eventually cease to exist altogether. Consequently, some U.S. leaders considered the treaties only a temporary measure. Instead, these reservations formed the basis for Indian communities and governments into the twenty-first century.

With Congressional action in 1871 Indian removal was considered essentially complete. However, with discoveries of new goldfields in the 1860s, the remote reservation lands increasingly looked attractive to prospectors and settlers. Some of the last treaties forced tribes to greatly reduce the size of reservations promised in earlier treaties.

Throughout the nineteenth century Indians were banished from towns and relegated to remote reservations. A system for policing Indians developed largely outside the normal U.S. court jurisdiction. Indian agents working for the Office of Indian Affairs had ready access to the U.S. military and exercised broad authority. They routinely detained individual Indians for a wide range of alleged actions. Finally advocates for Indians took a case to federal courts. In 1879 a federal court ruled that Indians off-reservation were persons as defined in the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They had the same constitutional due process (legal protections through established formal procedures) and equal protection rights (all persons treated fairly before the law) as U.S. citizens. The ruling meant the U.S. Army could no longer exercise broad authority to detain Indians while off the reservation without full civilian constitutional protections.

Assimilation policies

By the 1880s, many believed the only chance of survival for Indians was through integration into society. A major period of forced cultural assimilation began with the General Allotment Act of 1887. To a large degree this act marked a return to the highly prejudiced desire of civilizing Indian peoples. Believing the indigenous tradition of communally owning land was a major cultural barrier to Indians adopting Western ways, Congress passed the Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act. The act authorized the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to divide communal reservation lands into smaller, privately owned parcels. The agency allotted 160-acre parcels to families and 80-acre parcels to single adults over eighteen years of age. Indians receiving allotments also received U.S. citizenship supposedly to speed their assimilation. U.S. policymakers reasoned that if they owned their own property, Indians would most likely become farmers and adopt the U.S. social values.

Given the dramatic decrease of the Indian population before 1887, a large amount of reservation land was left over after each tribal member or family had received their allotment. The BIA declared those unallotted lands as surplus and sold them to non-Indians. Often these were the more agriculturally productive lands on reservations. In addition to the loss of these so-called surplus lands, much allotted land went into forfeiture (was lost) when many Indians could not afford to pay taxes on their often remote, unproductive desert properties. This land, too, went to non-Indians eventually. Even when land was productive, markets were usually still too distant to deliver produce in this era before refrigerated railway cars. As a result, the allotment policy was an economic disaster for Indian peoples. The size of Indian Country in the United States decreased from 138 million acres in 1887 to just 48 million acres by 1934.

As part of its assimilation policies, Congress later passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. The act granted all Indians citizenship. The act also made Indians citizens of the states in which they resided.

More legal challenges

The legal status of Indian tribes once again became a topic of the U.S. Supreme Court in the early twentieth century. Some of these decisions focused on the results of the early prejudices associated with the early treaty negotiations. In Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903) the Court ruled that Congress has the plenary (absolute) power to take away tribal rights. However, the federal trust responsibility identified by Supreme Court chief justice Marshall eighty years earlier required careful exercise of this absolute power, using it only when Congress believed it was beneficial to Indian peoples.

In United States v. Winans (1905), the Supreme Court established the Reserved Rights Doctrine. The doctrine meant that tribes retain inherent rights until explicitly taken away by Congress. For example, a tribe retains its hunting and fishing rights even if its reservation is taken away by Congress unless legislation specifically states that the rights are no longer valid.

In Winters v. United States (1908), the Supreme Court ruled that the creation of reservations through treaties also carried with them implied (unwritten) water rights (right of a user to a particular water source) necessary to support residential and economic use of the reservation. The decision, known as the Winters Doctrine, remained central to water rights negotiations into the twenty-first century involving tribes, private landowners, and public agencies, particularly in Western states.

To resolve legal disputes over how treaties are to be interpreted, the Court created the doctrine known as "canons of construction" in its 1908 Winters ruling. This doctrine stated that courts should always interpret unclear treaty language from the tribal perspective.

Renewed hope at survival

It is estimated the peak Native American population was perhaps as high as ten million people prior to the arrival of European explorers and settlers in the Western Hemisphere in the sixteenth century. The population plummeted to less than 300,000 by the 1920s, at its lowest point.

By the late 1920s American Indians had been stripped of almost all their traditional lands. Surviving Indians were isolated on remote reservations or in rural communities, trapped in oppressive poverty with few opportunities for an education and poor access to health services. Highly prejudiced government programs prohibited them to practice ancient Indian traditions. A 1928 study by the Brookings Institution, The Problem of Indian Administration, documented in detail the dire situation of Native Americans in the United States.

In the midst of this desperate situation, hope came in 1933 when newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) named Harold Ickes (1874–1952) as secretary of the interior. Ickes was a champion of civil liberties and not prejudiced against traditional native cultures. Ickes appointed John Collier (1884–1968), a leading critic of earlier federal Indian policies, to serve as U.S. commissioner of Indian affairs. Collier recommended an end to assimilation policies and Congress responded.

Under the guidance of Ickes and Collier, the 1930s became a turning point in American Indian history. The decade was marked by the Great Depression, a major decline in the nation's economy. Numerous federal programs of the Roosevelt administration designed to help those Americans suffering the most from hunger and unemployment were collectively known as the New Deal. Those programs aimed more directly toward Native Americans became known as the Indian New Deal. Using the 1928 report as a guide, Collier reformed the governmental policies guiding American Indian affairs. The U.S. Office of Indian Affairs (later renamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs or BIA) now promoted the continued political and cultural existence of tribes. American Indians would not be forced to blend into the dominant American white culture. Importantly, social services available to Indians were improved.

Collier wanted to provide tribes a way to pursue economic development while maintaining their individual tribal cultures. To achieve this goal he guided through Congress the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934. Still based on Western society racial prejudices, the act gave tribes an option of adopting written constitutions establishing democratic forms of government and forming federally chartered corporations. In creating an IRA government, a tribe could receive federal funds to purchase land, start businesses, and receive social services.

Some 252 tribes held elections to decide whether to create an IRA government. Of these 174 tribes voted to accept IRA conditions. However, ultimately only 92 tribes actually adopted IRA constitutions. Other tribes chose to organize new governments under their own tribal rules. Despite its limited acceptance by tribes, the IRA stopped the ongoing loss of American Indian lands and provided a major source of funds for tribes to pursue economic recovery. The IRA took a big step toward increasing tribal economic and political independence. On the other hand, the IRA-established tribal governments often clashed with the tribe's traditional leaders causing strife within tribal communities. Nonetheless, some tribes with a sufficient land base and marketable natural resources, such as timber, developed a strong economy and prospered during this period.

Collier orchestrated other reforms. To improve education and health services, Congress passed the Johnson-O'Malley Act in 1934. The act authorized the federal government to pay public school districts for expenses related to educating Indian children in their classrooms.

In 1935 Congress created the Indian Arts and Crafts Board to encourage American Indians to produce traditional as well as contemporary arts and crafts. The Board adopted standards for Indian crafts to guarantee their value. Indians could also now trademark their designs. The Board established galleries where Indians could market their crafts. The locations were in Washington, D.C.; Montana; South Dakota; Oklahoma; and at the World's Fair in San Francisco, California, in 1939 and 1940. In New Mexico the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA) hired artists and musicians to teach Indian crafts and traditions that had been almost lost. A small group of Indian artisans whose influence would grow later in the twentieth century emerged from these governmental programs.

Assimilation through termination

Thousands of Indians served in the U.S. military abroad during World War II (1939–45) while others worked in defense plants. Much like African Americans at the time, their exposure to mainstream society during the war made life on poverty-ridden reservations less acceptable as they returned from active duty or the assembly line following the war. A population shift from reservations to cities began.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Indian policies took another turn away from promotion of Indian traditions. As the population trend toward cities increased, special interests longing for valuable Indian-owned assets persuaded Congress to shift policy back to assimilation, this time known as termination. Termination of a tribe meant ending its special trust relationship with the U.S. government and converting tribal reservation lands to private lands. Access to federal health and education services was also curtailed.

The assimilation policies in the 1950s were designed to increase integration of Indian peoples into mainstream U.S. society. The government created the Adult Vocational Training Program and the Employment Assistance Program to promote urban relocation. From 1952 to 1972 the government sent over one hundred thousand Indians from reservations to urban job placement centers. The percentage of Indians living in cities expanded from only 10 percent in 1930 to almost 30 percent in 1960.

Approximately one hundred tribes were selected for termination through acts passed by Congress. As in the allotment period, much Indian land was sold to non-Indians or became public lands including National Forests. The economic base for those Indian communities was devastated. Also as part of termination, Congress passed Public Law 280 in 1953. The act expanded state jurisdiction onto tribal lands in selected states. Tribal sovereignty was decreased even further.

A return to tribal support

Congressional support for the termination policies did not last long. Once again U.S. Indian policy took another dramatic shift. The 1970s saw renewed support for tribal government independence. What was referred to as the tribal self-determination era began in which the tribes could govern their own internal affairs.

Changes in support of tribes began again in the 1960s. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act exempted Indians from job discrimination in certain circumstances. For example, the BIA could favor Indian applicants in filling jobs within the agency. The 1974 Supreme Court ruling in Morton v. Mancari affirmed that the federal government can treat American Indians differently from other U.S. citizens, despite antidiscrimination laws, when applying for jobs in the BIA. The Court ruled that when a government agency acts to protect Indian interests and promote tribal sovereignty, then tribes are considered political groups, not racial or ethnic groups.

Other legal distinctions for Indians were also identified. To ensure consistent civil rights protections within the individual tribes Congress passed the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) of 1968. The act extended most of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights (first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution recognizing certain rights and protections) to Indian peoples. These individual rights and protections included free speech protections, free exercise of religion, and due process (designated to protect the legal rights of individuals) and equal protection of tribal government laws. The act did not extend to Indians the prohibition on government support of a religion. Tribal governments were free to promote their own tribal religions.

The biggest boost in support of tribal sovereignty and self-sufficiency came in 1975 when Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. The act gave the BIA and other agencies authority to transfer responsibility for administering certain tribal programs to the tribes. The programs must be those federal programs benefiting Indian peoples, such as programs providing health and education services to tribal communities.

As the Indian population shift from reservations to cities progressed, problems of racial discrimination and poverty became prevalent for urban Indians. Underemployment led to homelessness, rampant substance abuse, and unusually high injury, disease, death, and infant mortality rates. To provide support for the expanding Indian urban population, Indian centers, clubs, and churches appeared in many cities. In 1976 Congress passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act to address the urban Indian plight by bringing increased healthcare services to Indians.

Resurgence gains momentum

With the resurgence of some tribal economies in the 1980s and resulting improved living conditions on reservations, Indians began moving back to their rural tribal communities from the cities. The educations and skills they acquired in mainstream society further propelled Indian Country resurgence. As the wealth of some tribes increased, questions and issues related to tribal membership and rights, claims to Indian ancestry or tribal affiliation, and intellectual property issues (who has the right to represent Indian interests to the mainstream society) became key areas of concern.

Determining who was Indian had increasingly important financial and legal consequences. Individuals could gain tribal membership through birth or marriage and may have substantial non-Indian ancestry. However, a person of total Indian ancestry who never establishes a relationship with a tribe cannot claim legal Indian status. Because of tribal sovereignty, each tribe was responsible for determining the basis for its membership. Generally, an Indian could be anyone having some degree of Indian ancestry, considered a member of an Indian community, and promoting himself as Indian.

Congress continued passing acts protecting tribal rights and interests, including the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978), the Indian Mineral Development Act (1982), the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990), and the Indian Self-Governance Act (1994). The 1994 act amended the earlier 1975 Self-Determination Act making more federal government services to tribes subject to tribal administration.

A key player on the national scene

By the late twentieth century, a special branch of law in the U.S. legal system had even become recognized, referred to as Indian law. In the early twenty-first century 554 tribes were formally recognized as sovereign nations located within the boundaries of the United States. These tribal governments oversaw about 56 million acres, or just over 2 percent of lands within the United States. In 2000 approximately two million Native Americans lived on 314 reservations and in cities. More than 250 native languages were still spoken in Indian Country. The percentage of Indians living in cities grew to 56 percent by 1990. The majority of American Indians now lived in urban areas. Despite the population shift, the reservations in Indian Country remained the focus of native pride and political identity separate from American white culture.

Issues of tribal sovereignty persisted into the new century related to natural resource management and economic development. By the beginning of the twenty-first century tribal lands held much of the last remaining deposits of natural resources in North America. Ongoing issues involved water rights, forest management, restoration of fish runs, mineral development (including gold, copper, zinc, oil and gas, uranium, and coal), cleanup of heavy-metal poisoning left from earlier mining activity, and management of major waterways including the Columbia, Snake, Colorado, and Missouri rivers. Legal conflicts frequently pitted private interests and state governments against tribal governments with the federal government weighing in on various sides depending on the circumstances behind the particular dispute.

Tribal governments and their peoples continued to enjoy a unique legal status. Under the sovereignty concept, tribes could form and reorganize their own governments, determine tribal membership, regulate individual property, manage natural resources, provide health services, develop businesses, regulate commerce on tribal lands, collect taxes, maintain law enforcement, and establish tribal court systems. Members of federally recognized tribes were both U.S. and tribal citizens, simultaneously receiving benefits and protections from federal, state, and tribal governments.

Indian gaming

A new era of tribal economics arrived in 1988 when Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. By the end of the twentieth century, one-third of the 554 federally recognized tribes operated some form of gaming establishment. Annual revenue was estimated at $6 billion. Due to tribal sovereignty, casino revenues were tax free. However, agreements with individual states required by the act often provided some funding to states to pay for increased community needs due to their popular businesses. These needs included improved roads and sewers and expanded police capabilities in the communities.

The financial success of the individual gaming businesses varied greatly. The most notable success in gaming was the Foxwoods Casino and Resort, operated by the Mashantucket Pequots of Connecticut, a tribe of only five hundred members. Comprised of three million square feet plus a high-rise hotel and twenty-four restaurants, in 1998 it was the largest tribal facility in the country. By the late 1990s the tribe was making over $1 billion a year through its casino and other businesses. It had become the largest employer in New England and largest landowner in Connecticut with the land purchases the tribe made.

Similar stories unfolded elsewhere in the country though normally at a lesser scale. The Coeur d'Alene Tribe of northern Idaho with its newfound gaming income built a $5 million wellness center and a 8,000-bed hospital. For the Ojibwa of Minnesota, who built two lavish casino and hotel complexes in the early 1990s including the Grand Casino Mille Lacs, unemployment fell from 46 percent to less than 10 percent. Housing for tribal members improved and the tribes acquired new lands. The Oneida of Wisconsin became the largest employer in the Green Bay area due to gaming and other business ventures.

Other economic gains

Gaming revenues first went into education, housing, health and elder care, and law enforcement. But as wealth accumulated, investments in a wide range of developments grew. In addition, donations were made to local non-Indian community needs.

Indian gaming successes gave rise to a new generation of Native American entrepreneurs. Economic issues involving casino development usually grabbed the public's attention, but tribes were also investing in a diversity of other long-term business ventures. Economic investments involved billions of dollars. Many of these new business leaders saw gaming as a means to establish long-term more diverse tribal economies involving non-gaming developments. Tribal acquisitions ranged from golf courses to industrial parks. Unemployment rates in many areas plummeted.

Their goal was a lasting increase in quality of life. Tribes also built new cultural centers to help reconstruct tribal identities lost over the centuries of oppression from dominant societies. They focused on lost languages, songs, dances, and other traditions.

A prejudiced reaction

The substantial economic gains some tribes were able to achieve brought a backlash from the federal and state governments and the general public. Issues of economic development and tribal sovereignty became increasingly intermixed. With incomes growing for some tribes, opposition rose to the tax-free and largely regulation-free status of tribes. Many complained that tribal businesses operating free of state taxes and regulations had an unfair competitive edge against non-Indian businesses.

The concept of tribal sovereignty came increasingly under attack. Tribal leaders responded that this challenge only represented what tribes had faced for centuries: whenever Indians gained something of value, the dominant white society wanted it. Opposition grew against placing more land in trust for tribes as tribes purchased more lands. When lands are placed into federal trust they become exempt from local taxation and zoning requirements since they are not privately owned.

Tribes began spending millions of dollars in donations to political parties and hiring lawyers, lobbyists, and public relations firms. Some tribes have even opened lobbying offices in Washington.

During the summer of 1999, Indian peoples filed a class-action lawsuit against the BIA alleging over two centuries of misuse of Indian assets held in trust by the U.S. government. They were asking for tens of billions of dollars in payment. The lawsuit captured national headlines in the following years as major changes were made in the way the government administered tribal programs.

Prejudice and poverty remained

Despite dramatic economic gains by some tribes in the late twentieth century, by 2000 Indian reservations overall still had a poverty rate of 31 percent, six times the national average at the time. Health and education needs were high. Almost 60 percent of Native Americans lived in substandard housing while large numbers were homeless.

American Indians in the United States suffered higher rates of tuberculosis, liver disease, cancer, pneumonia, diabetes, suicide, and homicide than the general U.S. population. In many tribes amputations, blindness, and dialysis were a way of life as diabetes is rampant.

American Indian Movement

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which made progress toward ending certain forms of racial discrimination of African Americans, inspired Indian activism and radicalism including growth of what became known as the Red Power movement. Among various organizations was the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the summer of 1968 by Dennis Banks (1937–) and others on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, an Indian community long known for its poverty and isolation.

AIM was formed to protect traditional ways of the Indian communities and inspire a cultural rejuvenation. Specific issues included from alleged heavy-handed police actions against tribal members and government takeover of Sioux lands in the Black Hills of South Dakota for gold mining. AIM was more confrontational than most social activist organizations of the time. They confronted government agencies and organizations that sought to marginalize American Indians. AIM caught national attention in November 1972 when AIM members seized the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the BIA in protest of the agency's policies. Twenty-four were arrested. The following year a gun battle erupted between Banks and approximately two hundred AIM members and FBI on the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The standoff lasted seventy-one days. Three tribal members were killed. In 1975 more violence erupted between AIM members and FBI leading to the deaths of two tribal members and two FBI agents in separate incidents. AIM member Leonard Peltier (1944–) was convicted in 1977 for the murder of the agents and became a symbol of American Indian radicalism as he served a life sentence in prison.

AIM remained active in the early twenty-first century advocating American Indian interests. Their involvement included the protest of schools and sports teams using indigenous caricatures as mascots and protests of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial celebrating U.S. exploration of the American West in the early nineteenth century. Another early leader of AIM, Russell Means (1939–), ran for governor of New Mexico in 2001.

The Indian Health Services (IHS), a U.S. federal agency, provided health care for about three-fourths of the two million Native Americans in the United States. Health care was provided at both reservation health centers and in urban clinics. Recognizing the hopelessness and despair still prevalent in much of Indian Country, in March 2000 the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recommended formation of a federal task force to seek solutions. In April 2000 President Bill Clinton (1946–; served 1993–2001) visited the Navajo Nation to stress how the American economic boom of the 1990s had bypassed some Native American communities. Almost 40 percent of Navajo households were still without electricity, 70 percent were without telephones, and the unemployment rate was 50 percent.

Despite foreign incursions of epic proportions into their native lands over the past five centuries, Native Americans refused to just disappear. Though isolated on poverty-stricken reservations and in inner cities for much of two centuries, the Native population had rebounded in population size as well as economically and politically.

For More Information

BOOKS

Dowd, Gregory. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1992.

Matthiessen, Peter. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.

Washburn, Wilcomb E., ed. Handbook of North American Indians: History of Indian-White Relations. Vol. 4. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1988.

Wilkinson, Charles F. American Indians, Time, and the Law: Native Societies in a Modern Constitutional Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.