The Praeger Handbook on Contemporary Issues in Native America 2 volumes (Native America: Yesterday and Today)

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The Praeger Handbook on Contemporary Issues in Native America, Volumes 1 & 2

Bruce E. Johansen

PRAEGER

The Praeger Handbook on Contemporary Issues in Native America

Recent Titles in Native America: Yesterday and Today Bruce E. Johansen, Series Editor George Washington’s War on Native America Barbara Alice Mann The Native Peoples of North America: A History, Two Volumes Bruce E. Johansen Daughters of Mother Earth: The Wisdom of Native American Women Barbara Alice Mann, editor Iroquois on Fire: A Voice from the Mohawk Nation Douglas M. George-Kanentiio Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny Robert J. Miller

The Praeger Handbook on Contemporary Issues in Native America Volume 1

Linguistic, Ethnic, and Economic Revival

Bruce E. Johansen Foreword by Philip J. Deloria

NATIVE AMERICA: YESTERDAY AND TODAY Bruce E. Johansen, Series Editor

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Johansen, Bruce E. (Bruce Elliott), 1950The Praeger handbook on contemporary issues in Native America / Bruce E. Johansen ; foreword by Philip J. Deloria. p. cm. — (Native America : yesterday and today, ISSN 1552–8022) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN–13: 978–0–275–99138–8 (set : alk. paper) ISBN–13: 978–0–275–99139–5 (v. 1 : alk. paper) ISBN–13: 978–0–275–99140–1 (v. 2 : alk. paper) ISBN–10: 0–275–99138–5 (set : alk. paper) [etc.] 1. Indians of North America—Social conditions. 2. Indians of North America—Government relations. 3. Indians of North America—Politics and government. 4. Self-determination, National—United States. I. Title. E98.S67J65 2007 973.04′97—dc22 2006100439 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2007 by Bruce E. Johansen All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006100439 ISBN–10: 0–275–99138–5 (set) 0–275–99139–3 (vol. 1) 0–275–99140–7 (vol. 2)

ISBN–13: 978–0–275–99138–8 (set) 978–0–275–99139–5 (vol. 1) 978–0–275–99140–1 (vol. 2)

ISSN:1552–8022 First published in 2007 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10

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Contents

Volume 1: Linguistic, Ethnic, and Economic Revival Foreword by Philip J. Deloria

vii

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction

xvii

Dedication: On the Passing of Vine Deloria Jr.

xxi

1 Back from the (Nearly) Dead: Reviving Indigenous Languages across North America

3

2 Where Has All the Money Gone?

49

3 Economic Revival: Up from the Bottom on the Reservation

79

4

High-Stakes Genealogy: When Is a Pequot Not a Pequot?

5 Names and Games: The Controversy Regarding “Indian” Sports Mascots and Place-Names Comprehensive Index

121 143 I

Volume 2: Legal, Cultural, and Environmental Revival Introduction

1 Cast among the Living Dead: Banishment Is Back

vii 185

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Contents

2 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: The Curious Conviction of Leonard Peltier

197

3 Grandfathers of Akwesasne Mohawk Revitalization: Ray Fadden and Ernest Benedict

209

4 Mestizo Nation: La Plaza de Seattle

229

5 Back to Bushmeat and Berries

245

6

269

The New Inuit

7 The High Price of Uranium in Navajo and Dene Country 8

Catharsis vis-à-vis Oppression: Contemporary Native American Political Humor

295 309

Selected Bibliography

355

Comprehensive Index

379

Foreword

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asinos. And more casinos. And yet still more casinos. I refer not to a building boom in American Indian gaming establishments but to the single-note theme sounded by most Americans when the subject is the state of contemporary Native America. “How come ‘they’ are ‘allowed’ to have casinos? Why do ‘they’ get such special treatment? How much ‘Indian’ do I have to be in order to get my share?” And so on. Such conversations happen on airplanes, on the sidelines of soccer games, at dinner gatherings, and in a hundred other venues—all settings that tend to foreclose the detailed discussion of issues and histories that would answer such questions. It is not easy to convince a casual questioner to explore topics such as the unique constitutional status of tribal entities, the political relation between state and federal governments, the long history of treaty-making, the shorter history of federal program development, the budget cuts of the Reagan era and the concretizing of sovereignty practices, legislation concerning gaming and the resulting regulatory apparatus, and the ways tribes determine their membership—all of which make up only a few of the necessary information points for the discussion of casinos that Americans claim to crave. In the end, one often simply observes that the situation is far more complicated than the questioner could ever imagine, a highly unsatisfactory response for all concerned, and one that actually fails to advance, even in a small way, the goal of educating non-Indians to the challenges and creativities characteristic of Indian country, past and present. Bruce Johansen’s Handbook of Contemporary Issues in Native America offers answers to that one-note question, but it goes far beyond. Johansen insists not only on the complexity of this single issue, for example, but of its place within the broader and more complicated panorama that is Native America today. Gaming, in his treatment, fits within the larger practices of cultural, economic, political, legal,

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linguistic, and even nutritional revival. Fitting these pieces together, Johansen shows Indian people engaged across a dauntingly broad front in a struggle for survival and autonomy. Like all broad fronts, a certain amount of unevenness haunts the struggle: A political success is qualified by a legal setback; an effort at rethinking food is crossed by the challenges of poverty and environmental change. And yet Johansen’s treatments—informed by decades of personal and intellectual observation and experience—suggest that despite the challenges, along that broad front, Native American people and societies are indeed resurgent. This book fits logically into Bruce Johansen’s own journey as a writer and scholar and reveals him to be a gift-giver of the first order. What do I mean by that? Here is a favorite example: My son’s high school civics teacher asks students for five influences on U.S. democracy. The supposedly right answers from the textbook are (in mildly simplified form): English common law (visible, for instance, in the Bill of Rights); natural law, as expressed by John Locke; classical republicanism, translated from ancient Rome by Jefferson and others; Montesquieu’s concern with territorial expansion and the separation of powers; and (most vaguely) the general sense of religiosity found in early America. “Are there only five?” I ask. “Well, that’s all that are on the test.” Grumbling about the mind-killing nature of contemporary education and yet smiling at the possibility of an important educational moment, I pull down from the shelf Bruce Johansen’s and Donald Grinde’s Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy. “Take a look at this,” I tell him, “and go back and ask your teacher about the Iroquois Confederacy.” Exemplar of Liberty and Johansen’s earlier sole-authored book Forgotten Founders: Benjamin Franklin, the Iroquois, and the Rationale for the American Revolution (which is on the shelf in my office rather than at home) stand as signal contributions to our understanding of the early republic. As if it were somehow outrageous to add one more element to the standard list of five European influences, however, white scholars of the Iroquois and conservative pundits viciously attacked these books following their publication. And here one is able to make clear the distinction between so-called scholarly contributions and the giving of gifts. Johansen’s great gift was his willingness to stand and fight, sharpen his arguments, intensify his research, and push his assertions, all in the face of a withering assault from a number of quarters. If it no longer seems a particularly outrageous assertion that perhaps the Iroquois Confederacy offered both model and advice to Franklin and other founders (and it should not), we have Bruce Johansen (as well as Grinde and a number of their other comrades) to thank for that. If a sixth influence on U.S. democratic government— an aboriginal influence—has not yet made its way into high school civics textbooks, Johansen and others have nonetheless given us the tools to continue to question the master narrative. Alterations in that narrative require repeated challenges, but we can be confident that time, quite literally, will tell. Our entire national culture, in this sense, owes a debt of gratitude for this gift—and for the others that emerge from Johansen’s substantial body of writings.

Foreword

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My father, Vine Deloria Jr., was a longtime supporter of Bruce Johansen and his work and wrote forewords to a number of Johansen’s books. With these volumes, Professor Johansen returns the favor, offering an extensive and heartfelt dedication to my father. I feel fortunate—and honored—to be able to send my appreciation, and that of my family, caroming back again in his direction. For us, this dedication comes as yet one more gift from Bruce Johansen. For you, the reader, these volumes make up another kind of gift, for they offer the stories and the tools to think richly about the state of contemporary Native America. Here one can move beyond the single-note concerns surrounding public perceptions of Indian gaming into a complicated series of issues, treated with the complexity and insight they deserve. I imagine my father looking across from the other side, smiling with his own approval at yet one more educational moment, courtesy of Bruce Johansen. Philip J. Deloria

Preface

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tudying history, I can use my imagination to draw famous figures from the past into our time to comment on what has become of their life’s work. I would, for example, like to walk with Jesus Christ down any one of our shopping malls in mid-December and ask his opinion on what mercantile capitalism made of his birthday and the old custom of gift-giving. I would, similarly, like the Prophet Muhammad’s thoughts on an age in which some people who profess serious devotion to his ideas express their idea of religious nationalism by ramming loaded passenger aircraft into tall buildings. The unifying theme of this two-volume set is Native American revival of Native American traditions. To juxtapose history in this case, I would call upon Gen. Richard Henry Pratt, the founder, roughly 130 years ago, of so-called American Indian industrial schools, by which he meant to “Kill the Indian and save the man.” His phrase was an advertising slogan for the schools, not (in Pratt’s view, at any rate) the genocidal confession some people in our time make of it. Pratt, arguing that American Indian traditions had no place in his modern world, thought he was doing young Indians a favor by disabusing them of their parents’ lifeways: cut that hair, do not speak Native languages, and learn to take their places in the grand factory assembly line of Manifest Destiny’s melting pot. Pratt’s thinking carried some heavy ethnocentric baggage, and he was hardly alone in his time, or afterward. Consider, for example, the so-called white man’s burden borne by Winston Churchill. He stood up to Hitler’s eugenics but also supported Britain’s imperial mission:

I do not admit … that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race,

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or a higher race, or a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. (Wheatcroft, 2006, 92) Visiting our time, Pratt might be amazed (and perhaps a bit distraught) at the degree to which his iron-clad assumptions have been turned on their heads. Many Native Americans today speak English, to be sure, but many also are relearning their own languages, considering traditional forms of justice, growing the foods of their great-grandparents, and (in Canada) demanding financial justice from the government that maintained a nationwide system of schools that followed Pratt’s model. Native American influences on society at large are recognized and celebrated. Ways of life and technologies mesh as Pratt might never have foreseen. In our self-identified census, Native Americans are the fastest-growing group of people in the United States in the twenty-first century. This two-volume set seeks to provide a guide to Native American revival in our time. It is not comprehensive; such an errand would require a small library. It is, instead, a collection of essays and stories, some of them quite personal, drawn from my 35 years growing up in a time of Native renewal. MATTERS OF LANGUAGE Language has meaning, although we often speak as a matter of assumption without forethought. Consciously or not, our words frame our beliefs. Some of these words justify the taking of a continent, but they are used so easily and so often that they roll off our tongues with very little forethought. Observant readers will find some words generally absent from this work. Except in direct quotations, for example, I avoid using the word settler, as a generic term for peoples who arrived from afar (usually, but not always, from Europe) to occupy land that had been utilized, sometimes for many thousands of years, by Native peoples. I find the word connotatively loaded not for what it says but for what it implies. Left unspoken is an assumption that the Native peoples whom the so-called settlers replaced themselves had no established homelands and that, by the lights of Anglo-American real estate law (of eminent domain and highest and best use), the new residents were making better use of the land and its resources. In the law, as anyone who has owned property that has been subject to eminent domain realizes, such use makes replacement legally defensible. In matter of historical fact, most Native nations had identifiable territorial limits, even if individuals often did not own real estate in the European fashion. Their land often was utilized as well (even if not generally with the same population density) as it was following usurpation by the so-called settlers. I may use the national affiliation (British, say) of the new residents, or the word immigrants. If I am in a postcolonial mood and do not mind drawing some rightwing flak, I may use—even if I try to avoid—invaders, which places the connotative shoe on the other foot. The shoe often fits, however, and I use the term under those conditions.

Preface

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The terms of occupation frame the immigrants’ entire relationship with the land’s first inhabitants. Most present-day controversies involving Native Americans have roots in questions of land and resource ownership and use. This is no less true today than during the Indian wars. (Vine Deloria Jr. asked during a speech in Omaha during 1993 if non-Indians had a right to live in North America, said, “If your ancestors are buried here, you have a right to the land.”) Another word that I try to avoid is tribal when it is used as a generic reference to Native Americans. My first objection to this word in such a context is that many other peoples worldwide have organized as tribes at various times in the past; some still do. More fundamentally, the use of this term freezes all Native American polities at a certain level of political organization: a small scale, by which assumption once again connotatively justifies replacement by the larger, state-level organs of non-Indian so-called civilization. Once again, Anglo-American real-estate law is being invoked, often without thinking. The most engrained assumptions are the ones that we invoke without forethought. Many Native polities were (and are) organized at the nation-state or confederacy level. FURTHER READINGS Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. “A Man So Various: The Misappropriated Winston Churchill.” Harper’s, May 2006: 86–94.

Acknowledgments

A

ppreciation, as always, is due my wife, Patricia E. Keiffer, whose wisdom often laces my writing. Hopefully, our children and grandchildren (Shannon, Samantha, and Madison) will enjoy a sustainable Earth long after we have passed on, having benefited from her selfless devotion. My mother, Hazel E. Johansen, gave me the work habits necessary for the endurance-contest aspects of book authorship. Also, I owe thanks to the director of the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) School of Communication, Jeremy Lipschultz, the deans of the College of Communication, Fine Arts, and Media, Bob Welk, and Gail F. Baker, as the administrative principals who maintain an atmosphere at UNO that nourishes scholarly research, reading, and writing. The staff of the UNO library, as always, has been crucial to this work as well. Praeger editor Hilary Claggett also played a crucial role in the birthing of this set. She suggested I write it; that’s basic. This two-volume set’s unifying theme is Native American revival, or (as some have phrased it) the recovery of nationhood, following many decades of suffocating colonialism by the United States government so intense that it dictated most Native Americans’ every personal and collective decision No one person was more responsible for Native America’s revival and sense of recovering nationhood than Vine Deloria Jr., who passed away on November 13, 2005, as these books were being written. This set, therefore, is dedicated to him, in a humble, personal tribute to a person who did so very much to shape my own life (one among many thousands of others). University of Colorado professor Charles Wilkinson, an expert in American Indian law, called Deloria “probably the most influential American Indian of the past century” (Dahl, 2005). “He was also a wonderful human being, brilliant, bitingly funny and profoundly warm and compassionate, always willing to lend a hand or lift a spirit,” Wilkinson added (Dahl, 2005).

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University of Minnesota American Indian Studies Professor David Wilkins, who is Lumbee, wrote in Indian Country Today that Deloria “was never quite comfortable with the notion that he was, in fact, the principal champion of tribal nations since he wanted—no, demanded—that each Native nation express confidence in its own national identity, develop its own unique talents and together wield their collective sovereignty, that is, their dignity and integrity, in a way that enriches them and the nations around them as well” (Wilkins, 2005). Deloria, a Standing Rock Sioux, first became nationally known during 1969, following publication of his book Custer Died for Your Sins. Like no other single work, this book framed the modern Native American self-determination movement. Reacting to his own influence, Deloria tried as best he could to spread his intellectual wealth around. Thus, many lives were shaped by him. This sketch of Native American revival walks in Deloria’s very large footsteps. FURTHER READINGS Dahl, Corey. “Indian Activist and Popular Author Dies; Vine Deloria Jr. was a Retired C.U. Professor.” Boulder (Colorado) Daily Camera, November 15, 2005, n.p. Wilkins, David. “Native Visionary Spoke for All Disadvantaged Americans.” Indian Country Today, December 1, 2005. .

Introduction

A

s the idea was formalized in academia as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Gen. Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, understood implicitly that language is the vessel, the intellectual framework, of culture. He therefore set out to pull up Native cultures by their roots by preventing children (by force if necessary) from speaking the languages of their ancestors. (Edward Sapir was a student of the ethnologist Franz Boas, whose study of Native American languages during the late nineteenth century taught him how influential they could be in shaping cultures.) How surprised General Pratt might be if he could return today to see Native American languages blossoming the length and breadth of North America. The many people who are now reclaiming Native American languages understand their vital role just as Pratt did: Nations, by their essence, have culture, and culture, of necessity, dies without language. This survey of Native American revival begins in chapter 1, “Back from the (Nearly) Dead: Reviving Indigenous Languages across North America.” At this late date, many Native languages are being rescued nearly from the grave. The people of the Cochiti Pueblo, for example, were moved to revitalize their language after they conducted a survey that disclosed that all of its fluent speakers were 35 years of age or older. The few speakers under age 35 were semiliterate, said Mary Eunice Romero, a Karas (Pueblo). Romero then asked, “What is going to happen to our language in 20 years when those [who are] 35 years old become 55? In 20 more years, when they’re 75?” (“Critical Moment,” 1998). Experiences at the Cochiti Pueblo mirror a trend across Turtle Island (North America). Native American languages, many of which have been verging on extinction, have enjoyed a revival in recent years largely due to many Native American nations’ adoption of immersion programs, which teach a language as the major

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Introduction

part of reservation school curricula. A century after boarding schools sought to wipe it out, study of Native languages in North America is thriving. Native American nations also can not be rebuilt without financial infrastructure. Thus, Native Americans during the 1990s began to explore a key aspect of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ colonial system: Individual Indian Monies, bank accounts kept by the government that, in (often untested) theory, were to be used to hold proceeds from use of Native-owned lands. Beginning in the late 1880s, the federal government had established itself as Indian Country’s bank. A century later, the supposed beneficiaries of this trust began to discover just how badly the government had bungled this self-appointed task. Chapter 2, “Where Has All the Money Gone?” explores what has become the lifework of Blackfeet accountant Eloise Cobell. During the 1980s, Cobell began to ask what had become of royalty payments owed Native Americans through Individual Indian Monies accounts operated, in theory, by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Treasury Department. The result was an inquiry into a financial scandal that startled professional bankers that by the year 2000 had become the largest class-action suit ever filed against the United States government. The trust accounts range in size from 35 cents to $1 million for individuals. Among Native bands and nations, the largest single account is the roughly $400 million set aside for the Sioux settlement of the Black Hills land claim, which has not been paid because the Sioux have not agreed to accept it. The Navajo Nation has an account worth more than $23 million. More than 300 Native American governments (with 2,965 accounts) and 300,000 Native American individuals who have trust accounts with the United States also have been wondering lately what has become of their money. It has been cold comfort to many of them who have learned that the BIA, their legal trustee, very possibly has no clue. Cobell’s efforts are one part of a much broader Native American effort to recover from pervasive poverty and reassert Native American economic independence. Chapter 3, “Economic Revival: Up from the Bottom on the Reservation,” begins with a survey of contemporary reservation economic conditions and is a corrective for anyone who thinks that modern-day reservation gambling has made all Native Americans rich. Aside from some of the poorest counties in the United States, Native peoples also occupy some of Canada’s most desolate real estate, as characterized by the village of Pikangikum, which has one of the world’s highest per capita suicide rates. Alcoholism is still a plague in the cities as well as on rural reservations. Readers will become acquainted in this chapter with the hamlet of Whiteclay, Nebraska, where the major business is selling beer and other alcoholic beverages to Indians of the neighboring Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where such sales are illegal. Is gambling an answer to poverty—the new buffalo, as some Native Americans have called it? The largest Native American casino to date has been the Pequots’ Foxwoods, near Ledyard, Connecticut. In other places, such as the New York Oneidas’ lands in upstate New York, gambling has provided an enriched upper class the means to hire police to force antigambling traditionalists from their homes.

Introduction

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Among the Mohawks at Akwesasne, people have died over the issue. Akwesasne’s position on the United States-Canada border also has made smuggling of cigarettes, liquor, other drugs, weapons, and human beings a major industry. Amid the poverty illustrated by U.S. census statistics by the turn of the millennium were some signs of hope. Some reservation economies are booming with small businesses. One example (described in “Where Has All the Money Gone”) is the Blackfeet of Browning, Montana, where Eloise Cobell is one of several collegeeducated Native people who have returned home with skills and energy that have energized reservation towns. Another is the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation in upstate New York on the Canada-United States border near Massena, New York. The main highway there is flush with truck stops, smoke shops, restaurants, and gift shops selling merchandise that gets a tax break on the reservation, which is unique to the Iroquois. The local newspaper, Indian Time, also is flush with advertising. The next U.S. census may portray at least parts of Indian Country as working its way up from the bottom. Chapter 4, “High-Stakes Genealogy: When Is a Pequot Not a Pequot?” describes efforts by Jeff Benedict, author of Without Reservation (2000), who purports to expose the builders of the world’s largest casino (Foxwoods) as faux Pequots. As a salesman of ethnic chauvinism, Benedict has got something going here. Pandering to various racial prejudices is probably doing his bank balance no harm. Without Reservation, for a time, was rated in the top 100 of Amazon.com’s sales rankings (among roughly 2 million listed titles). This chapter examines problems related to determining identity strictly in a multiethnic world as well as the big money behind such definitions. Arguing that the Pequots who started Foxwoods actually may be white—or is it black?—broaches a sticky historical swamp in which no one, strictly speaking, is purely anything. The first patriot to die in the American Revolution, for example, was half black, and half Native American. And Frederick Douglass, the famed black abolitionist? His mother, a slave, was probably partially Native American. Members of identifiable nations exercise some degree of self-identity—an image of themselves not strictly defined by outsiders. To attain a measure of self-definition, Native Americans since the beginning of the modern-day selfdetermination movement during the 1960s have protested widespread caricatures, most notably as sports mascots and denigrating place-names, such as squaw. Chapter 5, “Names and Games: The Controversy Regarding ‘Indian’ Sports Mascots and Place-Names,” casts a historical net over present-day efforts to challenge many of these names. “The pace is really picking up,” said Cyd Crue, president of the Illinois chapter of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media, regarding the campaign against Indian sports mascots. “We’re seeing more educators around the country, in middle schools and high schools and at universities, concerned about the racial climate in schools, … dropping these symbols” (Badwin, 2000). Since the early 1970s, at least 1,250 of the nation’s 3,000 elementary schools, high schools, and colleges with American Indian nicknames and mascots have dropped them, according to Suzan Shown Harjo, president of Washington, DC’s Morningstar Institute.

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A singular moment in the history of the Native American sports mascot controversy occurred during February 2002, when an intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado composed of Native American, Latino, and European American students collectively decided to change its name from Native Pride to The Fighting Whites. The new name was a purposeful parody of North America’s many Native American mascots, most notably nearby Eaton High School’s Fighting Reds. It was the first time in popular memory that a multiethnic sports team had decided to adopt a European American stereotype as a mascot. A dozen college students on an intramural basketball team suddenly found themselves playing in the stereotypical big leagues, with the likes of the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves, and the Cleveland Indians. During the 1990s, Native American nationhood was being expressed in a large number of sovereignty summits around the United States. At one of them, during late spring 1995 in Washington, DC, I heard the Onondaga leader Oren Lyons reduce the elements of nationality to the basics. A people is sovereign, he said, when members of the group decide to behave in a sovereign manner. A collection of reinforcing individual actions thus defines the whole, and in Native America, during our time, we have seen such efforts in language, culture, finances, economies, and legal systems. History is full of examples, of course; no single guiding hand instructed the peoples in 13 British colonies that they were ready for independence. Teaching in Poland during 2005, I heard stories of many people who had decided, during the 1980s, that Soviet colonialism had to die. Native Americans, in our time, have set this course. FURTHER READINGS Badwin, Don. “Opposition to Indian Mascots Mounts.” Associated Press, November 6, 2000. “The Critical Moment: Funding the Perpetuation of Native Languages.” Transcript of Proceedings, Lannan Foundation. Santa Fe, NM, January 26–28, 1998.

D E D I C AT I O N

On the Passing of Vine Deloria Jr.

P

olitical and intellectual rhetoric in Native America is usually egalitarian. Most Native tradition shies away from the elevation of kings, princes, and popes. No one worthy of such a title would claim it. The passing of Vine Deloria Jr. on November 13, 2005, however, brought forth superlatives. If Native America had a pope—of course, it does not—it would have been Deloria. The grief witnessed upon his passing may be compared to Poland’s grief upon the passing of Pope John Paul II, which I witnessed as a lecturer at Lublin Catholic University, where John Paul, as Karol Wojtyla, taught for nearly a quarter-century before he was called to Rome. University of Colorado Professor Charles Wilkinson, an expert in American Indian law, called Deloria “probably the most influential American Indian of the past century” (Dahl, 2005). “He was also a wonderful human being, brilliant, bitingly funny and profoundly warm and compassionate, always willing to lend a hand or lift a spirit,” Wilkinson added (Dahl, 2005). Deloria died following complications of surgery for a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm at Exempla Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, according to his son Philip, a history professor at the University of Michigan and a noted author in his own right (Williams, 2005). Before the aneurysm surgery complications, Deloria had struggled with recovery problems from colon cancer surgery more than a month earlier. For many days and weeks after his passing, the news rippled through Deloria’s vast extended family in the United States and around the world, by e-mail and personal contact, hand to hand, ear to ear, to “all our relations,” in a Native American sense. Even the rocks on which we walk sent their condolences, so it was said. I heard many Native people say that he lives—in his words and in our memories—and that we all go to the other side eventually. Many who knew

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Deloria drew comfort from the belief that he will be in the other world when they pass over. University of Minnesota American Indian Studies Professor David Wilkins, who is Lumbee, wrote in Indian Country Today that Deloria “was never quite comfortable with the notion that he was, in fact, the principal champion of tribal nations since he wanted—no, demanded—that each Native nation express confidence in its own national identity, develop its own unique talents and together wield their collective sovereignty, that is, their dignity and integrity, in a way that enriches them and the nations around them as well” (Wilkins, 2005). Reacting to his own influence, Deloria tried as best he could to spread his intellectual wealth around. “Above all,” wrote Wilkins, Deloria “fought tirelessly for human, not just indigenous, freedom and for ecological respect and common-sense approaches to heal the environment’s many wounds. Deloria believed that America’s national soul would never be cleansed until justice had been fully achieved by indigenous nations, blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans, women, impoverished whites, any disempowered groups, and especially young people” (Wilkins, 2005). The passing of Deloria was deeply personal around Indian Country because his network of friends and acquaintances was so large. Deloria’s early books called me to a life of writing and advocacy with and about Native Americans before the Wounded Knee occupation in 1973. Later, in the early 1980s, after my initial work linking the Iroquois to the founding of democracy had been rejected by about fifty trade and academic publishers, Deloria suggested I send it to Gambit, a small Massachusetts publisher run as a retirement hobby by Lovell Thompson, formerly of Houghton-Mifflin. Thompson had declined one of Deloria’s books, but Deloria liked Thompson’s erudite rejection letter. All along the way, Vine provided support and incisive words, advice, healing Indian humor, and prefaces for some of my books, as recently as Enduring Legacies in 2004. I am only one person who stood on Vine’s shoulders. The number of people inspired by him is uncounted—do not try to estimate a number. I once told a colleague, University of Nebraska at Omaha religion professor Dale Stover, that I could no longer ask Vine for help; he had given me so much, and I had nothing to give back that he would ever need. “Have you realized,” Stover replied, “that your work is his reward?” A SIGNIFICANT VOICE Deloria, a Standing Rock Sioux, first became nationally known during the late 1960s, following publication of his book Custer Died for Your Sins. Deloria also rose to national prominence as a spokesman for Native self-determination movements, becoming a widely respected professor, author, and social critic in several fields, including law, religion, and political science, as well as Native American studies. He was one of the best-known founders of Native American studies as a field of scholarly inquiry in the late twentieth century.


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By the late 1990s, Deloria was described by Roger Dunsmore in the Handbook of Native American Literature as: The most significant voice in this generation regarding the presentation and analysis of contemporary Indian affairs, their history, present shape, and meaning…. No other voice, Indian or white, has as full a command of the overall data of Indian history or affairs, and no other voice has the moral force, the honesty, to admit mistakes and to redress them, or the edge to bite through the layers of soft tissue, through the stereotypes, myths, and outright lies, to the bone … marrow of Indian affairs. (Dunsmore, 1996, 411)

“The great indigenous visionary, philosopher, author and activist Vine Deloria, Jr. passed over to join his ancestors today, November 13, 2005,” said a statement from the Colorado American Indian Movement (2005). “Our thoughts and prayers go to his wife, Barbara, to his children [Philip, Daniel, and Jeanne] and his other relatives [a brother, a sister, and seven grandchildren]. The passing of Vine creates a huge intellectual and analytical void in the native and non-native worlds…. It is safe to say that without the example provided by the writing and the thinking of Vine Deloria, Jr., there likely would have been no American Indian Movement, [and] there would be no international indigenous peoples’ movement as it exists today” (Colorado American Indian Movement, 2005). “He had the courage and the vision,” the statement continued, “to challenge the dominating society at its core. He was unapologetic in confronting the racism of United States law and policy, and he was prophetic in challenging young indigenous activists to hone their strategies. He was our elder statesman and mentor…. For many of us, Vine was a contemporary Crazy Horse” (Colorado American Indian Movement, 2005). A public memorial for Deloria was held on November 18 at the Mount Vernon Event Center, Golden, Colorado, west of Denver, as a scholarship fund was initiated in his name. An obituary in The New York Times recalled that “While his Custer book, with its incendiary title, was categorized at the time as an angry young man’s anthem, Mr. Deloria’s real weapon, critics and admirers said, was his scathing, sardonic humor, which he was able to use on both sides of the Indian-white divide. He once called the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were defeated by a combined force of Sioux and Northern Cheyenne in 1876 in the Montana territory, ‘a sensitivity-training session’” (Johnson, 2005). “‘We have brought the white man a long way in 500 years,’” Deloria wrote in a New York Times op-ed article during 1976. “‘From a childish search for mythical cities of gold and fountains of youth to the simple recognition that lands are essential for human existence’” (Johnson, 2005). In person, Deloria was known for his sharp onstage wit. Addressing 500 students at Boise State University on February 28, 1998, he jested about nineteenth-century pseudoscientific assumptions that Europeans were the most intelligent race because they had the largest skulls. That was before “the discovery

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that Apaches had something like 100 cc’s more cranial capacity than Harvard professors,” Deloria joked (Etlinger, 1998). A RENOWNED FAMILY Deloria was part of a renowned Sioux family that had a significant impact on U.S. life and letters long before his birth. As a member of the faculty at Columbia University beginning in 1929, Ella Cara Deloria (1889–1971) gained notice as an outstanding anthropologist and linguist. She wrote Dakota Texts (1932), which is bilingual in Dakota and English, and Speaking of Indians (1944), a description of Native life before the arrival of Europeans. Ella Cara Deloria was born in Wakpala, South Dakota; her Dakota name, Anbpetu Wastewin meant “Good Woman of the Day.” She attended Oberlin College and Columbia University, from which she graduated in 1915 with a bachelor’s degree. After working as a schoolteacher and an employee of the YMCA (in Indian education), Ella Cara Deloria returned to Columbia as a professor of anthropology, where she worked with Franz Boas on two major studies of Dakota language. She also authored a novel, Waterlily, during the 1940s. It was published in 1988, 17 years after her death. In her later years, Ella Cara Deloria continued to write, speak, and work with reservation mission schools as she added to her Dakota grammar, fearing that it might join other Native languages in historical oblivion before she could finish. She died of pneumonia at the Tripp Nursing Home, Vermillion, South Dakota, on February 12, 1971. One of the first American Indians to become an Episcopal minister, Philip Deloria (Yankton Sioux, 1854–1931) is one of about ninety historical figures whose statues surround Christ in Majesty at the Washington, DC, National Episcopal Cathedral. As the longtime rector of St. Elizabeth Mission on the Standing Rock Reservation, Deloria was said to have converted thousands of Sioux to Christianity. He was the father of Ella Cara Deloria and grandfather of Vine Deloria Jr. Vine Deloria Jr. was born in Martin, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, on March 26, 1933. Educated in reservation schools during his early years, Deloria served in the Marine Corps between 1954 and 1956, before he earned a bachelor of science degree at Iowa State University (granted in 1958) and a bachelor of divinity at the Lutheran School of Theology in 1963. After that, Deloria served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. At the same time, Deloria was a member of the U.S. Board of Inquiry on Hunger and Malnutrition. Serving on this board, he found black children in the Mississippi Delta eating red clay to deal with hunger (Dunsmore, 1996, 412). Early in his life as an activist, Deloria channeled his intellectual efforts into legal studies, entering the University of Colorado Law School in 1967. He took up legal studies expressly to advance Native rights. Deloria completed study for his law degree in 1970 and later, in 1990, joined the University of Colorado’s faculty, teaching until his retirement in 2000. While teaching at the University of Colorado, Deloria’s home department was history, but he also was affiliated with


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ethnic studies, religious studies, political science, and the law school, one indication of academic respect he commanded across many disciplines. COMMON THEMES OF DELORIA’S WRITTEN WORK Deloria’s written work (including twenty books and more than a hundred major articles) stress a common theme, according to Dunsmore: that sin is a major element in U.S. history and that “the sinners are those who have stolen and desecrated the land” (Dunsmore, 1996, 413). On this subject, Deloria quoted Curley, a Crow chief, who is best known to history as one of the scouts for George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. Curley is not known as a great Native American philosopher, but his words, spoken in 1912, evoke memories of Tecumseh, Sea’th’l, and Black Elk: The soil you see is not ordinary soil—it is the dust of the blood, the flesh and the bones of our ancestors. We fought and bled and died to keep other Indians from taking it, and we fought and bled and died helping the whites. You will have to dig down through the surface before you find nature’s earth, as the upper portion is Crow…. The land is my blood and my dead; it is consecrated; and I do not want to give up any portion of it. (Dunsmore, 1996, 415)

As early as the 1950s, Deloria was engaging in acute criticism of the Indian Claims Commission, arguing that it was a device by which to avoid treaty issues, not address them. He pointed out that laws and regulations announced as socalled help to Indians often perpetuated colonialism. Historically, Deloria argued, the rights of Native Americans have trailed those of other social groups in the United States. For example, slavery of Alaska natives was not outlawed until 1886, two decades after the Civil War. Deloria has won a broad audience among a wide variety of people for asserting, with a sharp wit, contradictions in the general cant of contemporary U.S. life. For example, in We Talk, You Listen (1970), Deloria recalled a conversation with a non-Indian who asked him, “What did you [Native Americans] do with the land when you had it?” Deloria said he did not understand the ecological irony of such a question until later, when he discovered that the Cuyahoga River running through Cleveland was flammable. So many combustible pollutants were dumped into the river that the inhabitants had to take special precautions during summer to avoid accidentally setting it on fire. “After reviewing the argument of my non-Indian friend,” wrote Deloria, “I decided that he was probably correct. Whites had made better use of the land. How many Indians could have thought of creating a flammable river?” (Deloria, 1970, 9) Deloria defined the differences between European and Native American views of the land this way: The tribal-communal way of life, devoid of economic competition, views land as the most vital part of man’s existence. It is THEIRS. It supports them, tells them

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where they live, and defines HOW they live. Land does not have the simple sentimentality of purple mountains majesty…. Rather it provides a center of the universe for the group that lives on it. As such, the people who hold land in this way always have a home to go to. Their identity is secure. They live with it and do not abstract themselves from it and live off it. (Deloria, 1970, 175)

Jousting with missionaries, Deloria in his many speeches sometimes condensed half a millennium of history in North America into one sentence: When the missionaries came, they had the book (the Bible), and Indians had the land. Now, Deloria said, they have the land, and Indians have the book. Deloria called for adaptation of Native American land ethics to a general nonIndian society that finds itself faced with the environmental damage pursuant to 2,000 years’ experience exercising the biblical commandment to multiply and subdue the earth. American society could save itself by listening to tribal people. While this would take a radical reorientation of concepts and values, it would be well worth the effort. The land-use philosophy of Indians is so utterly simple that it seems stupid to repeat it: man must live with other forms of life on the land and not destroy it. The implications of this philosophy are very far-reaching for the contemporary political and economic system. Reorientation would mean that public interest, indeed the interest in the survival of humanity as a species, must take precedent over special economic interests. Now the laugh is ours. After four centuries of gleeful rape, the white man stands a mere generation away from extinguishing life on this planet. (Deloria, 1970, 189, 195)

Throughout his life, Deloria continued to write a number of books and articles that often took issue with Eurocentric interpretations of reality. His early books, such as Custer Died for Your Sins (1969), We Talk, You Listen (1970), and Of Utmost Good Faith (1971), continued to spread to new, younger audiences. In all of his works, Deloria has asserted Native American rights of occupancy to the land. Under international law, according to Deloria, Native American nations possess an equitable title of occupancy over lands upon which they lived, “and this occupancy was not to be disturbed except by voluntary and lawful sales of lands to the European country claiming the legal title to the area in question” (Lyons, 1992, 283). Deloria’s writings also compare the metaphysics of Native American and European points of view, especially in legal and religious matters. In God Is Red (1973), Deloria argued that American Indian spiritual traditions, far from being out-of-date, are more congruent with the needs of the modern world than is Christianity, which Deloria said fostered imperialism and disregard for the planet’s ecology (Johnson, 2005). In God Is Red, he also contrasts Native American religion’s melding of life with a concept of sacred place to the artificial of Old World doctrines. Deloria compared the nature of sacredness in each perceptual realm. His discussion of sacredness also examines ecological themes in Native American religions. Deloria also compares the ways in which each culture perceives


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reality: Europeans seeing time as linear and history as a progressive sequence of events; most Native cultures as neither of these. Christianity usually portrays God as a humanlike being, often meddlesome and vengeful, whereas many Native religions place supreme authority in a great mystery symbolizing the life forces of nature. To Deloria, the great mystery of Sioux theology becomes an ecological metaphor, as he explains ways in which Native American theologies weave a concept of cycles into life, reinforcing reverence for the land and the remains of ancestors buried in it, contrasted to Europeans’ ability to move from place to place without regard for location, until the reality of the American land and its often unwritten history begin to absorb them. Deloria’s beliefs are not his alone; they may be read in a historical context provided by Luther Standing Bear, Chief Sea’th’l, and other Native American leaders. Deloria points out that many Native Americans and non-Indians have trouble communicating because, even today, their perceptual realms are different. The fundamental factor that keeps Indians and non-Indians from communicating is that they are speaking about two entirely different perceptions of the world. Growing up on an Indian reservation makes one acutely aware of the mysteries of the universe. Medicine men practicing their ancient ceremonies perform feats that amaze and puzzle the rational mind. The sense of contentment enjoyed by older Indians in the face of a lifetime’s experience of betrayal, humiliation and paternalism stuns the outside observer. It often appears that Indians are immune to the values which foreign institutions have forced them to confront. Their minds remain fixed on other realities. (Deloria, 1979, vii)

Ernest Cassirer, who is cited approvingly by Deloria, wrote that for Native American peoples, “Nature becomes one great society, the society of life. Man is not endowed with an outstanding rank in this society. He is part of it, but he is in no respect higher than any other member” (Cassirer, 1944, 83). Commented Deloria, “All species, all forms of life, have equal status before the presence of the universal power to which they are subject. The religious requirement for all life-forms is thus harmony, and this requirement holds for every species, ours included” (Deloria, 1979, 153–54). Deloria’s work often provides a trenchant critique of progress and civilization, two connotatively loaded words that have propelled the expansion of European lifeways around the earth, two words that are usually invested by Europeandescended thinkers with connotations of uncontested goodness, or— if not goodness—at least of inevitability. In recent years, we have come to understand what progress is. It is the total replacement of nature by an artificial technology. Progress is the absolute destruction of the real world in favor of a technology that creates a comfortable way of life for a few fortunately situated people. Within our lifetime the difference between the Indian use of land and the white use of land will become crystal clear. The Indian lived with his land. The white destroyed his land. He destroyed the planet earth. (Hughes, 1983, 136; emphasis in original)

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Entering his late sixties by the year 2000, Deloria often walked with a cane. When people asked him about it, he was prone to say he had “been bitten by a rabid Republican and got a staph infection” (Wilitz, 1997). Complaining about the left-leaning nature of the professoriat, Vincent Carroll, editorial page editor of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, pointed out with a straight face that Deloria was the only registered Republican among faculty of the History Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Carroll seemed to have missed what most people who knew Deloria knew as obvious: He had signed up as a Republican as a joke. A consummate observer of academic rituals, Deloria was a critic of research methods often employed by scholars investigating Native American peoples: My original complaint against researchers is that they seem to derive all the benefits and bear no responsibility for the ways in which their findings are used. In making this accusation, I said that scholars should be required to put something back into the Indian community, preferably some form of financial support, so the community can do some things it wants to do. (Deloria, 1991, 457)

Throughout his life, Deloria was a sharp critic of many theories that often had assumed the status of revealed truth among many non-Indian academics. One of these is the assumption that Native Americans populated the Western Hemisphere solely by crossing a land bridge from Siberia, the Bering Strait theory. Scientists, and I use the word as loosely as possible, are committed to the view that Indians migrated to this country over an imaginary Bering Straits bridge, which comes and goes at the convenience of the scholar requiring it to complete his or her theory. Initially, at least, Indians are [said to be] homogenous. But there are also eight major language families within the Western Hemisphere, indicating to some scholars that if Indians followed the trend that can be identified in other continents, then the migration went from east to west; tourists along the Bering straits were going to Asia, not migrating from it. (Deloria, 1996))

Although some scholars debate whether Native Americans really had a religious ethic that viewed the earth as mother, contemporary Native American religious and intellectual leaders continue to use the image with a frequency that evokes the rhetoric of Tecumseh and Black Elk. Deloria, who is arguably the father of the late twentieth century’s intellectual renaissance in Native America, has been arguing ecological views of history for more than three decades with a rising sense of urgency as environmental crises intensify around the world. The stakes, in Deloria’s analysis, include the future of humanity (as well as other animals) as viable species on an increasingly sullied earth. “It will take a continuing protest from an increasingly large chorus,” wrote Deloria, “to reprogram the psychology of American society so that we will not irreversibly destroy the land we live on” (Deloria, 1992, 2). His sense of urgency at the speed of environmental deterioration during the last years of the twentieth century was palatable: “Only a radical reversal of our attitudes toward nature can


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help us,” he said (Deloria, 1992, 2). “Nor do I look forward to paying the penalties that Mother Earth must now levy against us in order for Her to survive” (Deloria, 1992, 3). He continued: It remains for us now to learn once again that we are part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world. As we face the twenty-first century, the next decade will be the testing ground for this proposition. We may well become one of the few species in this vast universe that has permanently ruined our home. (Deloria, 1992, 3)

REMEMBERING DELORIA Inside the Mount Vernon Event Center in Golden, Colorado, Deloria was remembered during the late afternoon of November 18, 2005, by a standingroom-only crowd as an activist who, with biting satire and wit, provided intellectual muscle for the Native American civil rights revolution that began in the late 1960s, propelling Native peoples away from cradle-to-grave government supervision into a new era of self-determination and active pursuit of sovereignty and exercise of treaty-defined economic rights. Deloria was eulogized not only as an American activist but also as a more general figure who challenged mainstream religious assumptions as well as the industrial state’s relationship with the earth. Doug George-Kanentiio, Mohawk activist and close friend of Deloria, recalled his “laser-light ability to zero in on the contradictions, deceptions, and lies which defined so-called ‘western civilization’” (George-Kanentiio, 2005, 2). Floyd Westerman and Joanne Shennandoah sang, after which George Tinker gave a blessing. A slide show provided glimpses of Deloria and his family. He was buried in Golden, Colorado, in the Mount Vernon Cemetery. According to an account provided by Heidi McCann, who attended the service, Philip Deloria said that, in the Lakota way, those who cross over stay here for four days, that he (Vine) visited with everyone he met (McCann, 2005). Deloria was remembered as a family man and a lover of country music who treasured a note from Gene Audrey, dogs, professional football, and old movies, who fondly recalled his days as a Marine. The program handed out at the service called him “always a warrior, who fought the good fight until the very end [who is] even now exploring the spirit world that captivated his intellect during the course of his life” (“Celebration of the Life,” 2005). At the memorial service, Norbert Hill, a close friend of Deloria’s, noted that with his passing “the training wheels had been taken off.” It was now time, said Hill, for each of us to continue the struggle that Deloria had led for so long, relying now on our own individual and collective knowledge and talents. It is unquestionably true that over the last four decades we in Indian Country were overly dependent on Deloria’s penetrating knowledge; his exquisite wit; his cunning and hugely effective political, legal, and cultural strategies; and his delicious and biting humor (Wilkins, 2005).

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The same day that Deloria was remembered and put to rest, Vincent Carroll, editorial page editor of the Rocky Mountain News, still seemed to be seething over Deloria’s playful response to his relentless effort to portray the University of Colorado faculty as a hotbed of political liberalism. In a column on the newspaper’s editorial page, Carroll coldly recalled Deloria as “wacky” (Carroll, 2005). Carroll condemned Deloria as antiscientific and for maintaining, in Red Earth, White Lies (1995), that American Indians “existed here ‘at the beginning,’ probably as contemporaries of dinosaurs, and this bizarre claim only hints at his contempt for much science” (Carroll, 2005). The dinosaur quip is Carroll’s invention, a gigantic stretch of Deloria’s argument in the book. No humans existed anywhere for millions of years after the era of the dinosaurs, and Deloria knew that. One can only imagine the letter to the editor Deloria might have written had he been able to reply to Carroll. Deloria’s son Philip did reply: Vine Deloria Jr…. was open to any number of ideas that might be called “wacky.” He was willing to step outside the boundaries of acceptable knowledge…. Of course, this isn’t the first time the News has felt compelled to make light of his intellectual openness and curiosity. Who could forget the complaint a couple of years ago that the Center of the American West’s Wallace Stegner Award was being given, not to a legitimate figure of some import, but to a “crank”? It might interest Mr. Carroll to know that the current thought regarding the peopling of the Americas is trending away from the simplicities of the Bering Straits theory—which, as you know, my father vehemently criticized—to a far more nuanced account, one open to multiple possibilities of multiple migrations. What looked wacky 10 years ago might well look quite plausible 10 years from now. Vine Deloria Jr. took seriously the possibility of an American Indian creationism, a position not so far removed from similar debates unfolding today. I trust that the News will be as zealous in patrolling the power and status of “science” when the subject is Christian creationism cloaked as “intelligent design.” To do otherwise would be intellectually dishonest, if not also casually racist…. Perhaps Carroll might have waited a day? It seems unworthy of the News—and egregiously so—to offer such a nasty little comment on the day when Indian people from around the country were arriving en masse to grieve his loss and to celebrate his life. Is this the paper’s general practice when a complicated thinker and public figure passes on? It seems to me ill-mannered and indecent.(Deloria, 2005)

Beating Indian drums, and demanding a meeting with editors (which was not forthcoming), the Colorado American Indian Movement (AIM) picketed the Rocky Mountain News the Monday after Deloria was buried. AIM’s spokesman, Glenn Morris, said that Carroll had slurred a man who was “the equivalent of Thurgood Marshall, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King rolled into one in the eyes of the Indian world” (“AIM Fire,” 2005).


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The pickets at “the Rocky” recalled that little seemed to have changed since 1863, when the paper described the Ute people as “a dissolute, vagabondish, brutal and ungrateful race” that “ought to be wiped from the face of the earth” (“AIM Fire,” 2005). The protesters also demanded that Rocky Mountain News issue an apology (which also was not forthcoming) “for its role in inciting and celebrating the Sand Creek Massacre,” an 1864 assault on a peaceful Cheyenne camp in which at least 163 men women and children were murdered and mutilated (“AIM Fire,” 2005). Carroll later apologized by e-mail to Philip Deloria and then complained that he had not known Vine Deloria was being buried the day he published his derogatory column. For a man who postured as an expert news authority and who calls his own opinion column “On Point,” it was a rather lame excuse. The date of Deloria’s service and burial in a suburb of Denver hardly had been a state secret. Although editors at the Rocky Mountain News recalled Vine Deloria Jr. as a “crank” and a “wacko,” Indian Country Today’s editors described the affection for him that poured from Native America at the same time: We remember the beloved teacher for his generosity of spirit. As a professor, Deloria mentored and touched many people across all ethnic and religious persuasions while always managing to teach and guide the work of scores of Native graduate students and young activists, many of whom went on to gain success and prominence on their own. He wrote prefaces and introductions and recommendations by the dozens in careful assessments of the work at hand, but was always ready to add his considerable gravity to the work of newer hands. He would not tolerate fuzzy thinking, however, and could and would hold his students to task…. In every generation, to paraphrase the late Creek Medicine Man Phillip Deere, there is one who hits the click-stone just right, and sparks the fire. In his generation, Vine Deloria Jr. sparked the intellectual fire of political, legal, historical and spiritual illumination. He lighted the path to the fountainhead of knowledge, which points the way ahead. (“In Memoriam,” 2005)

FURTHER READING “AIM Fire: The American Indian Movement Targets the Rocky.” Denver Westword, December 15, 2005, n.p. (in Lexis). Carroll, Vincent. “On Point: Vine Deloria’s Other Side.” Rocky Mountain News, November 18, 2005, n.p. Cassirer, Ernest. An Essay on Man. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944. “Celebration of the Life of Vine Deloria, Jr., A” Program distributed at public memorial service, Mount Vernon Event Center, Golden, CO, November 18, 2005. Colorado American Indian Movement. “In Honor of Vine Deloria, Jr. (1933–2005).” Statement. November 14, 2005. Dahl, Corey. “Indian Activist and Popular Author Dies; Vine Deloria Jr. Was a Retired C.U. Professor.” Boulder (Colorado) Daily Camera, November 15, 2005, n.p.

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Deloria, Philip J. “Deloria Reveled in Thinking Outside the Box.” Letter. Rocky Mountain News, November 23, 2005, n.p. Deloria, Vine, Jr. “Commentary: Research, Redskins, and Reality.” American Indian Quarterly 15, no. 4 (Fall 1991): 457–68. Deloria, Vine, Jr. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, [1969]1988. Deloria, Vine, Jr. E-mail to Bruce E. Johansen, May 15, 1996. Deloria, Vine, Jr. God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. 2nd ed. Golden, CO: North American Press/Fulcrum, 1992. Deloria, Vine, Jr. The Metaphysics of Modern Existence. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979. Deloria, Vine, Jr. Of Utmost Good Faith. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1971. Deloria, Vine, Jr. Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact. New York: Scribner, 1995. Deloria, Vine, Jr. We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf. New York: Macmillan, 1970. Dunsmore, Roger. “Vine Deloria, Jr.” Handbook of Native American Literature. Ed. Andrew Wiget. New York: Garland, 1996. 411–15. Etlinger, Charles. “Indian Scholar Blows Holes in Theories: Deloria Says Lazy Scientists Adjust Facts to Fit Ideas.” Idaho Statesman, February 28, 1998: 1-B. George-Kanentiio, Doug. “Deloria as I Knew Him.” Indian Time 23, no. 46 (November 17, 2005): 2–3. Hughes, J. Donald. American Indian Ecology. El Paso: University of Texas Press, 1983. “In Memoriam: Vine Deloria Jr.” Indian Country Today. November 17, 2005. . Johnson, Kirk. “Vine Deloria Jr., Champion of Indian Rights, Dies at 72.” The New York Times, November 15, 2005. . Burns, Shannon. “Mohawk Immersion Program Goes Full-speed Ahead.” Indian Time, September 1, 2005: 6. Burns, Shannon. “Mohawk Language Is Just a Mouse Click Away.” Indian Time (Akwesasne), August 18, 2005: 1, 3. Cantoni, G., ed. Stabilizing Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University, 1996. Chang, Jack. “State’s Indians Uncover the Past.” Contra Costa Times, June 14, 2004, n.p. Clarke, Brennan. “Central Saanich Teacher Leading Charge to Save Local Indigenous Language from Extinction.” Victoria News, April 21, 2006. . Coin, Glenn. “Oneida Spoken Here; Eight Taking Classes in Tribe’s Language to Keep It Alive.” Syracuse Post-Standard, October 6, 2004, n.p. . “Community Effort Brings Potawatomi to a New Generation of the Prairie Band.” Topeka Capital Journal, November 2, 1995, n.p. Cornacchia, Cheryl. “Ancient Tongue, Modern Software: Kahnawake AIMS to Revive Mohawk Language; All Its 900 Public Employees Must Take Lessons.” Montreal

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Gazette, June 12, 2006. . “The Critical Moment: Funding the Perpetuation of Native Languages” Transcript of Proceedings, Lannan Foundation. Santa Fe, NM, January 26–28, 1998. Dillon, Jenni. “It Lies within the Culture.” Jackson Hole (Wyoming) Star-Tribune, August 30, 2005. . Estes, James. “How Many Indigenous Languages are Spoken in the United States? By How Many Speakers?” National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Rutgers University, 1999. . First Nations Confederacy of Cultural Education Centers. “First Nations Languages Funds Languish in Ottawa.” Press release. September 21, 2005. . Fishman, Joshua F. “Maintaining Languages: What Works, What Doesn’t?” Stabilizing Indigenous Languages. Ed. G. Cantoni. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University, 1996, 186–98. Fishman, Joshua F. Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters, 1991. Gee, Pat. “Native Speech: An Audio CD Package Aims to Give the Hawaiian Language the Place It Deserves in Everyday Life.” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 24, 2004. . Graef, Christine. “N.C.C.C. [North Country Community College] to Include Mohawk Language and Culture in Evening Course.” Indian Time 23, no. 227 (July 7, 2005): 7. Hayes, Ernestine. “Indigenous Languages Key to Cultural Identity.” Juneau Empire, June 12, 2005. . “In the Language of Our Ancestors; Programs in Montana and Washington Give Voice to Disappearing Words.” Northwest Education Magazine 9, no.3 (Spring 2004). . Johansen, Bruce E. “Living and Breathing: Native Languages Come Alive.” Native Americas 17, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 56–59. Kie, Will. “Language Program Preserves Ancient Language.” Cibola Beacon, June 28, 2005. . Kizzia, Tom. “Natives Want Their Dying Language Taught; Nanwalek: Village Asks Kenai School District to Make Sugt’stun Part of Curriculum.” Anchorage Daily News, April 9, 2006. . Krauss, Michael. “The World’s Languages in Crisis.” Language 68 (1992): 6–10. Kuchera, Steve. “Bands Focus on Preservation; Language Revitalization Groups Work to Save Minnesota’s First Languages and Cultures.” Duluth News-Tribune, June 28, 2004. <listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/ wa?A2=ind0406&L=ilat&P=3891>. Lacitis, Erik. “Last Few Whulshootseed Speakers Spread the Word.” Seattle Times, February 11, 2005. <listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/ wa?A2=ind0502&L=ilat&P=1530>. LaFortune, Richard. “Ojibwe and Dakota Language Revitalization Moves Forward in Minnesota.” Press release. April 20, 2004. “Lakota Immersion Camp Teaches Tribal Language, Traditions.” Sioux City Journal, April 29, 2005. <listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/ wa?A2=ind0504&L=ilat&P=6792>. “Lakota on Path to Recapture Language.” Ascribe Newsletter, March 15, 2006 (from Lexis). Leiste, Matthew. “College Uses Rap Music to Preserve a Language.” Sisseton Wahpeton College. Press release. August 21, 2005. .

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Logue, Susan. “New Lakota Leader Puts Emphasis on Language.” Voice of America. November 29, 2005. . Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Marigza, Lilla. “Nome Congregation Keeps Native Language Alive in Ministry.” Worldwide Faith News Archives. December 21, 2005. . Martin, Ian. “Restoring Linguistic Rights for Aboriginals.” Toronto Star, June 3, 2005. <www.caslt.org/Info2/newsenglishjuly05.htm>. Martinson, Bob. “Using Technology to Resurrect a Near-Forgotten Language.” The Frontiersman. February 13, 2005. . Matthews, Lisa. “More Than Words; Mohawk Language and Cultural Revitalization in New York: Interview with Kay Olan, Co-director of Kanatsiohareke.” Cultural Survival 27, no. 4 (December 15, 2003). <www.cs.org/publications/csq/index.cfm?id=27.4>. McCarty, Teresa L., Lucille J. Watahomigie, Akira Y. Yamamoto, and Ofelia Zepeda. “School-Community-University Collaborations: The American Indian Language Development Institute.” Teaching Indigenous Languages. Ed. Jon Reyhner. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University, 1997. January 6, 2006. . “Miami Dictionary.” Associated Press. June 29, 2005. . Morrison, Eric. “Dauenhauer Teaches Language That’s on the Edge.” Juneau Empire, September 21, 2005. . Neyman, Jenny. “Class Helps Preserve Dena’ina Heritage.” Fairbanks News-Miner, June 27, 2004. <listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/ wa?A2=ind0406&L=ilat&P=3247>. “NMSU Student to Do Play-by-Play in Navajo.” Associated Press, September 22, 2005. KOBTV.com. . Nugent, Tom. “As Tribal Speakers Dwindle, a Rush to Teach Their Words: Native American Languages at Risk.” Boston Globe, May 31, 2005. <listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/ wa?A2=ind0505&L=ilat&D=1&P=7735>. Ogden, Karen. “Tribal College Expands with Dedication of Cultural Center.” Great Falls (Montana) Tribune, June 2, 2005, n.p. Ostendorff, Jon. “Signs Spell Out Tribe’s Passion to Revitalize Native Language.” Asheville Citizen-Times, May 12, 2004. . “Preserving the Klamath Tongue.” Klamath Falls Herald and News, July 31, 2005. . Quintero, Carolyn. Osage Grammar. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Rahimi, Shadi. “American Indian Youths Preserve the Past, One Word at a Time.” Pacific News Service, Youth News Feature. May 11, 2005. Redish, Laura. “Native Languages of the Americas: Endangered Language Revitalization and Revival.” March 2001. . Reyhner, Jon, ed. Teaching Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff: Center for Excellence in Education, Northern Arizona University, 1997.

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Reyhner, Jon, Gina Cantoni, Robert N. St. Clair, and Evangeline Parsons Yazzie. Revitalizing Native Languages. Flagstaff: Center for Excellence in Education, Northern Arizona University, 1999. “Sealaska Heritage Offers Immersion Retreats.” JuneauEmpire.com. July 30, 2004. <listserv. arizona.edu/cgi-bin/ wa?A2=ind0407&L=ilat&P=4228>. Sims, Hank. “Speak It Good and Strong; Yurok Youth Vow to Bring Back the Language of Their Ancestors.” North Coast Journal, January 12, 2006. Via IndigenousNewsNet [email protected], no 618 (January 13, 2006). Smith, Bruce, and M. L. Cornette. “Defining a New Oral Tradition: American Indian Radio in the Dakotas.” SANTEC Weekly Newsletter. University of South Dakota, March 1, 2004. Springer, Patrick. “Spreading the Word: Project Uses Translated Rap Music as Means for Younger American Indians to Learn Native Language.” Fargo Forum, September 12, 2005. . Stastna, Kazi. “There’s No M for Mohawk; Language Fading, Software May Help Delay Disappearance.” Montreal Gazette, April 27, 2004, n.p. “U.S.-Canadian Native Students Play Scrabble Tournament in Dakota Language.” Associated Press. March 25, 2006 (in Lexis). Viotti, Vicki. “Native Language Goes Online.” Honolulu Advertiser, April 4, 2004. . Wilson, S. J. “Utilizing Song and Film to Teach Hopi Language.” Navajo Hopi Observer, April 2005. <listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/ wa?A2=ind0504&L=ilat&T=0&P=1797>. Wittmeyer, Alicia. “Linguistics Prof Revives Fight to Save Indigenous Languages; Pushes Senate Committee to Fund Immersion Schools.” The Daily Californian (University of California–Berkeley), May 27, 2003. . Wiwcha, David. “Task Force Calls for Funding of Aboriginal Language Project.” Today. October 4, 2005, n.p.

CHAPTER 2

Where Has All the Money Gone?

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eginning in 1887 through the General Allotment Act (sometimes known after its primary congressional sponsor, Senator Henry Dawes), American Indians were brought (rarely willingly) into what President George W. Bush later would call the “ownership society,” the lower rungs of capitalism, with their communal lands extinguished and as much as 90 percent parceled out to immigrant non-Indians. The lands remaining under Native ownership often included natural resources (lumber and, later, oil, natural gas, and other things) that were exploited by non-Indians. In theory, like other owners of resources, the Native landowners were supposed to be paid royalties through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Treasury Department, through accounts called Individual Indian Monies. More than a century later, when Blackfeet Nation accountant Eloise Cobell filed a lawsuit to narrow the distance between that theory and a reality of mismanagement and fraud, she had only the slightest inkling of the financial monster she had discovered. First estimates of mismanaged funds ranged from $2 billion to $4 billion (Johansen, 1997, 14)—a lot of money, surely, but a pittance compared to the $176 billion that was estimated 10 years later. By 2006, the Individual Indian Monies mess had become the stuff of political and legal legend, nine years after the class-action case that became known as Cobell v. Norton was first filed. With 500,000 plaintiffs, the case has grown to be the largest class action ever filed against the U.S. federal government. Employing more than 100 lawyers on the payrolls of the Interior and Treasury departments, Cobell v. Norton (after Cobell, the lead plaintiff, and Gale Norton, then secretary of the Interior) has become the largest single employer of federal legal talent in the history of the republic. Cobell rented a modest four-room office in Browning, Montana, and by 2005 had funded her legal challenge with about $12 million in grant money.

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Characterized as “small, soft-voiced, and an energetic 59 years old [in 2005]—she refers to herself as ‘kind of hyper’ even six weeks after undergoing surgery to donate a kidney to her husband—Cobell seems an unlikely crusader. But she is the great-granddaughter of Mountain Chief, part of a pantheon of legendary Blackfeet warriors who battled the U.S. government as far back as its original realestate emissaries, Lewis and Clark” (Whitty, 2005). During 2002, the Blackfeet awarded Cobell status as a warrior, rare for a woman, but hardly inappropriate at a time when robbery takes novel forms. REDEFINING “TRUST” Not even George Orwell, in his imaginary world where the names of government agencies described the opposite of their intentions, could have topped the wordplay at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Try this one on Big Brother: “Trust,” as in trust responsibility and trust account. Not even Orwellian Newspeak could describe what became of all varieties of trust among those Native Americans for whom the BIA became banker. More than three hundred Native American governments (with 2,965 accounts as of 1992) and 500,000 Native American individuals who have trust accounts with the Great White Father soon were asking what had become of their money. It has been cold comfort to many of them who have learned that the BIA, their legal trustee, very possibly had not a clue. Even then the adversarial legal system dragged on as if in perpetual motion, the government unwilling to make things right as best it could. Instead, by 2006, Uncle Sam’s legal talent was focused on successfully convincing a higher court to dismiss the judge it believed was biased. More on this later. The trust accounts ranged in size from 35 cents to $1 million for individuals. Among Native bands and nations, the largest single account was the roughly $400 million set aside for the Sioux settlement of the Black Hills land claim, which has not been paid because the Sioux have not agreed to accept it. The Navajo Nation had an account worth $23 million. Three-quarters of the group trust assets were held by 8 percent of Native nations in 1992, according to a 1992 report of the House Committee on Government Operations titled Misplaced Trust: The Bureau of Indian Affairs Mismanagement of the Indian Trust Funds. How much money was at stake? In 1997, the commonly accepted figure was between $2 billion and $3 billion. By late 2002, lead prosecutor Dennis Gingold placed the figure at “far north of $10 billion” (Kennedy, 2002). A report prepared for the Interior Department suggested that the federal government’s total liability might reach $40 billion. Tack on a few billion more and you have Uncle Sam’s annual bill for the Iraq War in 2004. A report prepared for the Interior Department in 2004 suggested that the federal government’s total liability to Native Americans eventually might reach $40 billion, which would work out to about $80,000 per plaintiff. Even that paled next to the bill as calculated by the plaintiffs for a century-plus of fraud plus interest: $176 billion.


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AN ACCOUNTING LESSON Eloise Cobell has spent much of her life in and near the reservation town of Browning, Montana. She was one of eight children in a house with no electricity or running water. The major form of entertainment was old-fashioned: oral history, parents telling stories to children, sometimes describing Baker’s Massacre, during which U.S. soldiers killed about two hundred Blackfeet, a majority of them women and children, following an ambush near the Marias River. As a child, Cobell also sometimes heard stories from her parents and their neighbors about small government checks they received that never seemed to bear any relationship to reality. After high school, Cobell graduated from Great Falls Commercial College and then studied for two years at Montana State University. Her education at the university was interrupted when she returned to the reservation to take care of her terminally ill mother. During a sojourn off the reservation in her twenties, Eloise met Alvin, her husband, who is also Blackfeet, in Seattle. He was fishing off the Alaska coast, and she held a job as an accountant at a Seattle television station, KIRO. At the age of 30, Cobell returned to Browning with Alvin to resume a life on the family ranch. As one of few Blackfeet with training in the fiscal arts, Cobell was offered a job as the reservation government’s accountant. At the time, Browning had practically no Native-owned businesses; unemployment rose to more than 70 percent in winter (which can last into May) when construction employment ceased. Cobell found the Blackfeet accounting system “in total chaos” (Kennedy, 2002). Some trust accounts were being charged negative interest. Checks were being posted against accounts without her knowledge, even though she was supposed to be the only valid signatory. Cobell served as treasurer of the Blackfeet from 1970 through 1983, 13 years putting Blackfeet accounting on a sound footing while also working her ranch with her husband. In 1983, after the government shut down the only bank on the reservation, Cobell formed the idea of founding an Indian-owned bank. Told it would never work, she went back to school, became a banker, and in 1987 threw open the doors of the Blackfeet National Bank, the first national bank located on a reservation in the United States and the first owned by Native Americans. Within 15 years, this institution had grown into the Native American Bank, with 23 Native American nations from across the country investing as much as $1 million apiece (Whitty, 2005). Following its creation, the bank provided loans to Native Americans to help start businesses that otherwise never would have been financed. In a few years, Cobell could point to several businesses in Browning that she had helped finance: the Glacier Restaurant, Browning Video, the Dollar Store (Kennedy, 2002). By 2005, Cobell’s assay into banking had helped provide Browning with more than 200 enterprises, 80 percent of them Indian-owned (Whitty, 2005). Cobell soon

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was spending much of her time (apart from the many hours devoted to the court case and ranch chores with Alvin) tutoring Blackfeet and other Native peoples in ways to best start their own businesses. RESERVATION STORIES During her years as the Blackfeet’s accountant, Cobell traveled the reservation, visiting one family after another. Cobell noticed oil wells pumping on Blackfeet land, large herds of cattle grazing, and fields of alfalfa rippling, all owned by nonIndian tenants on Blackfeet land. Many of the tenants lived in well-kept houses and drove new cars as their Blackfeet landlords lived in cold, leaky government housing, largely unemployed and undereducated, and survived on commodity food. “Why couldn’t an Indian—a landholding Indian at that, get a mortgage or a bank loan to start his or her own life?” wondered Cobell (Whitty, 2005). Cobell heard from Jim Little Bull, 82 years of age in 2005, who still was living in a tiny, nearly unfurnished home in Browning that was heated with an ancient wood stove. When Little Bull’s mother, Mary Little Bull, passed away many years ago, the government taxed her estate $7,000 for the operation and management of an irrigation system on her allotment. Although ditches had been dug on the land, irrigation equipment never was installed, and no water other than rainfall ever had run through it. Initially, Little Bull was afraid to ask questions, worried his own Individual Indian Monies would be withheld to pay his mother’s bill. Unable to pay the debt, he silently forfeited her land back to the government (Whitty, 2005). James Mad Dog Kennerly occupied hereditary allotments with as many as five working oil wells at a time. From these he received a government-issued royalty check for approximately $30 per month. He lives in a house smaller than many modern walk-in closets. The drive to his oil-producing property at the eastern edge of the Blackfeet Nation passes through two worlds: Browning’s bleak government housing, followed by miles of prosperous farmland. “That’s my land, right here,” said Kennerly, pointing to another of his allotments, leased not to an oil company but to a Hutterite farming colony, an Amish-like community that, ironically, works property communally. These farms are large and prosperous, consisting of large barns and well-tended fields. Kennerly complained that the Interior Department—which manages one-fifth of all land in the country—leases his lands for far less than the going rate (Whitty, 2005). Cobell’s education in the BIA’s ways of banking began with a detailed examination of the Blackfeet’s trust accounts. After Cobell discovered a number of problematic transactions, she began asking questions. She then began to ask what had become of royalty payments owed Native Americans through Individual Indian Monies accounts. One resident of the reservation, for example, wanted to know why her family was receiving less than $1,000 per year for the 7,000 acres of family land that the government leased to non-Indians, who were using it to graze cattle and extract timber, oil, and other minerals. Other people were raising questions as


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well. During the mid-1980s, David Henry, an accountant and the first CPA to be employed by the BIA in Billings, Montana, found that the agency had deposited between $7.5 million and $11 million more in banks than it had dispersed to Indian account holders of Individual Indian Monies. When Henry, who was 56 years of age at the time, took his findings to his superiors at the BIA in 1986, he was fired. He appealed the firing all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and was denied. Because he had been on the job less than a year, the BIA contended that Henry lacked rights to appeal. Henry, who said that local Indians gave him the nickname “Whistleblower,” later worked full-time as a critic of the BIA, especially of its accounting practices (or lack thereof). He also wrote a book titled Stealing from Indians (1995). The Billings Gazette characterized the book as “part autobiography, part screed, and part expose” (Johansen, 1997, 16). People often asked Cobell what kept her going. “The stories that I tell you about are the stories that drive me,” she said (Szpaller, 2005). Cobell grew up without television. Instead, neighbors and family gathered in the evenings and listened to stories. One thread tied together much of what she heard, she said, “If I could only get my money from the Indian agent” (Szpaller, 2005). Cobell’s aunt once needed money to take her uncle to the hospital. The aunt took a wagon to the Indian agent’s office. It was early November, and snow rose to her aunt’s chest. “She said they kept them outside all day, and it was cold,” Cobell said. She did not receive her check until April. “That was the treatment that the government gave individual Indian people,” Cobell said (Szpaller, 2005). COBELL’S INQUIRIES REBUFFED BY THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS Cobell explained why she took on the U.S. Department of the Interior. She believes that no one should have to sue for simple access to their own money. First and foremost, Cobell said, the class-action suit that she initiated asks the government to fix its flawed accounting system. “This is not rocket science,” she said. “This is fixing accounting systems” (Szpaller, 2005). The lawsuit also asks that the government give an accounting to individual Indians, and it requests restitution as needed. Cobell did not decide to file suit lightly, but only after several rebuffs by the government that displayed an unwillingness to take the trust-accounts problem seriously. “They said, ‘Oh, you don’t know how to read the reports,’” Cobell recalled. “I think they were trying to embarrass me, but it did the opposite—it made me mad” (Awehali, 2003). THE HERITAGE OF ALLOTMENT Cobell’s demand for an accounting was a challenge to more than a century of business as usual at the BIA. Beginning during the term of President Andrew Jackson and expanded and refined in the General Allotment Act (1887), trust

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accounts were created in the names of individual Native Americans into which the Interior Department deposited monies due them from use of land and resources. These deposits could be made for such things as the sale of timber or exploitation of mineral rights as well as leases of land for grazing and farming. Some of the funds came from tribal per capita payments and others from settlement of land or water claims. Allotment was advanced by so-called reformers who contended that life as farmers was the only alternative to extermination for Indians as the frontier closed around them. The theory of turning Indians into farmers in the Jeffersonian yeoman image was outdated by the late nineteenth century as the United States industrialized rapidly. The rigid allotments also failed to take into account the amount of land needed to sustain a family in the arid West. Allotments were fixed by the act at 160 acres (a quarter section) for the head of a family or 80 acres (an eighth section) for a single person older than 18 years of age. The land was to be held in trust for 25 years and then released in fee simple to the owner. The act then held that an Indian would become a U.S. citizen subject to the laws of the state in which he or she resided. The act indicated that allotment would extinguish Indian title to the land. The introduction of private property was advanced ideologically as an aid in civilizing native peoples. In reality, allotment mainly was a government-sponsored real-estate agency for transferring land from Indians to European Americans. As a result of allotment, Indian-owned landholdings were reduced from 138 million acres in 1887 to about 50 million in 1934, according to John Collier, commissioner of Indian affairs at the end of the period. Sixty million acres were lost through the release of surplus lands to federal government ownership or sale to homesteaders. Twenty-six million acres of land were transferred to non-Indians after they were released from trust status, by purchase, fraud, mortgage foreclosures, and tax sales. Of the 48 million acres remaining in Indian hands by 1934, 20 million were too arid for productive farming, which had been the goal of allotment. By 1933, 49 percent of Indians on allotted reservations were landless. At that time, 96 percent of all reservation Indians were earning less than $200 a year. Because allotment was based on the model of the Anglo-American nuclear family, many Indians who were subjected to its provisions were required to do more than change their property-holding customs. Native extended families were devastated by the allotment system, in which close relatives who had lived together often were given distant parcels of land. Long-established ties between grandmothers and their children were severed and a long-standing family structures destroyed. Indian men who were married to more than one wife were told to divest their extra relatives. Vine Deloria Jr. recalled the tearful response of the Kiowa chief Quanah Parker, who, when told that he must give up his extra wives, “told the [Indian] agent that, if he must give them up, he could not choose which one to surrender and that the agent must do it for him” (Deloria and Lytle, 1983, 197). According to legal scholar Charles F. Wilkinson, “Allotment and the other assimilationist programs that complemented it devastated Indian land base, weakened


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Indian culture, sapped the vitality of tribal legislative and judicial processes, and opened most Indian reservations for settlement by non-Indians (Wilkinson, 1987, 19). U.S. political leaders understood this to be the upshot of allotment at the time. President Theodore Roosevelt, for example, said, “The General Allotment Act is a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass. It acts directly upon the family and the individual” (Johansen, 1997, 19). Over the generations, many individual allotments were subdivided into miniscule plots by inheritances, rendering many of them nearly useless for agriculture. The breakdown of Native American estate, as well as tribal governments and family relations, was the stated aim of allotment legislation. The BIA’s own publications acknowledge that the trust of U.S. Indian policy in the 1870s and 1880s was to “further minimize the functions of tribal leaders and tribal institutions and to continually strengthen the position of the government representative and his subordinates, and to improve the effectiveness of their programs to break down traditional patterns within the Indian communities” (Johansen, 1997, 21). Other voices were raised at the time against allotment and other forms of assimilation. Ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgan, known as the founder of U.S. anthropology, predicted that a result of allotment for the Indian “would unquestionably be, that in a very short time he would divest himself of every foot of land and fall into poverty” (Johansen, 1997, 21). Morgan was echoing the minority opinion of the Congressional Committee of Indian Affairs on the Allotment Act: The real purpose of this bill is to get at the Indian lands and open them up to settlement. The provisions for the apparent benefit of the Indians are but the pretext to get his lands and occupy them…. If this were done in the name of greed, it would be bad enough; but to do it in the name of humanity, and under the cloak of an ardent desire to promote the Indian’s welfare by making him like ourselves whether he will or not, is infinitely worse. (Johansen, 1997, 21)

Although allotment impoverished many Indians as Morgan foresaw, the Bureau of Indian Affairs prospered. By 1934, with Indian estate making up less than half the area it had before allotment began, the Indian Bureau had increased its staff (6,000 people) and its budget ($23 million per year) 400 percent. Mismanagement of the Individual Indian Monies accounts surfaced early in the twentieth century when several full-blooded members of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma Territory were found dead of starvation despite the fact that they had Individual Indian Monies accounts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The BIA had been diverting their income to pay for construction of schools and churches. WARDS PUT THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS ON TRIAL Before Cobell’s challenge, many Individual Indian Monies account holders had been wary of confronting the system because the BIA could (and sometimes did) declare them incompetent to handle their own money, as wards of the agency.

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Trust—a word often used in banking circles—is also the legal rubric under which the BIA (or other agencies of the Interior Department) first became Indians’ bankers. The so-called handlers of Indians in the War Department, Interior Department, and BIA always have had available to them two versions of reality: one is the official ideology of trust, meaning “guardianship,” the kindly language of a supposedly benevolent Great White Father, of “the most exacting fiduciary standards,” “due care,” and “moral obligations of the highest responsibility and trust.” Consider that federal agencies that had lost, abused, and otherwise bungled the Indians’ funds were empowered, by their interpretation of the law, to decide whether Native individuals were competent to handle their own money. If the BIA could find their money, and if it was not gambled away in a failed savings and loan back in the 1980s, a Native nation or Individual Indian Money account holder still might not have access to funds. Helen Avalos, assistant attorney general for the Navajo Nation, noted that, considering the record, it should be obvious that it was the government, not the Indians, that was not competent. “I guess they thought the money would be misspent,” Avalos told the Santa Fe New Mexican. “But it turns out that everything they suspected we would do wrong, they have done wrong” (Johansen, 1997, 14). Wardship, in American Indian law and policy, refers to a legal doctrine, said to be based on opinions by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall during the 1830s that Native Americans live in “dependent domestic nations” and are therefore wards of the federal government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was initially established to hold Indians’ land and resources in trust. Wardship status rationalized the establishment of Indian reservations and schools to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream U.S. culture. The idea of Native sovereignty in modern times has been developed in large part in opposition to wardship doctrines. Indians reacted to a social-control system that was so tight that in many cases (e.g., if a will affected the status of allotted land) individual actions of Native American people were subject to approval by the secretary of the Interior Department. The assertion of states rights over Native territory in the Southeast provided the legal grist for a 1832 Supreme Court decision written by Justice Marshall. In Worcester v. Georgia, Marshall wrote that inhabitants of Native nations had assumed a relationship of pupilage (wardship) in their relations with the United States. Using this doctrine, which has no constitutional basis, the executive branch of the U.S. government, principally through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has created a superstructure of policies and programs that have had a vast impact on individual Native Americans and their governments. Through the use of the plenary power of Congress, such policies as allotment divested much of the Indian estate between 1854 and 1934. A concept of wardship also has been used since the mid-nineteenth century to construct for American Indians a cradle-to-grave social-control system that was described during the mid-twentieth century by legal scholar Felix Cohen:


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Under the reign of these magic words [wardship and trust] nothing Indian was safe. The Indian’s hair was cut, his dances forbidden, his oil lands, timber lands, and grazing lands were disposed of by Indian agents and Indian commissioners for whom the magic word “wardship” always made up for lack of statutory authority. (Johansen, 1997, 19)

Although Marshall’s opinions have been used as a legal rationale for government policies that have treated American Indians as wards, “There is nothing,” according to Robert T. Coulter, executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center, “in the rulings of the Marshall Court [that] even remotely suggested that the United States could unilaterally impose a guardian-ward relationship on Indians, that it held trust title to Indian lands, or that, as trustee, it could dispose of lands without Indian consent” (Coulter and Tullberg, 1984, 199). Wardship as historically practiced by the Bureau of Indian Affairs differs markedly from the legal status of non-Indian wards. Under most conditions, wardship is viewed as a temporary condition, with established standards for cession. Civil guardianship and custody law must allow people who have been deprived of their civil rights means of regaining them in accordance with the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution. As developed by the BIA, however, Indian wardship has no standard for cession and no ending date. An Indian is defined as a ward regardless of his or her accomplishments or other actions, as the object of a policy that may have misinterpreted Marshall’s intent. Legal scholar Frank Pommersheim writes that “it was in this soil of expansion and exploitation that federal Indian law developed and took root. This was a soil without constitutional loam…. The theory of the trust responsibility with the U.S. government as owner and trustee of Indian land, natural resources, and provider of many services is in direct conflict with any meaningful theory of tribal sovereignty” (Pommersheim, 1995, 38, 445). In other words, as the courts talk a measured sense of sovereignty for reservation residents, the government walks a potent form of colonialism through the trust doctrine. DOING THE MATH Around 1991, after having spent a decade badgering federal government officials for explanations of BIA finances, Cobell finally found someone in the Interior Department who was willing to help her: David Matheson, a Coeur d’Alene who was a deputy commissioner of Indian affairs in the first Bush administration. Matheson was about to lose his job, however, when the Clinton administration came into power in January 1993. Cobell thought she might have trouble finding anyone in the new administration who was willing to listen to her, but Matheson connected her with an influential Washington, DC, banking attorney, Dennis Gingold, who took an interest in the question of Indian trust money. Gingold, who eventually became the lead prosecuting attorney for the case, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying

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of his first meeting with Cobell, “From my experience, American Indians were not involved in banking. I was looking for a bunch of people with turbans” (Kennedy, 2002). Gingold admitted that he had a great deal to learn about how the government had separated Native Americans from their trust assets. Gingold recommended to Cobell that she file a suit against the government, but she initially was reluctant to do so, hoping that Congress would take action to correct the problems. As part of its rehabilitation efforts, the Interior Department in 1992 hired the Arthur Andersen accounting firm to report on just how much of a mess the BIA had created and how much money would be required to fix it. When the due bill arrived four years later—the firm said it would take $108 million to $281 million just to get the Individual Indian Monies program operational at minimal accounting standards—Congress and the Interior Department decided that because such money was not available, they could do nothing. More holders of Individual Indian Monies accounts were doing the math themselves and concluding that they would get nothing by waiting for the government to fix the problems it had created. The number of Native Americans asking for accountings of their accounts increased during the early 1990s. Some in the government saw the problem coming before Cobell filed suit. In 1992, the House Committee on Government Operations issued a report, Misplaced Trust: The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Mismanagement of the Indian Trust Fund. By that time, Congress’s General Accounting Office (GAO) was warning of problems with the BIA’s trust funds. Misplaced Trust found “significant, habitual problems in BIA’s ability to fully and accurately account for trust fund monies.” By this time, the report noted somewhat whimsically that “BIA continues to move at a snail’s pace…. Indeed, the only thing that seems to stimulate a flurry of activity at the BIA is an impending appearance by the assistant secretary of Indian affairs before a Congressional committee. Afterward, all reform activities appear to suspend until shortly before the next oversight session” (Johansen, 1997, 16–17). Several times between 1992 and 1996, reports from the GAO said that resolving problems with the Individual Indian Monies and other trust funds would pose a challenge, in large part because record keeping never met the minimal standards of the banking industry. Compelled by congressional action, the BIA in 1994 investigated its own mismanagement, including investment of some Indian monies in failed savings and loans, and pledged reform. Hearings were called and a special office created in the Interior Department to investigate and hopefully resolve the matter. In 1994, Congress passed the Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act, with the stated aim of cleaning up the mess. The House also established a task force on the problem. Trust reconciliation had become an issue with inside-the-Beltway credentials. For a time, this provided some hope to Cobell, but no movement toward compensation ensued. Life rarely has been so simple at the Interior Department, even before there was a Beltway. With broad Native American support, the Department of Interior hired Paul Homan, a former director of Riggs Bank and an expert at cleaning up failing private financial institutions, as special trustee for American Indians. Homan,


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having taken stock of the situation, later quit in disgust as he described a banker’s nightmare. Day by day, piece by piece, the Individual Indian Monies inquiries were producing evidence of what must have been the world’s sloppiest banking record keeping. Even Cobell was amazed at the sorry state of the BIA’s banking system, if it could be called that. Homan soon beheld the world’s worst excuse for financial accounting. The BIA never had established an accounts receivable system, so its bankers never knew how much money they were handling at any given time. More than $50 million had not been paid to individual Indians because the BIA had lost track of them or because they had not left forwarding addresses. Approximately 21,000 accounts listed the names of people who were dead. Large numbers of records were stored in cardboard boxes in leaky warehouses and slowly were being destroyed. “Years after our lawsuit was filed,” said Cobell, “Someone discovered a barn filled with discarded and missing trust records in Anadarko [Oklahoma]. These records were being watched only by the rats in that leaky building. Interior officials testified that when the barn filled up, they just tossed out the oldest records and stacked in newer ones.” “As for the leases of Indian lands that were supposed to be the sources of trust account funds,” she continued, “Thousands of those leases were never recorded. So how can the trust records be accurate? They can’t” (Cobell, April 22, 2005). In the meantime, a Republican-controlled Congress was funding the trust-fund cleanup at about only $1 million per year, barely enough to keep the paper flowing in Homan’s office, much less solve the problems and get Indians their money. The BIA, meanwhile, was spending $21 million building a castle of reports, such as the Tribal Trust Funds Reconciliation Project, an “Agreed-upon Procedures and Findings Report, and the IIM [Individual Indian Monies] Related System Improvement Project Report. The reports basically outlined how to implement the cleanup required by law since 1994, pending availability of money, and primarily repeated earlier reports. Once again, the infrastructure called for in the maze of reports indicated just how haphazard the Interior Department’s work as a banker for Indians had become. The reports called for such banking basics as “a proper, accurate, and timely accounting for trust-fund balances,” “the preparation of accurate and timely reports to trust account holders,” regular audits, a general ledger and general accounting system, a national archives and records center, and so forth (Johansen, 1997, 23). Meanwhile, Homan’s office stressed that “Indian Trust Asset reform efforts are critically needed to ensure that the government meets its fiduciary obligations to Indian tribes and individual American Indians.” Homan’s office began to assemble a comprehensive strategic plan to implement the American Indian Trust Management Reform Act of 1994 (Johansen, 1997, 23). SENATOR MCCAIN’S SOLUTION By the first half of 1996, the BIA accounting mess became the subject of hearings before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, chaired by Senator

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John McCain, Republican of Arizona. McCain himself presented an indictment of the BIA’s accounting problems in economic, demographic, and historical contexts that are worth noting. Also worth noting was McCain’s proposed solution: that trust accounts be privatized and how that fit in with a more general effort by former Senator Slade Gorton and his allies to get the government out of the so-called Indian business altogether, invoking code words for abrogating treaties. “I am committed to bringing real and substantive changes to the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” McCain said. “For those who may be inclined to resist change, let me paint you a picture. Indian families are living in poverty at three times the national average. Nearly one in three Native Americans in this nation is living in poverty. One-half of Indian households headed by a female are living in poverty. One half of Indian children under the age of six living on reservations are living in poverty. For every $100 earned by a non-Indian family, an Indian family earns $62. The per capita income for an Indian living on a reservation is $4,478” (Johansen, 1997, 18). McCain continued to paint his statistical picture: “The mortality rate for Native Americans for tuberculosis exceeds the national average by 400 percent. The mortality rate for diabetes exceeds the national average by 139 percent. Native Americans are four times more likely to die of alcoholism than other Americans. The incidence rates for fetal alcohol syndrome among Native Americans is six times the national average.” All of this after, according to McCain, “This administration has focused a great amount of energy on reforming the nation’s health-care system over the last two years” (Johansen, 1997, 18). McCain then narrowed the issue to the handling of Native American monies by the government: “Throughout history, American Indians and Alaska Natives have relied on the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the principal agency of the Federal Government to meet this nation’s trust obligations to Native Americans. And yet, based on their own studies and investigations, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has failed miserably to carry out this nation’s solemn obligations to American Indians. We have no idea how many thousands of Native Americans have been deprived of revenues that belong to them,” McCain said. “We should be ashamed of a system that is a living example of our nation’s inattention to its trust obligations to Native Americans” (Johansen, 1997, 18–19). Next, McCain began to assert his political agenda by assigning blame to the obvious (and historically rich) record of bureaucratic bumbling by the BIA: In acting as the trustee for Indian tribes and their members, the BIA has failed to meet even minimal fiduciary obligations in the management of Indian trust funds. Over $2.1 billion in Indian trust funds cannot be accurately reconciled. It will cost the federal government over $390 million just to reconcile the trust fund accounts. Government auditors report that there are $1.9 billion worth of construction project costs that cannot be reconciled. It has also been reported that over $3.2 billion in BIA assets cannot be accounted for.


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As a financial manager, the BIA has failed miserably. It has been estimated that through mismanagement and poor investments, the BIA has lost between $25 million and $30 million of tribal and individual Indian monies…. The long history of the failings of the Federal government to carry out its responsibilities to American Indians brings new meaning to the phrase “a parade of horribles.” … For all our efforts to reform the BIA and to improve the conditions on most reservations in this nation, we need just to look at the statistics in the recent census to see our failures. (Johansen, 1997, 19–20)

McCain certainly sounded like a “friend of the Indian,” and he seemed to see himself in that role. One will recall, however, that so-called reformers played a major role in passing the 1887 Allotment Act. Many Native American leaders believe that McCain’s attack on the BIA has an ulterior political motive. He, along with a number of other Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives, had voiced support for privatization of the BIA and the entire federal structure that supervises Indians’ lives. Some Native leaders found themselves in the paradoxical position of supporting the agency that has defrauded them because they see privatization efforts as an undercover form of termination, an end to the relationship between the federal government and Native nations. How does one privatize a treaty correctly? With every BIA gaffe, the privatization advocates were counting on the agency’s monumental incompetence to build Native Americans’ acceptance of the Great White Father’s demise. Most know their history too well to be tempted. The phrase one hears most often around Indian Country for plans to privatize Indian Affairs is The New Termination. THE DIMENSIONS OF THE INDIVIDUAL INDIAN MONIES MESS Meanwhile, the Individual Indian Monies melodrama played on. “Honestly, I have never seen anything like it in my 30-year career as a banker,” Homan told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in June 1996 (Johansen, 1997, 18). About $695 million in Native funds had been sent to the wrong Indian group, tribe, or nation. Some of the funds never were sent at all. Some funds had been posted to the wrong accounts. One property record valued three garden-variety chain saws at $99 million each. In 1996, $17 million in trust fund money simply vanished due to sloppy bookkeeping. Exhumation of the BIA’s financial record keeping came to resemble an archaeological dig. Some of the BIA’s financial records were contaminated with asbestos, and other records had been paved over under a parking lot. The Senate hearings into the accounting mess was an eye-opener for some U.S. senators. “I’m rarely startled when I go into a committee hearing, but I have to say I really have been stunned,” said Senator Paul Simon, Democrat of Illinois, after he attended the hearings and heard of the BIA’s financial incompetence (Johansen, 1997, 18).

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“What we’ve got is a mess. As far as I can see, it’s an unprecedented mess,” said Dan Press, an attorney for the Intertribal Monitoring Association on Indian Trust Funds, a coalition of several dozen Indian bands and nations, who told the Congressional Subcommittee on Native American Affairs Committee on Natural Resources that Individual Indian Monies accounts should be credited with interest (Johansen, 1997, 18). The association contended that the BIA had been legally obligated to pay interest since 1938. This group also advocated that individuals whose money was lost through the BIA’s investments in failed and bogus financial institutions be “made whole.” Before he quit, Homan reported that no one knew just how many people were owed money. Of the 238,000 individual trusts that Homan’s staff located, 118,000 were missing crucial papers, 50,000 had no addresses, and 16,000 accounts had no documents at all. Homan further reported that one could assume money had been skimmed extensively from the trust. “It’s akin to leaving the vault door open,” he said (Awehali, 2003). Comparing BIA officials’ public testimony with the historical record vis-à-vis Indian trust accounts, one must wonder whether both lived on the same financial planet. The government has long lived in the land of wish fulfillment, spin control, and legal fantasy. Testifying before Congress on August 11, 1994, Ada Deer, assistant secretary and head of the BIA, said, “Our goals for trust funds reform are really quite simple. First, we want to provide tribes with an investment approach that ensures both the safety of the funds and a good rate of return. Secondly, we want to assure that all trust fund account holders receive timely, adequate accounting information. Third, we want to ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, previous inaccuracies in accounting and crediting of accounts are identified and rectified. Fourth, we want to ensure coordination of trust funds management among the [Interior] Department’s various bureaus. Finally, we want to ensure that tribes which are prepared to manage their own funds are provided the opportunity to do so” (Johansen, 1997, 15). A dozen years later, the government was using its legal talent to stall attainment of Deer’s entire list of goals. COBELL FILES SUIT More and more, legal action appeared to be the only alternative for account holders. Cobell said that she took a visitor’s tour of Washington, DC, just days before filing the lawsuit. She walked past the Lincoln Memorial. Everywhere she went, she saw “government, government, government.” Her adversary’s power bore down on her. She felt goose bumps, she said, “I was so frightened.” Back at her hotel, Cobell called a friend and expressed her doubts. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she told her friend. “If not you, who?” her friend asked (Szpaller, 2005). In 1996, Cobell finally became fed up with government inaction after Attorney General Janet Reno reneged on a promise to look into the matter. The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) announced the class-action suit on behalf of the


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300,000 (later 500,000) holders of Individual Indian Monies accounts. Attorneys pointed to people such as Bernice Skunk Cap, an elderly Blackfeet, who lost her cabin to fire in 1994. Planning to build a new home, Skunk Cap applied to the BIA for $2,400 from her Individual Indian Monies account but was told she could have only $1,000 of it. She was forced to move into a nursing home. John Echohawk, executive director of NARF and Cobell, project director of the Individual Indian Monies Trust Correction and Recovery Project, announced the filing of the class-action lawsuit against Assistant Interior Secretary Ada Deer, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Said Echohawk, “We are in court because we have been unable to persuade the executive and legislative branches of government to honor the United States’ solemn trust and legal obligation to 300,000 individual Indian account holders…. The complete failure of the United States government to properly discharge its trust responsibility implicates what we believe is the largest and longest-lasting financial scandal ever involving the federal government. In our view, it represents yet another serious and continuing breach in a long history of dishonorable treatment of Indian tribes and individual Indians by the U.S. government” (Johansen, 1997, 21–22). Particularly disturbing, said Echohawk, “is the cavalier acknowledgement by the executive branch and Congress that the federal government has failed to account for our trust monies, yet the federal government continually refuses to take the necessary steps to fix the system…. The very government that is required by law to protect and advance [American Indian] interests” (Johansen, 1997, 22) Echohawk said that neither NARF nor the accounting firm it had retained, Price Waterhouse, would collect a contingency fee from this case. “Fully 100 percent of the recovery in this class-action lawsuit will go to the Individual Indians who lost and continue to lose their money daily at the hands of the federal government” (Johansen, 1997, 22). Echohawk outlined the goals of the class-action suit: “The suit asks the court to declare that the defendants have breached, and continue to breach, their trust obligations to 300,000 class members. It further asks the court to order the defendants to follow the law, fix the system, provide the account holders with an accounting, and make restitution. Finally, we seek to assure that the Special Trustee [Paul Homan] has the tools he needs to fix the system—and to get the job done right—as Congress mandated when it enacted the Trust Management Reform Act of 1994” (Johansen, 1997, 22). “This was our last resort,” said Cobell. “It’s mismanagement, and if this was a bank it would be called stealing, and it’s been going on for more than 150 years. The federal government has no idea how much of our money it has, no idea how much of our money it should have, and no idea how much of our money it has lost,” she continued (Johansen, 1997, 22). Echohawk elaborated on just how sloppy the BIA’s bookkeeping had become: “They have no idea how much has been collected from the companies that use our land and are unable to provide even a basic, regular statement to account holders. Every day we wait they are losing more and more of our money” (Johansen, 1997, 22).

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Of Senator McCain’s suggestion that Indians might be better off with accounts at private banks, Cobell said as the NARF filed its class-action suit, “That would be a natural way for the government…. They transfer it—say, to Wells Fargo— and then who’s responsible for historical wrongs?” (Johansen, 1997, 22). During the late 1980s, without asking anyone, the BIA had spent $1 million trying without success to unload its trust-fund problems on private banks. The House of Representatives had to order a halt to these efforts five times before the BIA finally stopped, according to the House report Misplaced Trust. The BIA then gave the originator of the plan a $5,000 award. The Native American Rights Fund was filing suit in large part because the government, for all practical purposes, had decided that fixing the Individual Indian Monies accounts was too expensive to pursue administratively. The route to this conclusion was a classic in the art of bureaucratic politics, BIA style. First, the BIA ignored the problem or fired nettlesome employees, such as Henry, who raised it. By about 1990, the problem became too large to ignore, so the BIA built a bureaucratic card castle around it. The trust-fund problem acquired a considerable amount of inside-the-Beltway cachet, as has been previously noted. A great deal of hearing testimony and fact-finding was arranged and many reports written and filed. Cobell realized that large legal actions were massively expensive. Her years of activism and her experience as the Blackfeet’s accountant had suggested some sources of support, however. She contacted the Arthur Bremer Foundation of St. Paul, Minnesota, and won a $75,000 grant and a $600,000 loan. In 1997, a year after she filed the class-action suit, Cobell also received, quite unexpectedly, a $300,000 genius grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, most of which went into the case. Shortly after that, J. Patrick Lannan of the Lannan Foundation read about Cobell’s MacArthur grant and traveled to Browning to meet with her. Lannan eventually donated $4 million to the cause. By mid-2002, the cost of the legal action had reached $8 million, still barely a drop in the proverbial bucket next to the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money that the federal government has spent to defend itself. Cobell and NARF finally filed suit because all of the federal government’s previous moving and shaking had been undertaken without any assurance that even one thin dime of actual compensation might reach Individual Indian Monies account holders. Indian account holders thus rediscovered a time-honored principle of life on Capitol Hill: It is easy to pass a law full of all sorts of professed good intentions but much more difficult to get the money to make reality of it. This is the state of trust in today’s world, in today’s dollars, down the Mall from the Capitol, at the bank that Indian money built. John Echohawk made this point in more legalistic language as the class-action lawsuit was announced: “The Department of the Interior has no plans or money to do any historical accounting regarding the IIM [Individual Indian Monies] accounts, to determine how much money the IIM account holders may have lost and continue to lose each day…. In short, the federal government continues to


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turn its back on 300,000 individual Indian account holders.” The longer the stall, the more expensive the fix, said Echohawk. “The longer it is permitted to continue, the more expensive it will be to fix the system … the price goes up every day” (Johansen, 1997, 23). News of the NARF lawsuit percolated at the Interior Department for six months before something of a response surfaced in a departmental report to Congress: Interior proposed a settlement of up to $600 million, a sort of savings-and-loan-style bailout for the BIA The proposed plan was short on details and again reminded many Native Americans who had banked with the BIA of past broken promises and rubber checks. As the amount in arrears grew to tens of billions during subsequent years, Interior’s initial low-ball bid looked even more ridiculous. PEN-AND-INK WITCHCRAFT With the government’s mismanagement of Indian accounts so widely known, a sensible person might have concluded that the time had come to find a way to reimburse the many Native people who had been cheated. If you were one of the 500,000 Native Americans who unwillingly did your banking with the BIA, when might you expect a corrective check in the mail? Do not hold your breath. If the George W. Bush administration has its way, you could turn a very deep shade of blue before the guarantor of your trust makes you, as they say in financial litigation circles, whole. These prospects hardly improved once the case entered the maze of the adversarial legal system. The spin doctors in the Interior Department probably did not realize that their actions resembled some treaty negotiations for its Alice-in-Wonderland quality (things were never what they seemed). In 1791, the famed Ottawa speaker Egushawa, observing treaty negotiations, called such machinations “pen-and-ink witchcraft.” What Egushawa witnessed had nothing on the trust-money mess. After more than ten years of legal shuck and jive by the federal government, the central fact of the case was this: The BIA and Treasury Department never built a recordkeeping system capable of tracking the money owed to Native Americans based on income from its superintendency of their resources. Locked in an adversarial relationship with the plaintiffs, the government was even less willing to admit error, much less make good on it. As time passed (the system, in its modern incantation, began with the advent of the Allotment Act in 1887), the lack of a functioning banking system made record keeping worse; the sloppiness of errant (or nonexistent) record keeping was compounded, for example, because of divisions of estate required by generations of fractional Native inheritances. By the time Cobell and a few other banking-minded Native Americans began asking, seriously, what had become of their Individual Indian Monies, the Interior Department, by and large, did not have a clue. In an average year, $500 million or more was deposited into the Individual Indian Trust from companies leasing Native American land for grazing, oil drilling,

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timber cutting, and mining of coal and other natural resources. According to law and financial theory, the money was collected by the Interior Department and sent to the Treasury Department, where it should have been placed into individual trust accounts. Problems began with the approximately 50,000 accounts that lacked names or correct addresses. One such account contained $1 million (Awehali, 2003). Along the way, it also was learned that some exploiters of Native resources simply neglected to pay as required; they soon learned that, much of the time, no one seemed to be watching. They began to act as if the system simply did not exist. As early as 1999, the plaintiffs’ legal team discovered that the Departments of Interior and Treasury had “inadvertently” destroyed 162 boxes of vital trust records during the course of the trial then waited months to notify the court of the so-called accident. “You tell me if that’s fair,” Cobell told Mike Wallace in a 60 Minutes interview shortly after the discovery. “When they have to manage other people’s money according to standards, why aren’t they managing our money to standards? Is it because you manage brown people’s money differently?” (Awehali, 2003). JUDGE LAMBERTH’S RULINGS The chief judge in the case, Royce C. Lamberth, was a Republican appointee, a Texan with a taste for fancy boots and large cars, who seemed, on the surface, unlikely to take a serious interest in a Native American class-action suit. Lamberth, however, also possessed a keen knowledge of bureaucratic politics and an ability to read and comprehend vast amounts of information. He also was a serious jurist—so serious that the government soon sought to remove him from the case. Like fishing-rights judge George Hugo Boldt (also a Republican appointee), Lamberth also had a sharp sense of justice, regardless of vested interests. He was, in other words (also like Boldt), hardworking and ruthlessly honest. A native of San Antonio, Lamberth, 63 in 2006, earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas. He was drafted out of law school in 1967 and entered the Army Judge Advocate General Corps during the Vietnam War. Until he was appointed to the federal bench in 1987, Lamberth worked in the civil division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC (Talhelm, 2005b). On December 21, 1999, Judge Lamberth, who was overseeing the case in the Washington, DC, Federal District Court, issued his first (phase one) opinion (the case is divided into two phases). The 126-page opinion stated that the government had baldly violated its trust responsibilities to Native Americans. He called the Individual Indian Monies mess the “most egregious misconduct by the federal government” (Johansen, 2004, 26). Although Cobell v. Norton is certainly a bigstakes case, such a superlative overstated its historical scope. Perhaps it is the most egregious example of financial misconduct in a trust relationship by the U.S. government—which, in its two-plus centuries, has done worse to Native Americans than lose several billion dollars.


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Judge Lamberth later ordered the government to file reports quarterly describing in detail its efforts to account for the monies. The judge also ordered the Interior and Treasury Departments to compile an audit of the Individual Indian Monies trust-fund system, reaching to its origins in 1887. At present, the Bush administration’s unwillingness to follow Lamberth’s order constitutes the legal line of scrimmage in what may turn out to be a decades-long battle. Judge Lamberth was shocked when he discovered, in the course of the lawsuit, that Interior and Treasury had, as a matter of course, destroyed accounting documents and filed false reports with the court. In the course of the litigation, 37 past and present government officials, including Bush’s Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and Clinton’s Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, have been held in contempt of court. On August 10, 1999, Lamberth ordered the Treasury Department to pay $600,000 in fines for misconduct. As he delved into the trust-account debacle, Lamberth found that some records were stored in rat-infested New Mexico warehouses. Others were dispersed haphazardly on several remote reservations. When the Interior Department kept computerized records at all, they were so inadequate and insecure that hackers could set up their own accounts (and, presumably, draw money from them). LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT RIDER In September 2003, Judge Lamberth ordered the Interior Department to conduct a thorough investigation into money that was supposed to have been paid to Indians for oil, gas, timber, and grazing activities on their land, dating back to 1887. He said that the accounting must be completed by 2007. Responding to Lamberth’s first-phase opinion and this directive, Cobell was enthusiastic at the time. “This is a landmark victory,” she said. “It is now clear that trust law and trust standards fully govern the management of the Individual Indian Trust and that Secretary Norton can no longer ignore the trust duties that she owes to 500,000 individual Indian trust beneficiaries” (Awehali, 2003). The idea of a complete accounting, which sounded so simple, suddenly became very problematic in the land of pen-and-ink-witchcraft. Interior and Treasury, with their allies on Capitol Hill and in the Bush White House, prepared a hastily inserted so-called midnight rider to a federal spending bill that forbade spending that would have implemented Lamberth’s directive. Funding, according to the rider, was to be frozen for a year, or until an accounting methodology could be agreed upon by Interior, Treasury, and Congress. In the meantime, the Interior Department was reported by several news organizations as complaining that the type of historical accounting required by Judge Lamberth’s ruling would take 10 years and cost $6 billion to $12 billion. Some feat of accounting that would be; the accounting equivalent, perhaps, of building the Panama Canal or putting many men on the moon—a rubber figure with an odor of obstructionist politics. To illustrate just how rubbery this estimate was, let us crunch a few round numbers. At $100,000 each per year, very good pay for an accountant, $10 billion

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would hire 100,000 accountants. Even if they worked ten years each, $10 billion would still pay 10,000 number crunchers. Add a few zeroes here and there, and soon we are talking some very serious money. Bear in mind that the folks who came up with these quick estimates worked at the same agencies that lost track of all that Native American money to begin with. In the meantime, before a dime has been paid to any of the 500,000 Native people who are part of the class action, the Bush administration seemed to have established some sort of perpetual-motion lawyer-employment fund. It requested $554 million in the 2004 budget to reform the trust fund, an increase of $183.3 million over the $370.2 million budgeted in 2003. Reform in this case meant, to a large degree, paying legal talent to cover Uncle Sam’s ass against the class-action suit; as with John Ashcroft’s Patriot Act, the terminology here is highly Orwellian. In a January 2001 interview with Harlan McKosato on the national radio show Native America Calling, Cobell noted that “just by not settling the case, it’s costing the government and taxpayers $160,000 an hour, $7 million a day, $2.5 billion a year” (Awehali, 2003). With a federal budget deficit approaching $400 billion per year (including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and reconstruction liabilities running at least $87 billion per year), the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress seemed unwilling to seriously consider paying up a century-plus of Indiantrust money bills that could cost as much as $40 billion—the final bill that could come out of the second phase of the case, once Interior and Treasury assessed the due bills, as ordered by Judge Lamberth. The midnight rider was sponsored in large part by a Republican-controlled executive branch and Congress that has added 721,000 federal jobs to the payroll since George W. Bush assumed office. To those concerned that the United States can not afford a Cobell v. Norton settlement, Cobell replied, “It’s not your money and never was” (Whitty, 2005). About fifty Republicans voted against the appropriations bill containing the rider, however, led by Representative Richard Pombo, Republican of California, chairman of the House Resources Committee, with Representative J. D. Hayworth, Republican of Arizona, cochair of the bipartisan House Native American Caucus. Pombo, who favors a legislative solution to the court case, called the rider a “poison pill that was added to the legislation in blatant violation of House rules and protocol” (Reynolds, 2003). The rider passed narrowly, 216–205. The Senate passed the spending bill (with the midnight rider attached) 87–2 on November 4, 2003, and sent it to Bush, who affixed his signature on November 10. Cobell sharply criticized the Bush administration, including Interior Secretary Norton, for sponsoring the rider. Said Cobell, “What this vote shows is the length that the Interior Secretary and the Bush administration will go to in their efforts to deny Indians the accounting for funds that belong to Indians—not the federal government. Now American Indians are being victimized once again by politicians in Washington” (Reynolds, 2003). Cobell said that she expected the courts to strike down the rider as an illegal interference with the judicial process, a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers.


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“It’s a clear act of bad faith to seek a stay based on an unconstitutional statute,” said Gingold (“Appeals Court,” 2003). The Senate’s legal counsel and House members from both parties said the provision was probably unconstitutional because the administration can not dictate to the courts how to interpret the law. In July 2005, Judge Lamberth wrote, “For those harboring hope that the stories of murder, dispossession, forced marches, assimilationist policy programs, and other incidents of cultural genocide against the Indians are merely the echoes of a horrible, bigoted government past that has been sanitized by the good deeds of more recent history, this case serves as an appalling reminder of the evils that result when large numbers of the politically powerless are placed at the mercy of institutions engendered and controlled by a politically powerful few” (Whitty, 2005). During the first phase of the case, many experts testified that Interior and Treasury lacked the records to render any semblance of a true accounting for the monies that the government was supposed to have been managing. Instead, the plaintiffs have suggested various methods of estimating what is owed. For example, the Geographic Information System (GIS) might use satellite-mapping technology to estimate the amount of oil produced by wells on native lands and thereby derive an idea of royalties owed. Bureaucratic venality posed another problem. The BIA also fought back in small-minded ways by hassling Indians who spoke out. “Among the Indians who filed affidavits about these BIA tactics was Verna St. Goddard, an elderly Blackfeet,” according to one account. She ran into problems when she visited the BIA office in Browning last February. For more than 35 years St. Goddard has withdrawn funds for the developmentally disabled Roseline Spotted Eagle, her former foster child. Following her inquiry, however, a BIA official ordered St. Goddard to drive to Great Falls and ascertain the price of the goods she wanted to buy for Spotted Eagle, then drive back to the BIA office to request a check, and then return to Great Falls to purchase the items and back again—480 miles altogether. (Whitty, 2005)

This was a perfect example, St. Goddard said, of what the BIA really stands for: “Bossing Indians Around.” When she asked the BIA official why he would not give Spotted Eagle her money, as he has for years, he blamed the Eloise Cobell lawsuit. A VICTORY FOR THE PLAINTIFFS In a major victory for the plaintiffs, Judge Lamberth ruled on September 29, 2004, that all sales and transfers of Indian-owned land by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs must include a detailed, court-approved notification of landowners’ rights as trust beneficiaries and class members. For the first time in history, individual Indian landowners would be informed of their rights as trust beneficiaries and class members before the sale of their lands.

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The court ruled that each beneficiary who decides to sell trust assets has an absolute right to a full and accurate accounting. Failure by the Interior Department to provide accounting effectively was said by Judge Lambert to rob those beneficiaries of the cash value of their rights. The court ruled that an attempted BIA auction of Indian-owned land in Oklahoma in September 2004 violated a 2002 court order stating that Interior could not communicate with Cobell class members about matters relating to the trust or the litigation without prior approval of the court. The court found that the owners of some of the land that was scheduled to be auctioned were not fully informed of the consequences of such sales with respect to the lawsuit, and in some cases it seemed that the landowners may have been unaware that their land was up for sale. Surveying this situation, Cobell said, “For more than a century, the U.S. government has sold our land out from under us without consent, without appraisal and without informing us of our rights as trust beneficiaries. That ends today” (Press Release, 2004). THE DUE BILL RISES Estimates of the size of the due bill for the trust-moneys mess kept growing as the litigation dragged on. An account in The New York Times put the total amount owed from oil, timber, grazing, and other leases since the program began at $137 billion (File, 2004). The dimensions of the scandal also continued to grow. From $2 billion to $3 billion at its initiation during 1996, the total due all plaintiffs was, by 2005, estimated by their attorneys to be $176 billion. Early in April 2004, Special Master Alan Balaran, a court-appointed investigator of the Individual Indian Monies scandal, resigned from his job probing the federal government’s management of the funds, charging that the Bush administration worked to thwart his work. Beginning during summer 2003, he said, Bush appointees began working to block his description of a two-decade-old practice by Interior officials of negotiating leases with oil and gas companies that gave Indian landowners a small fraction of the royalties that private landowners received in similar deals. Balaran accused the Department of Justice and the Interior Department of trying repeatedly to have him removed from the case “to prevent any further investigation” of the lopsided deals. According to a Washington Post report, “A full investigation into these matters might well result in energy companies being forced to repay significant sums to individual Indians,” Balaran wrote. “Interior could not let this happen…. Billions of dollars are at stake.” According to the same account, Interior Department officials called Balaran’s charges “preposterous” and “based entirely on innuendo, supposition and baseless speculation—just the sorts of things to which a competent judicial officer would give no credence” (Leonnig, 2004, A-7). Balaran described a specific case involving the Interior Department’s chief appraiser in New Mexico who, he said, repeatedly negotiated for energy companies to pay Indians less than market value for use of their land. For a San Juan Basin pipeline, the appraiser arranged for a gas company to pay $4.50 per yard to


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run pipeline across Indian-owned lands that Interior managed, whereas the same energy company paid private landowners $104 per yard for running the same pipe on their adjoining land (Leonnig, 2004, A-7). INTERIOR WINS ONE The Cobell case, eight years old by 2004, settled into an adversarial boxing match familiar to anyone who reports legal affairs. Although the government’s 100 lawyers got little sympathy from Judge Lamberth, they did win an occasional round in the appeals courts. In a victory for the government, a three-judge panel in federal appeals court on December 10, 2004, unanimously threw out most of Judge Lamberth’s orders designed to force the Interior Department to account for Individual Indian Monies. The appeals court panel told Judge Lamberth that he could no longer “micromanage” the Individual Indian Monies system (“Court Rejects,” 2004). The ruling permits the Interior Department to propose its own plan to account for the missing money then allows Lamberth to assess its proposal from the bench. The appeals court thus agreed with the Interior Department that Lamberth’s order for an accounting exceeded his judicial authority. “Rather than acting to assure that ‘agency action’ conforms to law, the court has sought to make the law conform to the court’s views as to how the trusts may best be run,” Judge Stephen F. Williams wrote for the appeals panel (“Court Rejects,” 2004). Interior officials had complained that an audit that Lamberth had ordered, reaching to the origins of the Individual Indian Monies system more than a century ago, could cost up to $12 billion. At the behest of the Bush White House, Congress intervened in November 2003, approving legislation that prevented an accounting from going forward until Congress had defined the scope and methods to be used. The court said that the monumental nature of the bookkeeping necessary for such a thing might take 200 years. In essence, the government had botched its accounting so badly that reconstructing the books would cost, by its own estimate, as much as $12 billion. The government had thus ruined Individual Indian Monies accounting badly enough, by the court’s circuitous reasoning, to be let off the hook. A three-judge appeals panel agreed, calling Lamberth’s decision “ill-founded” and an abuse of discretion that was not favored by either side in the lawsuit (Talhelm, 2005a). Interior Secretary Gale Norton said that she was pleased by the decision. “Thus far, the department has expended more than $100 million in its historical accounting effort and has found ample evidence that monies collected for individual Indians were distributed to the correct recipients,” she said (Talhelm, 2005a). THE PLAINTIFFS MAKE AN OFFER On June 20, 2005, several prominent Indian leaders, including Cobell, convened in Washington, DC, to announce 50 principles for legislation that they

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said could settle the case. Most significantly, they said they would settle the case for $27.5 billion—a figure they said was a very substantial discount from the $176 billion their accountants calculated would be owed in royalties and interest if allotment holders were to be fully compensated. The $27.5 billion offer also acknowledged that some money had been paid over the years (Nieves, 2005, A-19). “It is discounted quite substantially,” Cobell said at a news conference, “but I think we all understand that there’s a lot of suffering in Indian country. Many people will die before the money is approved” (Nieves, 2005, A-19). By late 2005, “According to Cobell’s forensic accountants, the government owed $176 billion to individual Indian landowners, averaging $352,000 per plaintiff, making this monetarily the largest class-action lawsuit ever launched” (Nieves, 2005, A-19). The Indian leaders said they had been asked by Senate and House members, including Senators John McCain, chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, and Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, senior Democrat on the panel, to come up with a plan they could use as a road map for a congressional resolution to the lawsuit. Cobell said that a timely settlement of the suit and payment of money would markedly change many Indians’ lives. The shame, she said, is that the government is fighting some of the poorest people in the country over money it owes them at the same time that it reneges on its treaty obligations by cutting funding for Indian programs. “They took our land and said they would provide health care and education,” she said in an interview with Evelyn Nieves of the Washington Post after the news conference. “And every single year they cut the funds” (Nieves, 2005, A-19). The Indian Health Service, for example, is so underfunded that it will not allow patients to see specialists unless they have a life-threatening condition, Cobell said. “They’re pulling young people’s teeth out because it’s cheaper to do that than fill cavities.” She added that her husband did not receive proper care for his diabetes until it became severe. “His leg is amputated now,” she said (Nieves, 2005, A-19). Cobell said of the proposal: “It is a good, commonsense bargain for the government and Indian people. It responds to repeated calls by Congress to settle this case promptly. It gives Congress a bold opportunity to reach out to the nation’s first citizens and end a national disgrace that dates to 1887. Our nine-year court fight has documented those wrongs. But the great tragedy of this issue has been that the government has known for decades that the accounts were not being handled properly. Study after study has confirmed that the Indians were short-changed and that the government simply kept the excess in Washington. Now, 118 years later, we finally have a practical way to put back the word ‘trust’ in the Indian trust account system. Equally important, we have an honorable way to remove the stain from the government’s dealings with thousands of Indians who were denied access to the money that they should have had decades ago” (Cobell, July 14, 2005). Dan DuBray, speaking for the BIA, said that the $27.5 billion the plaintiffs were requesting “is greater than the combined [annual] budgets of the departments of the Interior and Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency…. It really


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is a paradox that faces the plaintiffs. They brought the case on the foundation of a 1994 law that requires the government to provide an accounting for Indian beneficiaries. They brought the suit seeking that accounting. Now they’re saying that they are not seeking an accounting, they are seeking money” (Nieves, 2005, A-19). True, perhaps, but has not money been the object of the accounting all along? Of what use could an accounting be without a resolution of the resulting claim? THE GOLD STANDARD FOR MISMANAGEMENT At this point, Judge Lamberth repeated his belief that the Interior Department’s conduct in this case “sets the gold standard for mismanagement by the federal government.” DuBray said after the news conference that the department has spent $100 million thus far to provide an accounting and has found “no evidence” of fraud or any major systemic error. (Yes, but it spent $100 million mainly on legal costs, not a dime to the plaintiffs.) Out of 47,500 accounts studied, he said, the department found underpayments in 11 accounts ranging from $57 to $263 (Nieves, 2005, A-19). In April 2005, citing the government’s admission of computer-security problems, lawyers asked Lamberth to impose a temporary restraining order on the Interior Department to prevent computer hackers from damaging thousands of individual Indian trust accounts. The plea by lawyers in a class-action lawsuit came as government lawyers acknowledged that Bureau of Land Management computers holding trust account information had been penetrated by a government contractor last month during a security check. Accounting for past mismanagement was one thing. Keeping track of the Indian monies system itself was another. Warning that Indian Trust records continued to be in imminent risk of being manipulated and destroyed by computer hackers, Lamberth on October 20‚ 2005, ordered the Interior Department to disconnect from the Internet all computer systems that housed or provided access to Individual Indian Monies records. Lamberth cited as overwhelming evidence‚ testimony and documents introduced during hearings before his court indicating that the department’s computers are easy prey to attackers as well as poorly designed and managed with regard to security. Lamberth said that the computers should be reconnected only to issue payment checks. Gingold said that the government’s computer security is no better in 2005 than it had been nine earlier when the lawsuit was filed. “Here we are nine years into this litigation and nothing has changed,” Gingold told Lamberth during a two-hour hearing (“Lawyers Seek,” 2005). Gingold urged Lamberth to disconnect from the Internet any Interior computers containing trust data because of the continuing uncertainty over their security. His request came after the department’s inspector general disclosed that it had found serious computer problems in an unnamed Interior agency. By 2006, the U.S. government showed little inclination to solve the moneyfunds problem. Instead, Interior’s small army of attorneys was going to federal appeals court to get Judge Lamberth removed from the case, arguing that he was

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biased in favor of the plaintiffs. “It is exceptionally rare for us to make this request we are making today, and we make it urgently,” Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler told the appeals court in Washington, DC, on April 11, arguing that Lamberth should be removed from the case to “restore the appearance of fairness” (Talhelm, 2006). The attorneys complained after an opinion by Lamberth in July 2005 that included phrasing such as: Alas, our “modern” Interior Department has time and again demonstrated that it is a dinosaur … the morally and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and imperialist government that should have been buried a century ago, the last pathetic outpost of the indifference and Anglocentrism we thought we had left behind. (Talhelm, 2006)

Keisler told a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, “Even in cases involving convicted criminals, judges don’t use language this way.” If the appeals court removes Lamberth, said Keith Harper, lawyer for the Indian plaintiffs, “It will send a very clear message to the government that all their malfeasance … is exonerated.” “We think that would fundamentally undermine the appearance of justice and justice itself” (Talhelm, 2006). WHITHER THE TRUST-FUND BILLIONS? Leaders of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Senators John McCain and Byron Dorgan, in 2005 introduced legislation to amend the Indian Trust Reform Act. The senators sought to end the decades of fruitless litigation and give the Indians involved a settlement. The bill called for the Treasury and Interior Departments to figure out how much money had flowed through the individual accounts since 1980 and use that as a basis for an estimate of what the overall amount owed should be. During hearings on the bill in late July 2005, Cobell pointed out that the bill would do nothing to uphold her consistent victories in court and in fact would end the court’s role in this case. “What’s worse,” commented an editorial in The New York Times, “It would do nothing to reform the supervision of individual Indian trust accounts” (“Fixing an Old Injustice,” 2005). So, whither the trust-fund billions? When all is said and done, will the plaintiffs in Cobell v. Norton ever get anything close to what they are owed? Although optimism is always in season, and justice sometimes does actually prevail, there is ample precedent in U.S. legal history vis-à-vis Native Americans to create doubts that right and reasonable outcomes follow the opinions of courts presided over by hardworking, honest judges, even after the government has copiously admitted its errors. Some historical parallels present themselves: John Marshall, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, found in favor of the Cherokees’ sovereignty; President Andrew Jackson ignored him and his court, leading to the Trail of Tears. (Jackson’s action was an impeachable offense because contempt of the Supreme Court was


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a violation of his oath of office. It was never prosecuted because Georgia made a states’ rights case that could have started the Civil War thirty years before it actually began.) More recently, during the mid-1970s, the courts found in favor of a 250,000acre land claim for the Oneidas. Thirty years later, they have yet to receive any land from this legal proceeding. Might Cobell v. Norton end up being another perpetual-motion employment engine for lawyers and another reminder that sometimes the legal system talks the talk as the executive branch fails to walk the walk of justice? Or might the contending parties, with Judge Lamberth’s prodding, find a way to at least estimate what is owed the plaintiffs and take the necessary steps to pay them? The next few years may provide an answer, after the second phase of Cobell v. Norton is adjudicated and a final ruling is issued by Judge Lamberth. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who is Cheyenne, has insisted that all parties to the Cobell litigation must work together to resolve the case; he believes, otherwise, that it may not be resolved it at all. “We have one year to reach settlement on this issue,” he said during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, as it considered his bill, S 1770, to encourage individual beneficiary settlements in the lawsuit (Reynolds, 2003). BLACKFEET HISTORY AT GHOST RIDGE “I’ve heard from friends that the government thinks I’m tired and that they’ll wear me down, so that I’ll just go away,” Cobell reflected (Awehali, 2003). Near Cobell’s home town, a marker describes the winter of 1883–84, when 500 Blackfeet died of starvation and exposure while awaiting supplies promised them by the federal government. The dead were buried in a mass grave that is now called Ghost Ridge. During the more difficult stages of the lawsuit, Cobell said she visited Ghost Ridge, thinking of her ancestors who perished in the cold 120 years ago, while waiting for the government to fulfill its promises (Awehali, 2003). During the winter of 1883–84, as the cattle of white settlers grazed illegally on Indian lands, the Blackfeet began to die of starvation and a streptococcal epidemic. The following spring, they ate their last government-provided seed potatoes; by June, they were stripping cottonwood trees and chewing their inner bark; and by the time BIA officials in Washington, DC, finally responded with extra rations, a Blackfeet man called Almost-a-Dog was said to have cut 555 notches in a willow stick, one for every Indian who had died—one in every four Blackfeet in the state of Montana (Whitty, 2005). As the Blackfeet starved, Indian Agent John Young hoarded food. “All the Blackfeet know,” says Cobell, “that the Agency man was black-marketing the Indians’ rations, and that the reservation was enclosed in barbed wire” (Whitty, 2005). So much for trust and wardship. By 2006, the federal government was gathering all its money-trust records in one place, in an industrial park a half hour southwest of Kansas City, 70 feet

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beneath the prairie near Lenexa, Kansas, “filling limestone caverns protected by guards and a bomb-sniffing dog with truckloads of American Indian financial and cultural records…. Two years and $120 million into the accounting [in 2006], the archive has amassed 140,000 boxes with 300 million pages of old leases, bills, ledgers, account statements, school records, maps, letters and black-and-white photographs” (Heilprin, 2006). The government estimated at the time that the mere archiving of the records would take seven years and cost $335 million. In an area the size of a professional football stadium, “The shelves are coated with an electrostatically charged powder to resist corrosion or chemical action. The air within the painted cavern walls is kept at 60 degrees F. and 40 percent humidity. High-efficiency air filters catch 99 percent of all microscopic particles…. The boxes come from about 100 of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs offices and National Archives record centers around the country. At a nondescript warehouse nearby, 100 workers sort through the boxes and log their contents into computers” (Heilprin, 2006). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in July 2006 took Judge Lamberth off the case at the Interior Department’s request, arguing that he had been biased. The removal, a rare event in judicial circles, came even as the court echoed much of what he had said about the nature of the Department of Interior’s conduct on the case. The court called Lamberth “an experienced judge who, having presided over this exceptionally contentious case for almost a decade, has become ‘exceedingly ill disposed towards [a] defendant’ that has flagrantly and repeatedly breached its fiduciary obligations” (Weiss, 2006, A-13). The court also cited Lamberth’s own words to illustrate why he should be removed from the case, now titled Cobell v. Kempthorne, including a July 2005 opinion in which he called the Interior Department “a dinosaur—the morally and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and imperialist government that should have been buried a century ago, the pathetic outpost of the indifference and anglocentrism we thought we had left behind” (Weiss, 2006, A-13). FURTHER READING “Appeals Court Halts Indian Trust Accounting.” Billings Gazette, November 14, 2003. . Awehali, Brian. “Fighting Long Odds: Government Continues to Shred, Evade, Obstruct, Lie, and Conspire in Indian Trust Case.” LiP Magazine. December 15, 2003. <www. lipmagazine.org/articles/featawehali_300_p.htm>. Cobell, Eloise. “Indians Not Being Told Truth.” Daily Oklahoman, April 22, 2005: n.p. Cobell, Eloise. “Restoring Trust and Ending a National Disgrace.” Indian Country Today, July 14, 2005. <www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096411230>. Coulter, Robert T., and Steven M. Tullberg. “Indian land Rights.” The Aggressions of Civilization. Ed. Sandra L. Cadwallader and Vine Deloria Jr. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984, 185–214. “Court Rejects Judge’s Plan in Indian Case.” Associated Press, December 11, 2004 (in LEXIS).


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Deloria, Vine, Jr., and Clifford Lytle. American Indians, American Justice. Austin: Texas University Press, 1983. File, John. “One Banker’s Fight for a Half-Million Indians.” The New York Times, April 20, 2004: n.p. “Fixing an Old Injustice.” Editorial. The New York Times, August 4, 2005. . Heilprin, John. “Counting Up What American Indians are Owed.” Associated Press, May 7, 2006. (in LEXIS). Henry, David. Stealing from Indians. Billings, MT: Thunder Mountain Press, 1995. Johansen, Bruce E. “The BIA as Banker: ‘Trust’ Is Hard When Billions Disappear.” Native Americas 14, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 14–23. Johansen, Bruce E. “The Trust Fund Mess: Where Has All the Money Gone?” Native Americas 21 (Fall/Winter 2004): 26–33. Kennedy, J. Michael. “Truth and Consequences on the Reservation.” Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, July 7, 2002. <www.aaanativearts.com/cat186.html>. “Lawyers Seek Court Order to Keep Indian Trust Accounts Secure.” Indian Trust ListServ, April 20, 2005. . Leonnig, Carol D. “Interior Dept. Is Denounced; Investigator of Indian Funds Resigns, Alleges Obstruction.” Washington Post, April 7, 2004: A-7. Nieves, Evelyn. “Indian Leaders Seek to Settle Lawsuit over Leasing of Land Principles Outlined Include Payment of $27.5 Billion.” Washington Post, June 21, 2005: A-19. Pommersheim, Frank. Braid of Feathers: American Indian Law and Contemporary Tribal Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Press Release, Plaintiffs. Cobell v. Norton. Washington, DC, September 30, 2004. Reynolds, Jerry. “Bush Administration Likely behind Cobell Appropriations Rider.” Indian Country Today, November 1, 2003. . Szpaller, Keila. “Cobell Speech Inspires, Shames.” Great Falls (Montana) Tribune, July 4, 2005: n.p. Talhelm, Jennifer. “Appeals Court: Indian Money Accounting Would Be Impossible.” Colorado Daily, November 16, 2005a. . Talhelm, Jennifer. “Cowboy Judge in Indian Case Holds Little Back.” Associated Press, November 28, 2005b (in Lexis). Talhelm, Jennifer. “U.S. Wants Judge off Indian Case.” Associated Press, April 11, 2006 (in Lexis). Weiss, Eric M. “At U.S. Urging, Court Throws Lamberth Off Indian Case.” Washington Post, July 13, 2006: A-13. Whitty, Julia. “Accounting Coup.” Mother Jones, September/October 2005. . Wilkinson, Charles F. American Indians, Time, and the Law: Native Societies in a Modern Constitutional Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.

CHAPTER 3

Economic Revival: Up from the Bottom on the Reservation

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eservation poverty is an enduring cliché in Indian Country. As Walter Lippmann wrote when he coined the term, however, all stereotypes grow from a nub of reality to some degree, and thus reservation poverty still rings true, even today. There are signs of economic revival on the reservations, however. In addition, many Native people have been returning to their homelands from cities, bringing with them education, assets, and entrepreneurial energy. New technology also makes conduct of business from a rural base easier and more efficient. Niche markets—such as many that operate from reservations—may be enhanced by Internet technology. Native reservation residents have learned how to use exemptions from state taxes (even as the states mount extensive efforts to collect this money). Land bases and other assets also have been acquired through enforcement of laws such as the Non-Intercourse Acts of 1790 (and later years), which forbade state governments and individuals from purchasing or otherwise taking Native land without federal approval, laws that were routinely flaunted in the eighteenth century. Onreservation banking (such as efforts by the Blackfeet Eloise Cobell, described in chapter 2) has been an essential element in this economic revival. Some of this new economic activity is due to the infusion of gambling money. Although gaming has spawned its own set of socioeconomic problems on reservations, it has brought some seed money for other enterprises. Is gambling the answer, the new buffalo as some Native Americans have called it? Some places, such as the Pequots’ Foxwoods in Connecticut and some other locales, have been enriched by gaming. In other places, such as the New York Oneidas’ lands in upstate New York, gambling has provided an enriched upper class the means to hire police to force antigambling traditionalists from their homes. Among the Mohawks at Akwesasne, people have died over the issue. Akwesasne’s position on the United States-Canada border also has made smuggling of cigarettes, liquor, other drugs, weapons, and human beings a major industry.

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Even today, however, a survey of contemporary reservation economic conditions is a corrective for anyone who thinks that modern-day reservation gambling has made all Native Americans rich. Aside from some of the poorest counties in the United States, Native peoples also occupy some of Canada’s most desolate real estate, as characterized here by the village of Pikangikum, which has one of the highest suicide rates of any community in the world. Alcoholism is still a plague in the cities as well as on rural reservations. Readers will become acquainted in this chapter with the hamlet of Whiteclay, Nebraska, where the major business is selling beer and other alcoholic beverages to Indians of the neighboring Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where such sales are illegal. A GROWTH IN BUSINESS ENTERPRISES Beginning in the late 1980s, Indian Country witnessed an explosion in Native American enterprises (not all of them legal) involving the retail of cut-rate tobacco and gasoline as well as gambling establishments, from simple bingo halls to Las Vegas–type casinos, that now operate on a hundred or more reservations. Sovereignty is increasingly being interpreted as economic independence as Native Americans seek more control over resource development on their lands. Business profits, in many cases, are being used to buy back parcels of land that had been sold to non-Indians decades or centuries ago. On the Northern Cheyenne reservation in southeastern Montana, for example, land is being repurchased from non-Indians and turned over to tribal members who intend to use it for cattle ranching. Oneidas in New York and Wisconsin have been steadily acquiring formerly alienated lands with profits from casinos and using the proceeds to start other businesses as well as to preserve language and culture. By 1997, the unemployment rate on the Oneida reservation in Wisconsin (near Green Bay) had fallen to 4.2 percent, below the national average for all workers. The Wisconsin Oneidas are now one of the largest employers in the Green Bay area. They also spend almost $1 million per year on adult education. In 1995, the Wisconsin Oneidas purchased, for $40 million, a 49 percent stake in Airadigm Communications, a mobile telephone company that serves Wisconsin and Iowa. The Oneidas also spent $22 million in a joint venture with Plexus, a circuit-board assembly company. The Oneidas of Wisconsin also own a one-third stake in Bay Bank of Green Bay and maintain a $5 million revolving loan fund to provide start-up capital for small businesses. The Mississippi Band of Choctaws in the late 1970s borrowed $500,000 from a federal program that made guaranteed loans and sank most of it into a factory to make wire harnesses for automotive electronics. The business now also makes car stereos for Ford and Chrysler. The Mississippi Choctaws also opened a greetingcard plant in a joint venture with American Greetings as well as other enterprises, including an 18-hole golf course. By the late 1990s, less than 3 percent of household income on the Mississippi Choctaw reservation came from welfare programs, compared to almost 70 percent twenty years earlier. Unemployment on the reservation has fallen to less than 3 percent, and the tribe is the largest employer in its geographical area. Roughly half the tribe’s work force is non-Indian (Darlin, 1997, 88).

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The White Mountain Apaches of Arizona have increased their income dramatically by operating elk-hunting expeditions for which seven-day permits cost about $14,000. Some of these permits have been auctioned for as much as $50,000. Fishing permits go for $200 per day. The White Mountain Apaches make about $1 million per year from such permits, money that has helped fund development of a ski resort, a modest casino, and ecotourism package tours that feature white-water rafting and mountain climbing (Darlin, 1997, 88). Some Indian reservations experienced remarkable employment growth in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In what is probably part of a national pattern, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians Economic Development Corporation has compiled figures illustrating an explosive growth of individual Indian entrepreneurship. Statistics compiled by this group assert that the number of businesses owned by American Indians in Oregon nearly doubled (from 333 to 618 firms) between 1987 and 1992. In the state of Washington, businesses owned by American Indians also nearly doubled during the same period, from 682 to 1,335. These figures are probably representative of the United States generally. Between 1980 and 2002, employment on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota rose from 75 to 348. One of the most successful businesses at Leech Lake is a firewood company, which cuts, seasons, and markets wood for home heating. On the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, a company was started to freezedry fishing bait. On the Grand Portage Reservation of Minnesota, the 100-room Grand Portage Lodge and Conference Center was built in 1973. Ojibway Forest Products at White Earth cuts lumber for export. Six weeks after Hoopa Modular Building Enterprise opened its doors in midAugust 2005 to begin constructing modular built-to-order homes, it had three months’ worth of orders. The company, owned collectively by the Hoopas, aims to create jobs and affordable housing. The vast majority of the 60 workers employed at the new facility are Hoopas, who earn significantly more than minimum wage (Rushton, 2005). Inside the airplane hangar-size factory, the modular homes’ walls, floors, and roofs are constructed separately and then assembled into the more recognizable house shapes, which are then moved along the assembly line by cranes (Rushton, 2005). The modular homes range in size from 800 square feet to 3,000 square feet. Orders have come from Eureka to San Diego, with most of the homes going to buyers in the Los Angeles area. As of 2005, the homes could not be sold outside of California due to regulations, but the company was working with the Washington and Oregon governments to allow the homes to be shipped there (Rushton, 2005). The modular homes cost about $100 per square foot, less than half the average cost of traditional dwellings. Costs vary depending on which cabinets, flooring, and other fixtures are selected. CULTURE AND ECONOMIC COMPETENCE Native American economic resurgence requires access to capital with which to build reservation infrastructure. John C. Mohawk, professor of Native American Studies at the State University of New York–Buffalo, wrote:

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The Praeger Handbook on Contemporary Issues in Native America [F]or too long, apologists for the failure of United States Indian policy have asserted that the primary cause of Indian poverty is the culture of the Indians. The proposal that Indian culture causes poverty completely ignores the fact that the essential ingredients for economic growth—access to means and opportunity—have been forcefully absent from Indian life. (Mohawk, 1992, 46)

Professor Mohawk continued: If you want to do successful economic development in Indian country, you eventually have to conclude that you must do it on the Indians’ own terms. You come to understand that economic development in Indian country is not just organizing the materials and labor to produce wealth. It is also coming up with a way that people are comfortable in moving forward, in doing what they need in order to meet their needs. (Mohawk, 1989, 56)

By the last years of the twentieth century, these means and opportunities were becoming more available to urban and reservation Indians who also were doing their best to maintain their traditional cultures. The 1990s witnessed an explosion in business ventures by Indian tribes: fish canneries operated by the Quinault, Lummi, and Swinomish of the Pacific Northwest and office and industrial parks operated by the Oneidas of Wisconsin and the Gilas of Arizona. The Warms Springs Reservation of Oregon now includes a large sawmill and a tourist resort. David Lester, executive director of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT), who is Creek, wrote: While Indian peoples still lag other Americans in socioeconomic indicators, for the first time in over 200 years we are witnessing tribes as pillars in their regional economies. We see a consensus across Indian America that developing stable, diversified economies is key to other important tribal goals, such as cultural continuity, retention of the federal trust, tribal self-governance, and the protection of Indian treaty rights…. The Indian vision is to effectively govern our own land … to master the tools of modern technology to protect our cultural heritage, and to develop strong local economies that give expression to our tribal values in economic terms. (Lester, 1997, G-1)

HISTORICAL ROOTS OF NATIVE AMERICAN POVERTY Today’s reservation economic conditions have a long history, as do government statistics describing them. Shortly after 1920, a wave of sympathy emerged in response to the cruelties imposed on Native American peoples during the nadir of the reservation era. This wave of political opinion produced Lewis Meriam’s report (1928), which documented horrid economic conditions on Indian reservations under the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA’s) wardship. By 1923, a group of influential Indians and non-Indians, the Committee of One Hundred, was lobbying for more respectful and humane treatment of surviving American Indians. John Collier was an early member, along with William Jennings

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Bryan, Clark Wissler, Gen. John J. Pershing, Bernard Baruch, William Allen White, and the Seneca Arthur C. Parker. Parker was elected presiding officer at a convention in Washington, DC, in December 1923. Under his aegis in 1924, the group published its findings under the title The Indian Problem. This document formed the basis for the better-known Meriam Report four years later. The Indian Problem provided graphic evidence of just how badly the government’s wards were being treated. Infant mortality on Indian reservations, for example, was found to be nearly three times that of European-descended Americans generally. Large numbers of Indians were dying from tuberculosis, measles, and other diseases that had been largely eradicated in non-Indian populations. In this sea of disease, health services on reservations were ill-equipped and lacking sufficiently trained staff. Diets laden with cheap commodity carbohydrates were producing malnutrition in people who were otherwise overweight. The government provided an average of 11 cents per day to feed students at its boarding schools and skimped on equipment and salaries for teachers. Schools were often unsanitary. Per capita income for Native reservation residents was less than $200 per year at a time when national average earnings were $1,350. Belief that government should address its mistakes with regard to Indian affairs by bolstering Native economies became a popular political theme after the release of the Meriam Report. Even before John Collier (who had been accused of communist tendencies during the so-called red scare of the early 1920s) became Indian commissioner under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover drew the erudite Ray Lyman from the presidency of Stanford University to become his secretary of the interior. Hoover also chose Charles J. Rhoades, a devout Quaker, as commissioner of Indian Affairs. Rhoades quickly set about to try to implement the findings of the Meriam Report. Thus began a bit of momentum for radical reform to restore some economic integrity to reservation life. In certain ways, life for some Native people living on reservations was getting more difficult as the twentieth century ended. By 1990, the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, whose people are descended from Crazy Horse and Red Cloud and which was the site of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee and the 1973 confrontation there, had become the poorest area in the United States. In the 2000 U.S. census, the rankings were little changed. Buffalo County, home of the Lower Brule Indian Reservation, had the lowest per capita income in the United States. The second lowest ranking was Shannon County, home of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In Buffalo County, 61.8 percent of the children lived in poverty, the highest rate in the United States, followed by Zieback County (61.2%) and Shannon County (61%). These rates were much higher than those in any urban area. The 2000 census indicated that South Dakota as a whole had the largest percentage increase in the United States for household median income between 1990 and 2000. At the same time, Buffalo County, home of the 3,500-member Crow Creek Sioux, exchanged places with Shannon County as the two poorest in the United States. In Buffalo County, the largest and most successful business

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during the 1990s was the Lode Star Casino. Shannon County has benefited somewhat from federal empowerment-zone status that brought the county millions in federal dollars for economic development and a visit from President Bill Clinton. In 1989, nearly seven of every ten people in Shannon County were unemployed, and virtually the only work, except for a few private businesses, came from government agencies and the underground economy. Pine Ridge village, the largest town on the reservation, had no railroad or bus connections and no bank, theater, clothing store, or barbershop. Meanwhile, the pervasiveness of poverty shattered families and caused people to turn to alcohol and other drugs. Infant mortality at Pine Ridge was 29 per 1,000 children, three times the national average. The death rate from homicide was also three times the national average. People at Pine Ridge die from alcoholism at 10 times the national rate (not taking into account damage caused by fetal alcohol syndrome). The death rate from adult diabetes was four times the national average. The tribal housing authority had a waiting list of 2,000 families for subsidized lodging, at least a quarter of the people on the reservation. The indications of poverty in South Dakota were nearly duplicated in neighboring states. In Nebraska, unemployment on the Omaha reservation stood at 71 percent in the late 1980s; among the Santee Sioux, unemployment was 55 percent, compared to 65 percent among the Winnebago (Suzuki, 1991, 27–28). Nationwide, the civilian unemployment rate among Native Americans on reservations was about 30 percent in 1990. Unemployment on the Navajo reservation, with its workforce of 87,000 people (the largest in the United States), was 29.5 percent. Nationwide, Native Americans’ income level was falling in 1990 as measured against all other ethnic groups in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income for Native Americans (adjusted for inflation) fell from $20,541 in 1980 to $20,025 in 1990, whereas the same figure for citizens of European heritage rose from $29,632 to $31,435. The percentage of Native Americans defined as living below the poverty line increased from 27.5 percent in 1980 to 30.9 percent in 1990, whereas the percentage for European Americans rose from 9.4 percent to 9.8 percent. In 1990, the Census Bureau found that 29.5 percent of blacks, 14.1 percent of Asians, and 25.3 percent of Hispanics lived in poverty. In 1989, the Children’s Defense Fund found that 66 percent of Native American children in Minneapolis were living in families with incomes below the poverty line. Native American income levels have risen since 2000 in the United States and poverty rates have stabilized, but as a group they remain among the poorest in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. From 2004 to 2005, the average U.S. household earned $46,326, an increase of 1.1 percent, the first year since 1999 that the median household income rose. Incomes for American Indian and Alaska Native households from 2003 to 2005, averaged $33,627, lower than any other broadly defined ethnic group (white, Asian, and Hispanic). Only African

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American households, with a median income of $31,140, ranked below Native households (Census Bureau, 2005). There are still 37 million people, or 12.6 percent of the population, and 7.7 million families in poverty nationwide. Among American Indians and Alaska Natives, the picture was much worse. According to a 3-year average of data, 25.3 percent of Native Americans are living in poverty. This was actually a slight increase from the 24.3 percent that the Census reported in its 1990 study on income and poverty. The figure translated to 537,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives who were below the poverty line. As defined by the Office of Management and Budget, the poverty threshold for a family of four in 2005 was $19,971; for a family of three, $15,577; for a family of two, $12,755; and for unrelated individuals, $9,973 (Census Bureau, 2005). MIXED SOCIOECONOMIC EVIDENCE Although many statistics indicate that Native Americans often were experiencing intensifying poverty at the end of the twentieth century, some indicators revealed improvement in some areas of health and welfare. For example, the Indian Health Service reported that the homicide rate for Native Americans (per 100,000 people) declined from 23.8 in 1955 to 14.1 in 1988 as the homicide rate for all ethnic groups in the United States increased from 4.8 to 9.0. Between 1966 and 1988, 57 percent of murders of blacks and 47 percent of murders of whites involved guns (according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), only 29 percent of Indian murders involved firearms). Thirty-two percent of murdered Indians were killed with knives. Deaths from alcoholism among Native Americans declined from 56.6 per 100,000 in 1969 to 33.9 in 1988, whereas the alcoholism death rate for all races in the United States declined only slightly, from 7.7 to 6.3 per 100,000. Put another way, in 1969, the alcoholism death rate for Native Americans and Alaska Natives was 7.4 times that of the general population. In two decades, that figure fell to 5.4 times, according to the Indian Health Service. According to Jeffrey Wollock, writing in Native Americas, from 1996 to 2001, crime rates on reservations rose, whereas they fell elsewhere. Indians 12 to 20 years old are 58 percent more likely to be victims of crime than are whites and blacks. Indians younger than age 15 are murdered at twice the rate of whites (Wollock, 2003, 30). The contemporary murder rate on Indian reservations is five times the average in the United States as a whole: 29 per 100,000 people, compared to 5.6. The average in U.S. urban areas is 7 per 100,000 (“Crime Rate,” 2003, 11). An Indian Country Crime Report, compiled from 1,072 cases prosecuted in U.S. district courts, did not include felonies committed by non-Indians on reservations. Some small reservations have very high murder rates, according to this report. The Salt River Pima Maricopa Community in Arizona, for example, had six murders among 6,405 people, a murder rate 17 times the national average. The Gila River Reservation, with 11,257 enrolled members, suffered 11 murders, a similar rate

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(“Crime Rate,” 2003, 11). According to Mac Rominger, an FBI agent on the Hopi and Navajo reservations, often-blamed problems such as alcoholism and poverty were being compounded by isolation. “Ninety-five percent of the violent crime out there is directed towards family and friends,” he said (“Crime Rate,” 2003, 11). Youth suicide among Native Americans is twice the rate of non-Indians. The American Medical Association reports that one in five Indian girls attempts suicide before leaving high school. The alcoholism death rate is four times the national average (Wollock, 2003, 30). Additionally, more than 40 percent of Native Americans in the United States live in substandard housing, compared with an average of 6 percent for the rest of the population. The crisis for Native American young people is closely tied to loss of culture, with youth “stuck between two worlds” (Wollock, 2003, 30). Many more Native youth, compared to earlier times, can not speak their own languages and have little grasp of their traditional culture and history. Similar statistics can assume a terrifying profile when they are described in personal context of on a small village. Take, for example, the Ojibway-Cree village of Pikangikum, about 200 miles northeast of Winnipeg, Manitoba. PIKANGIKUM’S CONTINUING DESOLATION ESCAPES CANADA’S MINISTRY OF INDIAN AFFAIRS The Ojibway-Cree village of Pikangikum, about 200 miles northeast of Winnipeg, Manitoba, has the highest documented suicide rate in the world. It is a place where the main recreational pastime for young people is glue-sniffing. The reserve’s only school was closed for more than a year because of a fuel leak. Pikangikum’s water-treatment plant was closed nearly as long, also because of an accidental fuel leak. Eighty percent to 90 percent of the adults in Pikangikum are unemployed. The village is so overcrowded, with 400 homes for 2,100 people, that some people sleep in shifts to make beds available for others. All food is flown in, so prices are about five times the average for the rest of Canada. What did Canada’s Ministry of Indian Affairs do about all of this? When people in the village asked for help, it suspended the fiscal authority of the village band council, provoking anger at Pikangikum. On May 17, 2001, Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault took control of the Pikangikum First Nation’s $9 million (Canadian) annual budget and then gave control to a private consulting firm, A. D. Morrison and Associates, Ltd., of London, Ontario, an arrangement known within the Canadian Indian bureaucracy as third-party management. When the residents of Pikangikum refused to cooperate with Nault and the third-party managers, Nault, whose riding (district) in Canada’s Parliament includes Pikangikum, suspended federal transfer payments to its council, meaning that most of the 10 percent of the town’s adults who had jobs with the council stopped receiving paychecks. The local council called Indian Affairs’ actions paternalistic. The band council had no observable financial problems when the government removed its authority. It was not running a deficit when its financial powers were removed;

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it had passed previous financial audits. Chief Louis Quill, a spokesman for the Pikangikum council, said the community was shocked to learn that the new colonialist agent was a First Nations–operated company. “I don’t think that’s the way to treat other Natives,” said Quill. “We shouldn’t be going after our own people on behalf of Indian Affairs.” Quill said the third-party managers “are not welcome in our community” (“Federal Paternalism Angers Pikangikum,” n.d.). A WAVE OF SUICIDES While Ottawa played bureaucratic Great White Father in Pikangikum, more than forty young people killed themselves there during the 10 years ending in 2002. The same rate, per capita, would have yielded 70,500 suicides in a city of 3 million people. In 2000, the community’s rate of suicide was 380 per 100,000 population. The national average suicide rate in Canada is 13 per 100,000. “If [third-party management] is being forced on the community [Pikangikum] from the outside … that just increases the sense of not having control, and that increases the distress,” said David Masecar, president of the Canadian Association of Suicide Prevention (Elliott, June 7, 2001, A-15). Most of the suicides were women who hanged themselves (Elliott, June 7, 2001, A-15). In 2000 alone, nine Ojibway girls aged 5 to 13 killed themselves in Pikangikum. Those suicides sent the year’s suicide rate up to 470 deaths per 100,000, 36 times the Canadian national average. Three more young women killed themselves between mid-May and mid-June 2001. “When young women who are the bearers of life start to kill themselves, it’s a real reflection on the health of the community,” said Arnold Devlin of Dilico Child and Family Services in Thunder Bay, Ontario (Elliott, November 30, 2000). Since 1995, the Pikangikum Youth Patrol, a team of young volunteers, has scoured Pikangikum almost every night looking for huddles of gas-sniffers “whose spine-chilling howls permeate the community at night, but the young addicts often scatter into the darkness before patrollers can reach them. At peak suicide times like … summer and fall, there’s an attempt or two every night” (Elliott, November 30, 2000). Louise Elliott wrote for Canadian Press, “The [suicide] problem, while worst in Pikangikum, is region-wide. On Monday, another 13-year-old girl took her life in Summer Beaver, a reserve 300 kilometers east of Pikangikum, bringing the total suicides on northern Ontario reserves this year [2000] to 25. ‘This is the worst year on record [for suicide],’” said Arnold Devlin, of Dilico Child and Family Services in Thunder Bay” (Elliott, November 30, 2000). “It’s very, very difficult,” said band councilor Sam Quill, his eyes welling with tears. Quill, who recalled Pikangikum’s first rash of youth hangings in 1993 and 1994, included the suicides of his daughter and granddaughter (Elliott, November 30, 2000). Nault had his own take on the rising suicide rate across Ontario’s north country. In a letter, he said that Pikangikum band leaders had “perpetuated” the community’s suicide crisis by talking to the media. “I’m very concerned that the

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decision to pursue a media approach may in fact perpetuate the suicide crisis,” Nault wrote, adding that a 1996 report by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal peoples “suggests the more publicity given to suicides, the more suicides that follow in their wake” (Elliott, June 22, 2001). Joseph Magnet, a University of Ottawa law professor who undertook a constitutional challenge to Nault’s decision to take over the band’s finances, said the letter unfairly blamed the community’s interviews with media in recent weeks for the suicide epidemic. “It’s a weird thing to say—‘we shouldn’t bring our lawyers in, we shouldn’t call the press, we should let our kids die in private.’” Magnet said of Nault’s letter. “It’s ridiculous” (Elliott, June 22, 2001). A DISTRAUGHT DOCTOR Michael Monture, a Grand River Mohawk who is also a medical doctor, became lost in the bush while serving a rotation on the reserve, despite his reputation as a skilled hunter who was at home in the backcountry. Five doctors rotate in Pikangikum; the reserve has no other medical services. The entire community joined in a search for Monture because he was so well-loved. People who had shared a meal with Montour the evening before he departed for the bush said Monture lost his bearings after he was devastated by the horrible conditions in Pikangikum. The previous week, according to a report in the Brantford (Ontario) Expositor, during his second visit to Pikangikum, Monture had tallied up some of the dire social ills that plague the 2,100-member community and was angry. Bonnie-Jean Muir, had shared a dinner with Monture the evening before he went into the bush, beginning a two-day ordeal. About 12:30 A.M. he went out for a long walk, intending to spend the night in the bush. With little food and dwindling gasoline supplies, town residents used their own all-terrain vehicles and boats to comb the area in their search for Monture. They set out each morning of the search from a base camp north of Pikangikum. Spotted by an Ontario Provincial Police helicopter, Monture emerged from the bush seven miles from Pikangikum after two-and-a-half cold, wet days. According to one news account, Monture said that “The suffering and desperation … on the remote reserve of Pikangikum … prompted him to set out on a spiritual quest for help” (Elliott, June 18, 2001, A-14). Like each visiting physician in Pikangikum, Monture was given a large box of food for his rotation. Monture gave most of his food away. “The most common concern was the lack of food. What am I supposed to do? Write a prescription for food for these people?” Monture told Canadian Press (Gamble, n.d.). Monture had henceforth decided to dedicate much of his medical practice to the people of Pikangikum. He moved to Sioux Lookout, near Pikangikum, so that he could fly in to offer medical treatment to the community once or twice a month when not on rotation. “I was concerned and frustrated at the lack of resources,” Monture said after he was rescued. “What galvanized me was how people were lacking in basic food and necessities,” he said. “It’s not a question of what you’re going to eat, it’s whether

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you’re going to eat.” Monture described seeing young children huddled near a burning pile of refuse at Pikangikum. “They have a fire going in the garbage dump to keep warm while looking for things to eat,” he says. “It’s very upsetting to think that this is Canada” (Elliott, June 18, 2001, A-14). Chief Quill said that Monture’s actions had raised the community’s profile and its spirits, according to Canadian Press reports, which noted, “Residents, apparently overwhelmed by the doctor’s actions, circled around him as he prepared to fly off the reserve Saturday night, reaching out to touch him as though he were a hero” (Elliott, June 18, 2001, A-14). “It was a political stance he was taking,” said Muir. “He could not believe what he saw” (Elliott, June 22, 2001, A-16). Stan Beardy, the grand chief of Nishnawbe-Aski Nation, the political organization that represents northern Ontario First Nations reserves, says he believed that fury over the government’s appointment of an Indian agent to take control of Pikangikum’s finances also played a role in Monture’s sojourn into the bush. FAILED INFRASTRUCTURE About 200 students lost access to education when Pikangikum’s only school closed for about a year after 6,300 gallons of diesel oil was accidentally pumped into the crawl space under the school building. In addition, on October 2, 2000, the Pikangikum water-treatment plant flooded, leaking more than 250 gallons of fuel oil into the town’s reservoir. According to a report in a local newspaper, the Anishinabek News, “Health Canada closed down the water system and closed the hotel. The workers working on the school had to leave as well…. Chief Peter Quill has stated that unless the water situation is dealt with immediately, the impact of the community will be devastating—both in terms of water-related medical problems and youth suicide” (Goulais, 2000). Many Pikangikum residents were forced to buy water at the local store for $5.99 (Canadian) per four-liter jug. Residents who could not buy drinking water used bottled water that was occasionally, owing to weather conditions, flown in by Indian Affairs. Otherwise, they boiled lake water. Canadian Indian Affairs provided $1.3 million in repairs to the water plant, which were completed on January 22, 2001. “Canada’s Indian Affairs Department asserted that no residents of Pikangikum were without clean water. In addition, the department also flew in a portable Zenon water plant at a cost of $4,500 per month. The community continues to use this portable plant. (A local news account said, “The water situation is no stranger to the communities of the Anishinabek Nation. In August, Gull Bay First Nation tested positive for e-coli contamination in their water supply. According to Chief Oliver Poile of Gull Bay, somebody may have died as a result of that contamination” (Goulais, 2000). Pikangikum also has been grappling with $10 million in failed infrastructure projects. In March 1999, workers were putting finishing touches on a business center in Pikangikum, including a 1,080-square-meter business center that houses a hotel, full-service restaurant, offices, rental space and classroom facilities, which created 15 permanent jobs in Pikangikum. Two years later, Indian Affairs’ embargo on funding closed the hotel.

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The list of woes afflicting Pikangikum included construction delays and legal disputes with contractors over an all-weather road and a power line intended to connect the community to the provincial power grid—two necessary steps toward building the kind of infrastructure community members say is necessary. Meanwhile, at Pikangikum, according to Louise Elliott of the Canadian Press, “On the roads … young children play on makeshift sleds—sharp-edged fragments of wainscotting they’ve pulled from stalled construction projects. Band leaders say the community doesn’t have enough electricity right now to fix its water treatment plant, or to keep up with the need for new houses. A grid line to pipe in electricity from Balmertown, 100 kilometers south, is only half-finished—it stalled when the contractor walked off the job last summer…. Outside the graffiti-scrawled homes with no indoor plumbing, crosses marking the graves of old and young are lined up seven or eight meters from the front doors, in a unique Pikangikum custom. No one seems to know where this tradition began—some say it happened when people left their traditional church for another, and could no longer use the church graveyard” (Elliott, 2000). AKWESASNE: THE DOWNSIDE OF GAMBLING AND SMUGGLING Today on the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation (St. Regis) in upstate New York, the main highway is lined with businesses that did not exist two decades ago, and not just the usual cheap gas and cigarettes, but the everyday goods that sustain people who live there. Many Mohawk-owned businesses have secured government-backed loans and grants resulting in the building of a small strip mall and enterprises ranging from lacrosse-stick manufacturing to large-scale construction companies. This curious mixture of legitimate and illicit economies brought unparalleled material wealth to the Mohawks, but it was not without conflict. Doug George Kanentiio, who has lived at Akwesasne most of his life, reports that by far the most lucrative money-generating activity was drug smuggling. The risks of carrying narcotics had risen since 2001, but the rewards were substantial. Teenagers were actively solicited by the smuggling cartels because they were told it was unlikely they would be imprisoned if they were caught. A few hours on a boat netted them more money than their parents earned in a month, or so went the rationale. The local newspaper, Indian Time, also is flush with advertising of Akwesasne businesses, including a First Americans Food Store, the Village Currency Exchange, EScentULee (manicures, pedicures, facials, etc.), Little Bear Design (embroidery and design), Burning Sky Office Products, Four Seasons Lawn Care and Snow Removal, Grace and Allan’s Discount Tobacco Products, St. Regis Mohawk Senior Center, CKON Radio, Broken Arrow Truck Stop and Gift Shop, Physical Limits Fitness Club, Clyde N Performance Plus (boats and motors), Akwesasne Mohawk Casino, Trade Zone Gasoline Station, Oakes Heating and Cooling, and Bear’s Den Restaurant and Motel. Although gambling has brought benefits to some Native American communities, it has brought violence to the Akwesasne Mohawks. The violence erupted in part over the issue of gambling. As many as seven casinos had opened illegally

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along the reservation’s main highway as the area became a crossroads for illicit smuggling of drugs, including cocaine and tax-free liquor and cigarettes. Tension escalated after early protests of gambling in the late 1980s (including the trashing of one casino and the burning of another), to attempts by gambling supporters to brutally repress this resistance. Residents blockaded the reservation to keep the casinos’ customers out, prompting the violent destruction of the same blockades by gambling supporters in late April 1990. At Akwesasne, the rhetoric of Native American sovereignty has been called into service to justify growth of smuggling and gambling as well as the rise of a paramilitary Warrior Society, whose ideological basis was laid by Kahnawake Mohawk Louis Hall. Factions at Akwesasne collided violently in conflicts over commercial gaming during the middle and late 1980s. By the time of the April 1990 blockade and its subsequent destruction, gambling at Akwesasne was generating $100 million per year in revenues and $7 million per year in untaxed profits to the owners of six establishments, which employed about 500 people. At that time, the casinos were the largest employers on the reservation; 1 in 10 working Mohawks had a job at a casino. By that time, violence had spiraled into brutal beatings of antigambling activists, drive-by shootings, and nightlong firefights that reminded some observers of gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Beirut, Lebanon. The battles culminated in two Mohawk deaths during the early morning of May 1, 1990. Intervention by several police agencies from the United States and Canada followed the two deaths; outside police presence continued for years afterward. Many Native nations in North America face environmental problems, and commercial gambling also has become an issue on many reservations in the United States. At Akwesasne, however, these crises hit with a special force because the reservation is dissected by the Canada-United States border. As violence related to the debate over gambling hit its peak at Akwesasne in spring 1990 with the shooting deaths of Mathew Pyke and “Junior” Edwards, press reports described a “Mohawk civil war.” Such a limited perspective ignores the important role of the international border in the intensifying agony of Akwesasne. The United States-Canada border has complicated the governance of Akwesasne immeasurably. The reservation is divided between two national governments (the United States and Canada; three if Quebec becomes independent). The borders of New York and the provinces of Quebec and Ontario also converge within the borders of Akwesasne. Internally, the United States recognizes the St. Regis Tribal Council, whereas Canada recognizes the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. Many Mohawks reserve their political participation for the traditional Council of Chiefs, which draws its constituency from both sides of the border but is recognized by neither the United States nor Canada. The conflict at Akwesasne was usually characterized in the press as a battle between Mohawk factions over gambling. Although the events that shook the Mohawk reservations of Akwesasne, Kahnawake, and Kanesatake did pit Mohawks against Mohawks (often estranging members of families), and although gambling

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was a major issue, the root cause was not personal animosity, smuggling, guns, or gambling alone. The events were rooted in the loss of a productive land base and a way of life that once was based upon it. AKWESASNE’S ROOTS OF STRIFE The strife that paralyzed Mohawk Country in 1990 was not a series of events isolated in time but the violent culmination of many events and issues that grew out of the ruination of the traditional way of life. This attempt at tracing the recent history of Mohawk Country is really a case study of how the modern industrial state can crush a Native way of life. Without loss of the land and the way of life that Mohawks had based on it, the nationalistic Warrior Society, a paramilitary group whose image mesmerized headline writers in the northeastern United States and most of Canada during that violent summer of 1990, might never have arisen. Had the construction of the Saint Lawrence Seaway shortly after World War II and the subsequent industrialization of the area not destroyed traditional ways of making a living in Mohawk Country, gambling and smuggling might never have emerged as avenues of economic survival there. The Saint Lawrence Seaway brought ranks of manufacturing plants to Mohawk Country that profited from ready access to the open ocean and cheap power. This industrial base generated the pollution that ruined the farming, fishing, and hunting economy at Akwesasne and its sister Mohawk reserves. In a historical sense, the deaths of Mohawks Mathew Pyke and “Junior” Edwards, as well as the murder of Marcel Lemay (the Quebec police officer killed at Oka in 1990), may be attributed to the rise of industry and its attendant pollution along the Saint Lawrence. The destruction of the natural world, along with erosion of the Mohawk land base, made living by the old ways nearly impossible and prompted many Mohawks to look for other ways to survive in the cash economy. During the first half of the twentieth century, many moved away; some became the legendary “Mohawks in high steel,” the men who constructed large parts of the urban skylines from Montreal to New York City. Some later returned home to ply the smuggling trades and, later, build a gaudy gambling strip along Highway 37 across Akwesasne. THE GROWTH OF SMUGGLING A steep rise in Canadian taxes on tobacco opened opportunities in smuggling of cigarettes, which were sold at smoke shops on the Mohawk reserve of Kahnawake, near Montreal. Ancillary smuggling in alcohol, illicit drugs, and weapons followed. The smuggling trade provided the precedent and the seed money for gambling that was never regulated according to U.S. law. Very little of the gambling revenue went to meet tribal needs. In addition to smuggling, the paramilitary Warrior Society was growing at all three Mohawk reserves. The Warrior Society fed on the frustrations of Mohawks whose old ways had been destroyed and whose lives were deteriorating day by day as factories poisoned the lands that had not been taken from them. Although

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many Mohawks disparaged the violent tactics of the Warrior Society that often made them feel like hostages in their own homes, everyone in Mohawk Country understood the roots of the problems that had led to the rise of tension and conflict. Smuggling has remained an enduring economic force at Akwesasne despite efforts by police on both sides of the border. In June 1997, 21 Mohawks were arrested by federal officials in what was called the largest bust of a smuggling ring in U.S. history. The indictment sought to recover $680 million in property allegedly purchased with profits from cigarette, liquor, and gun smuggling that crossed Akwesasne territory, including boats, cars, and real estate. Among those arrested was L. David Jacobs, former chief of the St. Regis Mohawk Council, who was accused of taking several hundred dollars worth of payoffs. Everyone who is familiar with Akwesasne Mohawk Territory knows it has been the scene of considerable smuggling between the United States and Canada, but no one knew the extent of the traffic until its volume drew the attention of prosecutors and police in both countries. By late 1999, with several convicted smugglers awaiting sentencing, the size of the smuggling industry outlined in court records was astounding even to veteran observers. The evidence presented by prosecutors outlined the largest smuggling operation since the United States-Canada border with land access on both sides was established. As the only Native American reservation that straddles the United States-Canada border, Akwesasne has long provided a smuggling route for anything illegal that may be in demand on either side. This cargo varies from cigarettes and hard liquor (which are taxed much more heavily in Canada than in the United States) to several varieties of illegal narcotics, automatic weapons, and even human beings. Immigration authorities at one point broke a smuggling ring that was ferrying people (most of them illegal immigrants from Asia) across the border at a cost of $45,000 to $50,000 each. The right of Mohawks to cross the border unimpeded is recognized by the Jay Treaty (1794), which Canadian authorities occasionally have contested. Various enterprising Akwesasne residents have become adept at selling their connections as border middlemen, the central link in the smuggling chain. A few years ago, a story floated around the reservation that a local kingpin was negotiating to buy a small island in the Saint Lawrence River for about $225,000 for use as a smuggling base. After the two parties agreed on the price, the new owner walked to a closet in his home, which was stacked floor to ceiling with cash in large denominations. He peeled an inch or two off the top of the stack to pay for the island. The Canadian federal government has asserted that taxing authorities in that country lost $750 million in potential revenue because of smuggling through Akwesasne between 1991 and 1997, when the biggest smuggling ring was busted. Nearly as much money was laundered through an armored-car business in Massena, New York. Prosecutors requested that U.S. district court Judge Thomas McAvoy sentence John “Chick” Fountain of Massena to seven years in prison and forfeiture of an unspecified amount of personal property for his role in laundering

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$557 million through his armored-car and currency-exchange businesses. Before he started this business, Fountain previously had lived much more modestly as a New York state trooper. Fountain, convicted on November 3, 1998, was one of 27 people whom prosecutors alleged had important roles in a smuggling ring that at its height operated large warehouses and squads of motorboats that were used to ferry goods and people across the Saint Lawrence River. When the river was frozen, smuggling often took place in automobiles. The smuggling ring drew some wellknown names at Akwesasne into its ambit, including longtime gambling developer Tony Laughing and former St. Regis tribal Chief Leo David Jacobs, who was convicted of taking $32,000 in kickbacks paid to link alleged kingpin Larry Miller with a number of Akwesasne businessmen. One of these businessmen was Loran Thompson, owner of a marina, a restaurant, and what New York radio reporter Neil Drew of Malone, New York, called “a very busy cigarette warehouse along the St. Lawrence River … where millions of cartons were purchased for smuggling into Canada” (Drew, 2001). The alleged kingpin of the smuggling cartel was Larry Miller of Massena, who traveled the world in a Lear Jet and owned five houses in Las Vegas as well as an estate not far from the source of his income: the porous international border through Akwesasne. According to court records, Miller made as much as $35 million per year at the height of the operation. Prosecutors suggested that Judge McAvoy fine Miller $160 million in cash and personal assets in addition to a sentence of 17 to 22 years in prison. ALCOHOLISM: THE CONTINUING TOLL Second only to the ravages of smallpox and other diseases, alcoholism has been the major cause of early death and other forms of misery for Native Americans since the so-called discovery of the Americas by Columbus. Scarrooyady, an Iroquois sachem, told Pennsylvania treaty commissioners in 1750, “Your traders now bring us scarce anything but rum and flour. The rum ruins us…. Those wicked whiskey sellers, when they have got the Indians in liquor, make them sell the very clothes from their backs!” (Johansen, 1982, 68). In 1832, the sale of alcoholic beverages to Indians was made illegal, an act that was not repealed until the early 1950s, when it became evident that prohibition produced a bootlegging industry little different from that which had flourished in the United States during the 1920s and early 1930s. Alcoholism continues to be a major problem today and is the leading single cause of death in many Native American communities. Today, the sharpest increases in alcoholism are being suffered in faraway places such as Alaska and the Canadian North, where Native peoples only recently have been deprived of their traditional ways of life. In Manitoba, for example, several hundred Native people whose lands were flooded have been moved to settlements where they are no longer allowed (or able) to wrest a living from the land. Alcoholism and other

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forms of social disorientation have followed suit. As many as 90 percent of adults have abused alcohol and other drugs, and juveniles frequently engage in fights. In 1960, before widespread energy development on Alaska’s North Slope, the suicide rate among Native people there was 13 per 100,000, comparable to averages in the United States as a whole. By 1970, the suicide rate had risen to 25 per 100,000; by 1986, it was 67.6 per 100,000. Homicide rates by the mid-1980s were three times the average in the United States as a whole, between 22.9 and 26.6 per 100,000 people, depending on which study was used. Death rates from homicide and suicide were related to rising alcoholism. In the mid-1980s, 79 percent of Native suicide victims had some alcohol in their blood at the time of death. Slightly more than half (54%) were legally intoxicated. In 1969, the Indian Health Service appointed a Task Force on Alcoholism that, a year later, concluded that alcoholism was one of the most significant health problems facing American Indians and Alaska Natives. Seven years later, the American Indian Policy Review Commission, established by the U.S. Congress, found that alcoholism and its medical consequences were the most serious and widespread health problem among American Indians. According to the Indian Health Service, alcoholism has an insidious multiplier effect. Not only does it contribute to elevated rates of traffic deaths but it also contributes to the majority of Indian homicides, other assaults, suicides, and other mental-health problems. Even today, among Plains Indians, 80 percent to 90 percent of Native American men drink alcohol, as do 50 percent to 60 percent of Indian women. By age 17, a majority of Indian boys and a large minority of Indian girls are steady drinkers. Drinking among Indian young people has been related directly to the highest suicide rate in the United States for any age group. Alcohol abuse also relates to low educational achievement, poor health, high rates of unemployment, and crime among Indian youth. Nationwide, Indians have, for several years, averaged 12 times the number of arrests, per capita, compared to the general population. Three-quarters of these arrests are alcohol-related, almost twice the national average. In 1973, the General Accounting Office surveyed six Indian Health Service hospitals and found that 60 percent of the caseload could be directly or indirectly attributed to alcohol use. Cirrhosis of the liver was a frequent cause of hospitalization and, eventually, death. According to the Indian Health Service, cirrhosis of the liver occurs in American Indians at five times the rate of the general population. The Indian Health Service also reports that many child-battering cases are alcohol-related. A major cause of Indian alcoholism is deprivation and poverty, rejection by European Americans as inferiors, deterioration of traditional cultures, and a generally high level of anxiety that attends day-to-day reservation life. The Klamaths, who were dispersed by federal government termination policies during the early 1950s, had a high rate of arrests for alcohol-related crime, even when compared to the averages for all Indians, which are 12 times those for non-Indians. By contrast, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, who have maintained most of their traditional

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way of life through 150 years of U.S. domination (and two centuries under Spain and Mexico before that), have relatively low rates of alcohol-related arrests. Given the history of Indian alcoholism, treatment for it is a relatively recent development. As late as the mid-1960s, intoxicated Indians arrested in Gallup, New Mexico, simply were put in jail until it filled. On winter nights, those who were not arrested ran a risk of freezing to death. In a routine winter, many Indians froze to death on the streets of Gallup. For a number of reasons, most of them cultural, traditional non-Indian treatments, from hospitalization to non-Indian chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous, had very little success dealing with Indian alcoholism. In the late 1960s, along with a general thrust of Indian self-determination, Native treatment programs began to open. The idea of Indians treating Indians was hailed as revolutionary in some quarters, but it is not really new. Since at least the days of the Iroquois spiritual leader Handsome Lake in the early nineteenth century, Indian religious figures have opposed the use of alcohol and achieved moderate success in sobering their followers. THE POLITICS OF MALT LIQUOR During the 1990s, protests from Native groups arose in several states regarding the sale of Crazy Horse Malt Liquor. The beverage was being sold by Hornell Brewing Company of New York in 40-ounce bottles bearing a likeness of Crazy Horse, the nineteenth-century Lakota leader. The brew was being manufactured by G. Heileman Brewing Company. In Congressional hearings, U.S. Surgeon General Antonia Novello and representatives of Native American groups contended that Crazy Horse Malt Liquor was specifically aimed at underage Native American drinkers. The surgeon general also attacked other brands of alcohol, as well as cigarettes, that appeared to be aimed at minorities, women, and teenagers. The campaign already had resulted in the removal from shelves of PowerMaster, also a malt liquor, after complaints that it was targeted at young blacks. Crazy Horse Malt Liquor was not the first marketing attempt aimed specifically at Indians, of course; traders have been getting them addicted to liquor since the earliest days of contact. It also was not the first alcoholic product to enter into contemporary Native politics. In the late 1980s, Native groups across the northern tier of states (roughly from Wisconsin to Washington) protested the marketing of Treaty Beer by sportsmen’s-rights groups raising funds to annul Native agreements with the federal government. At the time, the fund-raising brew was called “the Klan in a can” by Indians in Washington (Johansen, 1988, 13). WHITECLAY: THE BUSINESS IS BEER On June 26, 1999—123 years and one day after their ancestors had removed George Armstrong Custer’s scalp—Lakotas gathered in Whiteclay, Nebraska, to demand details describing how Wilson “Wally” Black Elk and Ronald Hard Heart

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had died. Their partially decomposed bodies had been found on June 8. Many people at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation believe that the way in which Black Elk and Hard Heart died was similar to how two other Lakota, Wesley Bad Heart Bull and Raymond Yellow Thunder, were killed in 1972—beatings to death by white toughs having what they regarded as a sporting time with inebriated Oglala Lakotas. A month and more after the killings of Black Elk and Hard Heart, the men’s reservation relatives knew little or nothing, officially, of how they died. Law enforcement officials in Nebraska and FBI agents talked vaguely of “foul play” and “following leads” while anger spread at Pine Ridge. Pine Ridge tribal police chief Stan Star Comes Out told the Omaha World-Herald that the remains of the two men had been wounded and bloody. He also said the two men had been bludgeoned to death. The bodies were found on the Pine Ridge (South Dakota) side of the state line, but many Lakota believe the men were murdered in Nebraska, closer to Whiteclay, after which their bodies were dragged across the border. Lakota community responses to the deaths of Yellow Thunder and Bad Heart Bull defined the American Indian Movement in 1972 and provided a provocation (one of many) for the occupation of Wounded Knee the next year. Yellow Thunder was kidnapped and beaten to death during mid-February 1972 in Gordon, Nebraska (about 25 miles southeast of Whiteclay and 13 miles south of Pine Ridge), by several white toughs. Four young men were charged with manslaughter (not murder), and two of them were convicted. By March, Gordon was the scene of rallies of more than 1,000 Lakota and allies demanding justice for Yellow Thunder. Two brothers who were convicted of manslaughter served 10 months (of a two-year sentence) and two years (of a six-year sentence), respectively. Shortly after the murder of Yellow Thunder in 1972, Lakota Wesley Bad Heart Bull was stabbed to death by a young white man near Custer, South Dakota (in the Black Hills southwest of Rapid City). The assailant was charged with seconddegree manslaughter, provoking demonstrations, some of which turned violent, at the courthouse in Custer, organized by the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1999, some of the major organizers were the same ones who had been in Gordon and Custer—AIMsters with many more lines on their faces. They listened to speeches by Russell Means, Clyde Bellecourt, and Dennis Banks, among others, protesting basic injustices, such as young white men’s penchant for taking out their aggressions (sometimes with fatal results) on drunken Indians near the dusty streets of Whiteclay, population 24, where the main business is selling $3 million of beer per year to the people of Pine Ridge (Johansen, 1998, 5). In reaction to the murders of Hard Heart and Black Elk, a Rally for Justice—250 people walking and accompanied by about 150 automobiles—traversed the two-lane blacktop to “take Whiteclay back” on June 26. As the larger rally was breaking up in Whiteclay, about 25 to 30 people trashed a grocery store, V. J.’s Market, in Whiteclay. It was said that V. J.’s owner, Vic Clarke, had treated Lakota in a demeaning manner. The store’s freezer cases were destroyed and its cash registers doused with lighter fluid. Groceries were strewn through the store.

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Claims of Lakota control to the ground on which Whiteclay sits are based on surveys taken for the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which place Whiteclay within reservation borders. Documents related to the Dawes (Allotment) Act, notably legislation passed by Congress in 1889 to break up what was then called the Great Sioux Nation, also support this assertion. An executive order issued in 1882 by President Chester A. Arthur created a 50-square-mile buffer zone (which includes the site of Whiteclay) south of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation expressly to curtail the liquor trade. This order was rescinded on January 25, 1904, by President Theodore Roosevelt with the rationale that non-Indians needed the land. For years, Nebraska officials had been warned by activist Frank LaMere and others that the situation in Whiteclay could explode. One day during summer 1997, LaMere, a Winnebago who was executive director of the Nebraska InterTribal Development Corp., visited Whiteclay. He counted 32 intoxicated Indians on the town’s streets at 5:15 A.M. and 47 drunks on the streets during the afternoon, some of whom were fighting with each other. Several other Indians were passed out at the intersection of Nebraska Highway 87 with the road that leads to the reservation. A few of them were urinating on the street (Johansen, 1998, 5). Shortly after he visited Whiteclay, LaMere asked the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission to shut Whiteclay down. “I don’t know what constitutes infractions of liquor laws in Whiteclay, but my good sense tells me there is something terribly wrong,” LaMere told Toni Heinzl of the Omaha World-Herald. “What I saw … in Whiteclay would not be acceptable in Omaha or Lincoln,” LaMere continued (Johansen, 1998, 5). The Pine Ridge Reservation in 1996 had an alcoholism-related death rate of 61.9 per 100,000 people, twice the average for Native American reservations and nine times the national average of 7.1. On the two-mile highway between Pine Ridge village and Whiteclay, tribal police issue at least 1,000 driving-while-intoxicated citations per year. Despite the police presence, residents who live along the road are constantly pestered by drunks. Several family dogs have been shot to death along the road as well. A PROTEST MARCH IN WHITECLAY On Saturday, July 3, 1999, about a hundred sheriff’s deputies and state patrol officers, many of them in riot gear, barricaded Whiteclay’s business district. Ironically, the Nebraska State Patrol had met one of the protesters’ demands: for Friday and Saturday, at least, the beer stores of Whiteclay would be closed, on one of their busiest weekends of the year. During Friday afternoon, caravans of cars from Pine Ridge circled Whiteclay and its barricades in an air of ghostly quiet, using several back roads. Aside from a few rocks thrown and nine brief arrests (one of them Russell Means), the July 3 march came and went without notable physical contact between the Lakota Sioux and the hundred SWAT officers barricading Whiteclay. Many participants in the march stressed the spiritual nature of their actions. Marchers stopped four times to pray (and to give elderly marchers some rest) during the

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hour-and-a-half it took the group of several hundred people to move from Pine Ridge to Whiteclay on a hot and unusually humid day. As they approached Whiteclay, marchers debated whether to cross a line of yellow plastic tape that police had strung across the road into the village. Most urged restraint, but Russell Means urged the group on. One man on a pinto pony tried to run the line but was stopped by police. Means and the eight others who were arrested also stepped over the line, briefly, and were cited for failure to obey a lawful order, to establish a basis for a later court case (the activists contended that their arrests were illegal). They were released an hour later. Other marchers threw mud at the helmeted troopers. A few spit on them and cursed. One protester plastered a bumper sticker reading “YOU ARE ON INDIAN LAND” across one officer’s helmet. As the dust settled in Whiteclay following the second rally, the beer stores opened briefly Monday morning but closed once again after Clyde Bellecourt told Stuart Kozel, owner of the Jumping Eagle Inn, that opening his store would provoke another confrontation with AIM. Another beer outlet with a distinctly Indiansounding name, the Arrowhead Inn, also remained closed for an extra day. On Saturday, July 10, a smaller rally was held, followed by another march and motorcade from Pine Ridge to Whiteclay. Roughly 100 people on foot and in cars sang and drummed as they paraded up and down Whiteclay streets, unimpeded by police this time. AIM members posted eviction notices on the four beer stores then withdrew to tepees and tents erected on the site where the bodies of Black Elk and Hard Heart had been found on June 8. The people in the camp pledged to maintain it (along with weekly demonstrations in Whiteclay) until the border town went dry. In the meantime, LaMere, one of nine people who had been arrested at the initial rally, appealed again to the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission to shut down Whiteclay’s beer businesses permanently. Once again, the board did not act; within days the activists were gone, and most of the Indians on the streets of Whiteclay were, once again, falling down drunk. BILL CLINTON VISITS PINE RIDGE President Bill Clinton visited Pine Ridge later the same summer. The White House called the tour (which included communities in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, South Phoenix, the Watts area of Los Angeles, as well as Pine Ridge) the New Markets Initiative. The main purpose of the four-day tour was to lobby for business development of impoverished areas. Some White House planners had suggested that the federal government match certain forms of private investment in such areas. When President Clinton arrived at Pine Ridge on July 7, 1999, he found a page out of the Meriam Report, a state of reservation life in many cases little changed from the days of Franklin Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower. The Pine Ridge and its neighboring Rosebud Sioux reservations are among the poorest 10 counties in the United States. Clinton arrived at Ellsworth Air Force Base, near Rapid City, South

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Dakota, early in the morning and, after a lengthy drive, arrived at Pine Ridge village by midmorning. The president ceremonially signed documents creating an empowerment zone at Pine Ridge (the first such zone on an Indian reservation), toured a few housing areas, gave a speech at Pine Ridge High School, and was on his way back to Ellsworth after lunch. Clinton thus completed a three-hour visit to Pine Ridge that made him the first sitting U.S. president to visit an Indian reservation since Franklin Delano Roosevelt as well as the first to visit Pine Ridge since Calvin Coolidge (in 1927). During his 20-minute speech at Pine Ridge High School, Clinton greeted the 4,500 people in Lakota and promised such things as a doubling of the number of federal-backed mortgages at Pine Ridge, a move meant to add 1,000 homes to the reservation within a few years. As Clinton spoke, the waiting list for housing there stood at 4,000 units. GAMBLING: THE NEW BUFFALO? The arrival of gaming has brought dividends to some Native peoples and controversy culminating in firefights and death to others. At the same time, during the late twentieth century, commercial gambling has become a major source of income on many Indian reservations across the United States. On reservations where gambling is collectively controlled, revenue from gaming establishments sometimes has helped repurchase formerly alienated land and build infrastructure. Gambling benefits vary widely from reservation to reservation. The Mashantucket Pequots’ income at Foxwoods, more than $1 million per person per year, compares to gaming income of only $167 per year per member of Native nations in South Dakota (Giago, 1997, 24; Murphy, 2000, A-1). The concept of placing bets on sporting contests was known to several Native American peoples in precontact times; the Iroquois, Ojibways, and Menomines, for example, placed bets on games of snow snake. The scale of such gambling was usually small, and noncommercial. Although many Native American cultures today practice forms of gambling as a type of ceremonial sport, there was no traditional experience with gambling as a large-scale commercial enterprise. Marion Blank Horn, principal deputy solicitor of the Interior Department, described the fertile ground gambling enterprises found in Indian Country: The reasons for growth in gambling on Indian land are readily apparent. The Indian tribal governments see an opportunity for income that can make a substantial improvement in the tribe’s [economic] conditions. The lack of any state or Federal regulation results in a competitive advantage over gambling regulated by the states. These advantages include no state-imposed limits on the size of pots or prizes, no restrictions by the states on days or hours of operations, no costs for licenses or compliance with state requirements, and no state taxes on gambling operations. (Johansen, 1993, xxix)

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The history of reservation-based commercial gambling began during 1979, when the Seminoles became the first Native nation to enter the bingo industry. By early 1985, 75 to 80 of the 300 recognized Indian tribes in the United States were conducting some sort of game of chance. By fall 1988, the Congressional Research Service estimated that more than 100 Indian nations and tribes participated in some form of gambling, which grossed about $255 million per year. By 1991, 150 of 278 Native reservations recognized by non-Indian governmental bodies had some form of gambling. According to the Interior Department, gross revenue from such operations passed $1 billion that year. By 2006, the number of Native American groups in the United States hosting some sort of gaming topped 300. In 1996, American Indian casinos in the United States grossed about $6 billion, compared to $100 million in 1988. Indian gambling revenues increased 3,500 percent from 1985 to 1995, from $1.25 million to $4.5 billion. The increase in revenues has prompted attempts by some in Congress to collect taxes from these revenues. One outspoken advocate of such measures has been Bill Archer, Republican of Texas and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. Individual prizes in some reservation bingo games were reported to be as high as $100,000, whereas bingo stakes in surrounding areas under state jurisdiction sometimes were limited to $100. The reasons for growth in gambling on Indian land were readily apparent. Native governments sensed an opportunity for income that could make a substantial improvement in their economic conditions. A lack of state or federal regulation provided them a competitive advantage over off-reservation gambling regulated by the states. These advantages included a lack of state-imposed limits on the size of pots or prizes, no restrictions by the states on days or hours of operations, no costs for licenses or compliance with state regulations, and (unless they were negotiated) no state taxes on gambling operations. By the 1990s, gambling was providing a small galaxy of material benefits for some formerly impoverished Native peoples. One of the most successful reservation gambling operations in the United States was the Little Six Casino in Minnesota, which opened as a 1,300-seat bingo parlor in 1982, drawing customers from Minneapolis-St. Paul with free shuttle buses. The casino was a half-hour’s drive from the Twin Cities, and blackjack players crowded 41 tables while 450 other players stared into video slot machines inside the tepee-shaped Little Six Casino, operated by the 103 members of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux. By 1991, each member of the tribe, as a shareholder in the casino, was receiving a monthly dividend check averaging $2,000. In addition to monthly dividends, members became eligible for homes (if they lacked them), guaranteed jobs (if they were unemployed), and full college scholarships. The tribal government took out health insurance policies for everyone on the reservation and established day care for children of working parents. Within a year of its founding, the Little Six had paid off its mortgage and paved its parking lot as well as the driveways of several Shakopee-Mdewakanton reservation homes. Gambling opened under management by a non-Indian company

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that received 45 percent of the profits. The rest went into common funds. By 1984, Little Six’s profits passed $12 million per year, and it had become the largest employer in Prior Lake, Minnesota. Profits were used by the Mdewakanton Sioux to build a health clinic, day-care center, and cultural center. Everyone on the reservation who wanted a job was able to work. By 1998, the Shakopee’s Little Six Casino had been enlarged and expanded as the Mystic Lake Complex: [The casino] rises like Oz from the rolling countryside; beams form a circle of spotlights intersecting high above in the darkness to form a teepee of light. Down below, there are about 2,600 slot machines, at least 140 gaming tables, five restaurants, and a luxury hotel. The tribe is Scott County’s largest employer by far. Twenty-four hours a day, throngs of gamblers stuff quarters, dollars, and even hundred-dollar bills into the machines with glazed-eyed intensity. (Farney, 1998, A-1)

By 1997, 6 million visitors surged through its gambling facilities, earning the Mdewakanton Dakota $600,000 for each of its 270 members, who lived on 248 acres granted reservation status in 1969. Almost three decades later, the tribal casino complex, the only gambling of its type in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, employed 3,900 people, most of them non-Indians, and bringing $100 million per year to the regional economy (Farney, 1998, A-6). According to the National Indian Gaming Association, Indian gaming by 2002 contributed approximately $120 million in state and local tax receipts annually. Gaming patrons spent an estimated $237 million in local communities around Indian casinos (Marquez, 2002). Of the 562 federally recognized Native American governmental entities in the United States at that time, 201 participated in class II or class III gaming by 2001. Class II includes such games as bingo, pull-tabs, lotto, punch boards, and certain card games permissible under individual state laws. Class III includes everything else, such as casino-style table games like roulette and craps and card games such as poker and blackjack. Indian casinos operated in 29 states under a total of 249 separate gaming compacts (Wanamaker, April 5, 2002). A FEW CASINOS MAKE MOST OF THE MONEY A General Accounting Office (GAO) study conducted during the late 1990s disclosed that only a few reservations had casino windfalls. Ten casinos generated almost half the $7 billion in annual revenues generated by Indian tribes (with a net income of $1.6 billion per year), according to the GAO. Nearly all of them were located close to major urban areas that supply a large number of non-Indian gamblers. Only 5 percent of the nearly 500 tribes in the United States had made large profits from gambling. The typical casino was a small operation serving a limited clientele in a rural area. The Oglala Lakota, for example, grossed about $1 million a year from its casino, which was housed in three double-wide trailers on concrete blocks. Their revenues for a year equaled

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those generated at the Pequot casino at Foxwoods in half of an average day. The biggest moneymakers were the small number of casinos situated close to large non-Indian markets. Nearly 80 percent of casino profits went to 5 percent of Native nations and tribes. The largest casino to open by mid-1991 was the $3 million Sycuan Gaming Center on the Sycuan Indian Reservation near El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego, California. The casino’s rakish neon sign flashed against a rocky patch of land onto which the government forced the tribe to move more than a century ago. The sign was visible miles away over scrub-covered hills. The Sycuan Gaming Center’s gaming revenue grew to $10.6 billion in 2000, representing 16 percent of the $64.9 billion generated by gaming in the United States as a whole (Wanamaker, May 16, 2002). By 2002, Indian gaming revenue had grown to $14.5 billion. THE ONEIDAS OF NEW YORK: A BUSINESS CALLED A NATION In few areas is the conflict regarding gambling as sharp as among the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy, where New York governor George Pataki promoted plans to open as many as six new Native-controlled casinos in an attempt to jump-start a state economy that had been badly damaged by the attacks of September 11, 2001. The experiences of the New York Oneidas with gambling has been a particularly raw example of conflicts that have beset many Native American nations that have attempted to address problems of persistent poverty and economic marginalization by opening casinos. Supporters of the casinos see them as the so-called new buffalo, whereas opponents look at them as a form of internal colonization, an imposition of European-descended economic institutions and values upon Native American peoples. Around 1970, the New York Oneidas’ landholdings were down to 32 acres east of Syracuse, with almost no economic infrastructure. Three decades later, the New York Oneidas owned a large casino, the Turning Stone, which had incubated a number of other business ventures. Many of the approximately 1,000 Oneidas who resided in the area were receiving substantial material benefits. The Turning Stone Casino, 25 miles east of Syracuse, produced more than 4,000 jobs and has become, according to Oneida Nation representative Ray Halbritter, the fifth most popular tourist attraction in New York. Eighty-five percent of the Turning Stone’s employees are non-Indian. An expansion of the Oneidas’ casino and hotel accommodations during the late 1990s was expected to increase the Oneida payroll to 2,600, making it the largest employer in the region. Although Halbritter pointed to the economic benefits of the Oneidas’ growing payroll, local public officials complained that the Oneidas’ business ventures paid no sales or excise taxes to cities, counties, or the state. Additionally, land purchased by the Oneidas was taken off the property-tax rolls. In September 1997, the Oneidas attempted to assuage these criticisms by paying Oneida County $71,080 and Verona County (in which the casino is located) $55,230 in lieu of property taxes. The payments have been pledged on an annual basis (Kates, 1997, 25).

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By 2003, Turning Stone was earning an estimated net profit of $70 million per year on $230 million gross income. Approximately 4.2 million visitors passed through the casino’s doors each year (many of these were repeat visits). The casino’s influence on the tax base of nearby small towns was enormous. James Chapell, mayor of the town of Oneida, for example, said that the Oneidas had taken so much land off the tax rolls that the town’s tax revenues fell from $700,000 to $139,000 in one year (Randolph, 2003). The town of Oneida has resisted requesting financial help from the Oneida Nation, but nearby Verona, which faced similar declines in tax revenue, negotiated funding for a water project as well as $800,000 for local services (Randolph, 2003). The Oneidas used some of their gambling profits to start other businesses, such as the Oneida Textile Printing Facility in Canastota, their first effort at diversification outside of gambling. Oneida Textile, located in a renovated 6,000-square-foot structure, printed and marketed T-shirts, sweatshirts, and other items of clothing. A 285-room luxury hotel was opened in September 1997, adding 450 jobs; it was expanded eight years later. Casino profits also have been used to build a council house; health-services center; a cultural center and museum; a recreational center with a swimming pool, gymnasium, and lacrosse box; scholarship programs; medical, dental, and optical facilities; job training; legal assistance; Oneida language and music classes; elder meals; and day care. A convention center-arena and golf course are planned. The recent experience of the Oneidas of New York raised several significant questions for Indian Country as a whole. Is the Oneida model of an economic powerhouse key to defining the future of Native American sovereignty in the opening years of the twenty-first century, as many of its supporters believe? Materially, some of the New York Oneidas have gained a great deal in a quarter-century, including repurchase of 14,000 acres of land. Have these gains been offset by an atmosphere of stifling totalitarianism and a devastating loss of traditional bearings, as many Oneida dissidents attest? DISSENT IN ONEIDA COUNTRY A substantial dissident movement has grown among Oneidas who assert that Halbritter, so-called nation representative of the New York Oneidas, was never voted into such an office. This group is centered in the Shenandoah family, which includes the notable singer Joanne Shenandoah and her husband, activist Doug George-Kanentiio. They believe that the New York Oneidas under Halbritter have established a business, called it a nation, and acquired the requisite approvals from the New York and the U.S. federal governments to use this status to open the Turning Stone Casino. On various Internet sites and chat rooms, supporters of Halbritter accused the Shenandoah family of supporting antitreaty groups, whereas opponents of the Oneidas’ corporate structure routinely called Halbritter “the king” and “the despot.” The dissidents’ benefits as Oneidas were eliminated after they made these points, in 1995, in a march for democracy (Johansen, 2002, 25–43). The New York Oneidas under Halbritter’s aegis also appointed a men’s council (a body

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unheard of in traditional matrilineal Iroquois law or tradition), which issued a zoning code to beautify the Oneida Nation. This code enabled his 54-member police force (patrolling a 32-acre reservation) to “legally” evict from their homes those Oneidas who opposed his role as leader of the New York Oneidas. Halbritter’s control also was supported by the acquisition of a number of other businesses, a phalanx of public-relations spin doctors, several lawyers, and ownership of Indian Country Today, a national Native American newspaper. The newspaper carried no news of the evictions. Dissent against gambling also surfaced in other areas. John Yellow Bird Steele, chairman of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council in 1992, advocated construction of three casinos to alleviate unemployment and provide private industry on the reservation. The Wounded Knee chapter of AIM opposed the proposal on grounds that that gambling would drive poor people on the reservation farther into alcoholism and debt, regarded by AIM as a modern form of genocide. PROSPERITY FOR THE WISCONSIN ONEIDAS For the Oneida of Wisconsin, gambling has been the key to a quarter-century of economic development that reduced reservation unemployment from 75 percent in 1970 to 5 percent in 1995. The Wisconsin Oneidas, with $100 million in gambling revenues annually, have used some of the profits to purchase land taken from them many years ago. The Wisconsin Oneidas also have become the largest single employer in Brown County, which includes the city of Green Bay. The Oneidas employed 3,600 people, 55 percent of them members, in 1997. By the late 1990s, the Wisconsin Oneidas were bringing more than $1 billion per year in economic activity to the Green Bay area (Johnson, 1995, 17). The Oneidas have diversified into other investments, such as a printing business, telecommunications, and retail stores; revenues from a 301-room hotel owned by the Oneidas helped fund a Green Bay convention center during the mid-1990s. In 1969, the Oneida government in Wisconsin employed 9 people; by 1995, the payroll was 3,391: 1,611 members, 357 Native Americans who were not Oneidas, and 1,421 non-Indians. The Oneida Nation’s annual budget in 1969 was about $50,000, nearly all of which came from federal funds. In 1995, the budget was $158 million, of which 80 percent was generated on the reservation (Johnson, 1995, 17–18). Tim Johnson wrote that the Oneidas have used Indian gaming to develop reservation infrastructure, including education, in a way that has “merged Indian culture with corporate practices and left the Oneidas in a position to protect, preserve, strengthen, and protect their identity far into the future” (Johnson, 1995, 17). Prosperity has come to the Oneidas of Wisconsin at the same time as a revival of the traditional Longhouse religion. Non-Indians flock to the Oneidas’ casino from a radius of 200 miles, arriving by the busloads to play 5,000 slot machines that can pay off as much as $1 million. Prizes at the bingo tables can be as high as $250,000. “When I walk into that casino, I’m

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overwhelmed,” said Carol Cornelius, a Wisconsin Oneida. “I think, ‘My people did all this.’” Cornelius recalled that “Twenty-five years ago when I graduated from high school there were no jobs. As young folks we went to Milwaukee and found out we couldn’t handle city life. There just wasn’t a future. Now I see all of these young people working and I think, ‘all of these people now have job skills’” (Johnson, 1995, 20). THE FOXWOODS MONEY MACHINE By 1995, the largest Native American casino was the Mashantucket Pequots’ Foxwoods, operated by the Pequot between the urban areas of Boston and New York City. This casino has been notable for the socially conscious use of its profits. By 1995, the Foxwoods casino had become the largest single gambling establishment in the United States, where patrons could sample 3,900 slot machines, dine in 15 restaurants, or can take in entertainment by the likes of Bill Cosby, Ray Charles, and Joanne Shenandoah. The 190,000-square-foot casino complex, which also included several bars, spas, and a shopping center, employed almost 10,000 people on a reservation with 350 permanent residents located on 2,000 acres of trust land within a short drive of the Boston and New York metropolitan areas (Johnson, 1995, 22–23). Mashantucket means “the much-wooded land.” The word Foxwoods is a combination of the notion of forest with the Pequots’ reputation as “the fox people.” Foxwoods started as a very small bingo parlor after approximately 40 banks refused to loan money to the Pequots. The bingo parlor began operating in 1986 and became wildly successful. Having obtained financing from outside the United States, the Pequots opened their full-scale casino in 1992. At the time, Foxwoods was the only gaming establishment on the East Coast that offered poker, which was banned at the time in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The first day Foxwoods opened, February 14, 1992, its 1,700-car parking lot was full by 10:30 A.M. Approximately 75,000 people passed through the casino’s doors during that first day, and 2,000 of them were still present at the casino’s 4 A.M. closing time. During the ensuing decade, Foxwoods expanded and become one of the most notable examples anywhere of Native American economic development. By the year 2000, the Foxwoods complex was drawing about 50,000 people on an average day. By that time, the Foxwoods Resort Casino complex included five casinos housing more than 300,000 square feet of gaming space, 5,842 slot machines, 370 gaming tables, a 3,000-seat high-stakes bingo parlor with $1 million jackpots, a 200-seat Sportsbook, and a Keno lounge. Table games included baccarat, mini-baccarat, Big Six Wheels, blackjack, Caribbean stud poker, craps, Pai Gow, Pai Gow Tiles, Red Dog, roulette, and a number of other games. The Foxwoods casino complex also included four hotels ranging in size from 280 to 800 rooms. In addition to gaming space and its four hotels, Foxwoods also offered 23 shopping areas, 24 food-and-beverage outlets, a movie-theater complex, as well as the Mashantucket Pequot museum and a Fox Grand Theater that featured Las Vegas–style entertainment.

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HELPING THE STATE BALANCE ITS BUDGET Foxwoods quickly became a very large financial success for its sponsors, as well as for the state government of Connecticut, to which the casino’s management pledged a quarter of its profits. During the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1999, and ending June 30, 2000, Foxwoods’ gross revenues on its slot and video machines alone totaled more than $9 billion. Foxwoods quickly become an pillar of Connecticut’s economy and a multimillion-dollar contributor to the state’s charities. The Pequots’ casino even put up cash one year to help the state balance its budget. By 2000, the Foxwoods casino complex was paying the state of Connecticut more than $189 million a year in taxes. The Foxwoods and a second, more recently constructed casino, the Mohegan Sun, paid the state of Connecticut more than $318 million during the 1999–2000 fiscal year. The Mashantucket Pequots became Connecticut’s largest single taxpayer and, with 13,000 jobs, one of its larger employers. The casino complex employed a staff of lawyers and maintained its own permanent lobbying office in Washington, DC. At the same time, the Pequots also became a significant contributor to the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of the American Indian at $10 million. That amount was soon matched by the New York Oneidas, drawing from its own casino profits. The Mashantucket Pequots also gave $2 million to the Special Olympics and $500,000 to the Hartford Ballet, as well as $5 million to the Mystic, Connecticut, Aquarium. In June 2001, the Mohegans, owners of the neighboring Mohegan Sun Casino, made an equal pledge. To illustrate the volume of money changing hands in these casinos, consider that Mohegan Sun Casino investors included Trading Cove Associates, headed by Sol Kerzner, creator of the Sun City casino and resort in South Africa. By 2000, this firm had received more than $800 million in fees, a sum the company argued was fair compensation for services rendered. SOME CASINOS STRUGGLE Some casinos have not fared well. In late August 1997, the Lummis, in northwestern Washington, closed their casino because it was losing money. At about the same time, the two-year-old Seven Cedars Casino on the Jamestown S’Clallam reservation on the northern Olympic Peninsula laid off more than half of its 500 employees. In Nebraska and Iowa, two Indian casinos north of Omaha found their profits diminished by the opening of three non-Indian casinos in Council Bluffs, Iowa, closer to the urban area. The Omaha and Winnebago tribes opened casinos in 1992. The Omahas’ casino has seen a 30 percent decline in profits since a peak in 1995; the Winnebagos’ WinnaVegas has watched profits decline from $10 million per year to $5 to $6 million during the same period. The tribes have been using the profits to build business ventures (such as motels), to provide prenatal care, to fund day care, and to pay some tribal members’ college expenses. Per capita

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payments of $599 per year to both Winnebagos and Omahas, begun when gambling revenues were at their peak, were discontinued as profits fell. Employment at the Omaha Nation casino has declined from 500 to about 350 (Dorr, 1997, 14-A). Other American Indian nations have decided not to get involved in casino gambling at all. On November 4, 1997, the Navajo reservation’s residents rejected a proposal to allow as many as five casinos on their lands in Arizona and New Mexico. Of 33,392 votes cast, 18,087 (54%) were against casino gambling. Navajos rejected gambling despite promises that it would provide $25 million in payrolls and other aid during its first year on a reservation with a 45 percent unemployment rate. The Navajos’ oral tradition includes several stories that warn of the perils of overindulgence in gambling. CULTURAL APPROPRIATENESS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT One of the most important—and often most vexing—questions in Indian Country today concerns the creation of reservation economic bases that produce necessary cash income while being culturally appropriate and sustainable. Casinos, the reservation cash cow du jour, sometimes produce mountains of money as they transform parts of reservations into annexes of the non-Indian economy, with all of their imported artifices and vices. One question that concerns many responsible students of Native American economic infrastructure is what is going to be left behind that is sustainable and culturally appropriate after gambling loses its luster, after non-Indian interests find ways to cash in on the bonanza? Modern Tribal Development: Paths to Self-Sufficiency and Cultural Integrity in Indian Country (2000) by Dean Howard Smith is one of the first books to stare this question straight in the eye. It is an extension of the author’s involvement in programs such as the National Executive Education Program for Native American Leadership (NEEPNAL), which aims to increase “the cultural integrity and sovereignty of the Native American nations … leading to cultural integrity, self-determination, and self-sufficiency” (Smith, 2000, x). In this context, Smith, an associate professor of economics at Northern Arizona University as well as a Grand River Mohawk, raises some very important questions: 1. How do tribes maintain their cultural individuality and secure their cultural integrity? 2. How do tribes develop their sovereign rights as stipulated in the Constitution and the laws of the United States and the treaties? 3. Most importantly, how do tribes become fully self-determined and self-sufficient, thereby securing their rights and cultures?

Smith’s book focuses on the importance of economic development as a means to answer these questions (Smith, 2000, 3).

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The term development can be beguiling but costly in terms of cultural integrity and self-sufficiency. Early in the history of Native American-European relations, Smith points out that missionaries and merchants introduced guns, after which many Native hunters lost their traditional tracking and bow-hunting skills. “When the shotgun shells ran out,” Smith observes, “They became beggars” (Smith, 2000, 8). One recalls the debates engaged by Canassatego, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Grand Council Tadadaho (speaker) during the 1740s, regarding whether European artifices should be adopted at all, for just this reason. Even today, some Native American nations have made conscious decisions to forego the types of economic development that would make money and build infrastructure on a mainstream capitalistic model. The Hopis, for example, have passed up substantial potential income from tourism so that they can maintain their religious traditions. The Hualapai have closed large parts of their lands to outsiders so that they can live unmolested in a traditional manner. The Havasupai have refused uranium mining; they believe that mining uranium desecrates Mother Earth. After many miners’ deaths, the Navajos have done the same. Often, debates regarding the appropriateness of development have split Native nations, sometimes with deadly results. The so-called Akwesasne Mohawk civil war that degenerated to gunfights (and two deaths) in 1990 at its base was a debate over which path economic development should take. One faction interprets sovereignty as the freedom to establish businesses, including gaming, and to smuggle goods across the international border. Another faction opposes the transformation of Akwesasne into a one-stop cash transfusion from non-Indians looking for discount smokes, cheap gas, or a lucky strike on the video slots. The same debate has split the Senecas with a seriousness that has cost several lives. Smith points out, briefly but cogently, the fact that “Native Americans had extensive and vibrant economic systems of production and trade during the centuries of pre-contact” (Smith, 2000, 23). Extensive trade networks laced the hemisphere long before the arrival of Columbus; some of today’s interstate highways follow these original routes. The Senecas, for example, maintained extensive, lush cornfields at which Gen. John Sullivan’s soldiers marveled before they were laid waste. The contributions of Native American cultures and peoples to our staple diet (not to mention our political institutions) are well known to serious students of Western Hemispheric history. Smith is likewise clear and cogent on the point of who and what have caused the widespread economic poverty that has long been associated with the so-called plight of the Indian: “The dire poverty and the concomitant social problems facing Native Americans today are the direct result of federal policy, past and present” (Smith, 2000, 33). Smith’s book is woefully short of specific suggestions circumscribing just how specific peoples, on specific reservations, can implement its theoretical program. The book contains some very good theoretical ideas, but it (and $1.50) will get you a cup of joe in Lame Deer or Macy or Pine Ridge, where the need for sustainable, culturally appropriate economic development is more acute than ever.

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Modern Tribal Development does contain some worthwhile general suggestions. For example, it suggests that Native polities find better ways to keep people’s money at home, diminishing linkages to border towns that tend to suck Native income off-reservation. Smith also suggests that reservation governments inventory the working skills and employment ambitions of their residents with an eye toward designing enterprises that will take advantage of these skills. Smith also points out the growing role of tourism on many reservations, meanwhile stressing the need to develop tourism industries that do not disrupt traditional life. Dances, rodeos, and powwows are among the draws. In the meantime, some Native nations face difficulties keeping tourists away from religious ceremonies that are meant to be private. Without cultural education, many nonIndians often can not tell the difference between public and private activities. This book also stresses the noneconomic (or social) value of infrastructure, quoting Oglala Sioux President John Yellow Bird Steele: “He said it is not hard to understand that when you wake up in the morning realizing that ‘not only is today going to be like this, but tomorrow is going to be like yesterday, too. So you go out and get a bottle’” (Smith, 2000, 71). Lack of economic development stifles cultural activity; conversely, development of infrastructure also creates other jobs with cultural value, such as schools that require the employment of teachers. Smith also airs debate concerning the utility of one obvious route to reservation development: the importation of manufacturing that has little cultural relevance and provides minimum-wage work. In such cases, employers are often looking for cheap labor. The record of such enterprises on reservations has been rather dismal. Instead of being assimilated into an industrial capitalistic system, Smith believes that Native American traditions can be used to design “a new type of system that incorporates competitive behavior, social compatibility and adaptation, and environmental concerns” (Smith, 2001, 77). Smith has a handle on the conceptual framework required to develop reservation economies that will enhance social values and culture rather than simply make money for off-reservation interests. Here, we have a truly exciting beginning. Next, Smith and others will have to face the difficult part of economic development: How do we bring these thoughts to street-level reality? The final section of Modern Tribal Development, titled “Examples and Issues,” promises to “explain how the theoretical framework can be put into action” (Smith, 2001, 91). This section also is largely generic and academic. Starting on page 105, however, the author does present case studies of the Rosebud Sioux and Fort Belknap communities (105–122). Many more case studies could be warranted, with specific types of economic activities on specific reservations. What is being done with timber in Taholah? How about uranium in Window Rock? How are the Osages doing with their oil? How are the Wisconsin Oneidas doing as the largest single employer in Green Bay, Wisconsin? Another book rather quickly and easily suggests itself. As the Smith suggests, “Little first steps lead toward larger ones” (148). This book presents some very good ideas that should be adapted to specific community needs.

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THE MAINE INDIAN CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT The Penobscots and Passamaquoddies proved in federal court in 1975 that 12.5 million acres of Wabanaki land acquired by Maine and Massachusetts violated the terms of the 1790 Intercourse Act (Brodeur, 1985). The Intercourse Act laws, enacted between 1790 and 1834, made illegal any land purchases from Native governments not attended by a U.S. commissioner and ratified by Congress. Several land claims in the northeastern United States are based on violation of these laws. In exchange for giving up their claims to nearly two-thirds of Maine, the Wabanakis, principally the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies, during the 1970s received a settlement of $81 million, federal recognition, the right to purchase at least 300,000 acres of land, as well as limited immunity from state laws. Although the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act was a legal success, 25 years after its enactment many Wabanakis believed that the settlement also presented serious obstacles to their aboriginal sovereignty, economic growth, and environmental health. The act established a $27 million trust to be shared equally between the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots, tax-free and with interest paid quarterly. It also set aside $54.4 million to buy 300,000 acres to add to Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Maliseet territory. These new land acquisitions would be held in trust for the Wabanakis by the United States and subject to oversight by the U.S. secretary of the interior. The act also provided enormous benefits to the state of Maine. Although the federal government paid the $81 million settlement’s cost, Maine paid nothing, and the state cleared title to all of its lands. The settlement also equated the regulatory rights of Indian nations with state municipalities, a compromise of sovereignty. Courts have upheld this stipulation, which has practical implications, including denial of the Wabanakis’ request to build casinos. ALASKA NATIVE CORPORATIONS The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, passed by Congress in 1971, exchanged Alaskan natives’ claims to land across most of Alaska for 44 million acres and for shares in 13 regional and 200 village corporations, which were then developed economically with native labor and almost $1 billion in start-up capital provided by the U.S. government. Alaska native corporations and their 18,000 Aleut and Inuit shareholders acquired a sizable amount of economic clout in the quarter-century after the corporations’ formation. In one instance, the town of Pelican, population 160, was saved by native Alaskan capital from closure of its major (and sole) industry, a cold-storage facility, after its abandonment by Japanese owners. The Sealaska Corporation’s headquarters dominates the skyline of Juneau, Alaska’s capital, where several Alaska natives were elected to the state legislature during the 1980s and 1990s.

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A minority of Native shareholders in some of the corporations have voiced concerns that their behavior has become too capitalistic and predatory on the environment. Special attention has been focused on the logging practices of Sealaska and Haida native corporations in the state’s panhandle. These practices have been characterized as some of the most environmentally unfriendly in North America. Natives who continue to fish and hunt (as well as cash dividend checks) assert that insensitive logging is destroying animal herds (especially deer) and poisoning groundwater, diminishing salmon runs. Native corporations on the North Slope of Alaska, which have been major beneficiaries of royalties from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, have lobbied to have portions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge opened for oil drilling, causing bitter debate not only between Native groups but also between the corporations and environmental activists as well. During the late 1990s, leaders of some of Alaska’s 226 recognized Indian tribes and bands had identified another problem with the act creating native corporations that was passed in 1971: It left them without many of the legal protections exercised by Native Americans in other states, such as the right to levy taxes, enforce most laws, and regulate hunting and fishing on their territories. Legally, the Alaska native corporations do not fall within the definition of Indian Country, with its treaty-guaranteed rights of sovereignty. Venetie, a small native village in Alaska (population 200) filed suit to have Alaska natives incorporated within Indian Country, leading to a ruling by a federal district court that the definition did not apply to Alaska natives. On appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, that ruling was reversed in November 1996, creating a major public controversy across Alaska. The court of appeals held that the act creating the Alaska Native Corporations did not adequately address legal issues defining Alaska natives’ status. On June 23, 1997, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the state government’s appeal of the court of appeals’ ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the Venetie case late in 1997 and ruled in March 1998 in agreement with the state’s position. This decision has an impact on one-tenth of Alaska’s land area, which makes up roughly 200 Native American communities. At stake is the jurisdiction to levy taxes, a loss the state has sought to forestall by spending more than $1 million on its appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, said that Venetie does not constitute a reservation or a dependent Indian community as defined under statutes delineating Indian Country. NATIVE AMERICAN OFFSHORE BANKING The type of banking secrecy usually associated with Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and other offshore locations is now available on the windswept plains of southwestern Oklahoma, an hour from Oklahoma City, at First Lenape Nation Bank and the Apaches’ First Americans Trust Company. Both are lodged in

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nondescript office buildings in the town of Anadarko, within a short drive of oil derricks and acres of grazing cattle on a reservation shared by the Delawares and a band of Apaches. The two banks operate without much of the usual apparatus of commercial banks, such as advertising signs and automated teller machines. Most of the Lenape Bank’s advertising is over the Internet (http://www.firstlenapenationbank. com), and most of its deposits arrive in the mail or by wire. Because of the reservation’s semisovereign status, the two banks advertise the benefits of offshore banking in the middle of the American heartland: numbered accounts, privacy, and safety from most legal demands for money, notably judgments of U.S. courts. The two banks also do not report deposits of more than $10,000, as federal law requires. The Delawares’ original name is Leni Lenape; Delaware, the slightly anglicized name of a French nobleman, became associated with them following European immigration along the Delaware River as the city of Philadelphia was established. At Penn’s Landing, less than a mile west of Independence Hall, William Penn was met by the Delaware sachem Tamenund, as both men counseled peace. With the demise of William Penn, greedier members of his family expelled Native Americans from the state named after the Penn family. Some of the Delawares migrated to Ontario, and others endured a forced march that took them from Pennsylvania to Missouri and Texas, both of which were then under Spanish control. After the United States absorbed Texas, the Delawares were removed to western Oklahoma, by which time only 90 members of the Leni Lenape people remained alive. Today Anadarko, sometimes called Indian City, USA, is home to about 7,500 people and has an unemployment rate of 45 percent. A number of federal and state agencies, including the Department of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service, and the FBI have tried to probe the two banks’ businesses, which were more than a year old by mid-1998. None of the agencies moved to close the banks, however, largely because federal regulations and legal precedents for offshore banking on Indian reservations are virtually nonexistent. The federal agencies seem to be searching for a pretext to legally challenge these first experiments with independent Native American banking. The banks have been established as an experiment in Native American sovereignty. They also exist to bring money to the reservation and to build infrastructure. Investigating federal agencies maintain that they are concerned about the banks’ potential for attracting shady money seeking secrecy, a concern that leads the United States to seek banking regulation agreements with nations that host offshore banks. These banks offer none of the deposit insurance guaranteed by institutions chartered within the United States. As of mid-1998, eight other banks operated on Indian reservations with federal chapters. Shortly after the Lenape and First Americans banks opened, the Oklahoma state banking commissioner as well as the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency warned banks that it regulates to “exercise extreme caution” in doing business with First Lenape, First Americans, and any other banks that might be

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set up by Native Americans on the same model. First Lenape responded by saying that it accepts only noncriminal funds for deposit. THE COUNCIL OF ENERGY RESOURCE TRIBES The Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT) was founded in 1975 by 25 Native American tribes and nations that own substantial reserves of energy and other natural resources. Denver-based CERT, by 2005 a consortium of 57 American and Canadian Indian polities, works to help Native Americans recognize, protect, and exploit energy-related wealth on their lands. A. David Lester has been CERT’s executive director nearly since the nonprofit group’s inception. CERT pursues a cooperative relationship between private industry, particularly in the energy sector, and American Indian governments. CERT also has become a notable lobbying force for Native American energy interests within the federal government, including Congress and the Interior Department. Native lands in the CERT consortium produce 380 billion cubic feet of natural gas annually and contain 2 trillion cubic feet of proved gas reserves. Properties overseen by CERT also hold 30 percent of U.S. coal reserves, 5 percent of its oil, and significant amounts of uranium. CERT is governed by the elected tribal leaderships of 53 federally recognized Indian tribes in the United States and four Canadian bands that are affiliated with it. Its members have been working toward self-management of their energy resources, from negotiating agreements to protecting the environment to verifying revenue payments. CERT played a role in the North American Energy Summit, held April 14–16, 2004, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which included state, provincial, Native American, and national leaders from three countries and involved diverse interests in seeking to develop a secure, affordable, and environmentally responsible energy system. The conference included presentations by governors Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Bill Owens of Colorado, Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Frank Murkowski of Alaska, Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, as well as Canadian provincial premiers Ralph Klein of Alberta, Gary Doer of Manitoba, and Joseph L. Handley of the Northwest Territories. The summit considered capitalizing on renewable energy resources, improving energy efficiency, determining the future of nuclear energy and fossil fuels, providing a reliable and efficient electricity grid, financing infrastructure and making it more secure, and achieving needed international collaboration. The summit also included an Energy Futures Expo, which featured cutting-edge technologies, systems, and alternative-fuel vehicles. CERT has supported legislation that would allow Native American governmental entities to submit tribal energy resources agreements covering energy and right-of-way leases to the Interior Department that, when approved, may enable agreements to proceed without prior secretarial approval. This stripped-down version of the current process could accelerate energy development on Native American lands.

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Although this proposal has widespread support from Republicans, some Democrats fear it could dilute environmental restrictions on oil and gas drilling on Indian land and weaken the Interior Department’s trust responsibilities. In addition, according to the Democrats, the hydroelectric language in the energy bill would create a licensing process that favors power providers to the detriment of Native governments, their treaty rights, and the general public, according to a position paper Senate Democrats released at a Native American forum on Capitol Hill. Instead, the Democrats favor proposals to promote transmission development on Indian lands and creating tax incentives for renewable energy that are favorable to Native governments. Tex Hall, as president of the National Congress of American Indians, has gone on record in support of CERT’s assertion that incentives will be required for Native cooperation in exploitation of energy resources residing on Native lands. Hall would like to see the Congressional Budget Office analyze how much money the energy bill would allocate for development of Native American energy resources. He also wants the U.S. Department of Energy to provide a number of $1 million to $2 million grants for wind-energy demonstration projects on land with significant potential, such as the Blackfeet in Montana or Hall’s own Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation in North Dakota. Federal utilities, military bases, and government agencies also should include preferences for energy supplied by Indian tribes and nations in their procurement contracts, Hall believes. Through its representatives in Washington, DC, CERT also has been lobbying the U.S. federal government for simplification of many arcane federal, state, and Native governmental tax laws and regulations that discourage development of energy resources on Native lands. The organization also has been pressing Congress to pass a measure that would allow private producers of energy to receive credits on their federal tax returns for tax payments to a given state for Native energy development. In addition to making exploration and production on tribal lands more attractive, such a change would encourage more thorough exploitation of existing wells, Lester has said. CERT has supported inventories of energy resources with Global Energy Decisions, which has produced a wall map portraying the energy development issues in the West that illustrates the production, transmission, consumption, and land-use patterns. The map contains references to coal mines, oil and natural-gas wells, pipelines, railroads, power plants, and transmission lines as well as public lands (Indian reservations, national parks, national forests, and Bureau of Land Management districts). In addition to its energy-related activities, CERT also plays a major role in raising money for Native American education. By 2005, CERT had raised nearly $6 million through its American Spirit Award Dinner. CERT and the Morongo Band of Mission Indians on June 21, 2005, hosted the 25th annual American Spirit Award Dinner, a leading fund-raiser for Indian education at the Morongos’ $250 million Morongo Casino, Resort, and Spa.

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The dinner was part of the three-day Indian Energy Solutions 2005 conference focusing on current Indian energy policies, economic development, energy market trends, alternative and renewable energies, and Native utility formation. More than 500 energy industry officials, state and federal elected leaders, Native representatives, and press attended. The CERT Tribal Internship Program provides students with opportunities to work alongside senior CERT staff, Native leaders, and energy companies on technical and scientific issues, policies, and projects. Past projects have focused on reservation water-quality studies, cooperative planning on environmental issues with state and local governments, hazardous waste operations training, and biodiversity. CERT also operates a Tribal Institute for Sustainable Energy and publishes Red Earth Magazine Online. THE FIRST NATIONS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE The First Nations Development Institute seeks to combine Native American cultural strengths with technical support to create economic opportunity within Indian communities. Rebecca Adamson founded the First Nations Development Institute in 1980. Her major goal has been to help Native American communities become economically self-sufficient and thereby reduce their dependence on federal funding. Grants are awarded for projects that benefit Indian communities and provide long-term economic benefits. Adamson, daughter of a Cherokee mother and a Swedish American father, developed an interest in Native American economic self-sufficiency early in her life as she visited her mother’s parents on the Eastern Cherokee reservation in the Great Smoky Mountains of westernmost North Carolina. She cut her teeth as an activist in efforts to gain for Native Americans more control over reservation schools. By 1980, she had borrowed from Third World economic development the idea of microgrants, usually about $500 each, that helped people start businesses in their homes. She won a $25,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to develop the idea, and the First Nations Development Institute was born. The institute’s first project was development of a touring exhibition of art by children on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which earned $20,000 in fees that were used to purchase winter clothes for the children. First Nations Development Corporation grants about $1.25 million each year to reservation communities. Between 1994 and 1997, the organization granted about $3 million to Native Americans belonging to about 240 Native groups in 213 states (Prue, 1997, B-1). First Nations Development Corporation has helped develop ecotourism projects on several reservations. A health clinic was funded at Porcupine on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in one of the 99 grants made by the group in 1997. Other projects include video-rental stores on reservations and a small electric utility on the Hopi territory that generates and distributes solar power.

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NATIONAL CENTER FOR AMERICAN INDIAN ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT The National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development, headquartered in Mesa, Arizona, provides support for Native American small-business development across the United States. Each year since 1987, the organization also has hosted a national Reservation Economic Summit and American Indian Trade Show, which attracts about 500 registrants and about 150 trade booths. The National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development was started in 1969 by seven Native Americans in Los Angeles as the Urban Indian Development Association. It was incorporated in 1970 and acquired its present name in 1988, when its national conference was attended by Senators Daniel Inouye and John McCain. By the mid-1990s, the organization had opened offices in Los Angeles and Seattle, in addition to its home office in Arizona. The center provides entrepreneurs with contacts in government and private businesses, assists with legal matters, helps with loan applications, and designs marketing strategies. Much of this is done through workshops and other training sessions. FURTHER READING Barreiro, José, ed. Indian Corn of the Americas: Gift to the World. Special issue of Northeast Indian Quarterly 6, no. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1989): 1–96. Bristol, Tim. “Gaining Influence.” Native Americas 13, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 14–21. Bristol, Tim. “‘Indian Country’—Alaska.” Native Americas 14, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 38–45. Brodeur, Paul. Restitution: The Land Claims of the Mashpee, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot Indians of New England. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985. Census Bureau, United States. “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005.” . Chavaree, Mark. “Tribal Sovereignty.” Wabanaki Legal News (Winter 1998). . Cornell, Stephen, and Joseph P. Kalt. “Pathways from Poverty: Economic Development and Institution-Building on American Indian Reservations.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 14, no. 1 (1990): 89–125. Cornell, Stephen, and Joseph P. Kalt. “Where’s the Glue? Institutional Bases of American Indian Economic Development.” Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy Working Paper Series, H-91-2. John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, March 1991. “Crime Rate on Indian Reservations Much Higher than U.S.” Indian Time, October 9, 2003: 11. “Crisis at Akwesasne.” Transcript, Hearings of the New York Assembly. Albany: State of New York, July–August, 1990. Darlin, Damon. “Rebellions on the Reservations.” Forbes, May 19, 1997: 88. Dorr, Robert. “Tribal Gambling Income Dented by Bluffs Casinos.” Omaha World-Herald, September 14, 1997: 14-A. Drew, Neil. Personal communication. July 1, 2001. Elliott, Louise. “Band Talking to Media May Perpetuate Suicide Crisis, Says Nault.” Canadian Press, June 22, 2001.

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Elliott, Louise. “Hunger and Suicide Stalk Reserve after Feds Cut Funds.” Montreal Gazette, June 7, 2001: A-15. Elliott, Louise. “Ontario Native Suicide Rate One of the Highest in World, Expert Says.” Vancouver Sun, November 30, 2000, n.p. Elliott, Louise. “Reserve’s Doctor Safe After 2-day Walk in Wilderness.” Canadian Press in Montreal Gazette, June 18, 2001, A-14. Farney, Dennis. “They Hold the Cards, but, after All, They Do Own the Casino.” Wall Street Journal, February 5, 1998: A-1, A-6. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crime in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989. “Federal Paternalism Angers Pikangikum.” Canadian Aboriginal. n.d. Gamble, Susan. “M.D. Shocked at Conditions on Reserve.” Brantford (Ontario) Expositor, n.p., n.d. Ganter, Granville. “Sovereign Municipalities? Twenty Years after the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980.” Enduring Legacies: Native American Treaties and Contemporary Controversies. Ed. Bruce E. Johansen. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. 25–43. Giago, Tim. “Gambling Helps Few Indian Tribes.” Omaha World-Herald, June 6, 1997: 24. Goulais, Bob. “Water Crisis Latest Plague to Visit Pikangikum.” Anishinabek News, November, 2000, n.p. Hornung, Rick. One Nation under the Gun: Inside the Mohawk Civil War. New York: Pantheon, 1991. Johansen, Bruce E. Forgotten Founders: Benjamin Franklin, the Iroquois, and the Rationale for the American Revolution. Ipswich, MA: Gambit, 1982. Johansen, Bruce E. “The Klan in a Can.” The Progressive, July 1988: 13. Johansen, Bruce E. Life and Death in Mohawk Country. Golden, CO: North American Press/ Fulcrum, 1993. Johansen, Bruce E. “The New York Oneidas: A Case Study in the Mismatch of Cultural Tradition and Economic Development.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 26, no. 3 (2002): 25–46. Johansen, Bruce E. “Whiteclay, Nebraska: The Town That Booze Built.” Native Americas 15, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 5. Johnson, Tim, “The Dealer’s Edge: Gaming in the Path of Native America.” Native Americas 12, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1995): 16–25. Kates, William. “Oneidas’ Enterprises Bolster Struggling Central New York.” Omaha WorldHerald, November 5, 1997: 22, 25. Killborn, Peter T. “Poverty Only Sure Bet at Pine Ridge.” Omaha World-Herald, June 12, 1997: A-1, A-2. Lester, David. “American Indians Enter a New Era of Renewal, Self-governance.” Denver Post, April 27, 1997: G-1. Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission (MITSC). At Loggerheads—The State of Maine and the Wabanaki: Final Report of the Task Force on Tribal-State Relations. Hallowell, ME: Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission, 1997. Revised, June 2000. Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission (MITSC). “Maine Indian Land Claims Case.” February 14, 1995. <www.passamaquoddy.com/land_claims/preamble.htm>. Marquez, Deron. “Indian Gaming is Different.” Indian Country Today, February 9, 2002. .

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Meriam, Lewis. The Problem of Indian Administration. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1928. Mohawk, John. “Economic Motivations: An Iroquoian Perspective.” Indian Corn of the Americas: Gift to the World. Special issue of Northeast Indian Quarterly 6, no. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1989): 56–63. Mohawk, John C. “Indian Economic Development: The U.S. Experience in Evolving Indian Sovereignty.” Indigenous Economics: Toward a Natural World Order. Special issue of Akwe:kon Journal 9, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 42–49. Murphy, M. Maureen. “Gambling on Indian Reservations.” Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, April 26, 1985. Murphy, Sean P. “Congressmen Seeking Probe of Indian Casinos.” Boston Globe, December 16, 2000: A-1. Ortiz, Roxanne D., ed. Economic Development in American Indian Reservations. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Indian Studies, 1979. Pasquaretta, Paul. “On the ‘Indianness’ of Bingo: Gambling and the Native American Community.” Critical Inquiry 20 (1994): 694–719. Pertusati, Linda. In Defense of Mohawk Land: Ethnopolitical Conflict in Native North America. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Prue, Lisa. “Tribal Self-sufficiency Is First Nations’ Aim.” Omaha World-Herald, November 3, 1997: B-1, B-2. Randolph, Eleanor. “New York’s Native American Casino Contributes, but Not to Tax Rolls.” The New York Times, October 18, 2003: n.p. Rushton, Nathan. “Tribe’s Home Business Booming.” Eureka (California) Reporter, September 30, 2005. . Schwab, Priscilla Anne. “The Industrial Reservation.” Nation’s Business, August 1981: 57. Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Butterworth, 658 F. 2d 310 (5th Cir., 1980). Smith, Dean Howard. Modern Tribal Development: Paths to Self-Sufficiency and Cultural Integrity in Indian Country. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000. Suzuki, Peter T. “Housing on the Nebraska Indian Reservations: Federal Policies and Practices.” Habitat International 15, no. 4 (1991): 27–32. U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee. American Indians: Facts and Future: Toward Economic Development for Native American Communities. New York: Arno Press, 1970. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Trends in Indian Health. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991. Walke, Roger. “Gambling on Indian Reservations.” Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, October 17, 1988. Wanamaker, Tom. “Debunking the Myth of Unregulated Indian Gaming.” Indian Country Today, May 16, 2002. . Wanamaker, Tom. “Indian Gaming Column.” Indian Country Today, April 5, 2002: n.p. (in Lexis). Wollock, Jeffrey. “On the Wings of History: American Indians in the 20th Century.” Native Americas 20, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 14–31.

CHAPTER 4

High-Stakes Genealogy: When Is a Pequot Not a Pequot?

J

eff Benedict, author of Without Reservation: The Making of America’s Most Powerful Indian Tribe and Foxwoods, the World’s Largest Casino (2000), purports to expose the builders of the world’s largest casino (Foxwoods, near Ledyard, Connecticut) as faux Pequots. As a salesman of ethnic chauvinism, Benedict has got something going here. Pandering to various racial prejudices did his bank balance no harm. Without Reservation, for a time, was rated in the top 100 of Amazon.com’s sales rankings (among roughly 2 million listed titles). Arguing that the Pequots who started Foxwoods may actually be white—or is it black?—broaches a sticky historical swamp in which hardly anyone, strictly speaking, is purely anything. The broader issue here relates to problems parsing racial or ethnic identity by singular standards in a multiethnic world as well as the big money behind such definitions. Mixed genealogy is hardly unusual, and it bedevils creators of racial categories. For example, Crispus Attucks, son of an African American father and a Massachusetts Indian mother, was the first casualty of the Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770, the first death in the cause of the American Revolution. Attucks’s father was a black slave in a Framington, Massachusetts, household until about 1750, when he escaped and became a sailor. Attucks’s mother lived in an Indian mission at Natick. Poet Langston Hughes, singer Tina Turner, actor James Earl Jones, and civil rights activists Frederick Douglass and Jesse Jackson all have some degree of black American Indian ancestry, and not usually the kind that comes easily sketched in little boxes on charts. Benedict’s book became something of a best seller among members of antisovereignty groups such as the Citizens Alliance, which pumped it on the Internet. This book contains no index, a substantial oversight for a historical work. This book’s lack of sources that can be traced by anyone other than the author renders Without Reservation nearly useless as documentary history, despite the 650

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interviews that the author says he conducted. Still, Benedict must have laughed all the way to the bank as he railed against a riches-to-rags-to-riches story that might have impressed Horatio Alger. Commented one observer, surveying the financial success of Foxwoods so close to Mystic, site of a 1637 massacre that nearly obliterated the Pequot nation, “After a 350 year truce, the Mashantucket may actually have won the Pequot War” (Pequot History, 1997). Benedict, 35 years of age when Without Reservation hit the best-seller charts, once aspired to be a federal prosecutor (Barry, May 14, 2000, B-1). He wrote Without Reservation while he was a student at the New England School of Law in Boston. Benedict earlier had authored another expose, Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL (1998). Benedict probably will never become as wealthy as some of the Mashantucket Pequots who tapped a huge gambling market by opening Foxwoods, in Connecticut, however. Georg Sutterlin, a reporter for Neue Zurcher Zeitung of Zurich, Switzerland, described the grand sight approaching Foxwoods, the largest complex of structures committed to gambling in the history of the human race: Foxwoods rises like a mirage out of the Connecticut forests. People from New York or Boston, traveling through scattered villages, past fields and woods, do not expect a monumental, ultramodern building complex in this rural area. Traffic lights direct the flow of vehicles into the asphalt desert of the parking lots. (Sutterlin, 2001, 32)

Another book about the Pequots, by Kim Isaac Eisler, an editor at Washingtonian magazine, was published in February 2001 (Eisler, 2001). Revenge of the Pequots: How a Small Native American Tribe Created the World’s Most Profitable Casino expresses wariness about the Pequots’ ethnic identities but also describes evidence to support their claims. Eisler notes that the Indians were cheated out of their land because, in part, of their problems with alcohol; now their enrichment has come out of the white man’s compulsion for gambling. “A delicious irony,” Eisler wrote (Dalla, n.d.). Remarked another observer, “Of course, if the Pequots still were selling firewood and maple syrup, nobody would be concerned about the matter. The debate isn’t really about Indian rights or tribal sovereignty. It’s about money. The Indians are making money—and lots of it. Some people have a hard time dealing with that fact” (Dalla, n.d.). HISTORY OF THE PEQUOTS The purported extinction of the Pequots has been one bit of Connecticut folklore that has made its way into some important precincts of American letters. Alexis de Tocqueville, passing though the area as a tourist, missed several remnants of the Pequot Nation when he declared them extinct in 1833. He also declared extinct all of the Native peoples who had once inhabited New England (including the Narragansetts and Mohicans as well as the Pequots). In Moby Dick, published in 1851, Herman Melville explains that the Pequod, Captain Ahab’s doomed ship, was

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named after a New England Indian tribe that the narrator believes to be extinct. Melville also missed the scattered remnants that had survived the Puritans’ war of extermination (Eisler, 2001, 36). James Cunha Jr., chief of the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, recalled rushing home from high school after a teacher had declared the Pequots extinct. His grandfather, dressed in his regalia, walked to the classroom door and glowered, “Tell me that I don’t exist” (Barry, December 12, 2000). Before they were slaughtered in the Pequot War (1636–37), the Pequots were some of the most affluent Native Americans to do business with the early English immigrants. Pequot is derived from the Algonquin word pekawatawog or pequttoog, meaning “destroyers” (Pequot History, 1997). The Pequots and the Mohegans originated as a single group that migrated to eastern Connecticut from the upper Hudson River Valley in New York, probably the vicinity of Lake Champlain, sometime around 1500. At the time of their first contact with Europeans, the Pequot occupied southeastern Connecticut from the Nehantic River eastward to the present-day border with Rhode Island. If the Mohegan are included, the Pequot probably numbered around 6,000 in 1620. After a major smallpox epidemic during winter 1633–34 and the departure of the Mohegans, about 3,000 Pequots remained by the mid-1630s. Fewer than half are believed to have survived the Pequot War of 1636 and 1637. Highly organized, aggressive, and warlike, the Pequot dominated Connecticut before 1637, “a pattern continued later by the closely related Mohegan. Like their neighbors, the Pequot were an agricultural people who raised corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. Hunting, with an emphasis on fish and seafood because of their coastal location, provided the remainder of their diet. Clothing and housing were also similar—buckskin and semi-permanent villages of medium-sized longhouses and wigwams” (Pequot History, 1997). The Pequot were no larger in numbers than the peoples surrounding them, but they were more highly organized, with strong central authority exercised by a council led by a grand sachem. Their organized nature provided the Pequot a considerable military advantage over their neighbors before the intervention of English immigrants. The Pequot War began during summer 1636 when a Boston trader, John Oldham, was killed as the western Niantic captured his boat near Block Island. Richard Mather, in a sermon delivered in Boston, denounced the Pequot as the “accursed seeds of Canaan,” in effect imagining the confrontation in Connecticut as a holy war by the Puritans against the forces of evil. With these fiery words urging them to action, Massachusetts, without bothering to consult the colonists in Connecticut, sent a punitive expedition of 90 men under the command of John Endecott (or Endicott) to Block Island in August with orders to kill every man and take the women and children prisoner. The English soldiers managed to kill 14 Niantic and an undetermined number of dogs before they escaped into the woods and then burned the village and crops. Endecott then loaded his men back into the boats and sailed over to Fort Saybrook to add some additional soldiers for

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the second part of his mission—a visit to the Pequot village at the mouth of the Thames River to demand 1,000 fathoms of wampum for the death of Oldham and several Pequot children as hostages (Pequot History, 1997). MASSACRE AT MYSTIC The Pequot were furious. During the winter, they plotted revenge and sent war belts to the Narragansett and Mohegan, asking their help in a war against the English. Because of their past actions, however, the Pequot had few friends, and the English found it fairly easy to isolate them. Early in 1637, Sassacus, a Pequot leader, ordered a series of raids against the Connecticut settlements to retaliate for Endecott’s raid of the previous summer. Two hundred warriors attacked Wethersfield on April 12 and killed nine colonists (six men and three women). Other victims were 20 cows and a horse. Taking two teenage girls hostage, the war party loaded their loot into canoes and went home on the Connecticut River. Passing the fort at Saybrook, they taunted the garrison by waving the bloody clothes of their victims. The colonists lost 30 people in these raids, and in May the general court at Hartford formally declared war (Pequot History, 1997). A joint expedition of 90 English and 70 Mohegan warriors under Uncas assembled near Hartford to attack the main Pequot fort at Mystic. Commanded by Capt. John Mason, an experienced soldier, this tiny army departed on what seemed a suicide mission. Passing down the Connecticut River, it stopped at Fort Saybrook to add a few soldiers and then proceeded up the coast only to discover the Pequot waiting for them at Mystic. When Mason reached the Narragansett villages, 200 warriors joined his ranks, and he received their permission to travel overland through Narragansett territory for a surprise attack on Mystic from the rear. With his force now numbering more than 400 men, Mason left the Narragansett villages and moved westward across the hills of western Rhode Island. The English and their allies arrived at Mystic undetected because the Pequot warriors who usually would have been defending Mystic were absent. Lulled into a sense of false security by the sight of what earlier had seemed to them a retreat by Mason’s men, the Pequot had formed a war party to raid settlements near Hartford. Members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony attacked and massacred the Pequots in their fortified village near the Mystic River on May 26, 1637. The Pequot community at Mystic had gathered for its annual Green Corn Dance ceremony. After they had assembled in a thatched fort at Mystic, mercenaries of the English and Dutch surrounded the fort and set it aflame, trapping the Pequots inside. Pequots who sought to escape the flames met the business end of Puritan muskets at point-blank range, and witnesses left descriptions of Pequot flesh sizzling as the strings on their bows melted in a holocaust of roaring fire. A few Pequot bowmen stood their ground amid the flames, until their bows singed and they fell backward into the fire, their flesh sizzling like bacon on a hot griddle. The massacre even frightened some Puritans. William Bradford recalled, “It was a fearfull [sic] sight to see them thus frying” (Covey, 1966, 200). The English, Dutch, and their Indian allies held their noses against the stench of


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burning flesh. The roaring inferno burned itself out less than an hour after the torching had begun. During that hour, between 600 and 700 Pequots died. Trapping 700 Pequot inside the fort (mostly women, children, and old people), Mason and his men set it afire. Those Pequot not burned to death were killed when they tried to escape. Following Mason’s orders, the Narragansett and Mohegan finished any Pequot the English missed but were aghast when the English indiscriminately slaughtered Pequot women and children. Their grim work completed, Mason made a hasty retreat (actually, a headlong rush) to his boats waiting at a rendezvous on the Thames. Sassacus’ village was only five miles away, and his warriors were in hot pursuit. Hartford declared June 15th as a day of prayer and thanksgiving for the “victory” at Mystic. (Pequot History, 1997)

Although a few Puritans remonstrated regarding the violence, many (Bradford included) soon placed the massacre in the category of God’s necessary business, along with all sorts of other things, from smallpox epidemics to late frosts and early freezes. The outcome of the Pequot War during summer 1636 radically altered the demographic balance in New England. Before it, the English colonists were a tiny minority. Afterward, the immigrants held a slight majority. The terms of a peace treaty signed after the Pequot war systematically dismembered the Pequot as a people (Pequot History, 1997). After the Pequot war, most captured warriors were executed, and the English sold the remainder as slaves to the West Indies. Some of the women and children were distributed as servants to colonial households in New England. Some of the survivors also were divided as slaves among the Indians who had supported the Puritans: 80 to Uncas and the Mohegans, 80 to Miantonomo and the Narragansetts, and 20 to Ninigret and the Niantics. No Pequots were thereafter allowed to inhabit their traditional lands. The name Pequot was to be expunged; survivors were instructed to take the names of the Native nations to which they had been given. Some surviving Pequots were adopted by the Mohegans. The Mohegans treated their Pequots so badly that by 1655 the English were forced to remove them. Two reservations were established for the Pequot in 1666 and 1683. By 1762 there were only 140 Pequot; their population decline continued to a low point of 66 in the 1910 census. THE WAR OF GENEALOGIES The largest casino in the United States sprang from exceedingly humble beginnings. Mashantucket means “the much-wooded land.” The word Foxwoods is a combination of the notion of forest with the Pequots’ reputation as “the fox people.” By 1972, the 214-acre Western Pequot reservation housed only one resident, Elizabeth George, “The Iron Lady,” who died of a heart attack in 1973. George “could not have foreseen the radio call-in shows devoted to her bloodlines, or the press releases, or the ethnographic commentary of Donald Trump, who said that the Pequots who trace their lineage through George’s family ‘don’t look like Indians’” (Barry, May 14, 2000, B-1). By 2000, Foxwoods had become the larg-

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est single gambling complex in the world, a place where “Indian genealogy is a current event” (Barry, May 14, 2000, B-1). Much of Benedict’s story centers on George’s grandson, Richard (Skip) Hayward, who, with attorney Tom Tureen, led a group that sued to regain 800 acres of Western Pequot land sold by the state in 1855 on grounds that the sale was illegal under the Nonintercourse Acts. According to one observer, “What remained of the [Pequot] tribe was concentrated on a few hundred acres near the Rhode Island border. In 1856, the state of Connecticut—in an act that would typify much of the acrimony between the U.S. government and Native Americans—sold off nearly 80 percent of the Pequot’s land (an act later judged to be illegal by the federal courts). That left the tribe with only 213 acres. Descendants faced the bleak prospect of no jobs on the reservation. Many were forced to take jobs in cities. The tribe’s population dwindled with each passing year” (Dalla, n.d.). By October 1983, the Western (Mashantucket) Pequots had won 800 acres, $900,000 to pay for it, as well as federal recognition as an Indian tribe. From that point, the Mashantucket Pequots acquired more land, with an eye toward establishing businesses. At the time, the Pequot tribal roll (Benedict spells this term role at least twice, without editorial intervention) contained 42 reservation residents and 153 other Pequots. Ellen Barry, a reporter for the Boston Globe, observed, “So began the latest Indian war—the war of genealogies. Once the territory of academic researchers, the federal recognition process has come under pressure from millionaire investors who want to speed it up and angry state officials who want to stop it cold. Liberalminded Yankees are commissioning opposition” (Barry, December 12, 2000). Foxwoods started as a small bingo parlor because some 40 banks had refused to loan money to the Pequots. The bingo parlor began operating in 1986 and became wildly successful. After the U.S. federal Indian Gambling Regulatory Act was passed the following year, the Pequots signed an agreement with the state that 25 percent of revenues would be paid in taxes. (By the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1999, and ending June 30, 2000, Foxwoods’ gross revenues on its slot and video machines alone totaled more than $9 billion.) The first day Foxwoods opened, February 14, 1992, its 1,700-car parking lot was full by 10:30 A.M. Approximately 75,000 people gambled there during the first day, and 2,000 of them were still present at the casino’s 4 A.M. closing time. During ensuing years, Foxwoods expanded and became one of the most notable examples anywhere of Native American economic development. When it opened, Foxwoods was the only gaming establishment on the East Coast offering poker, which was banned at the time in Atlantic City, New Jersey. THE SIZE OF FOXWOODS By 2000, the Foxwoods complex was drawing about 50,000 people on an average day. The Foxwoods Resort Casino complex included five casinos housing more than 300,000 square feet of gaming space, 5,842 slot machines, 370 gaming tables,


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a 3,000-seat high-stakes bingo parlor with $1 million jackpots, a 200-seat Sportsbook, a Keno lounge, and pull tabs. Table games include baccarat, mini-baccarat, Big Six Wheels, blackjack, Caribbean stud poker, Craps, Pai Gow, Pai Gow Tiles, Red Dog, roulette, and a number of other games. The Foxwoods casino complex also includes four hotels ranging in size from 280 to 800 rooms and suites. In addition to gaming space and its four hotels, Foxwoods also offers 23 shopping areas, 24 food-and-beverage outlets, a movie theater complex, as well as the Mashantucket Pequot museum and a Fox Grand Theater with Las Vegas–style entertainment. Foxwoods quickly has become an integral pillar of Connecticut’s economy and a multimillion-dollar contributor to Connecticut charities. The Pequots’ casino even put up cash one year to help the state balance its budget. By 2000, the Foxwoods casino complex was paying the state of Connecticut more than $189 million per year. The Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun casinos, combined, paid the state of Connecticut 20 percent of their slot-machine profits, more than $318 million during the 1999–2000 fiscal year. The Mashantucket Pequots also became Connecticut’s largest single taxpayer and, with 13,000 jobs, one of its larger employers. The casino employed a staff of lawyers and its own permanent lobbying office in Washington, DC. The Pequots became the largest single contributor to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian—at $10 million, the largest contribution to any Smithsonian project. They gave $2 million to the Special Olympics, $500,000 to the Hartford Ballet, and $5 million to the Mystic Aquarium (Eisler, 2001, 212–13). In June 2001, the Mohegans, owners of the neighboring Mohegan Sun Casino, made an equal pledge. To illustrate the volume of money changing hands in these casinos, consider this fact: Mohegan Sun Casino investors included Trading Cove Associates, headed by Sol Kerzner, creator of the Sun City casino and resort in South Africa. By 2000, this firm had realized more than $800 million, a sum the company argued was “fair compensation” for services rendered (Murphy, 2000, A-1). Foxwoods also has funded a $200 million Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, which houses “dioramas of Pequot villagers, mastodons, and a trailer very much like the ones occupied by tribal members living on the reservation in the 1970s” (Barry, May 14, 2000, B-1). Construction of the 90,000-square-foot museum and research center began in 1993. Entering the museum, visitors pass through a simulated glacial crevasse, complete with cold air and creaking ice, which leads to an exhibit showing how glaciers shaped modern-day landforms in Pequot country. Computer animation and sound animates a diorama, 50 feet in diameter, of an 11,000-year-old caribou kill. A 22,000-square-foot immersion environment depicts a sixteenth-century Pequot village that features life-size, naturalistic, handcrafted figures taking part in everyday activities. The museum also includes a re-created Pequot village, circa 1550, and a palisaded area, circa 1620, that comprises 12 wigwams, a sweat lodge, dugout canoes, stone

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tools, woven cattail mats, weapons, food-storage pits, a waterfall, and streams. The exhibit includes 29 full-scale hickory, white oak, black gum, and chestnut trees, as well as some 25 animal species, amid hundreds of other items typical of life during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A state-of-the-art sound system employing 110 speakers and hundreds of sounds, from seagulls to crickets, has been added to the re-created village. Sensory inputs enable visitors to hear hundreds of village sounds and smell the woodlands and the aroma of a campfire as they walk among the oaks, chestnuts, and wigwams. A realistic model and three-dimensional interactive computer displays re-create a seventeenth-century Pequot fort, discovered in 1992 just 600 feet from the Museum and Research Center. The interactive display enables visitors to navigate through the fort as designers believed it existed about 300 years ago. In an outdoor, eighteenth-century farmstead, re-created on approximately two acres of land, visitors walk through an orchard and gardens, learning about eighteenth-century tools and farming techniques. Other presentations illustrate life on the reservation up to present times, including a gallery of portraits of contemporary Pequots. Thirteen original films and video programs explore various aspects of everyday Pequot life, including the making of clothes, preparation of food, as well as construction of canoes and wigwams. The manufacture of wampum also is illustrated. One of the films, The Witness, recounts the Mystic massacre of 1637, seven miles from the site of the museum, where 600 to 700 Pequot were burned alive in a thatched fort by the English. The Research Center also houses a library devoted to American and Canadian Native histories and cultures. A 185-foot stone-and-glass tower provides visitors with sweeping views of the region. More than 200 Native American artisans, craftspeople, consultants, and contractors from approximately fifty Native American tribes and nations contributed to the permanent exhibits through creation of original artwork, crafting of reproduction artifacts, and gathering of authentic materials. They also acted in the films and shared oral histories. Profits from Foxwoods also have financed archaeological digs in the area. Findings from these digs suggest that the Pequots “not only endured but also maintained many native practices—what they ate, how they cooked, how many family members lived together and more—through at least the eighteenth century” (Dobrzynski, 1997). Inside the 1670s fort is the remains of a village of eight to ten houses, “yielding a trove of fragments from iron kettles, pothooks, pottery pots with Pequot marks, pipes stamped with English makers’ marks, wampum, musket balls, gun flints, arrow points, spear points and decorative objects” (Dobrzynski, 1997). Laurence M. Hauptman, a history professor at the State University College at New Paltz, New York, and a coauthor of The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of An American Indian Nation (1990), said that “Village sites are hard to find because most are now other towns, like New London…. We Europeans didn’t discover the geopolitical or economic importance of certain sites” (Dobrzynski, 1997). The archaeologists have found trace remnants of a fortified Pequot village, probably built in 1670 and abandoned in 1675, and several eighteenth-century


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dwellings. These findings are beginning to sketch the story of how the Pequots persevered after the English forbade mention of their name following the Mystic massacre in 1637. Traces also have been found indicating that the Pequots’ remote ancestors occupied the area possibly 10,000 years ago. Other Foxwoods profits have been invested in fisheries and a shipyard and used to make an annual payment to all members. The Pequots also used some of Foxwoods’ profits to build roads, schools, and a power plant. THE NONINTERCOURSE ACTS Native American legal self-preservation is not solely a twentieth-century idea. Within years of the genesis of the United States as a national entity, the federal government passed several laws aimed at preventing the taking of Indian land by local investors or state-level interests. The laws, called the Nonintercourse Acts, forbade land-dealing without federal approval. The aim was to prevent fraud, of which there was plenty. The aforementioned local interests routinely ignored these acts, committing a raft of illegalities that would come back to haunt many landowners the better part of two centuries hence. In such a manner, the Pequots came to be reconstituted as a nation. Legal actions under the aegis of the Nonintercourse Acts during the 1970s netted the Passamaquoddys and Penobscots of Maine a land base and economic infrastructure. Without Reservation’s early pages contain a fascinating brief legal history detailing the roles played by Tom Tureen, then a young attorney, and John Stevens, tribal governor of the Passamaquoddy. This was the first time that a federal court ever has ordered a federal department (Interior, in this case) to sue a state, an instructive story for anyone interested in the practical rudiments of Native sovereignty. Before the land-claims settlement, the Passamaquoddy had inhabited a small and shrinking reservation; at one point, U.S. Route 1 was built through the reservation, and non-Indian families moved in without asking permission or paying for the land. In 1957, documents were discovered indicating that a treaty signed in 1794 between the Passamaquoddy and officials of Massachusetts had never been approved by Congress. Therefore the treaty, by which the Indians had ceded much of Maine, was not legally valid. At one point, the Penobscots and Passamaquoddys claimed rights to 12 million acres, two-thirds of the state of Maine, much of it large tracts owned by some of the world’s largest wood-products companies, including Scott Paper, Georgia-Pacific Corporation, St. Regis Paper Company, and the International Paper Company. The story of the Nonintercourse Acts is extremely important to contemporary treaty interpretation and will have an influence on land claims to come, including Iroquois claims in New York. In 1980, the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot each were awarded $40.3 million to settle their claims. Instead of distributing money to each tribal member in per capita payments, the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot decided to invest the money in land and business ventures to reestablish collective identity.

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The two tribes suddenly found themselves holding the largest pool of investment capital in Maine. One-third of the Passamaquoddys’ settlement money was spent on 300,000 acres of land. Another third was placed in conservative financial investments; the interest and dividends of these investments were earmarked for payments to members each year. The remaining third was invested in business ventures under a tribal-management firm, Tribal Assets Management. The Passamaquoddys invested a large portion of their capital in one of Maine’s largest blueberry farms. The farm was so profitable that the tribe recovered its investment in two years. In 1983, the Passamaquoddys bought the only cement plant in New England. They sold the plant five years later at a profit of $60 million. The same set of laws that was applied to the Maine tribes was found to have been ignored during the long history of land transfers that reduced the Mashantucket Pequots’ landholdings to 214 acres, enabling the legal rebirth that gave rise to the Foxwoods casino complex. Thus began the story of the Pequots’ rebirth, with acquisition of land, federal recognition as a Native polity, construction of Foxwoods, and the ensuing squabble, exploited by Jeff Benedict’s Without Reservation, regarding how much blood makes a Pequot “authentic.” BLOOD QUANTUM AND ETHNIC IDENTITY: WITHOUT RESERVATION’ S CONTRADICTIONS Without Reservation badly needed critical editing before its publication. The book, as published, suffers from several embarrassing contradictions that reflect Benedict’s ignorance of Pequot history. On page 31, for example, before the reader is introduced to Elizabeth George, Benedict declares that the Western Pequots “had died away generations ago,” evidencing, as absolute fact, his opinion that none of the Indian movers and shakers in this story meet his definition of Mashantucket Pequot heritage. On page 37, Benedict writes that the Western Pequot reservation was founded before the town of Ledyard, after which he declares (on the same page) that the reservation was placed in a remote area “to keep the Indians out of sight.” “Out of sight of whom?” a reader might ask. If the reservation was founded before the town, how is this possible? To call Without Reservation Anglocentric would be something of an understatement. One notable example is the way in which Benedict describes Skip Hayward’s ethnic heritage. When Benedict introduces Hayward (on page 34), he is, without qualification, “a white person.” By page 57, however, he is sitting with his grandmother Elizabeth George acquiring “Native American culture.” On the next page, Benedict resolves the ambiguity he has created by saying that though Hayward has some Pequot blood, “the bloodline to the Pequots was tissue-thin.” All along, the author uses Anglo-American, not Native American, definitions of kinship. Throughout Without Reservation, Benedict seems enamored of a simple concept of race, by which each and every person can be described with a one-word


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label. Based on blood quantum (a governmental definition), the most any of the present-day Mashantucket Pequots can claim is one-eighth blood (Dobrzynski, 1997). This singular fact, like no other, seems to rile Benedict and his European American readership. To them, one-eighth blood is seven-eights something other than Pequot, making the Mashantucket Pequot nation, as presently constituted, more a marriage of economic opportunity than a Native American nation. Regarding Skip Hayward’s Pequot heritage, Kim Isaac Eisler wrote, “On his mother’s side, Skip was about one-sixteenth Indian, at most. On his father’s side, he was as American as pumpkin pie,” whatever that means (Eisler, 2001, 56). In defense of mixed bloodlines, one may observe that John Ross, hero of the Cherokees’ resistance to the removal that became the Trail of Tears was exactly one-eighth Cherokee. At some point, blood quantum and ethnic identity do sometimes part ways. How vexing it must be to Benedict when Kenneth Reels, the chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot after Hayward, described his complicated ethnic heritage. Reels explained on a local cable show that his great-grandfather, Paul George, was a Pequot leader around the year 1800. “I can go back on a lot of sides and show all my blood,” Reels said on the local access channel’s Renshaw Report, hosted by New London plumber Murray Renshaw, “I’m a Western [Pequot] an Eastern [Pequot], a Mashantucket, a Niantic, a Narragansett. I’m black, I’m Caucasian, and I’m Portuguese. I’m proud of who I am” (Associated Press, 2000). Reels continued, “We are a proud people, and we will not stand by and cater to anyone who may be racist or jealous of our hard work and success” (“Farm Land Sits,” n.d.). Reels’s ancestors include full-blooded Pequots, he said, a fact affirmed by a family Civil War pension document. Without Reservation ignores this (Scarponi, May 12, 2000). Professor Hauptman said he would not give Benedict “even a C-minus for research.” Hauptman said that Benedict is “ill-informed about Native Americans, about American and Connecticut history, and even about law, his chosen profession” (Barry, May 14, 2000, B-1). Reading Without Reservation, one hears the engine hum of some very imaginary late-model welfare Cadillacs in the background. Benedict sheds a quick tear for the historical circumstances that reduced the Pequots’ numbers so drastically (including a very brief description of the 1637 Mystic massacre), but he seems ready to ratify the upshot of genocide by declaring that the Pequot, by lack of numbers, now have no right to a Native American identity. Benedict introduces the present Western Pequot chairman Kenneth Reels, who defeated Hayward for the chairmanship in November 1998, with the same welfare Cadillac treatment. On page 230, Benedict says that Reels’s birth certificate (at Wakefield, Rhode Island, on April 18, 1960) identifies him as “a Negro.” Benedict then lavishes attention (as he did with Hayward) on selective recall regarding Reels’s dysfunctional parents: a mother who was “destitute and constantly pregnant” (231) and a father who served nine years in prison for manslaughter in the death of Bonnie Jean Hay, who had filed a complaint that Hayward abused

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her 16-month-old baby. To his credit, Benedict admits that the younger Reels graduated from high school (having pointed out that both his parents dropped out), kept himself out of trouble with the law, and excelled at basketball. Still, Benedict finds him as “black” as he found Hayward “white,” arguing from town records that often had no Native American category. Pequots had been defined out of existence. The Single-Ethnicity Question The single-ethnicity question that vexes Benedict is the same one facing the U.S. census, which has been struggling for years with systems to describe (and count) people with multicultural heritages. The 2000 census form, for the first time, allowed respondents to mark one or more of 14 boxes representing six races and subcategories or “some other race.” In all, as many as 63 combinations were possible. This is a considerable demographic advance from the days before the Civil War, when the U.S. census contained two categories: white and Negro, for the sole purpose of determining congressional representation under the three-fifths compromise that counted blacks as 60 percent of a human being. Only recently has the census been worded with an eye to demographic value. Town records also reflected these trends. During his diligent efforts to discern who is and is not Pequot, Benedict displays an instinct for finding exactly what he wants to see in conflicting historical records, ignoring all contrary evidence. For example, Benedict ignores an 1857 state-court ruling that determined that the family from which a number of the Western Pequot are descended is, indeed, of Pequot lineage. Pequot officials have produced a 1857 Connecticut Superior Court petition and have asserted that it establishes a line of genealogical descent from the late 1700s to present Pequot Tribal Chairman Kenneth M. Reels and other members. Benedict believes that the document identifies Reels’s ancestor as a Pequot and a Mohegan on different pages. “That document doesn’t prove that Kenny Reels is descended from Pequots,” Benedict has said. “What it proves is that there are a litany of documents that say conflicting things.” Benedict has palmed off the document by saying, “The courts aren’t always right” (Scarponi, May 12, 2000). Benedict is not always right, either, of course. He also uses historical sources without reference to their inherent biases. Commented Hauptman: Benedict’s conclusions on who is or was a Pequot is largely based on southeastern Connecticut town records. Reflecting the racial bias of the times, the only categories for classifying peoples were often either “white” or “black,” an easy way to write Indians out of history. Benedict ignores the more reliable Connecticut State Overseers’ records—state officials who directly administered these and other Connecticut Indians from before the Revolution to 1973—records that clearly show the continuity of the Mashantucket Pequot as a distinct Indian community with a leadership over time. (Hauptman, 2000)


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Without Reservation’s richly detailed anecdotal nature induces a bogus sense of the familiar that creates a fuzzy zone between fact, as most historians and journalists understand it, and partially fictionalized accounts that sound as if the author was a fly-on-the-wall witness of many events that he most probably never saw. Witness Benedict’s descriptions of Hayward beating his first wife Aline during the early and mid-1970s, around page 50. Benedict does this again on pages 88 to 92, as he lavishes detail on the way in which Aline separated from and finally divorced Hayward in 1976, after seven years of marriage. One could swear from the precision of Benedict’s descriptions and the large number of direct quotes that the author was sitting right there, taking notes for a book to be published a quarter-century later. As a matter of fact, Benedict started writing Without Reservation in 1998. Benedict firmly believes that Hayward and others have adapted a Pequot motif to ride an affirmative-action gravy train and builds his case to fit. Benedict repeats the same theme on page 123 (“After organizing his [Hayward’s] relatives into an Indian tribe”) and again on page 138 (“Bestowing sovereign status on Skip and his family”). On page 151, Benedict does his best to assemble a case that not even Elizabeth George was a Pequot. Benedict believes that George lived on the reservation not out of any attachment to her ethnic identity or culture, but solely because her residence was rent-free. To the point of repetitive boorishness, Benedict drives home his central theme that Hayward and the rest of the Western Pequots are fakirs. There are no real Pequots, he tells us on page 62, and, on page 100, “The real Pequot tribe has been non-existent for years.” Benedict pegs Hayward and the rest of the Western Pequots as increasingly sophisticated scam artists. “If they did pull off a scam, it’s probably the most brilliant scam in American history,” said Michael Bernz, who grew up in the area and hosts a morning call-in show on WBMW in Ledyard (Barry, May 14, 2000, B-1). Although many non-Indians in the area have complained about the casino, most businesses in the vicinity of Foxwoods have profited handsomely since it opened, including local suppliers, retailers, hotels, and restaurants. THE COMMON NATURE OF MIXED GENEALOGIES Benedict’s version of ethnic cleansing aside, mixed genealogies are very common in the United States. For example, the mother of Frederick Douglass, the famed black abolitionist, a slave, was probably partially Native American. Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey on a farm on Lewiston Road, Tuckahoe, near Easton, Talbot County, Maryland, in February 1818, son of an unknown European American father and Harriet Bailey, a slave who may have been partially Native American. No traces remain of which Native tribe or nation with which he may share ancestry. As a boy, Douglass’s owner, Aaron Anthony, referred to him as his “little Indian boy.” In some cases, Native Americans and escaped slaves made common cause in sizable numbers. On such example are the Black Seminoles, who are sometimes

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called Seminole Maroons by ethnologists, who live today mainly in Oklahoma, Texas, the Bahamas, and Coahuila, Mexico. Their ancestors were runaways from the plantations of South Carolina and Georgia between the late seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries who sought refuge in Spanish-controlled Florida. The name Seminole, derived from the Spanish word cimaroon, meaning “fugitives” or “wild ones,” was incorporated into the Native language. The word maroon, in English, stems from the same Spanish word. Fugitive slaves from Charleston arrived in Spanish St. Augustine, Florida, as early as 1687, where many began new lives as free men and women in a multicultural community. Some of the men worked as cartwrights, jewelers, butchers, and innkeepers, and women were employed as cooks and laundresses. Some also owned small businesses. In 1838, the Spanish authorities established a settlement for escaped slaves, Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, where some 100 men, women, and children came into contact with various bands of Native Americans living nearby. The Seminoles, originally one of the five Civilized Tribes (the others being the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek), were chased into Florida by armed forces under the command of Gen. (and later U.S. president) Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s pretext for invading Florida (over Spanish diplomatic objections) was pursuit of freed slaves as well the Seminoles. For several decades, through the first half of Frederick Douglass’s life, escaped slaves made common cause with the Seminoles, sometimes mingling and at other times establishing a separate identity and preserving their own culture and traditions. In the meantime, the Seminoles fought the U.S. Army to a stalemate. To avoid capture, the Black Seminoles developed skills at guerilla warfare. They also became very adaptable, finding ways to survive in new environments that other people regarded as uninhabitable or marginal, such as the Florida Everglades. In 1818, Gen. Andrew Jackson’s troops chased the Seminoles into Florida, which was still under Spanish jurisdiction (the area was ceded to the United States in 1821). The Seminoles, many of whom were descended from Creeks, had elected to ally themselves with the Spanish rather than the United States, an act of virtual treason in General Jackson’s eyes. In addition, the Seminoles were giving shelter to escaped slaves. The pretext of Jackson’s raid thus was recovery of stolen human property. After Florida was purchased from Spain by the United States, slave-hunting vigilantes invaded the area en masse, killing Seminoles as well as blacks. Later, during the 1830s, when President Jackson proposed to remove the Seminoles to Indian Territory, they refused. Moving deep into the swamps of southern Florida (an area that, ironically, was being used as a removal destination for other Native peoples), the Seminoles fought U.S. Army troops to a bloody stalemate during seven years of warfare. They were never defeated and never moved from their new homeland. In 1823, Seminole leaders agreed to the Treaty of Moultrie Creek that ceded land and created reservations for the Seminoles. Later, as a result of U.S. removal policies, the Treaty of Payne’s Landing of 1832 required all Seminoles to leave


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Florida for Indian Territory within three years. According to the treaty, Seminoles with African American blood were to be sold into slavery. Escaped slaves joined the Seminoles during the Second Seminole War (1835– 42), a guerilla war in which the blacks served prominent roles as advisers, spies, and intermediaries. At one point, Gen. Thomas S. Jesup said it was “a Negro and not an Indian War” (“The Black Seminoles,” 1998). Jesup eventually promised the former slaves freedom if they would immigrate to the Indian Territory as part of the Seminole Nation. The war against the Seminoles was one of the most expensive Indian campaigns that the U.S. Army had waged to that time. In addition to the 1,500 soldiers killed (one for every two Seminoles eventually removed to Indian Territory), the government spent an average of $6,500 for each Native person transferred to Indian Territory. At a time when the average job paid less than $1,000 a year, this amount represented a small fortune. Following the First and Second Seminole Wars (1817–18 and 1835–42), some of the Black Seminoles escaped to the Bahamas. Others were separated from their Native American allies and transported to the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), where they became known as Freedmen. Some of them moved to Mexico, where their descendants, known as Indios Mascogos still live. After the Civil War, some Black Seminoles moved to Texas, where, during the 1870s and 1880s, they served with the U.S. Army on the Texas frontier as the Seminole Negro Indian Scouts. Today, members of the Black Seminole community in Texas refer to themselves as Seminoles to set themselves apart from other blacks, to emphasize the pride that they have in their unique history of having escaped slavery. DEFINING PEQUOT IDENTITY AND ANCESTRY The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) grants Native American groups recognition, one of the agency’s important tasks because it makes groups eligible for several federal-assistance programs. Conferral of recognition also creates a semisovereign national entity, a key prerequisite for gaining immunity from state laws (including those that may prohibit certain types of gambling). In all, 558 Native American tribes and nations had been recognized by the federal government by 2000. Another 200 groups had applied for recognition as of that date, enduring “exhaustive checks by federal genealogists and anthropologists to ascertain that they have legitimate Native American heritage in their specified group…. The BIA requires massive historical documentation supporting Indian groups’ claims, and it sometimes takes 15 years or more for the agency’s overworked, twelve-member Branch of Acknowledgment and Research to process and verify applications.” The discovery of gambling as an engine of Native American economic development has vastly complicated the process by which Native American nations are officially recognized by the federal government. The Mashantucket, however, were spared this process when they were recognized, by an act of Congress, in 1983. Commented one reporter, “Driven by the lure of billions of dollars in potential

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casino profits, unrecognized Indian groups across the country have unleashed such an overwhelming and highly contentious barrage of claims for federal tribal recognition that Kevin Gover says his Bureau of Indian Affairs can no longer cope with it” (Claiborne, 2000). Disputes pertaining to who should be regarded as a Pequot expanded at the turn of the millennium to include two reorganized bands that were seeking the kind of federal recognition that allowed the Mashantuckets to open Foxwoods. The recognition process, if successful, could lead to the opening of two more casinos. One, the Mohegan Sun, already has opened near Foxwoods to tap the lucrative Boston-to-New York City gambling market. The 600-member Paucatuck (Eastern Pequot) have retained the Lantern Hill Reservation (226 acres) at North Stonington and have applied, without success, for federal recognition (Pequot History, 1997). On December 24, 2000, the Paucatuck Eastern Pequot, one of two Pequot bands seeking the type of federal recognition that allowed the Mashantucket Pequot to open Foxwoods, sent Christmas cards to the 15,000 mainly non-Indian residents of North Stonington, Preston, and Ledyard, Connecticut, pledging never to threaten the holdings of private landowners. The town councils of the same three towns had spent approximately $1.2 million up to that time fighting expansion of the Mashantucket Pequots’ landholdings in court. The towns hired a genealogist to debunk the Pequots’ assertions of Native American ancestry. Many of the non-Indian residents agreed with gambling promoter Donald Trump that members of Elizabeth George’s family “sure don’t look Indian” (Barry, May 14, 2000, B-1). This is the core readership of Jeff Benedict’s book. “How do you put it politely?” asked True Miller, a longtime resident of North Stonington who owns a hardware store in central North Stonington. “How much Indian blood does one need to be an Indian?” (Barry, May 14, 2000, B-1) On April 30, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a challenge by surrounding towns (Ledyard, Preston, and North Stonington) and the state of Connecticut to the proposed addition of 165 acres to the Mashantucket Pequot land base. The court thus defused a suit by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and attorneys for the towns that sought an Interior Department order against the land transfer. In effect, the court let stand the long-established right of Native tribes and nations to petition the Interior Department to take land into trust. In the meantime, Attorney General Blumenthal and the same towns filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court against the U.S. Department of the Interior and the BIA seeking to block the BIA from issuing final federal recognition to the Eastern Pequot and Pawcatuck Eastern Pequot tribes. The BIA requires submission of detailed history and genealogy of a tribe before it grants federal recognition. The lawsuit contends that the BIA’s recognition process in this case has been rife with irregularities. Federal recognition gives recognized Native American nations rights to make land claims, to establish their own law enforcement, and to sustain economic-development projects, most notably casinos.


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The town officials who sued the BIA over the recognition process in Connecticut said that Kevin Gover, commissioner of Indian Affairs (who supervised the federal government’s recognition process at the time) relaxed BIA standards in approving the petitions, a move that could set the stage for recognition of the Golden Hill Paugussetts, a tribe that Gover once represented as a lawyer. The Paugussetts are seeking to build a casino in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Gover withdrew from the case. “If the [Mashantucket Pequot] tribe is not a bona fide tribe, then they should not be operating a casino,” said Ledyard Mayor Wesley Johnson. “We don’t expect 13,000 people to be out of work or to see property boarded up … but something should be done” (Scarponi, September 21, 2000). Ellen Barry, a reporter at the Boston Globe, observed: While some are grateful for the job base the casinos have created, many complain about social blights—of children locked in cars in the casino parking lot, of the financial losses of local residents who find they can’t stop playing the tables. Most of all they worry about losing more taxable land into the tribe’s reservation, where fantastic wealth is building on itself, just out of reach. (Barry, December 12, 2000)

“If they want to stir up trouble, we will meet them on the field of battle. But they are kidding themselves if they think we will abandon [the] Mashantucket,” said Gover, a Pawnee. “We tribes believe that if one is defrocked, if you will, then it sets a precedent for all the others. The Mashantuckets are part of the family now, and the tribes will look after them. What’s the alternative? To let outsiders decide who is a tribe and who is not? The fear is that my tribe is next” (Barry, December 12, 2000). After more than two years of trying to reform the trouble-plagued recognition process, Gover concluded that he could not succeed. So, he said, he is willing to give up his power to recognize tribes to a three-member commission that Congress would create under a bill proposed by Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell. “I know it’s unusual for an agency to give up a responsibility like this,” Gover said in an interview. “But this one has outgrown us. It needs more expertise and resources than we have available” (Claiborne, 2000). Looking into the future, Gover said he could not see the recognition process becoming any less politicized. “As more and more money is at stake, I expect it to get nastier still,” Gover said (Barry, May 26, 2000, B-1). Processing that all the existing applications for recognition could take the BIA’s Branch of Acknowledgement and Research as long as fifty years, Gover said (Barry, May 26, 2000, B-1). Senator Campbell, whose proposal would create a presidentially appointed Commission on Indian Recognition, said that he proposed the new body partially out of frustration with the slow pace of the Bureau of Indian Affairs recognition process. He told the Associated Press that he was “pleased and surprised” to hear that Gover agreed with him (Barry, May 26, 2000, B-1).

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Mark C. Tilden, a staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder, Colorado, said he has been petitioning the BIA on behalf of one tribe since 1980 and for another since 1985. He said the process can cost Indian groups $400,000 to $1 million at a time when “most tribes don’t have enough money to pay the light bill, much less legal fees like that” (Claiborne, 2000). Tilden said that politics sometimes causes the delays; when recognition removes land from states’ tax rolls, sometimes state governments bring pressure on Capitol Hill, which sifts down to the BIA. “Gover said the meager tribal verification staff and a mountain of other vexing problems that confront the BIA daily—combined with the increasingly frequent lawsuits that surround recognition cases—are to blame for the delays” (Claiborne, 2000). Benedict’s Without Reservation prompted a renewed call for a congressional investigation of the Mashantucket Pequots’ assertions of identity. Rep. Sam Gejdenson, Democrat of Connecticut, called for the congressional probe. “I believe an open committee review, including a public hearing with witnesses representing all interested parties, is not only appropriate, but essential,” he wrote in a June 14, 2000, letter to the chairman of the House Resources Committee (Stockes, 2000). Representative Gejdenson was a member of the committee that reviewed the Mashantucket Pequots’ recognition bill in 1983. Although Gejdenson pushed for an investigation, he also said Congress did nothing wrong in 1983 when it approved the settlement act. “As a member of the committee during the period in which legislation was considered, I believe it carried out its responsibility effectively with the information, testimony and evidence made available,” Gejdenson wrote (Stockes, 2000). HISTORICAL IRONIES As the high-stakes dispute over Pequot genealogy rolled on, the historical irony of their situation seems lost on the Yankees of the towns surrounding the Pequot and Mohegan Sun gambling complexes. European Americans acting as members of an oppressed minority in danger of losing their lands seem ill-suited to stand in the shoes of ancestors who did worse to the Pequots than the Indians ever will do to them. Against this backdrop, a few hours from Foxwoods by automobile, Native Americans gathered in Massachusetts for the thirtieth time, during Thanksgiving 1999, on a hill in Plymouth, near the first Pilgrim landfall. The annual protest was born in 1970, according to Moonanum James, a coleader of United American Indians of New England, “as a direct result of the state’s need to keep the Pilgrim mythology alive.” Wamsutta Frank James had been invited to address a gathering of dignitaries commemorating the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. Because his remarks did not fit the mythology, he was told that he could not give the speech he had written. The state was more than willing to write a speech for him that would keep the lies alive. He refused to have words placed in his mouth. Instead of speaking to a group of dignitaries in the warmth of a banquet


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hall, he and a small group of Native Americans came here to Plymouth, stood in the cold, and declared U.S. Thanksgiving Day a National Day of Mourning. (James, 1999)

The Pilgrims and Puritans knew nothing of the germ theory of disease and had no idea that diseases brought from Europe and spread on their breath had begun killing the native inhabitants before the immigrants even saw the beach. Indians had been dying for years from diseases imported by European fishermen off the coast. Native population in the area, about 80,000 at first contact, dwindled steadily. By 1640, European colonies in New England hosted about 20,000 people, still an island in a Native American sea. By the end of the century, the numbers were reversed. In 1970, 350 years after a storm-battered ship carrying 102 immigrants landed near a new home they called Plymouth Colony, the descendants of the people who had met them at the beach raised their voices to protest what they regarded to be an officially sanctioned myth. James continued: What was it about the speech that got those officials so upset? … Here is the truth: The reason they talk about the pilgrims and not an earlier English-speaking colony, Jamestown, is that in Jamestown the circumstances were way too ugly to hold up as an effective national myth. For example, the white settlers in Jamestown turned to cannibalism to survive. Not a very nice story to tell the kids in school. The pilgrims did not find an empty land any more than Columbus “discovered” anything. Every inch of this land is Indian land…. Upon first arriving, the pilgrims opened my ancestors’ graves and took our corn and bean supplies. Later, from the very harbor we can see from here, the English sold my ancestors as slaves for 220 shillings each. (James, 1999)

The first official Day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor James Winthrop, according to James, to celebrate the safe return of men from Massachusetts who had gone to Mystic, Connecticut, to participate in the massacre of approximately 700 Pequot women, children, and men (James, 1999). Half of the new arrivals at Plymouth Colony died of exposure and scurvy (caused by Vitamin C deficiency) during the first winter, as local Indians introduced them to foods that cured the disease. The Pilgrims, who had arrived at the wrong time of year (late fall) to raise crops to get them through a rough winter in a place they renamed New England, were at first dependent on local Native American peoples for their very survival. Knowing nothing about how weather behaves, they had expected to find a land warmer than England, because they had been traveling south as well as west. When spring arrived, few of their European seeds germinated in American soil. Finding large areas depopulated at their entry, the Pilgrims (and later the Puritans) thought their God had cleared the land for them. The town of Milford, Connecticut, in 1640 voted a motion saying that the Earth belongs to God and was given to His appointed missionaries, including themselves in that number. This assumption was reinforced by a belief that powered the Protestant reformation: God helps

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those who help themselves. Thus, the Puritans assumed they had a right to the land because they would make (in the words of modern property-tax assessors) “higher and better” use of it. Now that the Mashantucket Pequot have taken this to its logical present-day conclusion (“highest and best use” equating to hotels and casinos), many nonIndian New Englanders are upset. This particular application of the Protestant work ethic has become a bit too ironic for their tastes. FURTHER READING Associated Press. “Mashantucket Chairman Explains Ancestry on Cable Show.” Danbury News-Times, May 20, 2000. . Barry, Ellen. “Agency Willing to Relinquish Power to Recognize Tribes.” Boston Globe, May 26, 2000: B-1. Barry, Ellen. “A Question of Ancestry: In Connecticut, Casino Plans Fuel Debate over Tribal Genealogy.” Boston Globe, May 14, 2000: B-1. Barry, Ellen. “Recognition Is a Contentious Process: James P. Lynch, Who Debunks Tribes, Says He Was Shocked to Find the Pequots’ Proof of Ancestry So Tenuous.” Boston Globe, December 12, 2000, n.p. Benedict, Jeff. Without Reservation: The Making of America’s Most Powerful Indian Tribe and Foxwoods, the World’s Largest Casino. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. “The Black Seminoles’ Long March to Freedom.” Text for an exhibit displayed in Cohen Library of The City College during Black History Month, February 1998, City College of New York Libraries. . Bourne, Russell. The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675–1678. New York: Atheneum, 1990. Cave, Alfred A. The Pequot War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996. Claiborne, William. “Tribes and Tribulations: BIA Seeks to Lose a Duty.” Washington Post, June 2, 2000, n.p. Covey, Cyclone. The Gentle Radical: A Biography of Roger Williams. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Dalla, Nolan. “Tales from the Felt: Sour Grapes Growing in Connecticut.” Cardplayer Magazine. n.d. . Dobrzynski, Judith H. “Casino Profits Help Pequot Indian Tribe Reclaim Its History.” The New York Times, September 1, 1997, n.p. Eisler, Kim Isaac. Revenge of the Pequots: How a Small Native American Tribe Created the World’s Most Profitable Casino. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. “Farm Land Sits on Reservation Because of 1983 Congressional Vote.” Gambling Magazine. n.d. . Hauptman, Laurence M. Guest commentary. Poughkeepsie Journal, June 2, 2000, n.p. James, Moonanum. “Speech by Moonanum James, Co-Leader of United American Indians of New England, at 30th National Day of Mourning, Cole’s Hill, Plymouth, Mass., Nov. 25, 1999.” Larsen, Kent. “LDS Author Takes on Rich Indian Tribe: Are Pequots Really Pequots?” Mormon News. May 25, 2000. .


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Murphy, Sean P. “Congressmen Seeking Probe of Indian Casinos.” Boston Globe, December 16, 2000, A-1. Pequot History. 1997. . Scarponi, Diane. “Another Document Bolsters the Pequots’ Claim of Authenticity.” The New York Times, September 21, 2000, n.p. Scarponi, Diane. “Book Questions Ancestry of Connecticut Tribe.” Associated Press, Friday May 12, 2000. . Stockes, Brian. “Controversy Continues over Pequot Recognition.” Indian Country Today, July 12, 2000. . Sutterlin, Georg. “Handouts behind Them, Pequots Clean Up.” Neue Zurcher Zeitung (Zurich, Switzerland), January 18, 2001, in World Press Review, April, 2001: 32.

CHAPTER 5

Names and Games: The Controversy Regarding “Indian” Sports Mascots and Place-Names

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ank Aaron, who hit more home runs than any other player in the history of professional baseball, was invited to throw out the first pitch at the 2000 Major League Baseball All-Star game in Atlanta. Aaron, a black man who received many racist death threats after his home-run total surpassed Babe Ruth’s, stepped up to the plate in another way when he arrived in Atlanta for the big game. Aaron, who had worn the Atlanta Braves uniform, told the media that the team’s mascot was an unfair stereotype of Native Americans. He is the most prominent athlete to make such a statement. Reporters for various media generally ignored what he said. Aaron may have lost a battle, but he won a war. Stressing their right to dignity and self-definition of ethnic identity, Native Americans have been bringing increasing pressure on a number of sports teams, from the sandlots to the professionals, to retire stereotypical mascots. “The pace is really picking up,” said Cyd Crue, president of the Illinois chapter of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media. “We’re seeing more educators around the country, in middle schools and high schools and at universities, concerned about the racial climate in schools … dropping these symbols” (Badwin, 2000). Between the early 1970s and 2000, about 1,250 of the 3,000 U.S. elementary schools, high schools, and colleges with American Indian nicknames and mascots dropped them, said Suzan Shown Harjo, president of Washington, DC’s, Morningstar Institute (Badwin, 2000). More have fallen since, although no total tally was available. Political battles over sports’ mascot names mirror other debates over names and places, including a lively debate in recent years over the use of the word squaw—believed to be degrading to native American women—as well as advertising campaigns for the likes of Crazy Horse Malt Liquor. By 2006, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was denying tournament berths to teams that insisted on retaining their Indian mascots, to fulsome grumbling by some fans who insisted the names celebrated and honored Native Americans.

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Scholarly attention to the mascot issue has followed in train with public controversy. Three recently published scholarly books address the controversy (King and Springwood, 2001a, 2001b; Spindel, 2000). The North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in 1999 initiated annual conferences practically in Chief Wahoo’s shadow in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The conference included sessions on the sport mascot issue in the context of Native American rights. Papers included “Escaping the Tyranny of the Majority: A Case Study of Mascot Change” by Laurel Davis and Malvina Rau of Springfield College and “Red, Black, and White: ‘Playing Indian’ and Racial Hierarchy at Florida State” (where the mascot is a Seminole), presented by Richard King of Drake University. ORIGINS OF THE MASCOT CONTROVERSY The mascot issue emerged during the 1960s as the National Congress of American Indians in 1968 launched a campaign to bring an end to the use of Indian sports mascots and other media stereotypes. At about the same time, the American Indian Movement’s (AIM’s) founding chapter in Minneapolis vigorously complained that calling a team Redskins was as insulting as Niggers, Spics, or Honkies. Because of AIM, some of the first Indian stereotypes fell in the Midwest. At the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO), for example, a chapter of AIM worked with students and faculty to change the school’s mascot and team name from Indians to Mavericks, a beef animal with an attitude, in 1971. The change was popular on campus in part because the visual depiction of Owumpie (sometimes spelled Ouampi) the so-called Omaha Indian was so tacky that, by comparison, he made the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo look like a real gentleman. During spring 1970, UNO began to recruit Native American students, some of whom objected during the school’s first home football game the following fall as they watched a white student dressed as Owumpie run around the field in a headdress. The mascot, described as “an angry, dark-red cartoon character with a hooked nose swinging a club and doing a war dance” (Else, 2005, 9-B), thus became an object of protest by the Native students, who joined with nonIndian allies to win support of the student government and the faculty senate. The next stop was the university president, Kirk Naylor Sr., who asked the opinion of the Omaha Nation’s government, explaining that he thought the mascot was an honor. The real Omahas (U’ma’has, actually) replied emphatically that they thought Owumpie was an insult, not an honor, so the caricature was retired in May 1971. At UNO, an Indian princess also was retired as homecoming queen (Else, 2005, 9-B). Stanford University changed its mascot from an Indian to a cardinal at about the same time. In 1980, Choctaw filmmaker Phil Lucas addressed the question on the pages of Four Winds, a short-lived glossy magazine devoted to Native American art, history, and culture, by asking how whites would react if a sports team was named the Cleveland Caucasians. What would European Americans think, Lucas

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asked, if Indians adopted racial names (such as the Window Rock Negroes or the Tahlequah White Boys) for their sports teams (Lucas, 1980, 69–77)? In 1994, Wisconsin’s Education Department issued a directive urging school districts in that state to drop Indian mascots. Los Angeles schools have done the same (Gormley, 2000). Ten public schools in Dallas shed their Indian mascots in 1998, at a time when approximately 50 public high schools, 13 colleges, and three colleges in Texas still used Indian mascots (Doclar, 1998). In 2003, the Lincoln, Nebraska, Journal-Star amended its style to prohibit use of Redskins. The Peoria Chiefs, a minor league affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, retained its name but changed its logo from an American Indian to a Dalmatian fire chief. In June of the same year, The Michigan State Board of Education passed a resolution that strongly recommended elimination of American Indian mascots, nicknames, logos, fight songs, insignias, antics, and team descriptors by all Michigan schools. In September 2005, the American Psychological Association recommended the immediate retirement of American Indian mascots, symbols, images, and personalities by schools, colleges, universities, athletic teams, and other organizations. Some sports teams, especially the professionals, as private enterprises, have retained their mascots not (by their own testimony) because they make millions of dollars a year peddling the images on ball caps and sweatshirts but (so they say) for Native peoples’ own good. Witness the Washington Redskins (a term so offensive to some Native people that they refuse to use it), Cleveland Indians, and Atlanta Braves. WASHINGTON REDSKINS Many Native Americans take the word Redskin as an outright slur to the point of refusing to say the word in public or print it. Harjo, who is among this number, has sued the Washington Redskins over their use of Indian imagery. The Redskin lawsuit (Harjo v. Pro-Football, Inc.) was heard before a three-judge panel of the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board (TTAB), a three-judge panel of trademark judges. In a case heard on May 27, 1998, and decided on April 2, 1999, the board found: Although the marks [Redskin logos] were not scandalous, they were disparaging to the relevant segment of the population [i.e., Native Americans] at the time of their registration. As a consequence, the marks had a tendency to bring Native Americans into contempt or disrepute. These findings were based primarily on a survey provided by the Petitioners, and the T.T.A.B. decided to cancel the registration of the word marks at issue, finding that the Petitioners’ survey met their burden of proof by preponderance of the evidence. (Harjo, 1999)

The survey in question found that 46.2 percent of Native Americans questioned found the term Redskin offensive. The trademark board ruling against the

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Washington Redskins was appealed, a legal process that could last for years. The offending imagery was, of course, still very visible. In December 1996, Indian Country Today cartoonist Thom Little Moon presented two football helmets with stereotypical images, one for the Washington Blackskins and the other for the Kansas City Zulu Chiefs, asking, “Would African Americans like being mascots?” The National Coalition against Racism in Sports and the Media fashioned a poster that features pennants for imaginary sports teams—Fighting Jews, Blacks, Latinos, Orientals, and Caucasians—alongside the real pennant of the Washington Redskins (King, 2004, 197). An online discussion at the right-wing chat room Free Republic (http://freerepublic. com/focus/f-news/993089/posts) discussed the ruling. Many political conservatives did not think that calling a team Redskins demeaned Native Americans: Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found the litigant’s case to be smelly, so Washington wins. Sing “Hail to the Redskins” and go put some beer in your belly. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly—where do I mail her a Christmas card? Yay! thank God for that too, otherwise the Fighting Irish would be sued by Irish people, and the Falcons would be sued by birdwatchers! At least they don’t call themselves the “Washington Savages,” or the “Washington Firewater Drinkers.” I guess the Vikings now need not worry about changing their name. I myself would have no problems with a team being named Palefaces. (King, 2004, 189–90)

On September 30, 2003, a U.S. district court in Washington, DC, overturned the TTAB ruling initiated by Harjo’s suit that had canceled federal protection of the Washington Redskins’ trademarks. Although it found the team’s trademarks to be disparaging, bringing Native Americans into contempt or disrepute, the district court decided that the plaintiffs had not met the burden of proof and had failed to file their complaint in a timely fashion (King, 2004, 189). And so the controversy rumbled on. The connotations of words are socially constructed, and the emotive freight that we vest in them can change over time. One linguistic study asserts, for example, that Redskins began its career during the eighteenth century with none of the assumptions of insult it carries today. Smithsonian Institution senior linguist Ives Goddard has concluded that the word redskin was first used by Native Americans in the eighteenth century to distinguish themselves from the white others encroaching on their lands and culture. When it first appeared as an English expression in the early 1800s, “it came in the most respectful context and at the highest level,” Goddard said in an interview. “These are white people and Indians talking together, with the white people trying to ingratiate themselves” (Gugliotta, 2005, A-3). Harjo replied to Goddard’s case, saying, “I’m very familiar with white men who uphold the judicious speech of white men…. Europeans were not using high-minded

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language. [To them] we were only human when it came to territory, land cessions and whose side you were on.” Goddard, who was aware of the lawsuit and Harjo’s arguments, replied that “you could believe everything in my article and still oppose current public usage of ‘redskin’” (Gugliotta, 2005, A-3). Likewise, the word savage was used in a more neutral tone (from an archaic French term meaning “dweller in the woodland”) before Anglo-American aggressions of the nineteenth century turned it into a term of denigration. Benjamin Franklin, for example, wrote an essay that is quite complimentary toward Native Americans that he titled “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America.” CLEVELAND’S INDIANS The term Indians, on its face, is not overtly defamatory. Sometimes the context, not the name itself, is the problem. In the case of the Cleveland Indians, face value is the clincher—the face, that is, of stupidly grinning, single-feathered Chief Wahoo. Demian Bulwa opened an essay in the University of California–Berkeley student newspaper following the 1995 World Series between the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians by describing a purported basketball game between the Philadelphia Amish and the New York Jews. “Do you find this tasteless and degrading?” he asked. “Do you feel as ludicrous reading it as I do writing it? If the answer is ‘yes’ to either of these questions, then you should feel very uncomfortable about this year’s World Series” (Bulwa, 1995). Cleveland entered professional baseball more than a century ago with a team named the Spiders; in the team’s first year, the Spiders lost 134 games. Later, the team was called the Naps. The Cleveland Indian name was adopted by a vote of the fans in 1914. Chief Wahoo was created by a Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist during the 1940s. Chief Wahoo was first sewn onto Cleveland Indian uniforms in 1947. In 1972, in the context of a lawsuit against the Cleveland Indians, Native activist Russell Means openly critiqued the Chief Wahoo image: “That Indian looks like a damn fool, like a clown and we resent being portrayed as either savages or clowns.” Means did not content himself with an attack on stereotypes but turned to racial analogy to advance his argument against mascots. “Take the Washington Redskins…. Redskin is a derogatory name … what if we called them the Washington Niggers, or Washington Rednecks, or Washington Polacks?” (King, 2004, 195). Until 2000, the Cleveland Indians’ official media guide maintained that the Indians name was adopted in honor of Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot who played for the Spiders between 1897 and 1899. Therefore, many Indians fans boasted that the name was an honor, not an insult. The media guide first mentioned the Sockalexis story in 1968 (just as protests began to roll in from the new American Indian Movement). Sockalexis was said to have been the first Native American to play in baseball’s major leagues. It is unknown whether this is true, or spin control meant to turn a slur

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into an affirmative-action coup. In 1999, the media guide devoted an entire page to the Sockalexis story, which was coyly declared bogus a year later. In January 2000, the wording of the guide was changed, with the reference to Sockalexis taken as legend. The old version was proved factually inaccurate by Ellen Staurowsky, a professor at Ithaca College in New York, who maintains that the team should drop its Indian moniker. Any change could cost the baseball club a pretty penny, because Chief Wahoo is among the best-selling sports icons on clothing and other merchandise. Sockalexis began playing baseball at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, less than five years after the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. He had grown up on the Indian Island reservation in Old Town, Maine. By 1897, he was playing baseball at Notre Dame, a school from which he was expelled after only a month because of public drunkenness. The Cleveland Spiders signed him for $1,500. At first, Sockalexis experienced something of a hitting streak. By the middle of his first season with the Spiders, he was hitting .335. It has been said that some fans “took to wearing Indian headdresses and screaming war whoops every time Sockalexis came to bat” (Nevard, n.d.). In July 1897, however, Sockalexis got drunk and injured himself. He spent most of the rest of his baseball career on the bench, before being released by the Spiders in 1899. For a decade after that, Sockalexis performed manual labor in Cleveland as he continued to suffer from alcoholism. He died in 1913. A novel based on his life, The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday, was penned by Luke Salisbury in 1940. ATLANTA’S BRAVES Braves, like Indians, is not a problem name for many Native Americans. Most Native Americans are not thin-skinned enough to chafe at being called Indians or Braves. Rather, culture-demeaning antics invoked to ramp up team spirit in the name of the Braves, most notably the Tomahawk Chop, have been the rub. Sports legend has it that the Florida State Seminoles originated the Tomahawk Chop. For those who are not familiar with the ritual, the Tomahawk Chop involves the simultaneous lifting of arms (and, sometimes, sticks or ersatz tomahawks) to background music that could perhaps be described as the soundtrack to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Hiawatha” on a bad-hair day. Before it was called the Atlanta Braves, this major-league baseball team was the Boston Braves. Before that, it was the Boston Red Stockings, the Beaneaters, the Rustlers, and the Doves. In 1912, the name Braves was adopted. The Boston Braves baseball club later moved from Boston to Atlanta. Before it adopted the Tomahawk Chop at the behest of Ted Turner, the Atlanta Braves had Chief Noc-a-Homa, who did a stereotypical Indian dance outside his tepee every time the Braves hit a home run. Russell Means, a cofounder of AIM, criticized Noc-a-Homa: “What if they called them the Atlanta Storm Troopers and every time there was a home run a man in a German military uniform came out and knocked a few Jews on the head with a baseball bat? Or Atlanta Negroes, and an old black man came out of a shack and did a soft shoe dance?” (Carley, 1972).

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In October 1995, when the Atlanta Braves arrived in Minneapolis for the World Series, they found more than 200 protesters arrayed at the stadium’s gates, with placards reading (among other things), “500 Years of Oppression Is Enough.” Minneapolis is AIM’s home town, and even the mayor had made a statement calling on the Braves to sack their Indian imagery. When the Twins management asked the police to move the demonstrators farther from the Metrodome, they refused, citing the protestors’ freedom of speech and assembly. The Atlanta Braves’ emphasis on Indian imagery has spawned a number of mascot wannabes, the best-known of whom is Tomahawk Tom, also known as Tom Sullivan, who previously worked as a management trainee at U-Haul. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Tomahawk Tom arrives at the ballpark “in an Indian headdress, a catcher’s mask, and a cape” (Pomerantz, 1995). Tomahawk Tom was not officially sanctioned by the Braves, but he led fans in Tomahawk-chop cheers, signed autographs, and passed out free baseball cards to children. Sullivan also regarded himself as an inventor of an ice-cream treat called The (Tomahawk) Chop Pop. Tomahawk Tom learned to walk gingerly, however, as protests against the Braves logo and the Tomahawk Chop intensified. In early October 1995, before a Braves playoff game, a Native American protester, Aaron Two Elk, took a swing at Tomahawk Tom, knocking his catcher’s mask askew, as he told Tom that he was desecrating Native American cultures. Two Elk, a Cherokee, had become well known for his hand-written placards in a free-speech area near Hank Aaron’s statue at the stadium’s entrance. A week later, Sullivan called on Atlanta police for an escort into the ballpark. Sullivan henceforth was careful to enter the Braves’ ballyard in street clothes, changing into his buckskins in a restroom, to avoid several dozen protestors who frequently gathered in the free-speech area, watched carefully watched by a dozen Atlanta police of the Red Dog squad. INDIAN MASCOT CONTROVERSIES: A NATIONAL SAMPLER The struggle over sports mascots can evoke anger and even violence. In the otherwise peaceful burg of West Hurley, New York (in the Catskills), a mascot struggle sparked a battle for control of a local school board. A ban on the use of racial images was enacted in April 2000 by the board governing the 2,300student Onteora school district. The mascot then became the lead issue in a campaign for control of the school board. In May, supporters of the Indian image won a majority of board seats. In June, the school district’s Indian imagery was reinstated. In fall 2000, opponents of the Indian mascot found their cars vandalized, nails and screws driven into tires, and paint splattered, usually when the cars were parked at school board meetings. Tobe Carey, an opponent of the Indian mascot whose car was damaged, said that a climate of intimidation had made it impossible to speak at public meetings. Citizens working to remove racial stereotypes in the public schools had endured reprisals for 10 months, he said.

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Supporters of Onteora’s Indian imagery (which includes a tomahawk chop, ersatz totem poles in the school cafeteria, and various pseudo-Indian songs and dances) have been known to bristle at any suggestion that their images degrade Native Americans in any way. Joseph Doan, a member of the school board who voted to reinstate the Indian imagery, said that many white citizens see the Indian image as a symbol of honor and environmental protection. “Our Indian has nothing to do with degrading Indians. It’s our symbol and we’re proud of it,” said Doan (Gormley, 2000). In West Hurley, the proms are called Tomahawk dances. Onteora has used Indian images since the 1950s. Until 1997, no one had formally complained when a student in buckskins led cheers at football games or when songs and dances mimicked Native American religious rituals. Regarding Chief Illiniwek (an invented name), a many-year-old struggle continues at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign. “The chief is a religious figure for Native American people and he doesn’t belong as entertainment for drunk football fans at halftime,” said Monica Garreton, a University of Illinois senior and anti-Chief activist. “It’s comparable to Little Black Sambo and Amos ’n’ Andy” (Badwin, 2000). Every Columbus Day since 1992, opponents of the Illiniwek imagery have held demonstrations on the University of Illinois campus. In a paper titled “Chief Illiniwek: Dignified or Damaging?” Joseph P. Gone, a Gros Ventre, wrote: One primary obstacle to political and economic renewal and self-determination in Indian communities around the country is the appalling ignorance of most American citizens, including policymakers at local, state and federal levels of government, regarding Native American histories and cultures. As multidimensional peoples engaged in complex struggles for autonomy and equality … Indians are virtually invisible to the American consciousness, which gleans any awareness of natives from caricatured Hollywood portrayals, tourist excursions and, yes, popular symbols like Chief Illiniwek. Thus, the continued prevalence of Indian stereotypes fortifies a wall of misunderstanding between our peoples. (“Indian Mascots,” 2000)

Marquette University has replaced the team name Warriors in favor of Golden Eagles. Dartmouth changed its Indians to Big Green, and Miami of Ohio changed Redskins to the RedHawks. At Seattle University, the Chieftains have become the Redhawks. In the meantime, producers of Crayola Crayons have done away with the color Indian Red (Badwin, 2000). Roanoke, Virginia’s, Blacksburg High School’s faculty voted late in 2000 to retire the school’s Indian mascot. Other schools in the Roanoke area also have changed their mascots. The Shawsville High Shawnees became the Colts, for example. A citizen coalition raised the issue in 1999, saying that the names “objectify Indians, teach negative stereotypes and abuse spiritual symbols such as eagle feathers” (Calnan, 2000). The University of California–San Diego retired its Aztec in fall 2000. At about the same time (in late September), Maine’s Scarborough School Board voted to drop its Redskins nickname.

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THE FIGHTING SIOUX’S BIGGEST FAN: A NAZI AFICIONADO The battle over the University of North Dakota’s (UND’s) Fighting Sioux mascot has been notably acute in large part because of the role of Ralph Engelstad, the multimillionaire owner of the Imperial Palace casinos in Las Vegas and Biloxi, Mississippi. He also was the major donor for the $100 million Ralph Engelstad Arena at UND, his alma mater, where he had played hockey on scholarship during the 1950s. Engelstad was an astute investor, having purchased large amounts of land in Las Vegas, Nevada, before the gambling boom. He sold 145 acres to billionaire Howard Hughes that became the North Las Vegas airport. Engelstad, who was born on January 28, 1930, in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, died of cancer on November 26, 2002, in Las Vegas. Engelstad assembled a collection of Nazi memorabilia in the Imperial Palace, including a painting of himself dressed in a Nazi uniform. On April 20, 1986 and 1988, he hosted birthday parties for Adolph Hitler in a special so-called war room at his casino, where he had parked one of Hitler’s parade cars and Heinrich Himmler’s Mercedes and hung a life-size portrait of Hitler bearing a faux inscription—“To Ralphie from Adolph”—along with portraits of naked women. The birthday cake was adorned with a swastika and was served with German food and marching music. Bartenders wore shirts that read “Adolph Hitler: European Tour—1939–1945” (LaDuke, 2005, 140–141). Invoking his public idolatry of Hitler, the Nevada Gaming Commission in 1989 fined Engelstad $1.5 million for actions that damaged the reputation and image of Nevada’s gaming industry. When students and faculty at UND complained that the university was taking money from a man with a Hitler fetish, however, the administration mumbled something about bad taste and Engelstad’s rather weird sense of humor, then let the matter pass as the money rolled in. As a condition of building the UND hockey arena, Engelstad required that the Fighting Sioux name be kept indefinitely. If it was not, Engelstad swore that he would leave the arena in an incomplete state. Thousands of Fighting Sioux logos were designed as permanent fixtures throughout the arena to make their future removal very inconvenient and expensive. Most of the faculty in UND’s Teaching and Learning Department petitioned the university’s president to change its Fighting Sioux nickname, because, they contended, it dehumanizes Native American people (Benedict, 2000a, 2000b). On October 6, 2000, three UND students were arrested for blocking traffic in protest of the Fighting Sioux nickname. The local newspaper, the Grand Forks Herald, reported that these were the first arrests of students engaging in protest at UND since the days of the Vietnam War. The three arrested students, two of whom were Native American, were among a group of about ten who broke ranks with a march of more than a hundred people, a mixture of Native Americans and whites, who were protesting the mascot near UND’s student union building. Although the Fighting Sioux logo is still used, some schools with which North Dakota competes have refused to observe it. St. Cloud State University, for example,

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refuses to print the name on its tickets, and its game announcers do not use the name (Hofmann, 2005, 161). THE RABBI AS NAZI SPORTS MASCOT Perhaps with Engelstad in mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor Noam Chomsky (who is Jewish) has delivered one of the most searing parodies of American Indian mascots. Chomsky asked what could have happened if Nazi Germany had won World War II and taken a liking for mythical Jews as sports mascots. The sharply acid tone of his satire reflects why many Native Americans believe that stereotypical Native caricatures demean their heritage and culture. Chomsky imagines that sixty years after the Nazi victory in World War II, a prestigious German state university uses a sports mascot called the Rabbi. In Chomsky’s tale, a student from the White Aryan Youth League dresses up in an authentic costume as a Hasidic Rabbi, complete with earlocks and beard. The sports teams call themselves the Fighting Jews; the school’s band is called the Marching Jews. Sports fans wear jackets and T-shirts with pictures of the Rabbi stitched onto them. Owners of cars plaster Rabbi stickers on them. Replying to attempts to retire the Rabbi mascot, students and alumni campaign to “Save the Rabbi!” (Boyle, 2005) This German state university plays soccer matches at the Nuremberg Stadium in front of an audience of about 75,000 White Aryans, almost all of whom are wearing pro-Rabbi images and clothes. “At half-time,” writes Chomsky, “the Marching Jews take to the stadium floor and begin playing what they purport to be Jewish sounding music along the lines of Fiddler-on-the-Roof. Then all 75,000 White Aryans rise as one and shout in unison: ‘Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi’ gesticulating wildly and working themselves up into a feeding frenzy” (Boyle, 2005). Meanwhile, one faculty member protests by shouting “Racist Rabbi!” after which everyone else in the vicinity throws garbage at him, as “the Rabbi runs out onto the arena floor from among the Marching Jews, proceeds to the center of the Nuremberg Stadium, and dances the Hava Nagila while the Marching Jews play on and march into an intricately choreographed maneuver that they all brag about and take special pride in that culminates with the band being organized into a swastika…. By now all 75,000 White Aryans are hysterical, shouting, screaming and yelling: ‘Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi’” (Boyle, 2005). This imagined ritual then concludes as nearly everyone joins hands to sing “Deutschland über Alles,” with the Rabbi leading. Concluded Chomsky, “Then the Rabbi proceeds to dance the Hava Nagila out of the stadium followed by the Marching Jews. Everyone goes wild, clapping and cheering. This Rabbi ceremony brings tears to the eyes of many drunken alumni and students who had started several hours beforehand getting inebriated on schnapps and good German beer at pre-game tailgate parties” (Boyle, 2005). When it is all over, a visiting law professor from another country asks his host at the soccer match what this spectacle

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was all about. Without missing a beat the former dean of the law school turns to his guest and says, “We are honoring the Jews” (Boyle, 2005). Along the same lines, opponents of the Fighting Sioux mascot concocted a fictional team named after Jews in Germany, the Auschwitz Money-Grubbing Jews, with the Lakota as the Fighting Sioux, contrasting the stereotype of greediness with the stereotype of savagery. The contrast clarifies that “both are proud people, minorities forcibly relocated in planned spaces of confinement, who were stereotyped, oppressed, murdered, dehumanized as objects, yet survived as people,” even as most in the majority accepted their degradation (King, 2004, 201–2). MASCOTS: THE RACIAL CONTEXT Still, after all this, Chief Wahoo endures. The Tomahawk Chop seems to have assumed the kind of historical inevitability that a quarter-century ago was assigned to the Berlin Wall and the federal budget deficit: a rock-solid artifact of imperial popular culture. Ted Turner, who organized the Goodwill Games and gave $1 billion to the United Nations, has been unable, or unwilling, to touch the Tomahawk Chop. Why? The December 1999 cover of The Orange and Blue Observer, a right-wing student newspaper at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, displayed beneath the publication’s masthead a white gunslinger pointing a drawn pistol at an Indian dancer in full regalia, with the caption in large letters reading, “Manifest Destiny: Go! Fight! Win!” (Frueling and King, 2001). “The U.S. government conducted a strenuous campaign to wipe out American Indian cultures, religions, and languages. American Indian children were forcibly taken from their families to boarding schools where they were physically punished if they spoke their tribal languages or tried to maintain their religious observances,” commented Carol Spindel, who teaches writing at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign and has authored Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy over American Indian Mascots (2000). “In a country that prides itself on religious freedom, the First Americans had none until 1934. Before this, Native people faced sanctions even when trying to conduct ceremonies and dances on their own reservations. One of the few historical incidents many of us do know about, the tragic massacre at Wounded Knee, took place because American Indians were gathering to dance at a religious ceremony that the government was determined to suppress. At the same time, Native cultures were being ‘preserved’ and ‘appreciated’ via sports mascots” (Spindel, 2005). After all of this, some non-Indians, most of whom have not been notable for shedding much shoe leather marching for Native American rights under any other circumstances, continue to contend that they support Native American sports mascots because they are honoring the peoples of First Nations. Or, in Spindell’s words, “At the same time that we were trying to destroy American Indian cultures, non-Native Americans loved to dress up and play Indian. What could be more American—we’ve been doing it since the Boston Tea Party. Mascot performances

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like Chief Illiniwek, a fictional chief who dances at Illinois on the 50-yard line at halftime, or Osceola, who gallops in at Florida State University games carrying a burning lance, trace their origins to the Wild West show, traveling big-tent performances that were part of the American circus tradition” (Spindel, 2005). Tim Giago, publisher of the Lakota Journal and a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, commented, “Would you paint your face black, wear an afro wig, and prance around a football field trying to imitate your perceptions of black people? Of course not! That would be insulting to Blacks. So why is it OK to do it to Indians?” (Nevard, n.d.). Carolyn Fiscus, coordinator of Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska–Omaha, said that the continuing use of Native American logos can come down to pure demographic and economic clout. It expresses a power relationship between those who had the land and those who took it. “It’s rare in this country that you see a people used like this. It’s colonization and commoditization of a people.” Native Americans often are too small a group to have much impact with protests, she said. Whereas, said Fiscus, “If every African-American quit going to Florida State, they wouldn’t have a football team” (Wegner, 2005, D-2). At Oklahoma State University, the student newspaper, the Daily O’Collegian, reported on September 27, 2005, that students who had scribbled “Scalp the Indians” on local walls defended their prank as an inoffensive expression of school spirit. “Would we dismiss ‘Lynch the Negroes,’ ‘Gas the Jews,’ or ‘Deport the Latinos’ as in the school spirit? What about students of a predominantly nonWhite school chalking ‘Kill Whitey’ when playing a predominantly Caucasian school?” asked Cara Cowen and B. J. Boyd in the O’Collegian, referring to the school’s mascot. Cowen and Boyd, both of whom are Native American, commented that “This stereotypical imagery has become so ingrained in our environment we no longer recognize it for what it is” (Cowen and Boyd, 2005). Within a few years of the Plains Indian Wars’ conclusion in the late 1880s, William Cody (also known as Buffalo Bill) had recruited Sitting Bull, Black Elk, and a number of other Native leaders to appear in his signature acts, such as the Indian attack on the settler cabin, on the circled wagons, and on the stagecoach, all of which survived after the circus era as film and television clichés. Wild West shows were filmed and evolved into Westerns and broadcast around the world (Spindel, 2005). Buffalo Bill had a leg up on Chief Wahoo, however. At least Buffalo Bill used real people. Spindell pointed out that many Native people enormously resent how superficially colleges appropriate their cultures for entertainment at sports events—ironic for institutions whose main purpose is education. The United States Commission on Civil Rights pointed this out in April 2001 when it urged non-Native colleges to retire American Indian imagery and names in sports. Such practice does not wash well with other ethnic groups. One parallel symbol, wrote Spindell, “is Aunt Jemima, the slave cook who loved the plantation so much she didn’t want to leave when she was freed. She is a white fantasy that denies and

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betrays the real history of slavery, just like the mascot Osceola. The real Osceola fought against American expansion into Seminole land and was betrayed when he came in good faith to a peace council with American soldiers. But his mascot reincarnation is happy to welcome Florida State fans” (Spindel, 2005). The National Education Association passed a resolution in 2000, and restated it in 2005 that “rejects the use of names, symbols, caricatures, emblems, logos, and mascots that support … prejudice” (National Education Association, n.d.). “Indian mascots are used today [as a form of] ‘dysconscious racism’ and a form of cultural violence. ‘Dysconscious racism’ … accepts dominant White norms and privileges. For example, if you have seen these racial antics and negative behaviors portrayed by Indian mascots hundreds of times for most part of your life, you may become absolutely numb to it,” said Dr. Cornel Pewewardy, an assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas (“Indian Mascots,” 2000). Pewewardy, who is Comanche and Kiowa, described how he once rewarded a group of kindergarteners and first graders by taking them on a field trip to see the Minnesota Vikings play the Washington Redskins. As they were being escorted through the stadium, a group of adults decked out in fake war bonnets and face paint began taunting them, yelling, “Woo woo woo!” The children began crying in fear. Pewewardy also recalled his own experience playing sports in high school. Fellow teammates would tease him when the school was about to play another school with an Indian mascot. His coach told him to ignore them and did nothing to stop the hazing. “I didn’t know what to do with my feelings at that time…. It becomes a part of shaming,” Pewewardy said. “I had no recourse but to suppress my feelings” (“Indian Mascots,” 2000). “So-called Indian mascots reduce hundreds of Indigenous tribes to generic cartoons,” Pewewardy wrote in “Why Educators Can’t Ignore Indian Mascots” (“Indian Mascots,” 2000). Schools, said Pewewardy, “should be places where students come to unlearn the stereotypes such mascots represent.” After a visit by Pewewardy to schools in its circulation area, an editorial in the Asheville (North Carolina) Citizen-Times wrote: What’s the big deal, many people, even some American Indians, ask about using Indian mascots for sports teams. They point to teams like the Appalachian State Mountaineers or the Notre Dame Fighting Irish to show that Whites are caricatured as mascots too, or to the Cherokee Braves to how that Indians also use Indian mascots. But there’s a fundamental difference. It’s one thing for predominantly White schools to caricature themselves, or for Indians to caricature themselves. For one culture to caricature another in such a way is demeaning and disrespectful…. Anyone who knows our history should recognize the racism inherent in these symbols. (“Indian Mascots,” 2000)

The American Indian sports mascot issue surfaced in Asheville during the 1997–98 school year when some parents, teachers, and students at Erwin High School objected to the school’s use of warrior and squaw mascots. The U.S. Justice

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Department opened an investigation into a “racially hostile environment” at Erwin but dropped the probe in 1999 after reaching an agreement with the Buncombe County Board of Education, which agreed to stop using squaw to refer to the school’s women’s sports teams. The North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs in 2000 passed a resolution calling for elimination of Indian mascots and logos from all public schools in North Carolina by June 2003. Gov. Jim Hunt endorsed the resolution, pointing to “the impact such negative stereotyping has on the integrity of our public school curriculum” (Morrison, 2000). The resolution opposes the use of American Indian terms for naming mascots and logos because “Sports-team nicknames are considered offensive, disrespectful, demeaning, and they make a mockery of Indian people, their culture, their heritage, and their traditions” (Resolution, 2000). The commission urged North Carolina’s governor “to issue an executive order directing all state government and county agencies, all County Boards or Commissions, and all Boards of Education of each county in the state, to discontinue the use, and remove all references to, American Indian descriptions naming mascots, logos, and sports team nicknames from their policies, publications, instructional materials, signage, etc., by June 30, 2003” (Resolution, 2000). C. Richard King, an experienced commentator on the mascots issue (King, 2002; King and Springwood, 2001a, 2001b; King, Staurowsky, Baca, Davis, and Pewewardy, 2002) wrote that “No one would think of doing to any other racial or ethnic group what mascots do to American Indians. Pseudo-Indian imagery makes Native Americans exceptional, subject to images that disrespect and dehumanize indigenous peoples in a fashion no longer conceivable, let alone acceptable for others” (King, 2004, 199). Having surveyed mascot opponents’ attempts to demonstrate the strength of their case by parodying other ethnic groups, however, King commented, “It is troubling that the critical strategies deployed to demonstrate the inappropriateness and hurtful effects of Native American Mascots pivot around ugly images and ideas about other marginalized groups, often recycling them” (King, 2004, 207). Commented Tim Wise in Counterpunch, “When Notre Dame chose to call themselves the Fightin’ Irish, the school was made up overwhelmingly of Irish Catholics. In other words, it was Irish folks choosing that name for themselves. How many Indians do you think were really in on the decision to call themselves ‘redskins,’ or to be portrayed as screaming warriors on someone else’s school clothing?” (Wise, 2005). Wise recommended that if schools really wanted to honor Native peoples, they could establish Native American studies programs and fund them adequately and increase recruitment of Indian students, staff, and faculty rather than retreating from such efforts in the face of misplaced backlash to affirmative action. Wise said, “They could strip the names off of buildings on their campuses that pay tribute to those who participated in the butchering of Native peoples” (Wise, 2005). Wise suggested, for example, that Nashville, Tennessee, his home town, could begin by renaming, without delay, any building named after Andrew Jackson,

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who endorsed and enforced the Cherokee Trail of Tears in the face of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. “Perhaps, most importantly,” wrote Wise, “we could begin by telling the truth about what was done to the indigenous [peoples] of this land, rather than trying to paper over that truth, minimize the horror, and, once again, change the subject. You know the kind of people I’m speaking of: the ones who refuse to label the elimination of over ninety-five percent of the Native peoples of the Americas ‘genocide’” (Wise, 2005). MANIFESTING DESTINY Mascots sometimes act as cartoon motifs for the Indian wars. On one occasion at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, several Fighting Illini boosters responded to American Indian students who were protesting Chief Illiniwek by erecting a sign that read “Kill the Indians, Save the Chief.” And in the wake of the North Dakota controversy, faculty members who challenged the Fighting Sioux name have reported that supporters of the institution’s symbol have repeatedly threatened those who oppose it (Frueling and King, 2001). The Florida State University Seminoles’ football coach, Bobby Bowden, is known to scribble “Scalp ’em” underneath his autograph (Frueling and King, 2001). In 1999, the Knoxville News-Sentinel published a cartoon in a special section commemorating the appearance of the University of Tennessee Volunteers at the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix, Arizona. At the center of the cartoon, a train driven by a team member in a coonskin cap plows into a buffoonish caricature of a generic Indian, representing the team’s opponent, the Florida State Seminoles. As he flies through the air, the Seminole exclaims, “Paleface speak with forked tongue! This land is ours as long as grass grows and river flows. Oof!” The Tennessee player retorts, “I got news, pal. This is a desert. And we’re painting it orange!” Below them, parodying the genocide associated with the conquest of North America, Smokey, a canine mascot of the University of Tennessee, and a busty Tennessee fan speed down Interstate 10, dubbed “The New and Improved Trail of Tears.” What effect can such a cartoon have on people whose ancestors were victims of the actual Trail of Tears? (Frueling and King, 2001). THE NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION RULES AGAINST INDIAN MASCOTS The NCAA’s Executive Committee during summer 2005 barred from postseason tournaments the teams of 18 universities and colleges with Native American mascots, including three Braves, six Indians, and four specific Native national names (Seminoles, Utes, Chippewas, and Choctaws). In addition, the NCAA listed the Carthage College Redmen, the University of Illinois Fighting Illini and the Southeastern Oklahoma State—let us not bow to political correctness here—Savages. One could suppose, without witnessing the symbols employed by the school, that savages could come from any ethnic group, but attendance at one Southeastern Oklahoma State athletic event would remedy that misconception. Arkansas

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State University (Indians) was one of 18 schools with mascots described as “hostile or abusive” by the NCAA, according to an Associated Press report. Sun Belt Conference rival Louisiana-Monroe was also on the list, as were Florida State, Utah, Central Michigan, and Bradley. The NCAA ruling stated that although the association has no authority to prohibit the use of Indian-theme mascots directly, it can govern the names of teams that take part in its postseason playoffs and other tournaments. Florida State University (FSU; home of the Seminoles) quickly hired an attorney to challenge the NCAA decision. C. Richard King joked of FSU’s reaction to the mascot ban, “Not since the disputed presidential election of 2000 had the leadership of Florida responded with such pronounced urgency to a social or political crisis. Talk of legal action, the convening of emergency meetings among policy makers, and the frenzied pace at which commentators expressed disbelief and disgust were not incited by the failings of public education, the debasement of civil liberties, growing economic inequities, or even the economic and ecological catastrophes associated with rising oil prices” said King (King, 2005). King then asked, “What is the state of democracy in Florida and the nation as a whole, nearly five years after the electoral crisis, when public institutions of higher education like Florida State University refuse teachable moments such as this to reflect upon core concepts such as inclusion, community, dignity, and equality? What will it take for the use of American Indian symbols and names in sports to end, and for indigenous people to be recognized as people?” (King, 2005). According to Charles Frueling and King, “American Indian mascots directly contradict the ideals that most higher-education institutions seek—those of transcending racial and cultural boundaries and encouraging respectful relations among all people who live and work on their campuses. Colleges and universities bear a moral responsibility to relegate the unreal and unseemly parade of ‘team spirits’ to history” (Frueling and King, 2001). Suzan Shown Harjo, director of Washington, DC’s, Morningstar Institute, wrote in Indian Country Today, “Most of the commentators on this issue lump ‘Indian’ sports references in with the bears, tigers, banana slugs, geoducks and leprechauns. They don’t seem to notice that they are species hopping from humans to creatures and mythical beings, and that only the ‘Indians’ are based on living people” (Harjo, August 11, 2005). She added, “The NCAA is learning what it’s like to be mocked, cartooned, lampooned and vilified—in short, what it’s like to be Indian in the world of sports. After only days of this treatment, the NCAA should appreciate even more keenly the importance of [its] decision to the health, safety and emotional well-being of Native and non-Native students, who are and should be their first concern…. It’s the rough equivalent of the civil rights movement sending the message that the N-word is not acceptable in polite society. Is this PC? Yes, as someone said long ago, it’s Plain Courtesy” (Harjo, August 11, 2005). “It is shameful,” wrote Harjo, “That the mighty Osceola is portrayed as a mascot. He is represented with fakey ‘war paint,’ which he never wore; on an Appaloosa

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horse, which he never rode; with a Plains Indian war lance, which he never used; acting the fool, which he never was; and performing for non-Indians—which he never, ever did” (Harjo, August 11, 2005). Florida State University asked the Seminoles (the real ones) to approve of its caricature, to which Harjo suggested that if Florida State University and that state’s politicians were so desperate for political cover, the Seminoles should demand that the school change its name to Florida Seminole University. It would not even have to change its initials. While they are at it, FSU could call its team the Floridians and use St. Augustine as its mascot (Harjo, August 11, 2005). Of the NCAA ruling, Keith Woods of the Poynter Institute, a journalistic think tank based in Florida, wrote: So impressed by the indomitable spirit of the Indian were schools like Florida State, we are now to believe, that they appropriated their name (at a time when, surely, they wanted nothing to do with actual Indians), invented a likeness, and now send a horse-borne student galloping across a football field before a tomahawking crowd in the name of honor and respect. The irony takes my breath away…. Here in Florida, where rancorous debate is a redundancy … no less than the governor [Jeb Bush] has declared the N.C.A.A. policy the work of renegades. He, like the hyperbolic president of Florida State University and the columnists who support them, huff on about the blessing the school has gotten from the Florida tribe and the great Seminole tradition F.S.U. honors. (Woods, 2005)

Former Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who is Cheyenne, called the NCAA’s decision “a major step forward” and “a positive, important decision.” Campbell said, “A lot of people need help understanding that it’s wrong to use any derogatory name for a sports team. When I explain to African-Americans that it would be like a team called the ‘Washington Darkies,’ they understand. When I ask Hispanics how they would feel about a team called the ‘Spics,’ they understand” (Harjo, August 11, 2005). Campbell said he had introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate that would have prevented the Washington Redskins from using federal property, including the Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington, DC. Jack Kent Cooke, the team’s owner, moved the team to the Virginia suburbs before the bill was passed (Harjo, August 11, 2005). The NCAA’s decision drew a rebuke from the right-wing National Review, in which Peter Wood, provost of The King’s College in New York City, wrote in an article titled “The Diversity Bowl: No Admittance to the Abusively Named”: College-sports nicknames and mascots were a natural target for the purveyors of a politics of racial resentment…. In the broader culture wars, the fight over Indian nicknames is a loser for conservatives. The Alcorn State University Braves, the Central Michigan University Chippewas, the Mississippi College Choctaws, and the University of Utah Utes will have to go it alone. I don’t believe for a second that these names were adopted with malice; that they are hostile; or that anyone is “abused” by them. They do, however, have the capacity to irritate people, and it is hard to be on the side of chaffing when no really compelling

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principle favors it…. A stale conformity will … settle over this aspect of college sports—and America will be just a little bit poorer for the loss of historical reference and cultural exuberance. (Wood, 2005)

Shortly after the NCAA issued its ruling, appeals for exemptions surfaced. Florida State University, for example, was allowed on August 23, 2005, to continue use of the nickname Seminoles because the university had asserted a unique relationship with the Seminole tribe of Florida, which had approved the university’s use of the name. The University of Utah and Central Michigan State University also gathered the American Indian support required by the NCAA to retain their mascots. On appeal, the NCAA in May 2006, refused to allow exemptions for the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux, the University of Illinois Fighting Illini, and the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indians. Tim Giago, editor and publisher of the Lakota Journal, suggested that if the Seminole Nation so approves of FSU’s mascot, “The chairman of the Seminole Nation should attend the next FSU football game and allow the fans to put a collar and leash around his neck and lead him around the 50-yard line at halftime.” “If anyone wants to honor Indians,” Giago wrote, “honor our treaties” (Giago, 2005, 7-B). PUTTING THE MOCCASIN ON THE OTHER FOOT: THE FIGHTING WHITIES A singular moment in the history of the mascot controversy occurred in February 2002, when an intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado composed of Native American, Latino, and European American students collectively decided to change its name from Native Pride to the Fighting Whites. The new name was a purposeful parody of North America’s many Native American mascots, most notably nearby Eaton High School’s Fighting Reds. It was the first time in popular memory that a multiethnic sports team had decided to adopt a European American stereotype as a mascot. A dozen college students on an intramural basketball team suddenly found themselves playing in the stereotypical big leagues. The team printed a few T-shirts (their uniform of choice) bearing the team’s new name and created a logo—a suited, clean-cut white man with a bland smile on his face—and the slogan “Everythang’s Gonna Be All White.” Thus ensued a wave of nearly instant, continent-wide publicity that stood the long-standing debate over the decency of Native sports-team mascots on its head. The Fighting Whities (as they came to be called) set thousands of virtual tongues to wagging. Everyone had an opinion on them, from the American Indian Movement to affiliates of the Ku Klux Klan. The reactions provided a flash-frozen image of racial humor in an age of political correctness. Within weeks, the Fighting Whites had become nearly as well known as established professional monikers such as the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians. A cursory Internet search under “Fighting Whities” (on Google.com)

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turned up 4,700 hits; “Fighting Whites” provided 2,930 Web-page mentions— something of a media feeding frenzy for a mascot that had not existed three months earlier. The publicity helped sell thousands of T-shirts and other items for a hastily endowed scholarship fund to aid Native American students. By the end of 2002, more than $100,000 had been raised for the fund (Cornelius, 2002). As the official home page of the Fighting Whites explained, in a statement written by Ryan White (who is Mohawk), John Messner, and Charles Cuny, “We came up with the ‘Fighting Whites’ logo and slogan to have a little satirical fun and to deliver a simple, sincere, message about ethnic stereotyping. Since March 6 [2002], when our campus newspaper first reported on the Fighting Whites, we have been launched into the national spotlight, propelled by a national debate over stereotyping American Indians in sports symbolism” (“Fighting Whities,” 2002). The Fighting Whites’ parody very quickly sprang from the sports pages to the front pages. From the student newspaper, the story spread to the Greeley Tribune, then over the state, regional, and national wire services. Some of the stories popped up as far away as the London Guardian. The Whities also were contacted by Fox Sports Net and NBC News, among many other electronic media. Soon, the Fighting Whites had developed at least nine T-shirt designs for sale on an Internet site, with receipts fueled by publicity in many major daily newspapers, electronic news outlets, and such other large-audience venues as the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The effect on sales was downright salubrious. Soon the merchandise was available not only on T-shirts but also on sweatshirts, tank tops, baseball jerseys, several styles of caps, a coffee mug, boxer shorts, and mouse pads. On the court, the Whities confessed that they were hardly championship caliber, but soon their prowess at basketball did not matter. Their reputation soon had very little to do with dribbling, jumping, or shooting and more to do with the incendiary nature of the ongoing debate regarding Native American names for sports teams. Brooks Wade, a member of the Fighting Whites who is a Choctaw and an employee at the University of Northern Colorado Native American Student Services told the Rocky Mountain News on March 15, 2002, “It’s a huge media rush. It kind of snowballed out of control, really. We started it as more of a protest so we could change things in our little world, and suddenly it’s worldwide” (BeDan, 2002, 12-A). The original protest had been aimed at Eaton High School’s Indian mascot, the Fighting Reds, after one of the Fighting Whites’ wives resigned a job there in anger over the issue. The protest parody quickly cut a much wider swath. Solomon Little Owl, a Crow, whose wife resigned at Eaton, was director of the University of Northern Colorado Native American Student Services when he joined the team. Kacy Little Owl (who is European American), Little Owl’s wife, taught special education at the high school seven miles north of Greeley for two years before leaving at the end of the previous school year (Garner, 2002). “The message is, let’s do something that will let people see the other side of what it’s like to be a mascot,” said Little Owl (“Fighting Whities,” 2002). The Whities had reason to agree with a comment on the Wampum Chronicles message

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board, a Native American Web site: “They’ll swamp the country with publicity which has everyone laughing at their opponents, all the while our boys will be laughing all the way to the bank. Way to go, Fighting Whities. Give ’em hell” (Wampum Chronicles, n.d.). Little Owl said that the couple, as parents of a son who is half European American and half Native, felt uncomfortable mingling with townspeople at school events, especially at ball games where Eaton High School’s large-nosed Indian caricature was the prominent team symbol. “It was offensive in its own way,” said Little Owl (Garner, 2002). WHO WAS INSULTING WHOM? The Eaton Fighting Reds found themselves unwillingly sucked into the tornado of publicity created by the Fighting Whites’ parody. The defenders of the Fighting Reds did not take kindly to the notion of basking unwillingly in the reflected glory of the Fighting Whites. According to a report in the New York Daily News, “School officials have been unresponsive to the protests of local Native American activists. John Nuspl, the school district superintendent, has said the Indian logo is not offensive but that the Fighting Whities are insulting. Yesterday, a school official would only offer, ‘The Eaton school district has no comment, but thank you for your call.’” The inquiring sports writer was then disconnected (Bondy, 2002). A reporter for the Associated Press was told by Nuspl that Eaton’s logo is not derogatory. “There’s no mockery of Native Americans with this,” Nuspl said. As for the Fighting Whites, he said, “Their interpretations are an insult to our patrons and blatantly inaccurate” (“Team Chooses,” 2002). The reaction of Eaton’s school superintendent brought to light an unintended irony that dogged the Fighting Whites wherever their newly minted name went: Many people who had no problem with naming a sports team after a Native American image became profoundly offended when the same thing was done, tongue in cheek, with a European American mascot. GOPUSA, a Colorado Web page of “Republican resources,” declared the naming of the Whities a case of “Political correctness gone mad!” (GOPUSA, 2002) Aside from a small number of people in Eaton and one editorial writer in Omaha (described in a later paragraph), most white people harvested a belly laugh or two from the parody. Some commentators went out of their way to show that, as European Americans, they could take a joke. Another virtual commentator had a suggestion for Fighting Whities team colors: “Off-white and Velveeta Cheese yellow!” (“Mr. Cranky,” 2002). Rush Limbaugh, the popular radio commentator, used the controversy to demonstrate his appreciation of all stereotypes: “Now, I think that’s great! The team chose a white man as its mascot to raise awareness of stereotypes that some cultures endure. I love this, and it doesn’t offend me at all! I’d be proud to be on the team—which is the difference here. There isn’t a white person around that’s going to be offended by this” (Limbaugh, 2002).

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Limbaugh, who called Native Americans “Injuns” in this commentary, aimed perhaps to show that he is as good at taking ethnic stereotypes as he has been at dishing them out. “That’s great!” he said. “I had to laugh and laugh on the air” (Limbaugh, 2002). Limbaugh disagreed with Eaton’s offended school superintendent: “Now, come on. This is not insulting, Whitie; it’s funny” (Limbaugh, 2002). “If these Native Americans had wanted to offend,” Limbaugh continued, “They could have come up with something a lot worse than the Fighting Whities…. What’s going to happen is you’re going to have a bunch of civil-rights groups led by Jesse Jackson saying, ‘You can’t do that!’ Still, it’s just too good. The Fighting Whities? It just rolls off the tongue. Who wouldn’t want to be on that team?” (Limbaugh, 2002). The Fighting Whities nearly sent Limbaugh into rhapsody: “In fact, let’s rename the 101st Airborne Division the ‘Fighting Whities.’ I mean, can’t you see that painted on some Air Force squadron, on the tail of a bunch of F-16s: the Fighting Whities—and paint the airplanes all white. Oh-ho! I’ll guarantee you that this is not going to fly well with the NAACP crowd, folks, because it’s good, the Fighting Whities. I really do wish that I had authored this” (Limbaugh, 2002). Barry Benintende, executive editor of the La Jolla (California) Light, loved the idea almost as much as Limbaugh. “In this day and age it’s tough to come up with a nickname for an athletic department [or] team that won’t offend at least some portion of the population,” he wrote in the publication’s March 2002 edition. “Short of naming every school or pro-sports team ‘the Vanillas,’ someone is going to have their knickers in a twist over a nickname. Well, speaking of vanilla, let me bring up the name of my favorite sports team of all time, edging out the Banana Slugs of UCSC [University of California–Santa Cruz]—‘Fighting Whities.’ The slogan they adopted—‘Every thang’s gonna be all white!’—is pure genius.” “Sadly,” lamented Benintende, only the most selfconscious whites were offended by the turnabout. “What was intended to turn the tables on insensitivity and support for teams like the Redskins, et al., the reaction shocked the team founders: Caucasians not only loved the name but sent them congratulatory e-mails and requests to buy Fighting Whities jerseys” (Benintende, 2002). Benintende continued, “I’m a fan of the San Diego Padres, who could be seen as offensive to Catholics. Instead, many of us find the Swinging Friar a lovable guy with whom to identify, much like we would a briefcase-toting Middle-America dad type” (Benintende, 2002). Like many other commentators, Benintende used the Fighting Whities parody to take issue with an April 2001 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights opinion that said Indian-themed sports teams may violate antidiscrimination laws and should be dropped. “Does this commission finding also apply to the Fighting Irish at Notre Dame? The Celtics of Boston? And why limit it to sports teams? Does the name Rabbinical School Dropouts offend Jewish people who do not listen to the Klezmer band?” (Benintende, 2002).

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One virtual tongue wagged at The Geekery: Biased and Unbalanced News: See, this is what I’m talking about. Racial stereotypes got you down? Now you can reverse the stereotypes back on your oppressors and not receive ANY backlash whatsoever. God, I love this country. This is probably the best idea any minority has ever had, next we just need a baseball team, maybe “the Atlanta Trailer Park Trash” or “the Nebraska Rednecks” Hell, let’s not stop there. Let’s branch off into rugby to and have “the Preppy White Boys from Upper-class Neighborhoods that Look Down upon Every Color they have Only Seen on TV.” The possibilities are endless. (Geekery, 2002)

Clarence Page, a syndicated columnist based at the Chicago Tribune (who is black) opined, tongue in cheek, “Sometimes offense is the best defense” (Page, 2002). Page remarked that network television, major newspapers, and radio talk shows had made the Fighting Whites the best-covered intramural squad in the nation. The Greeley Tribune’s Web site crashed when demand for the story soared to 29,000 from the usual 200 hits per day for a high-interest local story (Page, 2002). Yet, quipped Page, “Caucasians have proved to be remarkably resistant to offense. Many agreed with an e-mailer who saw the new name as an ‘honor’ to white Americans, who apparently don’t get enough credit for their many contributions to history” (Page, 2002). “Help me out here,” asked one e-mail to the Greeley Tribune. “Why am I supposed to be offended?” (Page, 2002). In Page’s opinion: Whether their experiment turned out the way they expected to or not, the Fighting Whites deserve to go to the head of the class for giving us all at least one important lesson in cross-cultural differences: It’s not what you slur that counts, it is who is slurring it—and how…. As an African-American who has heard more than my share of slurs, I can tell you: to be truly offensive, it helps for a slur to carry at least a hint of a threat…. Most Redskins fans undoubtedly mean no harm by their passivity about their team’s name. If it reminds some Indians of the days when there were bounties on Indian scalps, that’s just tough tomahawks, pal. (Page, 2002)

“So,” Page concluded, “I give the Fighting Whites credit for keeping their wit about them. Humor often opens doors that battering rams fail to budge. If nothing else, they’ve stumbled across an unusual way to raise scholarship money. It’s like the old saying: If you can’t beat ’em, make a few bucks off ’em” (Page, 2002). The texture and potency of assumed insult soon became the main point of debate for many European Americans. “Some people online were saying that the mascot should be … a fat guy with buckteeth kissing his sister,” said Tom Crebbs of Oakland, California, who heard about the idea and started his own Web site selling spin-off shirts, hats, and mugs (“Fighting Whities, n.d.). Michael Gonsalves of New York told the Associated Press: “If you are fighting against a perceived injustice, is the proper recourse to go out and do the very same thing?” (“Fighting Whities,” 2002).

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Dimitri Vassilaros, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, asserted that no one would give a mascot name to a “business or pet” that carried negative connotations, as other commentators asserted that the notion of making a pet of an ethnic group was derogatory in and of itself. George Junne, a professor in the University of Northern Colorado’s Africana Studies Department said that a mascot “is like a pet. People don’t want to be pets” (Good, 2002). Vassilaros, who is a Greek American, wrote that is “just my luck” that “drunken college frat brothers [are called] ‘Greeks.’” He asked, “Are there any white men who feel violated whenever they see Fighting Whities mascots such as the Schenley Spartans, Peabody Highlanders, Central Catholic Vikings, North Catholic Trojans, Duquesne Dukes, or even the Quaker Valley Quakers?” In his court of public opinion, Vassilaros found that “The perpetually offended are intellectually bankrupt” (Vassilaros, 2002). A radio station, WOOD Newsradio 1300 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, conducted an on-air poll, asking, “Do you think a basketball team named the ‘Fighting Whities’ is racially insensitive?” The results: 84.19 percent “no,” 15.81 percent “yes” (Newsradio, 2002). A number of commentators assumed that the members of the Fighting Whites had set out to offend non-Indians, even after a number of newspaper pieces quoted them as saying this was not the case. Usually, such allegations were aired as the commentator strove to display his or her open-mindedness. An example was provided by John Ledbetter, a columnist for the Destin (Florida) Log, writing under the headline “Cantankerous Caucasian Fights Back,” who wrote: Offended? I want one of his team’s T-shirts. They feature a white dude with a coat and tie and slicked-back hair. He looks like an I.R.S. agent on crack, which isn’t a bad name for a team either. But really, if offending us honkies was Owl’s criteria for success, he may want a job with the visa department in the I.N.S. [Immigration and Naturalization Service]. It’s just not that often that an angle on the Anglos is spun toward something fierce or feisty. Unless you’re Scandinavian—Vikings—or from Ireland—Fightin’ Irish—there’s not a lot of scrappy Caucasians that end up on banners in an auditorium. Of course, if you’re Irish you’re fighting because you’re drunk—and a happy St. Patrick’s Day to you too. I’m also part Irish, allegedly, so kiss my blarney if you’re offended. And I’m even a lawyer. Now, talk about a maligned group. The San Jose Sharks today rejected a plan to name their team the San Jose Barristers. Ha! (Ledbetter, 2002)

A few commentators criticized the moniker. An editorial in the Omaha WorldHerald called the Whities parody an ineffective insult. In an editorial titled “‘Whities’ on the Court; Insult Doesn’t Work if Name Doesn’t Hurt,” the newspaper said, “The lack of deep, personal insult in the term ‘white’ may reflect the inequality of racial relationships. Because the majority typically has more power—political, economic, social—than minorities, its members are not so likely to feel diminished by words of contempt” (“Whities,” 2002).

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NOT OFFENSIVE ENOUGH? The World-Herald argued that “The white population is in the majority and lacks the depth of race consciousness needed to make a group sensitive to name-calling. Break whites down into smaller ethnic groups, however—everyone is familiar with the disrespectful names for Jews, Irish, Italians, French-Canadians and so on—and the anger can surface quickly” (“Whities,” 2002). By the World-Herald’s reasoning, perhaps the Fighting Knee-Knocking Norwegians might have been more effective. The editorial continued, “‘The Reds’ is a generic-enough name that the Greeley high school could easily move from an Indian logo to something less potentially offensive. Neither the Cincinnati Reds nor Nebraska’s Big Red refers to ethnicity” (“Whities,” 2002). The World-Herald’s editorial writer composed this piece without checking how the mascot was being depicted at Eaton High School. Although Big Red is characterized visually by Herbie Husker, definitely a down-home farm boy, the Eaton mascot is a no-bones-about-it American Indian, which was described by Owen S. Good of the Rocky Mountain News as “a cross-armed, shovel-nosed, belligerent caricature” (Good, 2002). The World-Herald was too polite to let loose with the names it might use to address the Fighting Whites’ asserted lack of racist vigor. Another commentator was not as shy, providing a number of very specific team names meant to insult white people, including “White Slaveowners; Light-Skinned Nigger-Killers; Fighting Crackers; Blue-Eyed Devils; The Rhythm Lackers; The Small Penises; The Non-Dancers; The Big House Massas.” The same author commented, “I suggest that, if they really want to get their point across, and they really want to do the equivalent of names like ‘Redskins,’ I think names like these more accurately represent the negative stereotyping of names like ‘Redskins’ and the use of images of the ‘savage’ American Indian” (“T. Rex Essay,” 2002). Some European Americans evidenced severe offense at the use of a white mascot and became very eager to pay back the perceived insult a thousandfold. One militant white nationalist Web page characterized the Fighting Whities parody this way: Some redskins on an intramural basketball team up at the University of Northern Colorado got their feathers all in a bunch recently and decided to show white folks—and especially those at nearby Eaton High School, whose motto is “Fightin’ Reds,” and whose logo is a caricature of an Indian—how insulting it is to have their identity pre-empted this way. Damn, didn’t the Sambo’s Restaurant chain get into heap big trouble with blackskins and have to change their name because black folks found it offensive to be portrayed as anything less than nuclear physicists? If the blackskins can back whiteskins down so easily, then certainly redskins can do the same thing. (Millard, 2002)

The same site offered links to another site seeking orders for its own European American icon: a T-shirt portraying Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in white sheets

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burning a cross above lettering reading “The Knight Time’s the White Time” (Johansen, 2003). SERIOUS DEBATES NATIONALLY Aside from a debate over who was offending whom, the Fighting Whities parody provoked a great deal of serious debate regarding the mascot issue. Student editorialists at the University of Illinois Daily Illini, where a controversy has long raged regarding the school’s Chief Illiniwek mascot, suggested that the Fighting Whities take its place. When University Board of Trustees member Roger Plummer addressed the board about Chief Illiniwek, he said the board has two decisions. Alas, at this prestigious University, we must strive for excellence. That’s why Scout was disappointed to see Plummer did not suggest the University adopt The Fighting Whities, the symbol a group of students in Colorado used to make a point. The school could keep “Fighting” on all its merchandise. Just scratch out “Illini.” People couldn’t call it offensive because it’s actually just taking the idea of the Fighting Irish to the next level. (“Campus Scout,” 2002)

“In sports,” the Daily Illini editorial concluded, “There’s nothing better than taking it to the next level. In life, there’s nothing better than poking a little fun at yourself. The students like ‘The Fighting Whities,’ too. Scout’s received numerous e-mails supporting the suggestion” (“Campus Scout,” 2002). Tanyan Barrientos, a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, took issue with a survey conducted by Harris Research, previously described in the March 4, 2002, edition of Sports Illustrated, which asserted that only 32 percent of Indians living on reservations believed Indian names and mascots used by professional sports teams contributed to discrimination against them. Sixty-seven percent said they did not, according to this survey. The same survey stated that the proportion of Native Americans not living on reservations who perceived no discrimination in Indian team names or mascots was even higher, at 83 percent. “Surprised?” asked Barrientos. “I was.” Perhaps I should lighten up. But my gut tells me that Chief Wahoo is wrong. He smacks of a Sambo, a lawn jockey, or one of those Mexicans sleeping under a broad-brimmed sombrero. There has to be a good reason why 600 schools, minor-league teams, and other pro-sports franchises have dropped or changed their Indian names and mascots since 1969. (Barrientos, 2002)

Bob DiBiasio, vice president for public relations for the Cleveland Indians, had told Barrientos that Chief Wahoo was never meant to be a racist logo and that “if there is no intent to demean, how can something demean?” “Tell that,” he concluded, “to the Fighting Whities” (Barrientos, 2002).

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A DEMONSTRATION IN EATON On Sunday, May 20, 2002, Eaton High School’s 450 students found themselves an unwilling audience for a rally against its Fighting Reds mascot. The protest was held one day after the Eaton High School Fighting Reds baseball team had claimed the Class 3-A state championship. The May 20 demonstration also coincided with Eaton High School’s graduation ceremony, which was held during the afternoon, after the rally had dispersed. The Eaton police rehearsed for weeks in anticipation of the event and called in reinforcements from nearby Ault as well as the Weld County Sheriff’s Office. “We are prepared to handle this event,” said Sgt. Arthur Mueller of the Eaton Police Department. “We don’t anticipate problems, but we do have several contingency plans in place” (Ochoa, 2002). These included mounted horse patrols, a K-9 unit, police teams patrolling the perimeter of the demonstration, officers mingling through the crowd, as well as officers posted on nearby rooftops. “We will have zero tolerance when there is an issue of safety for the officers, participants or residents,” Mueller said. “And we will have zero tolerance for the destruction of private property or public property” (Ochoa, 2002). Unarmed security guards trained by AIM also planned to provide added security to the rallying group. Dozens of local and county police, on foot and on horseback, as well as private security guards awaited the protesters. The mile-long Eaton Mascot Education March and Rally started at 9:30 A.M. in eastern Eaton at the intersection of East Fifth and Wall Streets. The marchers strode westward on Fifth Street, turning south on Park Avenue, stopping for a noon rally at Eaton Park, at Third Street and Park Avenue. As the rally concluded, some 300 marchers promised to return next year, and the year after that, until the mascot image was retired. Coloradans against Ethnic Stereotyping in Colorado Schools wanted nearly forty elementary, middle, and high schools statewide to change American Indian mascots that it believed are hurtful and racist. “This is our introduction to Eaton on how to live respectfully,” said Russell Means, a founder of AIM and a longtime national activist for Native American rights. “If Eaton wants to put up with this every year for their graduation, then so be it” (Migoya, 2002). According to a report in the Denver Post, “Protesters marched through town—drums beating, chants rising—on their way to Eaton City Park. There were speeches of heritage and strife, racism and tolerance…. They’re upset, saying we ruined their graduation,” Means said. “With this [mascot], they ruin every single day of our lives” (Migoya, 2002). At his home across from Eaton’s park, Leslie Smith hung a quiet proclamation of loyalty for the American Indian mascot: computer printouts of the Eaton mascot in red. A red tape surrounded the home. “They have their right to speak and so do we,” said Steve Smith, Leslie’s son and lifelong Eatonite. “We’ve listened to what they have to say. Now they can leave” (Migoya, 2002). The protesters included persons from several races from Colorado and several surrounding

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states. “We’re reverencing the Eaton logo. It’s an honor to [American Indians]. They’re nothing but a bunch of communists and they’re invading our territory” Steve Smith said (Darst, 2002). Newspaper reports suggested that a compromise was being considered. Protesters, led by the organization’s founder, Dan Ninham, called for the removal of the mascot image, not the Fighting Reds name, according to Philip Arreola, a member of the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service, who worked with the city and protesters to ensure a peaceful demonstration (Migoya, 2002). Fred Gibbs, a fifth-generation Eaton High graduate, said he could not understand why some people chose to be offended by a symbol that most people in Eaton (he assumed) considered a respectful honor to American Indians. The mascot was called “a tough little warrior that we’re very proud of,” by Gibbs, who was watching from his front lawn. “None of us feels like it’s a negative portrayal” (Good, 2002). Means, who is well-known in Denver for demonstrating against the city’s Columbus Day parade, said there was nothing even remotely honorable about using American Indian images as sports mascots. “It [comes from] the day when only the fiercest animals were used as team mascots—Lions, Tigers,” Means said. “That’s what Indians are to these teams, the fiercest of beasts” (Good, 2002). Means suggested that next year’s demonstration might confront the school’s graduation ceremony directly. “We have a year to convince the school board to dissuade us from attending,” Means said (Good, 2002). EVALUATING THE WHITIES IN IDEOLOGICAL CONTEXT Internet blogger Bob Maxim wrote on an Internet page devoted to anarchist causes that “Acceptance of racial stereotypes of ‘Indians’ … is not only more widespread than any other race, but actually ingrained so steadfastly into the American culture that most people don’t see what all the fuss is about” (Maxim, 2002). The proponents of Native American mascots often profess no malice; indeed, they loudly broadcast an admiration of their own stereotyped creations. Sometimes this sense of respect can be taken to absurd lengths, as when some European Americans defend the use of the word squaw as a place-name with full knowledge that it originated as a reference to Native women’s vaginas. However, wrote Maxim, “The fact is … [that] disrespect … is disrespect in the eyes of the offended, not the offender” (Maxim, 2002). The use of a prototypical European American figure as a mascot for a sports team (even a minor, intramural one) ignited an explosion of debate illustrative of a touchstone issue that has inflamed tempers for years. Maxim proposed that the offensiveness of native stereotypes be tested by using other ethnic caricatures in their places. For example, wrote Maxim: Take any name and caricature and change the stereotype and tell me if it seems offensive to your own sensibilities. For example, ask yourself if you would feel

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offended if they announced they were changing the Washington Redskins to the Washington “Blackskins,” and put a flared-nostrilled caricature of Kunta Kinte on the helmets, or a crazed-eyed Zulu Warrior with a bone in his nose wielding a spear. Do you think folks would argue that they were honoring black people, and their noble fighting spirit?” (Maxim, 2002)

Maxim continued, “How about the Fighting Kikes, or Wops … or a Boston favorite, The Washington Micks? Imagine the Washington ‘Whiteskins,’ with a caricature of George W. [Bush] on the helmet” (Maxim, 2002). With a sense of gentle sarcasm, that was the message that the Fighting Whities chose to send. The noise with which the message was received is illustrative of the perceptual power of images. Why are sponsors of Native American mascots so possessive of their fantasy images? The Fighting Whites (or Whities) spawned intense controversy by doing just that, igniting controversy on a profoundly sensitive issue. Why is the issue so sensitive? In his foreword to Team Spirits, Vine Deloria Jr. identifies several reasons: residues of racism, a sense of the Indian as other, and the fact that “Indians represent the American past, and Europeans and Americans have been fleeing from their own past since the days of discovery and settlement” (King and Springwood, 2001b, ix, x). These images are, King and Springwood remark, ideological artifacts reflecting attitudes toward “race, power, and culture” (King and Springwood, 2001b, 1). The defense of Native American mascots by non-Natives can be seen as enforcement of a sense of conquest, of a reminder that European Americans now set the perceptual rules. For all of these reasons, a parody created by an intramural basketball team in a small Colorado college town set off a firestorm of debate. Two years after creating a firestorm of controversy, the Fighting Whites were still around, set on using humor to bring attention to the use of Indian mascots. The intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado has given $100,000 to the college for the Fighting Whites Minority Endowment Scholarship Fund, but there are indications that the founders of the team may be changing tactics, a change attributed to frustration over the college and the use of mascots in general. C. Richard King, an experienced commentator on the mascots issue, concluded that the Fighting Whities had worked as an interracial joke but not as a political object lesson. “Although a financial success,” he wrote, “the Fighting Whites were a critical failure. The protest voiced in the name change went unheard by most. In many respects, the Fighting Whites was an over-determined project, doomed from its inception. In contrast to comparisons with other oppressed racial groups, such as African Americans or Jews, the analogy with whiteness neither interrupts the workings of racial common sense, nor invokes moral authority through trauma, marginalization, and violence. Judging from the public response, the Fighting Whites seem to confirm, rather than challenge, white-supremacist America—a white-centered, white-identified, and white-dominated society” (King, 2004, 205–6). MOVING ON MASCOTS IN WISCONSIN In the meantime, the mascots controversy roiled on. Wisconsin’s state schools superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster sent a letter in December 2005, asserting that

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local officials should scuttle American Indian mascots and logos. School officials in a handful of western Wisconsin communities that display Indian names and images said that they would resist the change, however, asserting that “an Indian name or image is an important part of a school’s identity [as] some say they have already worked to remove offensive caricatures from their logos.” “It’s a huge source of pride, and that’s why it’s such an issue,” said Mike McMartin, principal of Osceola High School, which goes by the Chieftains. “If there was no pride, you wouldn’t be talking about it” (Brewer and Harter, 2006). This issue has been raised many times in Wisconsin since the 1960s, as about twenty-five Wisconsin high schools dropped Indian logos and mascots. The number of Wisconsin schools using Indian mascots is not known, but the Wisconsin Indian Education Association identified 38 schools that it said make offensive use of Indian names or images, including the Osceola Chieftains and Menominee Indians. “We take a lot of pride in Chief Osceola,” said district administrator Roger Kumlien. “We teach a unit in fourth-grade classes on Chief Osceola and how our name came into existence” (Brewer and Harter, 2006). Kumlien said that across the nation, 2 mountains, 1 national park, 3 counties, and 20 towns are named after Osceola. “In 1996, [our logo] was more of a headdress. We wondered if it should be this or should it be the actual face of Chief Osceola,” Kumlien said. School officials asked the head of the Creek Indian Council about the matter, and Kumlien had a council artist design a new logo for the school. The logo updated the generic headdress by dropping the feathers, updating the profile and adding an arrow and tomahawk. “It’s kind of unique,” Kumlien said. “We embraced it and put it up everywhere. It’s on our sign on the highway, it’s on our letterhead, our clothing” (Brewer and Harter, 2006). David Driscoll, a curator at the Wisconsin Historical Society who has written about the use of Indian mascots in the state, said the fundamental issue for mascot opponents is identity and who controls it. Opponents contend that the use of the names, or racist or cartoonish mascots, is an example of the dominant white culture defining Native culture without Native communities’ consent. “Until a deeper understanding of white privilege prevails among the majority of Wisconsin residents, this issue is likely to remain controversial and bitterly contested,” Driscoll wrote (Brewer and Harter, 2006). It has been years since Step-n-Fetchit was sent packing to the racial-stereotype graveyard. It likewise has been a couple of decades since Frito-Lay discarded its Frito Bandito. Yet during the third Christian millennium, we find ourselves arguing over whether professional athletes should wear the likeness of Chief Wahoo and whether fans who generally believe themselves to be decent people should regret doing the Tomahawk Chop. “SQUAWBLES” The battle over names was not restricted to the mascots of games, of course. It overflowed into the naming of places and even the labels of liquor bottles. Sometimes, the controversies cross wires. Until 1975, for example, women’s sports

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teams at Bonaventure College in upstate New York were called the Brown Squaws. Men’s teams were called the Brown Indians. That year, a Seneca chief and clan mothers visited the college and respectfully requested that the names be changed. Once the faculty, staff, and students learned that squaw referred to the vagina, they quickly shed the name. “We almost died of embarrassment,” one former Bonaventure woman told Suzan Shown Harjo of Indian Country Today. “Of course, we stopped using it immediately” (Harjo, 2005, 170). In 1995, the state of Minnesota enacted a legal ban on the use of the word squaw in geographic place-names for lakes, streams, and points, agreeing with two Chippewa high school students on the Leech Lake Reservation that the word is degrading to Native American women. The state law was overwhelmingly approved by the state legislature and signed by Gov. Arne Carlson. A debate has since developed that the Associated Press, with a straight journalistic face, called a “squawble.” The state also was working to ban Indian-themed sports mascots. Fifty school districts at one time had Indian names and mascots in that state, but the remaining schools using such images had fallen to eight by 2006. Of those, three (Mahnomen, Red Lake, and Warroad) have large Indian populations (Brewer and Harter, 2006). Squaw Lake (St. Louis County, Minnesota) became Nokomis Lake Pond in county and state records; the specific term is Ojibwa for “grandmother,” wellknown from Longfellow’s poem “The Song of Hiawatha” (Bright, n.d.). Squaw Point became Oak Point, and Squaw Creek became Fond-du-lac. Squaw Pond became Scout Camp Pond. POLITICALLY CORRECT CREEK? In Minnesota’s Lake County, a swatch of forest, streams, and lakes with 10,000 residents that reaches the shores of western Lake Superior near the Canadian border, non-Indian residents suggested that their Squaw Creek and Squaw Bay be changed to Politically Correct Creek and Politically Correct Bay. The state rejected Lake County’s proposal, which arrived with a letter from Sharon Hahn, head of the Lake County Board of Commissioners, who wrote, “The term ‘squaw’ is in common use throughout North America, far beyond its Algonquian origin.” “We find nothing derogatory in continued use of this term.” Local Indians said that the county’s attitude is arrogant and disrespectful; Larry Aitken, a Chippewa tribal historian, says, “It’s equivalent to having the New York Mets called the New York Jews” (Bright, n.d.). Muriel Charwood Litzau, a Native American who is a resident of Squaw Lake as well as the Leech Lake Reservation, loathes the S-word so much that she does not want to tell people where she lives. She says that Squaw is a French corruption of an Iroquois (possibly Mohawk) word for “vagina.” Her daughter, Dawn Litzau, and another student, Angelene Losh, began the campaign to illegalize Squaw as a geographic place-name in Minnesota as part of a Native American studies class at Cass Lake-Bena High School, a public school within the Leech Lake Reservation. Students of the school’s Name Change Committee also met

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with students at the Pequot Lakes High School in northern Minnesota and persuaded the student body to change its Indian mascot. County officials in Lake County refused to change names as required by the state, citing standard dictionary definitions that define squaw as “Indian woman” (generically) as well as the expense of making the changes on signs and maps. Indeed, the 1983 edition of Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary defines squaw as (1) an American Indian woman or wife and (2) any woman, chiefly humorous. Some dictionaries attribute the word to squáas, in an Algonquian language (Massachuset, Natick, or Narraganset) and add that it is a derogatory word for women of any race or ethnic group. Unabridged dictionaries also sometimes list several derivations, such as squaw winter, said to be a spell of unusually cold and stormy weather before Indian summer. In Literature of the American Indian (1973), edited by Thomas E. Sanders and Walter W. Peek, however, Squaw is said to be a French corruption of the supposedly Iroquois word otiska, referring to female private parts. Which Iroquois language is involved here is not addressed. The phrase was probably carried into the north woods of Minnesota (and the rest of Anglo-American culture) by French fur trappers, later to be anglicized by English-speaking colonists. According to the Thesaurus of American Slang (1989), edited by Ester and Albert A. Lewis, the word squaw has been used as a synonym for “prostitute.” The Associated Press Stylebook, the most widely used guide for grammar and style in the newspaper industry, says that squaw may be disparaging and should be avoided. FREEDOM OF NOMENCLATURE Local residents in the United States may call places anything they wish. Assignment of names to natural features, however, notably specifically federal documents such as topographic maps published by of the U.S. Geological Survey, requires approval by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. This body has changed words considered offensive; in 1967 it directed that 143 place-names with Nigger should be changed to Negro, and 26 place-names with the word Jap should be switched to Japanese (Schmitt, 1996, A-16). The board presently has a policy to consider “squaw” names on a case-by-case basis, as requested by local authorities, such as state naming boards. According to the Board on Geographic Names, the word squaw at one time or another has been affixed to 1,050 geographic names in the United States, most of them in the West and Midwest. In California, for example, a request has been filed with the survey board to change the name Squaw Gulch, in Siskiyou County, to Taritsi Gulch. Also in California, questions are being raised about the name of the Squaw Valley ski resort. Activists in Arizona and Oregon (with about 170 placenames that include Squaw) were taking up the refrain, advocating state laws similar to Minnesota’s. According to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, Oregon has more rivers, buttes, meadows, mountains, and gulches named Squaw than any other state—170 out of 893 in the United States.

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MORE “SQUAWBLES” By 2005, the movement to erase “squaw” place-names from maps across the northern and western United States was gaining momentum. Following Minnesota’s lead, Oregon had enacted a law ordering changes in such names; Wisconsin was considering a similar law. A proposed state law incited debate in Idaho as well. Jack Jackson, a Navajo (Dineh), was frustrated for the better part of a decade in his campaign to change place-names in Arizona. The Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names voted unanimously to refuse a request from American Indian petitioners that a mountain near Phoenix, named Squaw Peak, be renamed Iron Mountain, its name before 1910 (Bright, n.d.). Montana and Maine also passed similar legislation. In Montana, House Bill 412 passed with little debate or opposition, but greater controversy accompanied the ultimately successful efforts of Passamaquoddy Representative Donald Soctomah in Maine (King, 2003, 1). Jim Fisher, editor of the Lewiston (Idaho) Morning Tribune, remarked that “Killing a bad name gives birth to many good ones,” following calls by Idaho’s Indians and others for removal of the name Squaw from local place-names (Fisher, 2005, 3-F). Some opponents of the proposed Idaho law argued that swapping Squaw for other names would diminish Idaho’s cultural richness, erasing historical color for bland political correctness. “Boy, were they ever wrong,” wrote Fisher. “That was made clear to me the other day on reading a story from Oregon about that state’s enrichment of its place place-names and subsequent maps by replacing ‘squaw’ with names that are anything but nondescript, and from tribal languages to boot” (Fisher, 2005, 3-F). Oregon legislators passed a law requiring name changes in 2001, the same year Idaho legislators defeated a similar ban. In October 2005, the Oregon Geographic Names Board voted to change Coos County’s Squaw Island to Qochyax Island, which is pronounced “coke-yaw,” said Howard Roy, cultural development coordinator for the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians, who first proposed the name Qochyax Women and Children’s Island, historically a place to which local women and children fled to avoid being taken as slaves. The name was considered too long, so it was shortened (“Next Stop,” 2005). Squaw Creek was renamed Whychus Creek. The new name is Sahaptin, one of the three languages of the Warm Springs tribes, meaning “the place we cross the river.” But it also has a historic precedent as the name for the stream, recorded in an 1855 railroad survey (Fisher, 2005, 3-F). Other names replace squaw with akawa, the Wasco word for a female badger. Some opponents of the name changes argue that Native names would be difficult to pronounce. What then, asked Fisher, of the many unique Native placenames that already distinguish towns, cities, and natural features all over the West? Fisher remarked: How many of us Northwesterners have tittered while hearing people from other regions wrestle with marvelous Indian names like “Puyallup”? Not all

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Indian names are difficult to learn to pronounce, though. In fact, some of the most mellifluous roll off the tongue with delightful ease. Like Skookumchuck. Klickitat. Issaquah. As a native Washingtonian, I grew up absorbing Indian names as part of my heritage, which of course they are. When my family would visit Mount Rainier National Park (we Tacomans are still pretty steamed about the peak being renamed from the Indian Tahoma), one woodsy stop was Ohanapecosh. The Nisqually River flows into Commencement Bay today as it did then. In our young married years in Seattle [anglicized from Sea’th’l], my wife and I would visit the Stillaguamish River, still one of my favorite names. We would fish the Skykomish, hike up the Suiattle and, on the Olympic Peninsula, the Quinault. At times, our picnic would include Tillamook cheese…. Amid all these riches, and more on the way from Oregon and elsewhere, who needs “squaw”? Only a few rednecks, I’d say. “Redneck” is an old Saxon word meaning musically deaf, deliberately dumb and historically blind. (Fisher, 2005, 3-F)

In Oregon, the changing of names proved to be complicated. Of approximately 150 “squaw” place-names, only about 10 had been changed by 2005, as required by the state law passed in 2001, according to Lewis L. McArthur, a member of the Oregon Geographic Names Board and author of Oregon Geographic Names (Preusch, 2005, B-1). Having passed its bill, Oregon lawmakers set aside no money and appointed no agency or other group to handle it. As with sports mascots, many non-Indians professed attachment to names that many Native Americans found to be offensive. Perhaps the most prominent name change in Oregon applied to Squaw Creek, originating in the Three Sisters Wilderness and flowing through the town of Sisters and a rimrock canyon before merging with the Deschutes River southwest of Madras. The U.S. Forest Service proposed calling the creek Whychus, derived from the Sahaptin language, meaning “the place we cross the water.” A government surveyor in 1855 recorded Whychus as the creek’s original name (Preusch, 2005, B-1). In November 2005, the 15,400 residents of White Settlement, Texas (near Fort Worth), defeated by a margin of 9-to-1 a ballot measure to change the name, with about 2,500 voting. With a town seal that features a church, a factory, and a fighter jet (its main industry is defense contracting), most of the town’s residents are no friends of nonwhites and like it that way. The town is in decline, however; even the town’s Wal-Mart moved away. White Settlement’s population was 85 percent European American in the 2000 census (Romero, 2005). WHAT DOES SQUAW REALLY MEAN? Having entertained all the aforementioned thunder attending use of the S-word, come now students of language, some of them Native American women, who contend that the whole debate is linguistically beside the point as well as “profoundly Eastern Hemisphere, Indo-Germanic, and, I might add, masculine” (Gunn Allen, 2005). Paula Gunn Allen, writing in Barbara A. Mann’s Daughters of Mother Earth (2006), presents a compelling case that the politics of “squaw” have

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been socially defined in our time, that the word original incantation meant simply “woman.” At a Women’s Studies Conference at Connecticut State University in October 2001, Gunn Allen writes, “the Plenary Session addressed the issue directly. Abenaki (Algonquin) scholar and writer Marge Bruchac made the point that the word has long been a quite respectable word among various Algonquin dialects, and simply meant ‘woman.’ In her essay, ‘Reclaiming the Word ‘Squaw’ in the Name of the Ancestors’ Bruchac instructs us: first, that ‘Squaw is not an English word.’ In the first subheading, she assures us that ‘Squaw means the totality of being female.’ Providing linguistic contextualization, she continues:” It is a phonetic rendering of an Algonkian word, or morpheme, that does not translate to mean any particular part of a woman’s anatomy. Within the entire Algonkian family of languages, the root or morpheme, variously spelled “squa,” “skwa,” “esqua,” “kwe,” “squeh,” “kw” etc. is used to indicate “female,” not “female reproductive parts.” Variants of the word are still in widespread use among northeastern peoples…. Nipmuc and Narragansett elders use the English form “squaw” in telling traditional stories about women’s activities or medicinal plants; when Abenaki people sing the “Birth Song,” they address “nuncksquassis,” the “little woman baby.” The Wampanoag people, who are in the midst of an extensive language reclamation project, affirm that there is no insult, and no implication of a definition referring to female anatomy, in any of the original Algonkian forms of the word. (Bruchac, 1999)

Gunn Allen continued, citing Mohegan tribal historian Melissa Fawcett (Tantaquidgeon) in The Lasting of the Mohegans: The Story of the Wolf People: Red is the color of women and life…. The Mohegan word for woman is “shquaaw” and red is “squayoh.” Blood is referred to as “(um)sque” which also has a related “squ’ root. [As does] the name of Granny Squannit, leader of the Makiawisug (Little People of the Woodlands). The root of her name describes her very clearly. “Squa” means woman, blood, red, or of the earth. The root “anit” comes from “manit” or “Manitou,” often spelled as “Mundu” in Mohegan-Pequot, which means Spirit. Therefore Granny Squannit’s name means “Spirit Woman” and implies a connection to the earth and blood…. Quite literally, women are “the bleeders” through whose blood the tribe renews its life. Red is the color of the earth, hence the notion of “Mother Earth.” … A woman Chief is known as a Sunq-Shquaaw, that is to day, the is the “Rock Woman” of the Tribe; since, the word “Sun[q]” means rock in Mohegan Pequot. (Fawcett, 1995, 35)

Definitions of words change over time, of course, and the question of what Squaw meant, to whom, and with what effect remains a subject of lively debate. CRAZY HORSE MALT LIQUOR: A HAPPY ENDING The one-time makers of Crazy Horse Malt Liquor, Stroh Brewing Company (as owner of G. Heileman Brewing Company), settled with the estate of Crazy Horse

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and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in an agreement that included a public apology and payment of 7 racehorses, 32 Pendleton blankets, 32 braids of tobacco, and 32 bundles of sweet grass to compensate for misuse of Crazy Horse’s name to market alcoholic beverages. Crazy Horse’s estate and the Crazy Horse Defense Project had pursued an apology and damages in the courts for eight years. The 32 Pendleton blankets symbolized the 32 states in which the malt liquor was distributed, and the 7 horses represented the number of breweries Stroh’s owned after it acquired G. Heileman. The apology and compensation were delivered on April 26, 2006 during a three-and-a-half hour late-afternoon ceremony at Sinte Gleska University, in Mission, South Dakota, on the Rosebud Reservation. After Eugene Stroh of the brewery’s founding family finished reading a formal apology, he handed a Pendleton blanket and a twist of grass to Seth Big Crow, administrator of the Crazy Horse estate. A drum rumbled “and a standing ovation rolled like a slow wave through the crowd,” according to a report in the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader. Big Crow held high the letter of apology for all to see. “Oh man, it’s a beautiful day,” he said (“One Brewing Company,” n.d.). Big Crow said that when Stroh offered traditional gifts to honor the Lakota principle of restoring harmony, “I told him today, you have won the hearts of the … Sioux Nations.” After Big Crow had given away the horses and blankets, Crazy Horse’s descendants wrapped a star quilt depicting a horse’s head with eagle feathers in the mane around Stroh’s shoulders. “This is a historic victory in the battle to protect the name of Crazy Horse and the cultural property of all tribes,” said Phyllis Tousey Frederick of the Crazy Horse Defense Project. “This settlement recognizes the important role of Tribal Customary Law in protecting indigenous intellectual property and sends a strong message that people cannot just take Indian cultural property and use it without permission” (“One Brewing Company,” n.d.). “While this settlement is cause for celebration we remind everyone that the big battle with Hornell Brewing, and Ferolito, Vultaggio & Sons (the makers of AriZona Iced Tea Products) continues and these defendants are liable for both culturally appropriate and monetary damages,” said Frederick. “We must continue to put public pressure on these companies to get them to stop making Crazy Horse Malt Liquor and where possible efforts must be intensified” (“One Brewing Company,” n.d.). FURTHER READING Allen, Paula Gunn. “Does Euro-think Become Us?” in Barbara Alice Mann, Daughters of Mother Earth. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006, 1–28. Badwin, Don. “Opposition to Indian Mascots Mounts.” Associated Press, November 6, 2000 (in LEXIS). Banks, Dennis, Laurel R. Davis, Synthia Syndnor Slowikowski, and Lawrence A. Wenner. “Tribal Names and Mascots in Sports.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 17 (April 1993): 1–33.

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Barrientos, T. “A Chief Beef: Some Teams Still Seem Insensitive to Indians.” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 16, 2002, n.p. BeDan, M. “International Eye Drawn to ‘Fightin’ Whities’; Protest of Mascot for Eaton High School ‘Has Kind of Snowballed.’” Rocky Mountain News, March 15, 2002: 12-A. Benedict, Michael. “Protesters Block Traffic along University Avenue.” Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, October 7, 2000a, n.p. Benedict. Michael. “UND: Another Voice; Faculty Group Gives Kupchella Petition Urging Nickname Change.” Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, November 9, 2000b, n.p. Benintende, B. “At Least They Didn’t Call Themselves the ‘Ragin’ Caucasians.’” La Jolla (California) Light, March 2002, n.p. Bondy, F. “Intramural Name Pales by Comparison.” New York Daily News, March 14, 2002: 76. Boyle, Francis. “The Racist Mascot from Urbana-Champaign: Why You Should Boo Illinois.” CounterPunch. March 30, 2005. . Brewer, John, and Kevin Harter. “Indian Mascots Back in Debate; Schools Still Resisting Request for Change.” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 16, 2006: n.p. Bright, William. “The Sociolinguistics of the ‘S-Word’: ‘Squaw’ in American Place Names.” Unpublished paper. University of Colorado, n.d. Bruchac. Marge. “Reclaiming the Word ‘Squaw’ in the Name of the Ancestors.” NativeWeb. November 1999. . Bulwa, Demian. “Tomahawk Chop the Indian Mascots.” Daily Californian (University of California–Berkeley), October 20, 1995, n.p. Calnan, Christopher. “Faculty Votes to Retire Mascot.” Roanoke Times, November 8, 2000, n.p. “Campus Scout: The Fighting Whities.” Daily Illini (University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign), April 2, 2002, n.p. Carley, William M. “Is Chief Noc-a-Homa Racist? Many Indians Evidently Think He Is.” Wall Street Journal, January 27, 1972: n.p. Connolly, Mark R. “What’s in a Name? A Historical Look at Native American–Related Nicknames and Symbols at Three U.S. Universities.” Journal of Higher Education 71, no. 5 (2000): 515–47. Cornelius, Coleman. “Fightin’ Whites Fund Scholarships: T-Shirt Sales Reap $100,000 for Indians.” Denver Post, December 1, 2002. . Cowen, Cara, and B. J. Boyd. “‘Scalp the Indians’ from a[n] American Indian Perspective.” Daily O’Collegian (Oklahoma State University), September 27, 2005. . Darst, K. “Protesters Seeing Red.” Longmont (Colorado) Daily Times-Call, May 20, 2002, n.p. Davis, Laurel. “Protest against the Use of Native American Mascots: A Challenge to Traditional American Identity.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 17, no. 1 (1995): 9–22. Doclar, Mary. “Protests Cause Reassessment of Dallas Schools’ Indian Mascots.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, December 5, 1998. <www.aistm.org/1998mascot.articles.htm>. Else, John F. “Indian Mascot Ban Needn’t Be Difficult.” Omaha World-Herald, December 18, 2005: 9-B. Fawcett, Melissa Jayne. The Lasting of the Mohegans. Part I: The Story of the Wolf People. Uncasville, CT: The Mohegan Tribe, 1995.

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“Fighting Whities.” The Geekery: Biased and Unbalanced News. March 11, 2002. . “‘Fighting Whities’ Make a Statement; American Indian Students Try to Raise Awareness of Stereotypes.” Philadelphia Daily News, March 12, 2002. <www.utpjournals.com/ simile/issue9/JohansenX4.html>. Fisher, Jim. “Killing a Bad Name Gives Birth to Many Good Ones.” Lewiston (Idaho) Morning Tribune, October 23, 2005: 3-F. Frueling, Charles, and C. Richard King. “‘Playing Indian’: Why Native American Mascots Must End.” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 9, 2001. <www.thepeoplespaths. net/Articles2001/ Springwood-King011109Mascots.htm>. Garner, J. “‘Whities’ Mascot about Education, not Retaliation; Intramural Basketball Team Takes Shot at Indian Caricature Used by Eaton High School.” Rocky Mountain News, March 12, 2002. <www.utpjournals.com/simile/issue9/JohansenX4.html>. Giago, Tim. “NCAA Mandate Shines Spotlight on Demeaning Indian Mascots.” Omaha World-Herald, August 22, 2005: 7-B Good, O. S. “School’s Nickname Fuels Fury; American Indians March against ‘Reds’ Moniker.” Rocky Mountain News, May 20, 2002. . GOPUSA, Colorado. “Bringing the Conservative Voice to America.” 2002. . Gormley, Michael. “State Commissioner to Take a Stand on Indian Mascots, Names.” Boston Globe On-line, October 28, 2000. . Gugliotta, Guy. “A Linguist’s Alternative History of ‘Redskin’; Term Did Not Begin as Insult, Smithsonian Scholar Says; Activist Not So Sure. Washington Post, October 3, 2005: A-3. . Harjo v. Pro-Football, Inc. “Citation: 1999 WL 329721. “The Trademark Trial and Appeals Board, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.” April 2, 1999. . Harjo, Suzan Shown. “The N.C.A.A. Is Learning What It’s Like to Be Indian.” Indian Country Today, August 11, 2005: n.p. Harjo, Suzan Shown. “Respect Indian Women—Stop Using the ‘S’ Word.” America Is Indian Country. Ed. Jose Barreiro and Tim Johnson. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2005. 170–72. Hofmann, Sudie. “The Elimination of Indigenous Mascots, Logos, and Nicknames: Organizing on College Campuses. American Indian Quarterly 29, no. 1–2 (Spring 2005): 156–77. “Indian Mascots: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed.” Editorial. Asheville (North Carolina) Citizen-Times, September 30, 2000. . Johansen, Bruce E. “Mascots: Honor Be Thy Name.” Native Americas 18, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 58–61. Johansen, Bruce E. “Putting the Moccasin on the Other Foot: A Media History of the Fighting Whities.” Studies in Media and Information Literacy Education 3, no. 1 (2003). <www.utpjournals.com/simile/issue9/JohansenX1.html>. Johansen, Bruce E. “‘Squawbles’ in Minnesota.” Native Americas 13, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 4. King, C. Richard. “Borrowing Power: Racial Metaphors and Pseudo-Indian Mascots.” The New Centennial Review 4, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 189–209.

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King, C. Richard. “Defensive Dialogues: Native American Mascots, Anti-Indianism, and Educational Institutions.” Studies in Media and Information Literacy Education 2 (2002). <www.utpjournals.com/simile/issue5/king1.html>. King, C. Richard. “De/Scribing Squ*w: Indigenous Women and Imperial Idioms in the United States.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 27, no. 2 (2003): 1–16. King. C. Richard. “It’s a White Man’s Game: Racism, Native American Mascots, and the NCAA.” Popmatters. September 29, 2005. . King, C. Richard, and Charles F. Springwood. Beyond the Cheers: Race as Spectacle in College Sports. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001a. King, C. Richard, and Charles F. Springwood, eds. Team Spirits: Essays on the History and Significance of Native American Mascots. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001b. King, C. Richard, Ellen J. Staurowsky, Lawrence Baca, Laurel Davis, and Cornell Pewewardy. “Of Polls and Race Prejudice: Sports Illustrated’s Errant ‘Indian Wars.’” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 26 (2002): 382–403. LaDuke, Winona. Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming. Boston: South End Press, 2005. Lapchick, Richard E. “Hank Aaron Steps Up to the Plate on the Use of Native American Names and Mascots in Sport.” Special to the Sports Business Journal. Northeastern University Center for Study of Sport in Society. n.d. <www.bus.ucf.edu/sport/cgibin/site/ sitew.cgi?page=/news/articles/article_10.htx>. Ledbetter, J. “Cantankerous Caucasian Fights Back.” Destin (Florida) Log, March 8, 2002, n.p. Limbaugh, Rush. “The Cutting Edge: Go Whities!!!” March 12, 2002. <www.utpjournals. com/simile/issue9/Johansenfulltext.html>. Lucas, Phil. “Images of Indians.” Four Winds: The International Forum for Native American Art, Literature, and History, Autumn 1980: 69–77. Maxim, B. “Stereotyping of Native Americans: Links and Commentary from My CryptoAnarcho-Libertarian Perspective.” March 17, 2002. <www.utpjournals.com/simile/ issue9/JohansenX4.html>. Migoya, D. “Mascot Foes March into Eaton; Fightin’ Reds Protest Given Quiet Response.” Denver Post, May 20, 2002, n.p. Millard, H. “Fightin’ Whities—Pale Faces Want ‘um T-Shirts, Not Blankets.” New Nation News. 2002. . Morrison, Clarke. “Education Key to Fighting Negative Ethnic Stereotypes.” Asheville (North Carolina) Citizen-Times, September 26, 2000. . “The Motorcycle Company Needed an Indian Sidekick.” Dallas Morning News, September 26, 1999. <www.indiantrademark.net/t07Media/index.html>. “Mr. Cranky Rates the Movies: Iris.” Comment posted by Mister-Mucus. March 12, 2002. . National Education Association. 2000–2001 Resolutions. n.d. . Nevard, David. “Wahooism in the USA; A Red Socks Journal.” n.d. . Newsradio WOOD 1300. “Daily Buzz Results.” 2002. .

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“Next Stop Qochyax Island.” Associated Press, October 12, 2005 (in Lexis). Ochoa, J. “Eaton Calls in Security for Mascot Rally.” Greeley (Colorado) Tribune, May 18, 2002. . “One Brewing Company Settles Lawsuit with the Family of Crazy Horse and Rosebud Sioux Tribe.” Message from the Estate of T’Sunka Witko. n.d. May 3, 2006. . Page, Clarence. “The ‘Fighting Whites’ Offer Lesson in Cultural Diversity.” Newsday, March 19, 2002: A-32. Pomerantz, Gary. “Atlanta Fan’s Headdress Ruffles Indian Feathers.” Atlanta JournalConstitution, October 21, 1995, n.p. Preusch, Matthew. “Erasing ‘Squaw’ from Maps Goes Slowly.” NDN News, October 2, 2005, B-1. . Resolution of the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs. June 9, 2000. . Rodriguez, Roberto. “Plotting the Assassination of Little Red Sambo.” Black Issues in Higher Education 15, no. 8 (1998): 20–24. Romero, Simon. “A Town with a Provocative Name Says No to Change.” The New York Times, November 13, 2005. . Schmitt, Eric. “Battle Rages over a 5-Letter Four-Letter Word.” The New York Times, September 4, 1996: A-16. Spindel, Carol. Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy over American Indian Mascots. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Spindel, Carol. “Racism and Ignorance.” Inside Higher Education, August 9, 2005. . “Team Chooses a White Man as Its Mascot.” Boulder (Colorado) Daily Camera, March 11, 2002, n.p. “The T. Rex Essay: The Fighting Whities.” March 25, 2002. . Vassilaros, D. “Political Correctness Off-base on Mascots.” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, March 17, 2002. . Wampum Chronicles Message Board. Fighting Whities. n.d. <www.wampumchronicles. com>. Wegner, Jonathan. “Honor or Insult?” Omaha World-Herald, October 2, 2005: D-1, D-2. White, R., J. Messner, and C. Cuny. “Fighting Whites: Everythang’s Gonna Be All White.” Fighting Whites Home Page. May 2002. . “‘Whities’ on the Court; Insult Doesn’t Work if Name Doesn’t Hurt.” Editorial. Omaha World-Herald, March 13, 2002: 6-B. Wise, Tim. “Darken Up, A-Hole: Reflections on Indian Mascots and White Rage.” Counterpunch. August 10, 2005. . Wood, Peter. “The Diversity Bowl: No Admittance to the Abusively Named.” National Review, August 23, 2005. . Woods, Keith. “Nicknames & Mascots: Complicity in Bigotry.” JournalismList. August 17, 2005.

Volume 2 Legal, Cultural, and Environmental Revival

CHAPTER 1

Cast among the Living Dead: Banishment Is Back

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raditionally, many Native American societies did not incarcerate people who violated social norms. They had several methods of social control: ridicule, restitution, and banishment. Ridicule could take the form of gentle teasing of an adolescent who had behaved in a socially unacceptable manner to intense ridicule for an adult who had committed a more serious offense. Serious crimes, such as murder, were punished by banishment. Survival on the northern Great Plains without the group was difficult. Banishment could become a death sentence. Banishment involves loss of social and family connections as well as—in today’s societies—health, housing, and education benefits; Native rights to fishing and hunting; burial rights; and cash payments made to members of some tribes that earn large casino profits. Some Indians say banishment, though seemingly harsh, must be viewed through the prism of tradition. It avoids bloodshed and reflects tribes’ community values. “It’s out of desperation,” said Doug George-Kanentiio, who is a journalist for News from Indian Country, a national newspaper, and a member of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), which has maintained banishment customs. “They could either reinforce the ancestral discipline, or they go the American route, which has proven to be a failure” (Kershaw and Davey, 2004). Banishment once turned unwanted members of Native American nations into a caste of the so-called living dead. Such retribution, sometimes in starkly personal terms, played a role in serious crimes, especially murder. An extremely antisocial person might be exiled from the community to a near-certain death in the wilderness. Banishment often was viewed as worse than execution, because a person without a community often ceased to exist as a human being. A growing number of Native peoples across North America, grappling with rises in drug and alcohol abuse, gambling, poverty, and violence, have revived banishment in varying forms in the last decade.

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BANISHMENT REVIVED Banishment was used as an experimental punishment at least once in the 1990s. In Everett, Washington, two Tlingit teenagers, Simon Roberts and Adrian Guthrie, were sentenced to 18 months’ banishment on an island off the southeastern coast of Alaska by state judge James Allendoerfer after the teens were convicted of severely beating a pizza delivery man. Before the sentence was completed, however, Judge Allendoerfer ordered the two boys to prison in the Shelton, Washington, state correctional center. Guthrie was sentenced to 31 months and Roberts to 55 months. An 80-minute documentary film, Eagle and the Raven, profiled the story of the two Native American Tlingit teenagers. After spending a year in county jail for robbery and assault in 1993, the teenagers were brought home to Klawock, Alaska, to stand before a people’s court. In an unprecedented action that became a focus of international news, the young men were ordered to spend 12 to 18 months exiled on separate isolated islands, a punishment based on Tlingit tradition. The film showed the first visitors the banished teenagers had seen in their time of exile and following visits. The film gives a rare look at the young men’s struggles and healing processes. It also depicts the rare and untold stories of the Natives of this part of Alaska through the eyes of many of its elders (George Amiotte Video Series, n.d.). At least 7 of Minnesota’s 11 Native bands (all either Ojibwe or Dakota) by 2004 had implemented banishment-type laws (“American Indians Resort,” 2004). Native American polities were turning to banishment in part because federal law does not allow their courts to impose sentences of more than a year in jail and a $5,000 fine (“Some Indian,” 2004). In most cases, reservation court offenders are allowed to defend themselves and to petition for reinstatement. The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe recently utilized banishment for the first time in around seventy-five years, casting out two young members for starting fights and causing other trouble on their Minnesota reservation. Some reservation leaders argued that banishment simply relocated local problems elsewhere. Others worried that the punishment could be misused to silence political opponents. That was one reason Minnesota’s Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe decided not to revive the banishment in the late 1990s (“American Indians Resort,” 2004). In fall 2003, the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota banished a non-Indian accused of bringing drugs onto the reservation. A tribal prosecutor said it was only the second time in his 13 years that the band had banished someone (“American Indians Resort,” 2004). BANISHMENT FOR DANGEROUS BEHAVIOR A superior court judge in Alaska has upheld the right of a Native village to banish a dangerous resident and to obtain an order from a state court to enforce the banishment. In a short, scathing decision, Judge Peter Michalski refused to dissolve an injunction he had issued in 2001 at the request of the Native Village of

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Perryville, a small Alutiiq community about 200 miles southwest of King Salmon on the Pacific coast of the Alaska Peninsula. According to a report in the Anchorage Daily News, “The injunction backed a village tribal court resolution banishing John Tague, a local man with a long history of alcohol-fueled violence against other villagers. It said Tague could not return to Perryville without first getting permission from the local council or the Superior Court” (Toomey, 2003). The state called the banishment and Michalski’s injunction illegal and demanded he vacate it. A letter from Assistant Attorney General Dean Guaneli went so far as to threaten to defy any court orders in the case. Michalski said that the state’s objections were based on “incorrect information” and an “incomplete understanding of the facts” (Toomey, 2003). “The law allows a tribe to ‘regulate the internal affairs of its members,’” Michalski wrote, quoting from John v. Baker, a controversial 1999 Alaska Supreme Court decision recognizing the sovereignty of Native courts within the state (Toomey, 2003). In addition, the judge said, the state is not a legal party in the case and can not seek dismissal of the injunction. “We’re very happy with the decision,” said Anchorage attorney Sam Fortier, who represented Perryville. Michalski described banishment as a very difficult decision for the Perryville council (Toomey, 2003). Tague was raised in Perryville and had been banned for violent behavior in 1997 but allowed to return in 1998. In 1999, he committed a string of assaults that landed him in jail once again. This time the village council, sitting as a tribal court, took testimony from victims and issued the formal banishment. Concerned whether Alaska state troopers would enforce a Native court’s resolution, the Perryville council sent Fortier into court in Anchorage to get a supporting injunction. Michalski issued it in March 2001 (Toomey, 2003). According to the Anchorage Daily News account, “In January 2003, Tague flew into Perryville, coincidentally on the same plane as a trooper headed for the village on other business. The council showed the injunction to the trooper and asked him to make Tague leave. After many phone calls between law enforcement agencies, the trooper served an updated injunction on Tague, who agreed to leave if the village bought his ticket, which it did. About two months later, according to Michalski, “The state of Alaska, unaware of some facts underlying the Perryville resolution, the relationship of Mr. Tague to Perryville, the history of his conduct in Perryville, and perhaps even the serendipity of a trooper being available to perform constabulary duties, expressed concern about the propriety of the court’s provision of injunctive relief” (Toomey, 2003). BANISHMENT TO COMBAT DRUG SALES AND USE When the leaders of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe signed an agreement with the federal government creating the Red Lake Indian Reservation in 1889, they successfully resisted the federal effort to allot land to individuals, thereby avoiding the loss of common lands to non-Indian real estate speculators. They also permanently banned the sale and consumption of alcohol within the reservation’s

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borders (Mosedale, 2004). Despite the ban, alcohol abuse has continued to be a problem in the north-central Minnesota community of approximately 6,000 people. As with other reservations that ban alcohol use (notably Pine Ridge in South Dakota), border towns supply the booze at a handsome profit. In recent years, other drugs, mainly crack cocaine and methamphetamine, have provoked a crime wave on the reservation. In February 2002, a homeless, crack-addicted woman broke into the home of 68-year-old George Stately. The woman proceeded to beat Stately with a hammer, slit his throat, and set fire to his house, all for a $50 rock of crack cocaine (Mosedale, 2004). Jim White, a member of the Red Lake Tribal Council, said that Stately’s murder might have been prevented if law enforcement authorities had dealt with the reservation’s drug dealers more quickly and effectively. Jurisdictional issues impeded that. Major crimes at Red Lake fall under the U.S. Attorney’s office, where cases often linger for years. Red Lake’s courts possess only limited authority; the maximum penalty is only one year in the reservation jail. In December 2003, the Red Lake Tribal Council amended its Prohibited Drug Crimes Code, authorizing tribal judges to banish offenders. Judges were allowed to banish band members from the reservation for any of a number of drug offenses. Although the revised ordinance passed by a unanimous vote, some critics worried that it could be implemented unfairly. For years, tribal officials at Red Lake and elsewhere had issued orders banishing non-band members from reservations, and complaints are common (Mosedale, 2004). The banishment ordinance has been used for reasons other than drug use. Clara NiiSka, a non-Indian writer who lived with her husband at Red Lake for almost twenty years, was banished by order of a former tribal chairman following a dispute over the probate of her husband’s estate. For NiiSka, the banishment felt “like a social death penalty,” under which she had scant opportunity for appeal. With the expansion of such punishment now extending to members, NiiSka worried about the prospect of civil rights being violated. “It sets off warning bells,” NiiSka observed. “This is a part of a nationwide movement among tribal attorneys to systematically expand the powers of tribal courts,” she asserted (Mosedale, 2004). The banishment law is open to abuse, NiiSka believes: “It could be used by those drug dealers who have good political connections on the tribal council to eliminate the competition” (Mosedale, 2004). SMUGGLING AND BANISHMENT AMONG THE LUMMI Use of illegal drugs also has influenced attitudes toward banishment on the Lummi reservation of northwestern Washington, where the Noland family has struggled for many years with abuse of alcohol, painkillers, and, more recently, crack. Seven family members have been jailed, several for dealing drugs, on and off Lummi land. Their experience has been repeated hundreds of times on the desperately poor reservation of 2,000 Lummi, where, according to a New York Times report, “addiction and crime have become pervasive” (Kershaw and Davey, 2004).


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To combat drug sales and abuse, the Lummis returned as a last resort to banishment. The Lummi then set about evicting the residents of households in which someone is charged with any drug-related crime. The Lummis’ court issued orders to banish five of the Nolands’ young men who had been in jail and another who had been released. Yevonne Noland, the matriarch of the Noland clan, also was evicted from her house on the reservation because her son, a convicted drug dealer, was listed on the lease. Although banishment was not being used when Yevonne Noland’s nephews and her son Robert Zamora committed their crimes, she acknowledged that the threat might have deterred them. Still, she said, the punishment is too brutal. “Spiritually, it’s going to take your insides and turn them inside out,” she said (Kershaw and Davey, 2004). “We need to go back to our old ways,” said Darrell Hillaire, chairman of the Lummis’ council, shortly before an early-morning meeting on the reservation about the tribe’s new campaign against drugs. “We had to say enough is enough” (Kershaw and Davey, 2004). Support for the eviction policy was not shared by all the Lummis. “Would we propose taking someone’s food or water?” asked Perry Adams, vice chairman of the council. “It is a human right, and for us to turn housing into a form of policing, I think we’ve gone too far. I think we had good intentions, but does the tribe really have the right to take away membership in the nation?” (Kershaw and Davey, 2004). By the time they turned to banishment to combat drug abuse, Lummi leaders estimated that at least 500 residents of the reservation (about 25 percent of the population) were addicted to painkillers, methamphetamine, or heroin; many others were alcoholics. Violence, made worse by frequent use of guns, plagued many neighborhoods. Some babies were being born addicted to drugs. Yevonne Noland’s 15-month-old grandniece died in 2002 of an overdose after eating an OxyContin pill that had been dropped on the ground (Kershaw and Davey, 2004). The loss of that baby was a turning point, some leaders said. The rising number of drug- and alcohol-related deaths was filling the Lummi cemetery, which runs along a winding road that hugs Bellingham Bay. The road itself is a cemetery of sorts, lined with flowers marking spots where drunken drivers had crashed and died. Until a few years ago, Bellingham Bay and surrounding waters ran thick with salmon, providing natural wealth that made the Lummi, known as “People of the Sea,” one of the most successful fishing peoples. With the number of salmon shrinking and the unemployment rate on the reservation rising rapidly, many former fishermen turned to dealing drugs, especially the prescription painkiller OxyContin. Lummi leaders in 2004 estimated that the annual value of the drug trade on the reservation had surpassed $2 million, more than the Lummi earned from fishing (Kershaw and Davey, 2004). Kay Commodore was stripped of her Lummi membership and banished from the reservation after she was convicted of drug trafficking in 1992. Commodore, then 67, served three years in prison but said banishment was worse. She was allowed on the reservation only to visit a plot of land she owns. She was forbidden

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to visit family members. “They’re taking away a piece of who I am,” Commodore said. “I can go out to my land, but I can’t stop and see anybody—that’s the thing that hurts me” (“Some Indian,” 2004). Eugenia Phair, a Lummi who was 26 in 2006, smuggled OxyContin over the Canadian border from the Scottish Lodge Motel, 13 miles south of the border near the Lummi reservation, “with its stained carpets, its stench of vomit and stale cigarette smoke, its bathroom sink smudged with burn marks from the crack-cocaine cooks who had used the room before” (Kershaw, 2006). For several years, Phair became rich with drug money. She sold painkillers to everyone, including Lummi government officials. Until she was caught, Phair said that drug dealing “Was almost an answer to your prayers” (Kershaw, 2006). She was selling up to $30,000 worth of pills each day and clearing up to half of that in profits. A single pill might sell for $80. Phair was familiar with evading the law; she had a long record of felony convictions for robbery, burglary, and possession of stolen property before she served time for drug trafficking. Phair employed 12 to 15 Indian women at a time who worked as mules, buying OxyContin in Vancouver, British Columbia, hiding the pills in condoms in their vaginas at the border. Phair was released on February 6, 2006, after serving 20 months in state prison. “If you came from rags and then you had a chance at riches, wouldn’t you choose riches? If you lived your whole life in poverty and then you had a chance to be rich, what would you do? It’s almost impossible. I never had anything ever, no new clothes, no school-clothes shopping, no nothing at all. Then you’re able to have your kids go to a good school and look nice and fit in. I never fit in.” She recalls growing up eating so-called commodity food: noodles and cheese, peanuts, canned peaches, and fruit cocktail. White children at school called her “Lummi Dummy” (Kershaw, 2006). Phair sold OxyContin to parents of a two-year-old who later died after eating the pills off a carpet. She said that the parents later tried to sell the dead baby’s clothes to her for more pills, and she refused. “I almost puked when they talked to me.” She added, “That’s when I wanted to quit. That made me physically sick. That’s sick. I said, ‘Your baby just died,’ and they didn’t care. They didn’t even really fathom it; they didn’t think anything was wrong” (Kershaw, 2006). The child’s death provoked the Lummi government to enact strict laws to banish drug dealers. Phair faced banishment herself, which would prevent her from working for the tribe, living on the reservation, or receiving financial assistance. Following her conviction, Phair was assigned to dig up the bones of ancestors found during the construction of a waste-treatment plant. EXILE AT GRAND PORTAGE Even in places such as Grand Portage, Minnesota, where violence and drugs are not yet rampant, Chippewa leaders have turned to banishment. Chippewa lands are policed by county law enforcement officers, but when a crowd got out of hand


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during summer 2003, people on the reservation demanded more than an arrest by the sheriff and county criminal charges. “We see ourselves here as kind of a big family, and so we needed to be part of the solution,” said Norman W. Deschampe, council chairman (Kershaw and Davey, 2004). Some 350 members of the Grand Portage Chippewa band live near Lake Superior in trailers and duplexes along roads rarely crossed in the winter except by tourists headed to the local casino and truckers headed southward to Duluth. Life is mostly quiet, and many front doors are not locked. Car keys often remain in ignitions. One Saturday night in July 2003, however, a group of people drove up to nearby Mount Maude and wound up talking, drinking, and fighting. Along the way, some pulled knives, vandalized cars, and made death threats. Within days, a crowd packed into a council meeting, demanding change (Kershaw and Davey, 2004). That night, the council unanimously voted to remove a mother, her two grown sons, and a family friend in connection with the fight and began writing a long resolution adding exclusion to the band’s rules. Under the new rules, people could be banished for membership in a gang, selling drugs, harming the band’s cultural items, disrupting a religious ceremony, unauthorized hunting or fishing, or if they had been banished from another reservation. John Morrin, a member of the Grand Portage council, said that he struggled with the banishment, Mille Lacs band’s first in about 75 years. He favored reconciliation, not rejection. “This was a hard thing to do if you care about people,” said Morrin, who ultimately voted to banish the woman and her family, even though he said he was related to them. The banished woman, Jacquelyn Jackson, lived wherever she could. Sometimes she slept on a cot in an elderly friend’s shabby apartment near downtown Duluth. Other times, she spent the night in a pile of blankets inside a tent in a dark basement of a relative’s girlfriend’s house (Kershaw and Davey, 2004). Jackson admitted that she behaved very dishonorably that summer night when she was drunk and violent. She asserted, however, that the punishment was too severe. Jackson lost her subsidized duplex on the reservation. “That’s my land, too,” Jackson said. “I’ve never been homeless in my life. I’m never homeless. But I guess I am.” “I cry every night because I want to go home,” she said. “I miss that place so bad” (Kershaw and Davey, 2004). Grand Portage’s Deschampe said that banishment is “a process we can use” to deal with certain offenders. The National Tribal Justice Resource Center has no count of how many tribes recently have adopted or revived banishment laws. Numbers are on the rise. At least 7 of Minnesota’s 11 Indian bands—all are either Ojibwe or Dakota—either have passed or have used banishment-type laws within the past decade (“Some Indian,” 2004). BANISHMENT FOR ILLEGAL BUSINESS PRACTICES AT ONONDAGA In a democratic process more ancient than the U.S. Bill of Rights, the Council of Chiefs on the Onondaga Nation banished three members of the Nation for

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violation of their laws and for jeopardizing the Nation’s working relationships with County and New York State officials (Onondaga Nation, 1994). Kenneth Papineau and Veronica Beckman, proprietors of Smoke Signals, and Oliver Hill Jr., owner of OR’s Fuel, were formally stripped of their membership in the Onondaga Nation. Their rights, property, and protection under the ancient Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Law of Peace were removed. The exiled former Onondagas had failed to follow Onondaga and Iroquois limits on legal business practices as they stashed millions of dollars in hidden funds. A fourth person, Donald Rockwell, of Drive In Cigarettes, could not be found to be served and his banishment edict (Onondaga Nation, 1994). “Over the past six years,” according to a press release from the Onondaga Nation, “the four have defied the Council and the people of the Onondaga Nation by setting up businesses on Indian land claiming exemption from Federal and New York State laws and taxes. The four sought to avoid New York State laws and taxes by hiding behind Onondaga national sovereignty. When the Council initiated the lengthy Indian judicial process to impose discipline on these errant members, the four responded with violence against Council Chiefs and Clan mothers, destruction of Indian property, defiance of tribal customs, and authority, and numerous legal actions—all to overturn the Onondaga traditional system of rule” (Onondaga Nation, 1994). The authority of the Onondaga to operate as a nation stems from the Constitution of the Haudenosaunee called the Gaiannenh sa go:nah, the Great Law of Peace, adopted about 1,000 A.D. The United States recognized the Haudenosaunees’ independent national status in the Canandaigua Treaty of November 11, 1794, signed by President George Washington with the Onondaga and their six neighboring nations composing the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy. Article 7 of this treaty provides the process for dealing with illegal business dealings (Onondaga Nation, 1994). The centuries-old practices of the Onondagas required extensive face-to-face consultation, counseling, negotiation, open discussion, fair notification, offers of reconciliation, and consensus of the entire community before the extreme step of banishment. “Even parents and members of their own families supported the Council of Chiefs in its final action of removing the lawbreakers from their midst,” according to the Onondaga Nation (1994). Federal and state laws have long recognized the exemption of Indian territory from taxation and have endorsed this practice as a means of providing economic incentives for development of environmentally compatible business and industry on Native American lands. The business must be operated according to recognized Indian customs and authority, and profits are to be shared with whole Indian community—a practice consistent with Native American culture (Onondaga Nation, 1994). “In recent years,” according to the Onondagas, the temptation of enormous profits from tax-free sales of cigarettes, fuels, and other products, as well as gambling casinos, has “created open rebellion by certain greedy Indians who are willing


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to deny their own families and culture to profit.” With the Onondagas and their compatriots in the confederation, the decision to enter these businesses is democratically decided by a consensus vote of the whole Indian community. “Unfortunately,” according to the Onondaga council, “unscrupulous politicians, and ‘businessmen’ with questionable connections, smelling the possibility of new revenues got into the act and seek to make deals with Indians willing to sell out their own people…. The Onondagas have watched with dismay as states exert great leverage by using gaming compacts to breach Indian sovereignty. Some Native American groups have seen their culture and social structure destroyed with the introduction of casino gambling” (Onondaga Nation, 1994). “Without the protection of Onondaga sovereignty,” the Nation’s press release continued, “Papineau, Beckman, and Hill, fall into the hands of county, state and federal criminal investigators [vis-à-vis] numerous violations of business, environmental, criminal, and tax laws” (Onondaga Nation, 1994). BANISHMENT AT AKWESASNE The Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (the Canadian-side government) in 1999 adopted a banishment law after five years of debate and deliberation. Like many others, it was adopted to deal with growing drug dealing and (in this case, because of Akwesasne’s position on the United States-Canada border) smuggling. The law was fashioned “in a manner consistent with our natural and historic heritage … using our traditional principles and practices to address a newly emerging problem” (Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, 2005, 3). The process creates a group of people independent of police agencies to warn the offender and encourage self-rehabilitation. Banishment is initiated only after these requests have fallen on deaf ears. The first banishment hearing was held in 2005, regarding Frank Roundpoint, who was serving a six-year sentence in a Kingston, Ontario, prison for conspiracy to traffic marijuana. Roundpoint was compelled to settle his status under the banishment law because Canadian law allows Native prisoners’ release to their traditional communities after serving half of a prison sentence. Roundpoint was compelled to prove that he would be allowed to return to Akwesasne. The first banishment hearing under the law was held on September 19, 2005, before a crowded courtroom as Roundpoint read a statement expressing regret. A few individuals, including Jake Swamp, a traditional leader at Akwesasne, spoke on Roundpoint’s behalf. No one advocated his banishment. BANISHMENT OF NON-INDIANS FOR OFFENSIVE BEHAVIOR Taos Pueblo officials banished Tito Naranjo, a professor of Native American studies at the University of New Mexico Taos campus, after he allegedly caused “irreparable harm” to a sacred tradition by publishing an account about it in a newspaper essay contest. According to the Native American Times, Naranjo “witnessed a Taos Pueblo deer dance and says he was so moved by the ceremony that

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he felt he had to share the experience with others. “Naranjo knew that publishing the article could spark a negative response from Taos Pueblo officials. Still, he declined to acquire permission to submit the essay, which won first place in the adult category, with a $100 prize. ‘I thought … Taos Pueblo is gonna disagree, am I gonna be a wimp, or am I gonna write about this?’ said Naranjo” (Adson, 2004). Leaders of the Taos Pueblo accused Naranjo of using tribal religious activity (the deer dance) “for self promotion by writing an essay of a sensitive activity for publication” (“Sacred Dance,” 2004). The banishment order, signed by former Taos Governor Allen Martinez, stated that Naranjo, who was married to a woman from Taos Pueblo, could be arrested if he was found on Taos Pueblo land. Taos Pueblo includes about 1,200 members near the city of Taos, about 110 miles northeast of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In his defense, Naranjo asserted that the only way to preserve the pueblo’s oral traditions was to write them down and record the sounds of the dance. “Young tribal members are watching television instead of doing community work,” he said. “CD-ROM will record the entire language of the elders and preserve precise intonations and authenticity of the language for future generations” (“Sacred Dance,” 2004). Taos officials countered that written accounts could provoke exploitation of their sacred ceremonies (Adson, 2004). FURTHER READING Adson, Candice. “Taos Pueblo Essay Leads to Banishment; Ancient Punishment Meted Out.” Native American Times, February 10, 2004, n.p. “Alaska Governor Fighting Tribe’s Banishment Order.” Anchorage Daily News, November 3, 2003. . “American Indians Resort to Banishment; Banishment, Long Regarded As the Ultimate Punishment Among American Indians, Is Making a Comeback.” ABC News. January 2, 2004. George Amiotte Video Series. n.d. May 10, 2004. . Hoebel, E. Adamson. The Law of Primitive Man. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954. Kershaw, Sarah. “Dizzying Rise and Abrupt Fall for a Reservation Drug Dealer.” The New York Times, February 20, 2006. . Kershaw, Sarah, and Monica Davey. “Plagued by Drugs, Tribes Revive Ancient Penalty.” The New York Times, January 18, 2004. . Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. Press release. Indian Time, September 29, 2005: 3, 5. Mosedale, Mike. “The Longest Goodbye: Red Lake Tribal Leaders Fight Drugs with Banishment.” Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages, January 7, 2004. . NiiSka, Clara. “Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Hears Arguments in Penn Banishment Case.” Native American Press/Ojibwe News, February 21, 2003., n.p.


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Onondaga Nation. “Onondaga Nation Banishes Three Law Violators; Council of Chiefs Offers Cooperation to State Officials.” Press release, July 2, 1994. . “Sacred Dance Essay Prompts Tribal Banishment.” CNN.com. February 6, 2004. . “Some Indian Tribes Bring Back an Old Punishment: Banishment.” CNN.com. January 2, 2004. . Toomey, Sheila. “Judge Upholds Tribal Court’s Banishment of Dangerous Villager; Michalski Refuses State Demand to Vacate Injunction,” Anchorage Daily News, November 20, 2003. .

CHAPTER 2

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: The Curious Conviction of Leonard Peltier

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knew Leonard Peltier slightly before he was convicted of killing two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He was running an auto-repair shop on the grounds of El Centro de la Raza in Seattle (profiled in volume 2, chapter 4). In recollection, he did not seem, to me, like a cop killer. In fact, he seemed to have an affable manner and a ready smile, not the kind of guy you would find on a wanted poster at the post office. So how has Leonard Peltier come to spend most of the last three decades in various federal prisons, made an object lesson by the FBI? How did Peltier and his fellow members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) come to confront FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler at the Jumping Bull ranch in June 1975 in a face-off that started over a stolen pair of boots? Why, with several dozen unsolved murders on the reservation, was the FBI chasing a pair of purloined boots? How is it that both sides were bristling with armaments in a place that was experiencing a murder rate higher, per capita, than that of Detroit (at the time, the murder capital of the United States)? How did the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation come to experience a political murder rate (again, per capita) as high as or higher than that of Chile under the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet during the same years? Seeking answers to these questions, in 1976 I became a member of Peltier’s first defense committee; amazed by what I found, I became the first journalist to air the castle of legal fantasy that the FBI built around Peltier in an article for The Nation on October 1, 1977 (Johansen, 1977, 304–07). He had been framed then, and he remains framed now. Even after an extensive tour of the U.S. federal judicial system, a campaign by Amnesty International (which declared him a political prisoner), and petitions signed by tens of millions of people around the world, Peltier remains in prison.

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BULLET HOLES IN THE WALLS An activist in AIM during the 1973 confrontation at Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier (Anishinabe, born in 1944) was caught in a shootout with FBI agents and state police at the Jumping Bull ranch on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on June 26, 1975. Two unmarked cars chased a red truck onto the ranch, which was housing several families being defended by AIM. The agents opened fire on the ranch and its residents, who fired back in self-defense. Within minutes, more than 150 FBI SWAT-team members, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) police, and Pine Ridge police surrounded the ranch, and a fierce, largely one-sided, firefight erupted. (A year later, I visited the abandoned ranch house with Roberto Maestas and listened to the wind whistle through several hundred bullet holes in the walls.) Peltier later was convicted of killing two FBI agents, Ronald Williams and Jack Coler. A Native man, Joe Stuntz, aged 23, also died of a shot to the head by an unidentified government agent’s sniper bullet that day. Like the murders of several dozen other Native people on the reservation during those tumultuous years, the FBI did not investigate Stuntz’s death. Peltier’s initial trial, which was held in Fargo, North Dakota, federal district court in 1977, has since become the focus of an international protest movement aimed at obtaining a retrial. The conviction of Peltier was a textbook example of a manufactured verdict, a major reason that Amnesty International declared Peltier a political prisoner. On October 15, 1985, the government admitted in open court that it did not have proof of who killed the two agents. The road to conviction is paved like this: fake evidence, find a compliant judge, and drill the faux evidence into the heads of a non-Native jury, meanwhile denying the defense even the pretense of fair treatment. The facts have not changed in thirty years, and Leonard Peltier is still serving two life terms in prison for the purported murders of Williams and Coler. Even after the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in November 2003, acknowledged that “Much of the government’s behavior at the Pine Ridge Reservation and in its prosecution of Mr. Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed.” Even after 30 years, the FBI still does not have sufficient evidence to show that Leonard Peltier was the trigger man. Another person, in fact, has confessed to the murders, but not in a manner that made his identification or capture convenient for the FBI. Leaders of 25 Native nations have called on the U.S. government to give Peltier a new trial. Ernie Stevens Jr., speaking for the National Congress of American Indians, said, “Many people have asserted that Leonard does not have support. Well, you have heard today’s examples of support, and I represent the National Congress of American Indians—and we have drafted several resolutions of support of clemency for Mr. Peltier. Those represent more than 250 Indian Tribes of the United States” (Robideau, 2005). The Assembly of First Nations in Canada has not only drafted support for Peltier, but has also offered him shelter and work.

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Don Edwards, a former congressman from California for more than thirty years (and a former FBI agent), said, “I wish to speak out strongly against the FBI’s efforts in opposing the clemency appeal of Leonard Peltier. I served as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights in the U.S. House of Representatives” (Robideau, 2005). THE FORGED AFFIDAVITS Following the shootout at the Jumping Bull ranch, Peltier escaped to Canada knowing that he would never get a fair trial in the United States. He was captured in Canada on February 6, 1976, and extradited to the United States. Peltier was tried before an all-white jury in a Fargo, North Dakota, federal district court before a hostile judge, Paul Benson. The FBI created a climate of fear during the proceedings to convince jurors that Peltier was a terrorist. Even before Peltier’s trial started, however, the prosecution’s case began to fall apart. Discovery proceedings produced an affidavit, signed by government witness Myrtle Poor Bear, dated February 19, 1976 (before two others known to the defense, dated February 23 and March 31), which said that the woman had not been on the scene of the June 26, 1975, gun battle in which the two FBI agents had been shot to death. This information, contained in an affidavit that had not been sent to Canada by the U.S. government during Peltier’s extradition hearing, contradicted the other two statements attributed to Poor Bear. More important, Poor Bear herself recanted. On April 13, out of earshot of the jury, Poor Bear told the court (having been called by the defense) that she had never seen Peltier before meeting him at the trial. Furthermore, Poor Bear said that she had not been allowed to read the three affidavits implicating Peltier in the murders that bore her name and that FBI agents David Price and Bill Wood had threatened physical harm to herself and her children if she did not sign them. Judge Paul Benson refused to let the jury hear Poor Bear’s testimony, ruling it irrelevant to the case. The next day, the judge changed his mind and ruled the testimony relevant but still would not let the jury hear it. He ruled this time that Poor Bear’s testimony was prejudicial to the government’s case and, if believed, could confuse the jury. Prosecution testimony, which occupied the first five weeks of the trial, ranged far afield from events on the day of the shootings. The prosecution was allowed to bring up extraneous charges against Peltier on which he had not been tried and testimony that ran counter to the federal rules of evidence. The defense’s planned two weeks of testimony was reduced to two-and-a-half days by Judge Benson, who limited defense testimony to events directly connected with the shootings themselves. Virtually every time the defense challenged the government, and before every attempt by the defense to present its case, Benson had the jury removed from the courtroom. In essence, the jury never heard the defense’s complete case.

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THE IMPOSSIBLE SIGHTING The only evidence that directly linked Peltier to the killings of Coler and Williams (other than that fabricated in Poor Bear’s name) came from Frederick Coward, an FBI agent who said he had recognized Peltier from a half-mile away through a seven-power rifle sight. The defense team replicated the sighting and found that the feat was impossible through such a sight at such a distance, even for a person with excellent vision. In court, defense attorneys offered to duplicate their experiment for the jury, so that its members could judge for themselves the veracity of the FBI agent’s statement. Judge Benson refused the request. “Finally,” said Bruce Ellison, a member of the defense team, “we brought in someone from a gun shop, who said that an idiot could tell you that it is impossible to recognize someone, even someone you know, from a half-mile away through a seven-power sight” (Johansen and Maestas, 1979, 114). The prosecution, its eyewitness testimony in dispute, linked Peltier to the use of an AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle, which was not introduced as evidence because it had been blown apart during a Kansas freeway explosion on September 10, 1975. FBI Agent Evan Hodge testified at the Fargo trial that the AR-15 was the weapon used to kill Agents Williams and Coler. The weapon tested by Agent Hodge, however, did not match the ballistic evidence. That weapon, alleged by the government as having been used by Peltier, did not kill the agents. Nonetheless, the prosecution used this weapon in court as a prop in its argument to convince the jury that Peltier shot Williams and Coler at point-blank range. The prosecution also asserted that Peltier’s thumbprint had been found on a bag containing a gun belonging to one of the dead agents. The bag and the gun were found on November 14, 1975, after the two men police described as Peltier and Dennis Banks had escaped their dragnet near Ontario, Oregon. Banks had eluded capture during the FBI dragnet that followed the Pine Ridge shootings for which Peltier was convicted. Banks went underground before receiving amnesty from Jerry Brown, governor of California. Banks then earned an associate of arts degree at the University of California–Davis and during the late 1970s helped found and direct Deganawidah-Quetzecoatl University, a Native-controlled college. After Jerry Brown’s term as California governor ended, Banks in 1984 was sheltered by the Onondagas on their reservation near Syracuse, New York. Three Native juveniles also testified that they had seen Peltier at the scene. Each of them also testified, under cross-examination, that their testimony had been coerced by the FBI. One of them, Mike Anderson, testified that he had been threatened with beating. Another, Wish Draper, said that he had been tied and handcuffed to a chair for three hours to elicit his statement. The third, Norman Brown, swore that he was told that if he did not cooperate he “would never walk the Earth again” (Johansen and Maestas, 1979, 115).


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DEMANDS FOR A NEW TRIAL Following his conviction, Peltier became the object of a growing popular movement demanding a new trial. Peltier’s request for a new trial was rejected by the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court (in St. Louis, Missouri) in 1978; his appeal also was declined by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978 and 1986. In the meantime, Peltier’s support spread to the Soviet Union and Europe. In the Soviet Union, by 1986, an estimated 17 million people had signed petitions in his support. Peter Matthiessen’s In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1991) was readied for publication in the early 1980s, making a case for Peltier’s innocence. The publisher, Viking, withdrew the book after former South Dakota Governor William Janklow threatened to sue for libel over passages in the book that linked him to the rape of a young Native American woman. Bootlegged copies of the book began to circulate, and it was published in 1991 after Janklow’s case was dismissed by the South Dakota Supreme Court. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse presents, in an epilogue appended after the book had been suppressed for eight years, a case that Peltier was not the murderer of the two FBI agents. In an interview, a Native man known only as “X” confesses to the murders. In the meantime, the FBI had withheld from the public 6,000 pages of documents on the case, for reasons the agency associated with national security. During the 1980s and 1990s, as Peltier’s appeals for a new trial were denied several times by U.S. federal courts, he was serving two life terms at Marion Federal Penitentiary in Illinois and at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas, developing his talents as an artist, creating posters, paintings, and designs for a line of greeting cards that were sold nationwide. Peltier’s case also became the focus of the feature film Thunderheart (1992) and a documentary, Incident at Oglala (1992). Peltier’s case came to the attention of Amnesty International and the government of Canada, from which Peltier was extradited to face trial on the basis of the Poor Bear affidavits. Peltier’s appeals were directed by several well-known legal personalities, including former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and attorney William Kunstler. His third appeal for a new trial was turned down by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals (St. Paul, Minnesota) in 1993, exhausting his remedies within the United States legal system. PELTIER AND THE AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT When he was put on trial, Leonard Peltier was a longtime activist in AIM at a time when the group was actively being infiltrated and subverted by the FBI. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the 1975 shootout took place, also had been the scene of several dozen unsolved murders, many of them with political overtones. The FBI is charged with investigating major crimes on Indian reservations. Members of AIM charged that murders of its members were being ignored by federal officials as they armed themselves. In 1968, AIM was formed in Minneapolis to resist selective law enforcement policies (and brutality toward American Indians) on the part of the Minneapolis police.

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Initially, an Indian patrol was established to follow police in Native American neighborhoods. Arrest rates of Native Americans declined to the general average in the city within nine months after the AIM patrols were introduced. Chapters of AIM formed nationwide over the next few years, amid considerable publicity, as the group’s best-known cofounders, Dennis Banks and Russell Means, confronted authorities time and again. Banks produced a remarkable memoir with coauthor Richard Erdoes that recounted in rich detail and with occasional wit his life from his birth on the Leech Lake Reservation in 1937 through the activist 1970s (Banks and Erdoes, 2004). Banks’s early life was typical of many Native American men of this generation: his youth on a reservation, the “silent terror” of boarding school, frequent drinking and jail time, and a stint in the armed forces. By 1968, Banks and other founders of AIM were ready for fundamental change. The book concentrates on the years 1968 through 1975, beginning with AIM’s founding to resist police abuse of Native Americans in Minneapolis, through the takeover of BIA headquarters in 1972 and the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. The years 1973 through 1976 were spent mainly on the run or under arrest, especially following the shootout at Pine Ridge in 1975. The ability of AIM to focus attention on specific issues was accentuated by its high media profile. For example, AIM became involved in Gordon, Nebraska, early in March 1972 following the discovery of the body of Raymond Yellow Thunder, a 51-year-old Lakota Sioux from Pine Ridge. On the evening of February 12, during a Saturday night dance in the Gordon American Legion Hall, Yellow Thunder was stripped of his pants and pushed into the hall while the dance was under way. Eight days later, two young boys found his body in the cab of a pickup truck in a Gordon used car lot. An autopsy attributed his death to a cerebral hemorrhage. He had been dead for more than two days. Sheridan County attorney Michael V. Smith called the incident at the American Legion Hall a very cruel practical joke. On March 7, more than a thousand Indians converged on Gordon from across Nebraska and South Dakota to protest Yellow Thunder’s death. After a march down Main Street, the Indians, including Means and Banks, went to the town hall to hear testimony of police brutality and harassment. Led by AIM, American Indian activists protested several other killings of American Indians in South Dakota and Nebraska as well. THE TRAIL OF BROKEN TREATIES The focus of American Indian activism and nationalism was defined during a journey across the United States in 1972 to protest the fact that numerous historical treaties between the United States and Native Americans had been broken by the U.S. government. The caravan protest was followed, during the last week of the 1972 national presidential election, by an occupation of the BIA headquarters in Washington, DC (Deloria, 1974) During summer 1972, Hank Adams, a leader of indigenous fishing-rights struggles in Washington State, and Banks met in Denver to plan the Trail of


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Broken Treaties caravan. Banks, a Chippewa who was born on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota in 1932, and Russell Means became familiar faces to television news viewers as the two most easily recognizable leaders of AIM. Participants in the Trail of Broken Treaties sought to marshal thousands of protesters across the United States to dramatize issues related to American Indian self-determination. Caravans assembled in Seattle, a center of fishing-rights activism, and in San Francisco, the site of the American Indian occupation of Alcatraz Island between 1969 and 1971. The two groups merged in Minneapolis, the birthplace of AIM. Here, the group issued its Twenty Points, a document that sought to revive Native American sovereignty. Among other things, the Twenty Points advocated the repeal of the 1871 federal statute that ended treaty making, the restoration of treaty-making status to native nations, the establishment of a commission to review past treaty violations, the resubmission of unratified treaties to the Senate, and the elimination of all state jurisdiction over American Indian affairs. The Trail of Broken Treaties caravan moved on to Washington, DC. Upon its arrival on November 3, 1972, the protesters learned that there was not enough lodging. In his memoir, Ojibwa Warrior (2004), Banks wrote that the marchers had not planned to take over the BIA headquarters building at the conclusion of the Trail of Broken Treaties. The decision was made, however, after the participants learned that the only lodging available to them in Washington, DC, was a rat-infested church basement. The protesters decided to stay in the BIA building for several hours until security guards sought to remove them forcibly. At that point, events turned violent. The protesters seized the building for six days as they asserted their demands that Native sovereignty be restored and immunity be granted to all protesters. Files were seized and damage was done to the BIA building (AIM leaders asserted that federal agents had infiltrated the movement and had done most of the damage). On November 8, 1972, federal officials offered immunity and transportation home to the protesters. The offer was accepted, and the crisis was resolved for the moment. A few months later, however, many of the same themes were sounded as AIM occupied the hamlet of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The Trail of Broken Treaties, the occupation of Wounded Knee the next year, and another nationwide march, the Trail of Self-Determination in 1976, all served to raise awareness of Native American treaty rights throughout the United States. These events occurred during a decade when Native Americans were asserting their treaty rights, often in federal courts. For example, during this period Native Americans in Washington State obtained rights to half the salmon returning to Washington coastal waters in United States v. Washington (commonly called the Boldt Decision). Native Americans in Maine argued for enforcement of the federal Nonintercourse Acts (which forbade land sales without approval of the federal government during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), resulting in settlements that restored land and provided cash for economic ventures.

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THE OCCUPATION OF WOUNDED KNEE, SOUTH DAKOTA The tiny hamlet of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the site at which more than 200 Sioux and others were massacred in 1890, became a symbolic site again as members of AIM occupied the site in 1973. They quickly were confronted by armored troops and police. The 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee began on February 28, 1973. On March 11, 1973, AIM members declared their independence as the Oglala Sioux Nation, defining its boundaries according to the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868. At one point, federal officials considered an armed attack on the camp, but the plan ultimately was discarded. Dennis Banks and Russell Means, AIM’s bestknown leaders, stated that they would hold out until the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had reviewed all broken treaties and the corruption of the Bureau of Indian Affairs had been exposed to the world. After much gunfire and negotiation, AIM’s occupation of Wounded Knee ended on May 7, 1973. Providing food for a community of several hundred people under siege was a continual problem. Some food was smuggled through police lines, but fresh meat was acquired on the hoof. Writing in his memoir, Ojibwa Warrior (2004), Banks noted that occupants of Wounded Knee rustled cattle from local ranches. Most of the AIM leaders were urban people, however, who had to learn quickly how to process meat on the hoof. The struggle between AIM and Pine Ridge tribal chairman Richard Wilson also was taking place within the realm of tribal politics. Wilson had a formidable array of supporters on the reservation, many of whom criticized AIM for being urbanbased and insensitive to reservation residents’ needs. When Wilson sought reelection in 1974, Means challenged him. In the primary, Wilson trailed Means, 667 votes to 511. Wilson won the final election over Means by fewer than 200 votes in balloting that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights later found to be permeated with fraud. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission recommended a new election, which was not held. Following the occupation of Wounded Knee, Banks and Means were charged with three counts of assault on federal officers, one charge each of conspiracy, and one charge each of larceny. Banks and Means, facing five charges each, could have been sentenced to as many as 85 years in prison. For several months in 1974, a year after the occupation of Wounded Knee, the defense and prosecution presented their cases in a St. Paul, Minnesota, federal court. On September 16, Judge Fred J. Nichol dismissed all charges. The judge said that the FBI’s agents had lied repeatedly during the trial while under oath and had often furnished defense attorneys with altered documents. Judge Nichol said that R. D. Hurd, the federal prosecutor, had deliberately deceived the court. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation,” said Judge Nichol, “has stooped to a new low” (Johansen and Maestas, 1979, 91). To the chagrin of the judge and jurors, the Justice Department responded by presenting Hurd with an award for superior performance.


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The occupation of Wounded Knee by Native American activists had a profound impact on non-Indians, as news of the conflict spread worldwide through the media. The occupation had a major effect on U.S. culture: a book by Dee Brown, titled Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), became an international best-seller. At the 1973 Academy Awards, held as Wounded Knee was being occupied, Marlon Brando refused to accept his Oscar to protest the treatment of American Indians. The publicity of AIM’s protests reached Hollywood on Oscar night early on March 27, 1973, as Sacheen Littlefeather (the stage name of a movie actress and activist) rejected an Academy Award on behalf of Marlon Brando. Brando refused the Oscar for best actor in The Godfather to protest the movie and television industries’ misportrayal of American Indians and to emphasize grievances associated with the ongoing occupation of Wounded Knee. Littlefeather actually was Maria Cruz, a woman of mixed ancestry (Apache, Yaqui, Pueblo, and Caucasian). MARLON BRANDO REJECTS AN OSCAR At the awards ceremony, Littlefeather said, “Marlon Brando … has asked me to tell you, in a very long speech which I cannot share with you presently—because of time [the producer had given her only 45 seconds]—that he … very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award…. I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will, in the future … our hearts and our understanding will meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of Marlon Brando” (“Sacheen Littlefeather,” 1973). A few people in the audience applauded, but many more jeered until Littlefeather walked off the stage. Later in the evening, Clint Eastwood wondered whether he should present the award for best picture “on behalf of all the cowboys shot in John Ford Westerns over the years,” and Raquel Welch said, “I hope the winner doesn’t have a cause,” before announcing the winner of the best actress Oscar. Cohost Michael Caine criticized Brando for “Letting some poor little Indian girl take the boos,” instead of “[standing] up and [doing] it himself” (“Sacheen Littlefeather,” 1973). After the ceremony, Littlefeather shared the text of Brando’s statement with the press. Brando said that although he did not wish to “offend or diminish this occasion, I do not feel that I can, as a citizen of the United States, accept this or any award…. The motion picture community as much as anyone has been responsible for degrading the Indian” (“Sacheen Littlefeather,” 1973). Brando said of American Indians, “We murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember” (Brando, 1973). PINE RIDGE POLITICAL MURDERS The killings of FBI agents Williams and Coler, for which Peltier was convicted, occurred at a time when the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation had been turned into

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an armed camp by supporters and opponents of tribal chairman Richard Wilson. Wilson’s police answered his detractors by increasing assaults on his opponents, examples of which were described in a chronology of murders between 1973 and 1976 kept by the Wounded Knee Legal Defense-Offense Committee. One of the Guardians of the Oglala Nation’s (GOON’s) favorite weapons was the automobile. Officially, such deaths could be reported as traffic accidents. Between 1973 and 1976, Pine Ridge experienced a higher per capita murder rate than any U.S. urban area. Following the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, more than sixty AIM members and supporters were killed on and near the Pine Ridge Reservation for political reasons. The reservation became an armed camp, with many of the political murders carried out by the tribal government’s militarized police GOON squad. During this period, there was essentially no law enforcement or prosecution of the murders. Pine Ridge tribal police supported tribal chairman Wilson (Oglala Lakota, 1936–1990) against the occupiers of Wounded Knee. From the early 1970s until his defeat for the chairman’s office by Al Trimble in 1976, Wilson outfitted a tribal police force that was often called the “goon squad.” This police force, which took GOON to mean Guardians of the Oglala Nation, was financed with money from the federal government. The local context of the occupation included an effort to publicly confront Wilson’s policies, which often favored non-Indian ranchers, farmers, and corporations. Using only these documented political deaths, the yearly murder rate on Pine Ridge Reservation between March 1, 1973, and March 1, 1976, was 170 per 100,000. By comparison, Detroit, the reputed murder capital of the United States, had a rate of 20.2 per 100,000 in 1974. The U.S. average was 9.7 per 100,000, with the range for large cities as follows: Detroit, 20.2; Chicago, 15.9; New York City, 163; Washington, DC, 13.4; Los Angeles, 12.9; Seattle, 5.6; and Boston, 5.6. An estimated 20,000 persons were murdered in the United States in 1974. In a nation of 200 million persons, a murder rate comparable to that of Pine Ridge between 1973 and 1976 would have left 340,000 persons dead for political reasons in one year; 1.32 million in three. THE DEATH OF ANNA MAE AQUASH On February 24, 1976, Roger Amiott, a rancher, found Anna Mae Aquash’s body near Wanblee, in the northeastern section of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Dr. W. O. Brown, a pathologist who performed autopsies under contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, arrived the following day. After examining the body, Brown announced that the woman, who still had not been officially identified, had died of exposure to the brutal South Dakota winter. The FBI decided that the only way to identify the woman was to sever her hands and send them to the FBI’s crime laboratories in the Washington, DC, area. Agents on the scene reasoned that the body was too badly decomposed to take


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fingerprints at Pine Ridge. Ken Sayres, BIA police chief at Pine Ridge, would say later that no one had been called to the morgue to attempt identification of the body before the hands were severed. A week after the body was found, Aquash—now missing her hands as well as her identity—was buried at Holy Rosary Catholic Cemetery, Pine Ridge. On March 3, the FBI announced Aquash’s identity. Aquash’s family was notified of the death on March 5. They did not believe that she had died of natural causes. At 32 years of age, Aquash had been in good health and was trained to survive in cold weather. She did not drink alcohol or smoke tobacco. Her friends remembered that she had smuggled food past federal government roadblocks into Wounded Knee during another brutal South Dakota winter, almost three years to the day before her body had been found. A new autopsy was demanded. In the midst of the controversy, Aquash’s body was exhumed. Her family retained an independent pathologist, Dr. Gary Peterson, of St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Peterson reopened the skull and found a .32-caliber bullet, which he said had been fired from a gun placed at the base of Aquash’s neck. The bullet was not difficult to find; “It should have been discovered the first time,” Peterson said (Johansen and Maestas, 1979, 106). According to an account in the Washington Star on May 24, 1976, Dr. W. O. Brown, the BIA coroner, when asked about the bullet he had not found, replied, “A little bullet isn’t hard to overlook” (Johansen and Maestas, 1979, 106). Following identification of Aquash’s decomposed body, the Canadian government and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights demanded an investigation. The U.S. Justice Department announced that it would look into the case, but the investigation languished in bureaucratic limbo. Aquash’s friends refused to let her spirit pass away. On March 14, Aquash’s body was wrapped in a traditional star quilt, and several women from Oglala Village mourned her passing for two days and two nights. Twenty-seven years after Aquash’s murder, federal agents on April 2, 2003, arrested a man and charged him with the death. Arlo Looking Cloud, 49, was arrested in Denver and pleaded innocent to a charge of first-degree murder. Looking Cloud worked as a security guard for AIM, checking people at the gates of events and patrolling the grounds, said Paul DeMain, editor of the bimonthly newspaper News from Indian Country. AIM was beset by internal disputes (and was infiltrated by FBI informers) at the time, DeMain said (Walker, 2003). On February 6, 2004, Looking Cloud was convicted of the murder. An investigation by author Steve Hendricks, published in 2006, indicated strongly that Aquash was a victim of so-called snitch jacket tactics by the F.B.I.—the agency did such a good job of convincing AIM leaders of her complicity with them that she was shot by her colleagues (Hendricks, 2006). Even 30 to 35 years after the shootout at Jumping Bull, the FBI is not winning any popularity polls in Indian Country. Witness an electronic poll conducted during late summer and early fall 2005 by Native America Calling and The Native American Times with the question “Who do you think is the greatest Native

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American?” Of the nearly 7,000 votes registered, the most often named person was Leonard Peltier (Greatest Native American Poll, 2005). Peltier may become eligible for parole in 2008, but any attempt to release him will be opposed strenuously by the FBI. Institutional memory—even forged memory—dies hard. For the same reason, the U.S. Army still insists, officially, that the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 was a battle—that or revoke nearly two dozen Medals of Honor it awarded for its soldiers’ conduct there. History still awaits justice at Pine Ridge. FURTHER READING Banks, Dennis, and Richard Erdoes. Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. Brand, Johanna. The Life and Death of Anna Mae Aquash. Toronto, ON: Lorimer, 1978. Brando, Marlon. “The Godfather: That Unfinished Oscar Speech.” The New York Times, March 30, 1973. . Churchill, Ward, and Jim Vander Wall. Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret War against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. Boston: South End Press, 1990. Deloria, Vine, Jr. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties. New York: Delacorte, 1974. Greatest Native American Poll. “Native America Calling and The Native American Times.” October 15, 2005. . Hendricks, Steve. The Unquiet Grave: The F.B.I. and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006. Johansen, Bruce. “Peltier and the Posse.” The Nation, October 1, 1977: 304–07. Johansen, Bruce E., and Roberto F. Maestas. Wasi’chu: The Continuing Indian Wars. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979. Josephy, Alvin, Jr. Red Power. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971. Matthiessen, Peter. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. New York: Viking, 1991. Robideau, Bob. “Is He a Reporter, Crime Fighter, or Peeled Apple? Paul Demain and the F.B.I.” September 28, 2005. <www.noparolepeltier.com/rob.pd>. “Sacheen Littlefeather Refuses Brando’s Oscar.” News of the Odd. March 27, 1973. . Walker, Carson. “Man Is Arrested in Activist’s Death.” Associated Press in IndigenousNew [email protected], Listserv, April 2, 2003. Weir, David, and Lowell Bergman. “The Killing of Anna Mae Aquash.” Rolling Stone, April 7, 1977: 51–55.

CHAPTER 3

Grandfathers of Akwesasne Mohawk Revitalization: Ray Fadden and Ernest Benedict

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n the recent history of revitalization among the Akwesasne Mohawks, two names stand out: Ray Tehanetorens Fadden and Ernest Kaientaronkwen Benedict.1 Both established educational organizations that revitalized cultures when most people were talking about the so-called vanishing race. Their efforts presaged today’s emphasis on multicultural education and Native self-determination by several decades. Benedict was born during 1918 at Akwesasne, where the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs’ office is currently located, next to the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Council offices.2 He was born on what some might consider the U.S. side of Akwesasne. He currently lives on what some refer to the Canadian side. Benedict, who believes that Akwesasne is one community despite the arbitrary external borders that have been overlaid upon this ancient community, is one of the Akwesasne Mohawks’ most influential elders, a key figure in the birth of Akwesasne Notes during the 1960s. The journal was born around his kitchen table. The Notes office utilized a cabin outside of Benedict’s house and initially was published in his house. Hearing that a Canadian Indian boarding-school student had frozen to death as he tried to walk home, Benedict during the late 1960s decided to create a new way to deliver Native American education. The result was the Native North American Travelling College, which brought culturally relevant schooling to many Canadian reserves via caravan. Benedict’s traveling college was part of a wave of new approaches to dealing with old problems among the Akwesasne Mohawks. Ray Fadden, for example, created new venues of education for Native young people when he became dissatisfied with the offerings of the Boy Scouts. His family also built its own museum as an alternative to institutional offerings. Benedict initiated many other self-determination efforts, such as starting the St. Regis Indian Health Service on the U.S. portion of Akwesasne.

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During the last half of the twentieth century, Ray Fadden (who was born in 1910) was a principal figure in the revitalization of Mohawk language and culture. First as founder of the Mohawk Counselor Organization during the 1940s, then the Six Nations Indian Museum in the 1950s, Fadden and his family have taught many hundreds of Mohawks and other Iroquois the value of their heritage. Fadden also has been very active in environmental and wildlife preservation in the Adirondacks. “If you kill the forest, you kill your own grandchildren,” he has said (Barreiro, 1984, 5). Fadden is a living legend to many who know him. Said Ron LaFrance, an Akwesasne Mohawk who was one of Fadden’s students, “He has been father, grandfather, teacher, and friend to three generations of Mohawks” (Barreiro, 1984, 4). RAY FADDEN AS LIVING LEGEND In spoken and written accounts of Ray Tehanetorens Fadden’s life, the phrase living legend occurs many times. Fadden himself displays little of the ostentation that might expand to fill such a phrase, however. An adopted (naturalized) Akwesasne Mohawk, he and Christine Fadden have raised a family of artists and teachers who have inculcated heritage and culture into many hundreds of Iroquois and others. During his long and productive life, Fadden has had the air of a man with no time to consider his own importance. He has been a person driven by his sense of what is right and necessary. “Ray,” wrote Doug George-Kanentiio, one of his students, “initiated a cultural revolution among the Mohawks by giving them reasons to be proud of who they were.” “Ray stripped away the negative image American schools have used when referring to Indians. He led his students on amazing journeys throughout eastern North America where they visited historical sites. Met other Native people and came to appreciate the creativity and determination of their ancestors” (George-Kanentiio, 1997). Fadden also explored methods of multicultural education a half-century before they became popular. “We would get in his old beat-up panel truck and travel all over—museums, reservations, Indian burial sites—you name it—anywhere there were Indians or some Indian history, Mr. Fadden would take us,” said Ron LaFrance, one of his students in the 1950s (Barreiro, 1984, 4). Beginning during the 1940s, Fadden told his students to research Iroquois history and create charts describing Native American contributions to the world. They thereby learned that Native Americans have had a profound effect on all of humanity. From agriculture to political science, Native peoples have transformed the way people eat and how they think, whether it is eating corn in an isolated village in Tibet or exercising democracy in the U.S. Congress. RAY FADDEN’S EARLY YEARS Ray Fadden was born on August 24, 1910, at the farmhouse of his grandfather Henry Fadden, who lived by hunting and blacksmithing as well as farming five

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miles east of the hamlet of Onchiota, New York, in the northeastern Adirondack Mountains. Henry Fadden’s lineage was primarily Scottish, reaching back to John McFadden, who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1729, the family’s first immigrant to America. A descendant married Rebecca Williams, who may have been Mohawk, according to genealogical research by John Kahionhes Fadden, Ray’s son. According to John, Ray had some Native blood in his veins along with the Scottish. The fact that he would marry a Mohawk and become adopted (naturalized) at Akwesasne made him Mohawk to the people who knew Ray Fadden best. Ray grew up in Onchiota and elsewhere in New York. His father, Carroll Fadden Sr., who worked as a cable-splicer for the telephone company, often traveled around the state with his family, including mother Matilda. Ray began collecting Indian artifacts as a young boy and completed his first piece of beadwork when he was 12 years old. His schooling was varied, including an informal education in the ways of the forest from his grandfather during long summer days in the Adirondacks. The elder Fadden, who sometime during the late 1800s had lived among the Menominees in the Midwest, told his grandson Ray, “Don’t believe the stuff they tell you about the Indians. Most of it is lies” (Fadden, c. 1985). This observation, along with a deep, heartfelt affinity with the mountain forest, was a legacy from his grandfather that was indelibly etched in Ray’s mind and soul. As a teenager, Ray traveled to various Native American communities throughout New York and became friends with elders from those communities. He also visited most of the museums throughout the state to view their collections of Native artifacts. During his travels, Fadden met Arthur C. Parker, a noted Seneca museum curator and authority on the Iroquois, with whom Ray struck up a lasting friendship that continued until Parker’s passing in 1955. Ray also was educated in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) history and culture by Jesse Lyons of Onondaga as well as the Tuscarora George Nash. A TEACHER’S LIFE Fadden attended Fredonia Normal School, graduating in 1934 with a degree in teaching, after which he assumed a teaching position at an elementary school on the Tuscarora Reservation, near Lewiston, New York. During this time he met Christine Chubb, a young woman from Akwesasne who was living with her family in Niagara Falls, New York. Ray and Christine were married in October 1935. While at Tuscarora, Ray became friends with Clinton Rickard, founder of the Indian Defense League of America. Ray worked with Rickard and a Mohawk from Ohsweken, David Hill, on various projects. The Indian Defense League focused on Iroquois Confederacy members’ rights to pass freely over the United StatesCanada border in accordance with provisions in the Jay Treaty (signed in 1794) as well as other agreements between the United States and Great Britain. Ray and Christine moved to the Akwesasne reservation in 1938, where Ray taught at the Mohawk school in Hogansburg and began his life’s work helping

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revive the Akwesasne Mohawks’ culture. In late December 1938, Christine gave birth to their only child, John. An Eagle Scout, Fadden during the early 1940s established the first Boy Scout troop at Akwesasne. When he sensed prejudice in the larger organization, Ray founded his own youth group, which awarded dressed feathers instead of merit badges and visited historic Iroquois sites. The Akwesasne Mohawk Counselor Organization sought to educate Mohawk children in woodcraft, Native American history, and Mohawk traditions and in so doing to enhance their self-image. Ray took the club members to various locations throughout the northeast to view actual sites that were historically significant in Iroquois history. “Under Ray’s tutelage,” George-Kanentiio said, “a Native boy or girl was never the same. They went from his classrooms holding their heads high and wellprepared to become leaders in their own right” (George-Kanentiio, 1997). Fadden also instructed his students in the ways of other cultures, taking special note of Africa from the days of slavery to persistent media stereotypes of recent years. Under Ray Fadden’s guidance, the students sought out elders to learn Haudenosaunee oral tradition. With elders’ help, Fadden’s students learned “the significance of wampum belts while making facsimile belts. They learned how to build different structures because elders taught them to build these structures, mostly in miniature. They learned to make clothes and headdresses by being taught to make them. These were all skills that were on the verge of dying out in the communities” (Jennings, 1998, 166). Fadden intended to infuse members of the Akwesasne Mohawk Counselors Organization with a knowledge base that would allow them to be employable as cultural ambassadors, primarily as Adirondack region summer-camp counselors, to correct negative stereotypes of Native American people. He also was concerned with enabling Native young people to draw on their own culture for economic self-sufficiency. Some did become self-sufficient this way, especially in jewelry making, as multimedia artists, and in education as museum and film consultants (Jennings, 1998, 166). The counselors collected and shared information with each other. With Fadden’s help, they then wrote their findings and collections in narrative form, producing illustrations where necessary. Some information was published in pamphlets, some in charts and drawings. These publications were then sold to produce revenue for the organization. By 1948, the Six Nations Cultural Historical Series included 26 pamphlets and 37 charts (Jennings, 1998, 167). According to one observer, “Multicultural education [today] regards as new theory and pedagogy the theory and teaching methods Fadden was prevented from using in the public school system in the 1930s and 1940s. Even in today’s political climate, however, his use of multiple learning style approaches, his observation and subsequent application of Native instructional methods, his ability to actively involve his students in research and publication, the multiple field trips, and the establishment of a museum collection would be remarkable. The passage of more than fifty years has proven Fadden right: the people will continue” (Jennings, 1998, 171–72).


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In those days, Ray was very agile; he could sneak up on a deer and swat it across the rear end. “The deer thing, by the way, just happened once,” remarked John. “The wind was blowing from the deer to Dad, and the sun was low in the sky behind Dad. He moved slowly and very quietly toward the deer. The deer wiggled its tail just before it looked up and around, and that’s when Dad froze. Eventually, he made it to the deer, and slapped it on the rump. The deer jumped into the air, bounded away, jumped a fence, jumped back over the fence, then over the fence again, and finally disappeared into the woods at a fast pace” (Fadden, 2003). THE SIX NATIONS INDIAN MUSEUM OPENS On land received from Ray’s parents, the structure housing the Six Nations Indian Museum was built with pine cut by Fadden. First opened to visitors in 1954, the museum initially was built to house a large number and variety of gifts given to Ray while he was teaching, beadwork, gustowehs (Iroquois chiefs’ headgear), and educational charts that Ray Fadden had manufactured. Ray left the St. Regis Mohawk School in 1957 and began teaching seventh-grade science at the Saranac Central Junior High School in fall of the same year. He taught at Saranac for a decade, retiring in 1967. Once the museum had been established, Onchiota came to be called “a mountain hamlet, a place that has become a spiritual refuge for the Haudenosaunee” (George-Kanentiio, 1997). Located in a longhouse-style building, the small museum overflows with Iroquois artifacts, beadwork, photographs, and dozens of wall charts depicting Native American history. Built without government grants or foundation support, the museum is a labor of devotion by the Fadden family. Ray Fadden’s son, John, has been joined by his sons Dave and Don, ensuring the museum will continue on well into the twenty-first century. At Onchiota, Ray Fadden met Felix Cohen, who was working as an associate solicitor at the Interior Department. Cohen was the author of the Handbook of Indian Law, first published in 1942, which remains a basic reference in the field more than six decades later. The large-format handbook ran to several hundred pages of small type and could not be easily lifted with one arm. Cohen maintained a summer cabin near the Fadden family home. John recalled that his father and Cohen walked in the woods talking of Native American contributions to general society in the early 1950s as many Native reservations were being terminated and when such things were not in intellectual fashion. Shortly before his death at age 46 in 1953, Cohen wrote of Iroquois contributions to democracy in a seminal essay in The American Scholar (Cohen, 1952) that inspired much study later in the century. “It was out of a rich Indian democratic tradition that the distinctive political ideal of American life emerged,” Cohen wrote. “Universal suffrage for women as well as for men, the pattern of states we call federalism, the habit of treating chiefs as servants of the people rather than their masters, the insistence that the community must respect the diversity of men and the diversity of their dreams—all these things were part of the American way of life before Columbus landed” (Cohen, 1952, 179–80).

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Following his retirement from full-time teaching, Ray continued to work at the museum. He was always available to tell an Iroquois legend, to describe the structure of the Iroquois government, and to point out, with his own brand of seasoned eloquence, that today’s ways of life, particularly in the line of food plants, owes much to the contributions of Native American cultures. Ray maintained an intense affinity with wild birds and animals; people from miles around often brought injured animals to him. During his retirement, he was able to devote more time to preparing and maintaining feeding stations for them. Ravens, blue jays, nuthatches, and chickadees, among others, gathered sustenance at Ray’s sunflower-distribution sites. Occasional raccoons, coyotes, fishers, and other animals also fed at sites built by Fadden. By 2006, the Six Nations Indian Museum housed more than 3,000 items, ranging from a variety of arrowheads to two birch-bark canoes as well as Iroquois pictographs and a 75-foot-long piece of beadwork, all stuffed into four small rooms measuring, overall, 20 feet by 80 feet. Wall displays have crept to the ceilings and floors. “We’ve always been here,” said John, whose three sons and several grandchildren live nearby along Route 30. “I guess we’ll always be here, until the sun goes nova” (Ringwald, 2000, 32). John is a culture bearer and internationally known artist who retired from teaching art at Saranac Junior High School after 32 years. John’s wife, Elizabeth Eva Thompson of Akwesasne, is widely recognized for her wildlife carvings, which include a series depicting Iroquois clans. She devotes considerable care to the collection and, with Christine, oversees the museum shop. John’s three sons have stayed close to home. David is an artist who divides his time between Onchiota and Akwesasne. Donald lives next door and works in the maintenance department of the Saranac Lake Central School District. Dan lives in Saranac Lake and has worked at a nursing home. Ray’s brother, Carroll Fadden Jr., lived nearby, as did several in-laws (Ringwald, 2000, 32). The museum receives 1,000 to 2,000 visitors in an average year. Many are Europeans. At one point, Greylock Discovery Tours brought a busload of English and Scottish tourists. One of John’s favorite groups was a dozen indigenous Siberians from the Lake Baikal region. “We had a lot in common,” he said. “We shared songs and we went out to the council fire and sang for each other. I couldn’t imagine doing that with the British” (Ringwald, 2000, 32). Visitors to the museum receive much more than a casual tour of the premises. Upon entry through the gift shop, visitors are invited to be seated on one of the many longhouse-style benches. Until he retired, Ray, his intense blue eyes behind dark-framed glasses, would sit at his chair, smoking his pipe. “Today,” he might open, “I’m going to correct some of the lies they teach you in school.” Later, John or one of his sons would read, as Ray had done for many years, from a beaded pictograph record belt describing the migration and trials of the Iroquois. If enough interest was apparent in his audience, Ray then delivered a second message describing in considerable detail Native American contributions to the world. If the audience maintained its level of interest, Ray unleashed (no other word exists to describe it) his third and final message, which, according to one


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observer’s description, “Quite frankly sometimes disturbs the more delicate and patriotic American ego. He strips away the veil of lies and half-truths that makes American history palatable to the average American conscience. He reveals the … truth [regarding] the treatment that this continent’s Native peoples received from the American and Canadian governments and its people. He emphasized not only past history but the present as well. His oratory [was] a comparative discourse that spans pre-contact Europe and North American pre-Columbian histories” (Thompson, 1981). The lecture may include, for example, references to Andrew (“Spit on his grave!”) Jackson’s expulsion of the Cherokees from Georgia on the Trail of Tears. “The strength of my father’s delivery has turned some people off,” John said. “In a word, he’s fiery.” Ray Fadden “has a nature of volatile compassion” (Thompson, 1981). Does the presentation ever offend or hurt visitors, even sympathetic nonNatives? “Not as much as non-Natives have hurt Native peoples,” John Fadden said. “He’s angry, and part of the reason he’s angry is that when he was in the schoolroom starting in 1915, teachers said things they would never say now,” explained John (Ringwald, 2000, 31). Ray grew up at a time when some nonIndians still thought of Native peoples as subhuman. BLACK FLIES HAVE RIGHTS, TOO In addition to revitalization of Mohawk culture, the Faddens practice an active stewardship of the Earth; until the early 1990s, Ray fed local wildlife, including many birds and families of local bears, whom he knew as individuals. Visitors sometimes would position themselves in Ray’s screened porch in hopes of glimpsing bears at feeding time. Large parts of Fadden’s lessons were ecological: “Indians didn’t worship trees. They talked to trees, they respected this form of life. The Christian, the European mentality couldn’t understand that. To them trees, plants, animals, even whole mountains had no significance … all of that is believed to be below the human…. Boy, what craziness. I wonder where they got an idea like that. They say, too: Man was created in the image of God. Boy, if I were God I would be insulted. With all the destruction they have caused. How arrogant!” (Barreiro, 1984, 6). “It makes me angry, sad, just frustrated by the stupidity of it all,” he said. “They’re killing everything,” Ray said to all who would listen. “The fools. Every year it gets worse. Every spring I notice it, there is less life in this forest. I can tell. Maybe someone else wouldn’t be able to tell. But I have known these woods all my life. I can see it happening. Every year there is less life, every year fewer insects, fewer small rodents” (Barreiro, 1984, 4). “People!” Ray would say. “They try to play God, and every time they do, they make a terrible mistake. In our woods, what they hate the most is the black fly. We have these black flies here in the Adirondacks. They come out certain times and they bite, they bite hard. Of course, they bother the tourists, so the townships around here, they spray chemicals to kill the black fly. The fools!” Fadden

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raged. The chemical doesn’t just kill the black fly. It kills many kinds of insects, even kills the bees. The bees! How are trees going to pollinate without bees? The small birds—how are they going to survive without insects? The fish, the spiders, the salamanders, the tadpoles—what are they going to eat?” (Barreiro, 1984, 4). “See that little bumblebee? That one is more important to the Creation than the President of the United States” (Barreiro, 1984, 7). At a town meeting, a representative of the chemical company that sprays the forests in the Adirondacks tried to maintain that the chemical aimed at the black flies was harmless to other insects. “I asked him,” Fadden said, “‘Does it kill other insects besides the black fly?’ The man wouldn’t answer. Finally, the man admitted that yes, the chemical killed other insects as well. A woman stood up,” Fadden said. “She said: ‘I don’t care about insects, I just don’t want my children bitten’” (Barreiro, 1984, 4). “Her kids!” exclaimed Fadden. “She is worried about a black fly bite. And for that they wipe out insects. I said, ‘Lady, you destroy the forest life, you kill your own grandchildren’” (Barreiro, 1984, 5). “These people—they’re so myopic,” Fadden said repeatedly. “They are like little children. They focus on one thing, as if you could do that. Something irritates them, so kill it. Kill the black fly, sure.” He raised his finger, tapped his own chest. “Me, I’m for the black fly. I think the black fly has his rights too. I think: If you hate the black fly so much, then don’t come into his home, stay away from the Woods” (Barreiro, 1984, 5). “I worry for the grandchildren,” Ray Fadden said many times. “There is so much confusion among humans today. I only see this small part of the earth,” he said, “but I know it well, and it scares me, what they are doing to the earth. I am living right here and I can see it…. They have the wrong value system; they arrived here on this continent and have never learned to appreciate it. They called us Indian, pagan, savages. But the Indian knew this land, knew how to take from it and how to give back to it. But who will listen now to the old-time Indian thinking? Who will live by the old Indian life values?” (Barreiro, 1984, 5). A DUSTUP WITH THE “DEAN” OF IROQUOIS STUDIES Ray Fadden’s work also led him into occasional intellectual dustups with William N. Fenton (1908–2005), who has been called the dean of Iroquois studies by many of his students. Fenton has had an influence that one observer believes “has been felt by virtually every student of the Iroquois over the past four decades” (Foster, Campisi, and Mithun, 1984, xiii). Fenton parlayed contacts with Seneca informants into a career of federal employment, grants, books, and papers beginning in the 1930s. With the rise of Native American legal and political assertions late in the twentieth century, however, Fenton lost his ties to many contemporary Haudenosaunee, who thought he had betrayed them by publishing photographs of sacred Grandfather (False Face) masks. Fenton lost considerable political respect with the Haudenosaunee by failing to recognize and respect their political and social revival during the last half of the twentieth century. Fenton, acting as an executive officer of the New York State


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Museum in Albany, argued that the Iroquois would not be able to properly maintain or respect the wampum belts, an opinion that angered many Haudenosaunee (Johansen and Mann, 2000, 80–82). Until political context left him no other alternative, Fenton also had opposed repatriation of Haudenosaunee wampum belts. By 1990, the Iroquois were demanding return of their belts at the same time that a national clamor was beginning to rise from many Indian peoples over the return from museums of human remains and funeral objects. Fenton then stoked the coals of Haudenosaunee anger by criticizing Ray Fadden. In a book review, Fenton paternalistically lectured Fadden and the Haudenosaunee Grand Council’s chiefs on the proper treatment of their own history: “Iroquois do not take kindly to misuse of time-honored customs and rituals. Ray Fadden’s use of the ‘Fourteen Strings’ of wampum as a vehicle for castigating writers about Indians violates the sensibilities of Longhouse people” (Fenton, 1989, 59). At about the same time, Fenton added another log to the fire of Iroquois anger by taking credit for the return of the wampum belts that he had earlier tried to keep locked in the state archives (Fadden, 1990). The Ray Fadden essay to which Fenton reacted, “Fourteen Strings of Purple Wampum to Writers about Indians” (Bruchac, 1989, 97–98), did not name him. Fenton may have been reacting to the title of the essay or the first two sentences: “We hold in our hand fourteen strings of purple wampum. These we hand, one by one, to you—authors of many American history books, writers of cheap, inaccurate, unauthentic, sensational novels, and other writers of fiction who have poisoned the minds of young Americans concerning our people” (Bruchac, 1989, 97; Fadden, 1990, 43–44). RAY RETURNS TO AKWESASNE In December 2003, the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (Canadian-side government) passed a special resolution waiving admissions policies to admit Fadden, then age 93, to its long-term care facility at Iakhihsohtha, “in consideration of his life-long work.” Iakhihsohtha (pronounced “Ya-key-soh-tha”) is Mohawk for “Grandparents,” a modern 30-bed home for the elderly located in Akwesasne Territory (Snye, Quebec). Christine joined him there late in 2006. This “unique endeavor” resulted from “community appreciation of Ray Fadden’s work to promote Haudenosaunee culture and practices among Mohawks, plus his far-reaching achievements in regard to educating the public at large about the Haudenosaunee” (“Teacher Ray Fadden,” 2003, 9). The resolution was undertaken because Fadden was not an enrolled member on the Canadian side of Akwesasne. Canadian immigration authorities also were required to clear his residence, which was approved following a letter-writing campaign by several of his former students. By this time, Fadden was suffering from progressive dementia, which robbed him of his fiery eloquence and penetrating intellect. Because he was not Canadian, that country’s government would not pay for his care and, because he was in Canada, U.S. Medicare did not pick up any of the bills (Golden, 2004). People at

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Akwesasne pitched in with regular fund-raisers and silent auctions that, together with Fadden’s Social Security benefits and teacher’s pension, paid the bills. Most days he was wheelchair-bound and unable to recognize visitors, including his wife and son. Every once in a while, however, a spark would return to his eyes—a memory, perhaps, of many years of struggle to preserve Mohawk ways of life. On July 2, 2004, as the Faddens’ family museum opened for its 50th season, John Fadden wrote to John Golden, a columnist at the Watertown Daily Times, “It’s hard to believe that he’s not out there feeding the bears, and educating people about Native Americans. But, like all things, there is always an end to it. I’m talking like he’s dead. He’s not dead, but the dynamic being he was is no more” (Fadden, 2004). In April 2005, Art Einhorn, a longtime friend of Ray’s, visited him and relayed the following word portrait: Last Sunday I drove up to Akwesasne to look in on Ray Fadden in the nursing home; Ernie Benedict accompanied me. The home’s location is on the Canadian side of the reserve, but you can drive to it from the US side east of Hogansburg down back roads off of Rt 37. The place is very nice, lots of window light, cozy, and they treat the elders there very well. Food is good too; Ernie & I had lunch there. Anyway, the last time I saw Ray in person was in 1997, when I visited Onchiota and we walked several miles talking “old times” 50 years ago. His physical and mental condition were still good then, and he had the same old smile and voice I will always remember. My recent visit was a gut wrenching shock of what can happen in just a few short years. His hair was nearly snow white, his body frame was so slight I’d guess he doesn’t weigh more than 100 lbs, and he just sat motionless in the wheelchair, eyes closed. It seems he doesn’t recognize anyone at all anymore, not even John and Christine. I sat next to him awhile and sang the old Partridge Song very low to see if that might spark any recall; there was no reaction at all. Then I asked him if he wanted to go feed the bears (he fed them every day at Onchiota); suddenly his eyes opened wide, looking blankly out into space, like the words had sparked something in his memory … then they slowly closed the world off again. An aide came to wheel him to lunch. He has to be fed soft foods, one spoon at a time, like a year-old baby. It was a very sad experience all in all. (Einhorn, 2005)

Most weeks, John drove down from the mountains to visit with his father, usually on Mondays. Many times, Ray was asleep or said nothing. Often, he did not recognize John. Every so often, however, there was a glint in his eye, recalling the Ray Fadden who had held the entire world to account. On March 21, 2006, John wrote: Yesterday I went up to see Dad. He was responsive this time! It’s been about a month since I’ve heard him say anything. He spoke, smiled, and his eyes were open for most of the time. He also ate a great lunch, and had had a very good breakfast earlier … a red-letter day. I stayed over two-and-a-half hours, and then he began to drift off. So, they put him into bed for a nap. (Fadden, 2006)


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ERNIE BENEDICT AS INVENTOR Ernie Benedict’s penchant for useful invention resembles Benjamin Franklin’s. Benedict has invented an infrastructure of cultural revitalization, from newspapers, to a traveling college, a health service, and many others. Native control of indigenous education has been one of his cardinal ideas for decades, long before it was popular. The range of Benedict’s revitalization efforts is daunting. He was a central figure in a drive that resulted in recognition of Native elders and spiritual leaders as equals of chaplains in Canadian prisons; he also helped win recognition and provision of Native religious ceremonies in the same prisons. He has started Indian youth traditional dance and culture clubs that inspired young people to learn and practice their cultures. Some of these students later worked with the North American Indian Travelling College and utilized their cultural knowledge to benefit others. Benedict also was the founder and longtime director of the Onake Corporation (“Birch Bark Canoe” in Mohawk), a corporation that applies for money for the benefit of unincorporated community-based organizations to “canoe” the money to them so that they will be able to carry on beneficial community work. Benedict also has been an athlete—a swimmer, skater, and long-distance runner—as well as a graceful traditional dancer. As a political figure, Benedict has served as an elected chief on the St. Regis Band Council, which is recognized by the state of New York, as well as the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (MCA), the elected council recognized by the Canadian federal government. (Akwesasne spans the border, so it has an elective council on each side as well as a traditional chiefs’ council, the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs.) He served on the MCA for close to twenty years, seven terms of office between 1956 and 1982. He was voted in as a chief of the Kawehnoke District, which also is known as Cornwall Island; he was elected by the council in his last term of office to serve as the head chief, a title now known as grand chief. Benedict also is a condoled (officially installed) life chief (Rotinonkwiseres) with the traditional community government, a predecessor of the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs, the traditional community government at Akwesasne. Benedict has been a member of the Elder’s Council within the Canadian Assembly of First Nations, a national Indian organization in Canada similar in purpose to the National Congress of the American Indian in the United States. Ernie and his father, Charles, both were members of the North American Indian Brotherhood, which was formed after World War II as a precursor of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada. As a spiritual leader, Benedict was chosen by indigenous peoples of Canada to present Pope John Paul II with an eagle feather on September 15, 1984, at an eighteenth-century mission site in Midland, Ontario. As he presented the eagle feather, Benedict told John Paul: We, who are sheltered by the Great Tree of Peace, have placed at the top of the tree, the Eagle who can see far, even into the coming days. His courage is the

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greatest among living creatures and he travels high above us all. It is therefore fitting that we award you a feather from the wings that have brushed against the heavens, as a symbol of your courage and spiritual achievement. Even as you fearlessly proclaim the heavenly messages we consider that the Master shed his blood for the world. You also have shed your blood. This has been recorded on the feather. We will continue to wait for your words, for you have proved the strength of your devotion to truth. Ne to niio wennake: These are my words. (Benedict, 2005)

In 1994, Benedict received a National Aboriginal Achievement Award for his work in education, one of 14 Aboriginal Achievement Awards given to First Nations leaders in several categories across Canada by the Canadian Native Arts Foundation. He was an elder for the Indian Claims Commission and testified to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. THE BENEDICT FAMILY Ernie Benedict, a member of the Mohawk Wolf Clan, was born on July 14, 1918, at Akwesasne. His mother was Julia Kiohawihtoh Jandrew Benedict and his father was Charles Kiorenhakwente Benedict. Both were from Akwesasne. Ernie’s maternal grandmother, Sarah Kanataiehwas Claus, raised him on occasion, teaching him traditional medicines and other elements of Mohawk traditional culture. Ernie’s uncle, Ira Benedict, was a condoled (officially installed) Mohawk Nation Longhouse traditional chief. He died at age 97, as did Benedict’s grandfather Louis Skaroniati Benedict (in whose nineteenth-century home Ernie now lives) and great-grandfather Mitchell Sawennakarati Benedict. Benedict’s wife, Florence Katsitsienhawi Benedict, is a master basket maker. One of his sons, Lloyd Skaroniati Benedict, served as a chief on the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne for more than ten years. Lloyd also has farmed contaminant-free yellow perch in a new aquaculture project at Akwesasne. Another son, Daniel Kiorenhakwente Benedict, has worked as a media specialist and technician for Akwesasne’s radio station. He also has worked as a computer technologist for the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe Environmental Division. Daughter Rebecca Wenniseriiostha Benedict has been a medical laboratory technician and a traditional artist and also works for the St. Regis Mohawk Health Service Dental Clinic. His daughter Salli M. Kawennotakie Benedict has worked for the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne Aboriginal Rights and Research Office and has been instrumental in many community revitalization efforts. She also is a traditional and contemporary artist. Members of the family have shown the same penchant for invention as their father. For example, Lloyd and Salli Benedict and others developed a radio station at Akwesasne in 1984 that has operated more than twenty years. Situated in a building astride the United States-Canada border in the middle of Akwesasne, CKON 97.3-FM has provided community news and promoted local Mohawk artists, the Mohawk language, and culture. The station also is known locally as


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Sekon (a Mohawk greeting) Radio and is licensed by the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs. ERNIE BENEDICT’S EARLY YEARS Ernie Benedict graduated from Massena High School at age 16 in 1936; he actually had graduated in 1935 but was too young for college, so he repeated his senior year on a postgraduate basis. He walked and hitchhiked to school from the reservation, 15 miles each way. Benedict attended Syracuse University as a freshman and then transferred to St. Lawrence University (SLU) in Canton, New York, graduating in 1940 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology at a time when Native Americans with university degrees were rare. Benedict took an anthropology course from the noted anthropologist William Fenton at SLU during Fenton’s first teaching job, after his graduation from Dartmouth University; he also occasionally babysat Fenton’s young daughter. Fenton was impressed with Benedict because he never used a pencil or a notebook (he could not afford them) but paid very close attention in class. Benedict’s advocacy of Iroquois revitalization already had begun in 1941, when he said, “We Six Nations of Indians feel we have potentially a superior social system…. If we were only left alone, we could redevelop our society … which was old in democracy when Europe knew only Monarchs” (Horn, 2001). Benedict volunteered for military service in World War II after objecting to the draft in peacetime on grounds that the United States could not conscript Haudenosaunee to enlist in its armed forces. Benedict initially served three months in jail for refusing to be drafted because he could not afford even minimal bail. He later volunteered for service to avoid further prosecution and because war had been declared following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Eleanor Roosevelt intervened with local Selective Service authorities to allow Benedict’s release from jail (Benedict, 2004; Hauptman, 1986, 5–9). A journalist on occasion throughout his life, Benedict started Akwesasne’s first newspaper, called the War Whoop, during the late 1930s. During the 1940s, he initiated the newspaper Kawehras (“It Thunders” in Mohawk), which published news in both Mohawk and English. All of these preceded Akwesasne Notes, which became a national news journal for Indian Country during the heyday of the activist 1970s. (Benedict later released Akwesasne Notes to the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs, where it operated until the 1990s.) It was briefly revived as Akwesasne Notes Magazine in 1994 and continued for another two years, edited by Benedict’s daughter Salli Kawennotakie. Benedict was an active member of the Indian Defense League of America beginning in the 1940s. During the 1950s, he resisted termination legislation (which proposed to eliminate Native reservations) in the United States. When Canada attempted termination during the late 1960s, he fought that, too. At one congressional hearing, in 1948, Benedict confronted Sen. Arthur Watkins, the best-known advocate of termination legislation, after Watkins said that the federal government was tiring of its trust responsibilities to Indians and intended to divest itself of them. “What about solemn treaty commitments?” asked Benedict.

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“Can an honorable nation, just because it is tired, shrug off its responsibilities regardless of the wishes and conditions of the ward…. Perhaps Indians are tired too! Tired of poverty and ignorance and disease. They are weary of neglect and broken promises and fruitless hoping” (Hauptman, 1986, 49–50). Citing environmental problems that became obvious after it was built, Benedict strongly opposed the construction of the Saint Lawrence Seaway through Akwesasne during the 1950s; a half-century later, he continues to consult with the Mohawk governments on seaway issues. Benedict warned that the seaway would cause silt buildup in the river; in places, the Saint Lawrence has not cleared to this day. ORIGINS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN TRAVELLING COLLEGE Benedict started the North American Indian Travelling College (which is now called the Native North American Travelling College and Ronnatahonni Cultural Center) in 1968 to promote Native cultural revitalization across Canada and the United States. The college provided a mobile, accessible source of knowledge about Native American history and culture through curricula, visual aids, books, and artifacts at a time when Native American studies programs were generally in their infancy. The traveling college was rich in spirit but not in money, as Benedict carried books, materials, tapes, magazines, and musical instruments in the back of a Volkswagen van, driving from one reserve or reservation to another. Benedict’s advocacy of Native-controlled education encouraged numerous Indian Survival Schools at Kahnawake and Akwesasne and elsewhere. Benedict’s efforts forged a network of educators and young leaders across Canada. Benedict began to plan the traveling college in 1966, after he heard accounts of Indian children running away from residential (boarding) schools. One was 12year-old Charlie Wenjack, who froze to death on train tracks. Benedict believed that Native children should not be removed from their homes for education, even in remote locations. Instead, native-controlled education should travel to them with curricula that the people wanted. Today, the traveling college offers a travel troupe of Native singers, dancers, and speakers who respond to invitations to visit other First Nation reserves, nonNative organizations, workshops and conferences, prisons, and educational institutions. The center publishes cultural material and posters advocating against alcohol and drugs and educates young Native people as cultural providers. THE CONFLICT OVER BORDER-CROSSING RIGHTS As the traveling college was being organized, Benedict also became a major organizer of the International Bridge blockade of 1968 at Akwesasne. At the time, Canadian policies curtailed Mohawks’ freedom of movement across the international border that is guaranteed under the Jay Treaty of 1794. Benedict began his longtime support of border-crossing rights with the Indian Defense League of


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America when he attended the annual border-crossing events at Niagara Falls with Chief Clinton Rickard, the so-called Fighting Tuscarora. Benedict, with others, helped collect money to fight Akwesasne’s first battle for border-crossing litigation in 1956. From Benedict’s home on Cornwall Island, the Mohawks of Akwesasne prepared to blockade the nearby International Bridge and force the issue of policies that required them to pay customs duties on anything worth more than $5, including food and other necessities of daily life. Benedict acted as lead media spokesman for the Akwesasne community as the blockade unfolded. Canada’s National Film Board recorded the blockade in a 1969 documentary titled You Are on Indian Land. More than 100 Mohawks, mostly women, children, and young men, created a wall of bodies that stopped traffic between the United States and Canada. Police arrested 41 Mohawks, who later were released; charges were dropped. After a second blockade in February 1969 and a long series of negotiations and court cases, Canadian officials agreed to abide by the terms of the Jay Treaty. Long before the courts upheld the Mohawks’ rights officially and in the interest of peace at the Akwesasne border, customs officials allowed greater tolerance of the Mohawks’ right to transport the necessities of life across the border duty-free. Although the right of Native Americans to freely cross the United States-Canada border long had been recognized by both countries, their right to transport goods without paying customs duties or tariffs had not been respected. Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell, who later would serve as the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne’s grand chief, with the support of at least 400 Akwesasne community members and visitors from the Assembly of First Nations, transported a number of basic goods across the border to force a test case. Mitchell was arrested and charged $361.64 in duty, which he refused to pay. He then took the items to the Mohawk territory of Tyendinaga in Canada and presented them as gifts to that community to symbolize a renewal of trading ties. Mitchell brought suit in Canadian federal court, which accepted the case and designated the minister of National Revenue as the defendant. Mitchell argued that as a Mohawk of Akwesasne he possessed an aboriginal right protected under the Constitution Act of 1982 to bring so-called usual goods into Canada for personal and community use without having to pay customs duties. Mitchell specified that his claim involved only legal items, not firearms, restricted or prohibited drugs, alcohol, or plants. Justice William P. McKeown later ruled that Mitchell did in fact have an existing aboriginal right to pass freely across the Canada-United States border carrying goods without being liable for customs duties. The judge also ordered the defendant, the Canadian government, to pay legal costs to Mitchell, a bill that had grown to $293,991.92 Canadian (Grace-Kobas, 1997). “The ruling was very complicated, and we did not win on all points,” said Robert W. Venables, a professor at Cornell University who testified on Mitchell’s behalf. “Essentially the judge ruled that the Mohawks do have the right to trade

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regardless of contemporary political boundaries drawn by non-Indians, and they have the right to trade in ‘usual goods.’ He ruled that their treaty rights were still intact under the new [Canadian] Constitution. This was an important precedent” (Grace-Kobas, 1997). “I was particularly pleased with the court decision because the judge was very sensitive to the social structure of the Haudenosaunee,” Venables added. “McKeown cites respectfully the testimony of the Mohawks and refers respectfully to those aspects of Mohawk society that were clearly distinct from Canadian and U.S. society and doesn’t judge them inferior. It was a joy for me to see that. It was an amazingly sensitive decision that respected Mohawk points of view” (Grace-Kobas, 1997). HIS QUIET WAY Throughout a life of political turmoil and struggle, lawyer Paul Williams remarked at Benedict’s “quiet way.” “I can’t think of anyone from whom I have learned more,” he said (Williams, 1994, 1). An educator most of his life, Benedict has taught at Mantiou College, Trent University, State University College at Canton, the Akwesasne Freedom School, and as a guest lecturer at many others, including Loyalist College, the University of Ottawa, Carlton University, St. Lawrence University, McGill University, and Concordia University. He also taught history at Manitou College, an all-Native school of the arts that operated in La Macaza, Quebec, until 1976, when it was closed by the Quebec government. Benedict’s kindness is legendary. People tell stories of the massive ice storm that crippled much of New York, as well as southern Ontario and Quebec, during the third week of January 1998. One observer remembered: On Highway 401 past Kingston, [the observer, Dan Longboat] and a friend saw trees snapped in half “like twigs” and skinned “like banana peels.” When they crossed the St. Lawrence River into Akwesasne about 7 P.M., it was pitch black but everything was under control. Many elders, like … Ernie Benedict, could provide shelter to their extended families because they had wood stoves and stores of food. [An observer] was impressed with the sharing, generosity and caring the First Nations communities showed one another—and non-natives— during this emergency. Benedict gave wood to some Cornwall residents who came and asked for it. You can’t get better than that. (“Tales after the Ice Storm Cometh,” 1998)

Benedict is regarded as a living museum of Iroquois culture. One Internet correspondent remarked, “Ernie Benedict from Akwesasne taught me some songs for Alligator Dances which are Iroquoian social dances. They were brought into the Confederacy by the Tuscaroras when they joined in the 18th century. Not too many alligators around Lake Ontario! I love the borrowing … it reminds me that our cultures ARE still alive, despite what the textbooks might try to tell you” (Corrigan, 2003). After a lifetime of work revitalizing Native cultures, Ernie Benedict has earned a number of prestigious honors. His alma mater, St. Lawrence University, gave


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him a citation for his work promoting indigenous education and later awarded him the prestigious Sol Feinstone Award, with a financial prize that Benedict gave to the Akwesasne Freedom School (this traditional school survives on donations by parents and other friends and does not receive any government money). In 1994, to mark the 25th anniversary of Native studies at Trent University at Peterborough, Ontario, the university awarded Benedict an honorary doctor of laws degree. On February 19, 2000, as part of the 30th anniversary of Native studies at Trent University, Benedict was honored again. Benedict and Marlene Brant Castellano were guests of honor at a gala evening as their pictures were added to the Native Studies Wall of Honor. In an address on February 6, 1998, Castellano, Trent University professor emeritus and former cochair of research for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, had outlined some of the intellectual debts owed Benedict and other elders: Knowing our histories is not a luxury. It is essential to our well-being, not so that we can do things the way our grandparents or their grandparents did, but so that we can choose how to apply the knowledge of our heritage to our lives today. There are apprentices who are devoting the major portion of their time and energy to training as healers and teachers. Jake Thomas, Ernie Benedict, Art Solomon, Fred Wheatley who have been leading lights in the work here at Trent, who were always on call to help where they were needed, always had a day job to support their families. I believe that aboriginal communities and organizations who depend on elders for leadership need to recognize that studying and teaching culture is a full-time vocation for some gifted persons. If we want to have a next generation of elders and teachers here when we need them, we should be providing scholarships and stipends as well as tobacco as a sign of respect. There are gifted teachers in all cultures who touch the spirits of their students and open doors on the world. I cannot imagine that I would have survived through all my years in mainstream educational institutions without the extraordinary teachers who nurtured and encouraged me. (Castellano, 1998)

“Ernest is a treasure to our people,” wrote Michael Mitchell, former grand chief of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, in a letter of support for Benedict’s nomination in 1995 for a National Aboriginal Achievement Award. “He is a gifted and caring man who has taken on the responsibility of an elder, for all who seek his wisdom and knowledge. He is an educator, a philosopher, and advisor, and a friend. He is a man of peace and great spirituality. He is a man of wisdom and honour. He is a humble man, who unselfishly imparts his knowledge and wisdom to all who come to his door” (Mitchell, 1994, 2). “Without bitterness or antagonistic argument, he has spoken in a soft but determined and rational voice to inform generations of Indians and non-Indians alike about the reality, meaning, and contemporary value of Indian history and

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culture,” wrote Gail Gutherie Valaskakis, dean of arts and science, Concordia University. She continued, “Mr. Benedict’s role as a traditional Mohawk spiritual leader is recognized by Native leaders and elders through Indian Country. He is revered for his generosity of time and energy; his endless willingness to share his knowledge; and his soft-spoken and good-natured manner” (Valaskakis, 1994, 3). Time and again, people have remarked at Benedict’s talents as well as his humility and modesty and his ability to bring groups to consensus, making him an ideal Iroquois traditional leader. He risked his life in 1980 at Racquette Point, Akwesasne, when shooting broke out between Mohawk factions. Again, in 1990, when shooting killed two Mohawks at Akwesasne, he mediated conflict. Benedict presents an influential presence in any group of people. NOTES 1. Kaientaronkwen is an old Mohawk name that means “he gathers the bets or the markers,” as in a traditional game. Reading a draft of this chapter, Benedict suggested that others at Akwesasne also should be named as influential, including Tom Porter, Jake Swamp, Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell, Richard Cook, and Richard Mitchell. 2. The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Council is an elected council that was created by New York State law in 1892. It is not a traditional government.

FURTHER READING Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment (ATFE). n.d. Accessed December 23, 2006. <www.northnet.org/atfe/atfe.htm>. Barreiro, Jose. “View from the Forest: An Elder’s Concern.” Indian Studies: American Indian Program at Cornell 1, no. 3 (Fall 1984): 4–7. Benedict, Salli. Personal communication with the author. January 8, 2004. Benedict, Salli. Personal communication with the author. April 8, 2005. Bruchac, Joseph. New Voices from the Longhouse. Greenfield Center, NY: Greenfield Review Press, 1989. Castellano, Marlene Brant. “Bring Cultural Renewal out of the Longhouse.” Trent Fortnightly, March 5, 1998. . Clyne, Patricia Edwards. “Ray Fadden: Sachem of Onchiota.” Adirondack Life, Summer 1975: 9–12. Cohen, Felix. “Americanizing the White Man.” The American Scholar 21, no. 2 (1952): 177–91. Corrigan, Chris. “Ohwejagehka: Ha’degaenage.” Daguerreotype. December 19, 2003. . Einhorn, Art. Personal communication with the author. April 15, 2005. Fadden, John Kahionhes. Personal communication with the author. December 29. 2003. Fadden, John Kahionhes. Personal communication with John Golden. July 2, 2004. Fadden, John Kahionhes. Personal communication with the author. March 21, 2006. Fadden, John Kahionhes. “Sketch of Ray Fadden’s Life.” Unpublished manuscript, c. 1985. Fadden, Stephen. “Response.” Northeast Indian Quarterly 7, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 43–44. Fenton, William N. Review of New Voices from the Iroquois Longhouse, by Joseph Bruchac. Northeast Indian Quarterly 6, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 59.


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Foster, Michael K., Jack Campisi, and Marianne Mithun, eds. Extending the Rafters: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Iroquoian Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984. George-Kanentiio, Doug. “Ray Fadden-Tehanentorens Is the Teacher behind Six Nations Museum.” Syracuse Herald-American, 1997: n.p. Golden, John. “Great White Hope of the Mohawks a Legendary Exception at Home for Elders.” Watertown Daily Times, June 20, 2004: G-1, G-7. Grace-Kobas, Linda. “Lecturer Will Describe Recent American Indian Rights Case in His Class.” Cornell Chronicle, August 21, 1997: n.p. . Hauptman, Laurence M. The Iroquois Struggle for Survival: World War II to Red Power. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Horn, Greg. “Canada/Kahnawake Relations Agreement Announced.” Eastern Door 10, no. 12 (October 12, 2001): n.p. Jennings, Nadine Nelson. In the Spirit of the Kaswentha: Cultural Literacy in Akwesasne Mohawk Culture. Diss. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1998. Johansen, Bruce E., and Barbara Alice Mann, eds. The Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. Mitchell, Michael. Letter to the manager, Order of Ontario. October 1997. Ringwald, Christopher D. “One Man Defends Six Nations; Ray Fadden Saves Iroquois Heritage.” Adirondack Explorer, June 2000: 31–32. Sanders, Richard. “Demonstration to Oppose the Arms Trade.” Ottawa Peace Calendar. May, 1989. . “Tales after the Ice Storm Cometh.” Trent Fortnightly. January 22, 1998. . “Teacher Ray Fadden Returns to Akwesasne.” Indian Time 21, no. 50 (December 18, 2003): 9. Thompson, Daniel Rokwaho. Dedication: 1981 Akwesasne Notes Calendar. Akwesasne, New York: Akwesasne Notes, 1981. Valaskakis, Gail Gutherie. Letter to the secretariat, National Aboriginal Achievement Awards. October 13, 1994. Williams, Paul. Personal correspondence to Gail Gutherie Valaskakis. September 21, 1994.

CHAPTER 4

Mestizo Nation: La Plaza de Seattle

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hat happened when thousands of Latinos, nearly all of whom were seeking employment, found themselves in the Anglo-American metropolis of Seattle, lacking a traditional community center—a barrio, with a Latin American-style plaza? They built one, with their own hands, in an abandoned schoolhouse. During the ensuing thirty-plus years, El Centro de la Raza, which translates as “The Center of the People,” has become a sociopolitical, often controversial, institution for a rainbow of peoples. El Centro is more than a plaza, however. It has the air of the nineteenth-century Hull House, a gateway for immigrants to Seattle of all colors and points of origin, not only Latinos. El Centro had its beginnings in a multiethnic neighborhood in a very diverse city, which became more so as it took root and grew. Founder and longtime executive director Roberto Maestas’s family tree has roots in several ethnicities—African, Spanish, Indio—and he is proud of all of them. The founders of El Centro also had a wide ethnic range of personal friends and compatriots; Roberto Maestas was close to black activist and community leader Larry Gossett, Asian leader Bob Santos, Native American urban activist Bernie Whitebear, as well as fishing-rights advocates in the Frank family. Many other people cemented ties that made El Centro de la Raza a multiethnic institution from the start. A brief struggle ensued during the late 1970s and early 1980s with Chicano ethnocentrists who sought to restrict El Centro’s focus. The ethnocentrists lost and departed. ORIGINS OF SEATTLE’S LATINO COMMUNITY By 1970, about 15,000 Latinos lived in King County, including Seattle; by 1980, the number had risen to approximately 35,000. Many had migrated to the urban area westward along Interstate 90 from farmworker jobs in the Yakama

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Valley of eastern Washington and surrounding areas. Washington State, east and west of the Cascade Range, had become the northern terminus of a migratory labor route that each growing season brought laborers northward from Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Latin America. By 1970, several Yakima Valley towns housed large populations of Latino residents. Wapato, for example, was 40 percent Latino; Sunnyside was 25 percent (Johansen and Maestas, 1983, 120). During the 1950s and 1960s, many migrant laborers began leaving farmwork as the fields were mechanized. They departed with few good feelings; the average life span for field workers in 1970 was 48 years; one in three migrant mothers’ children died in infancy. The educational level of adult farmworkers was 5.7 years. Wages were so low that an entire family could work full time and fail to earn enough money to exceed the federal poverty level (Johansen and Maestas, 1983, 119). Maestas himself had arrived in Seattle along that migrant stream as a teenager. He was born in San Augustín De Valles de Lourdes, a New Mexican village of about thirty farmsteads. Although poverty forced him into the migrant stream at the age of 14, “the sense of community that I found in that remarkable place has been one of the strongest forces in my life. It led to the work I do today [at] El Centro de la Raza” (Fields, 2001). Seattle’s Latino community grew rapidly, but almost invisibly, at first. By the thousands, Latino families loaded their belongings into old cars and trucks that had carried them from field to field, valley to valley, following Interstate 90 to the Puget Sound urban area. The Spanish-speaking population there grew so quickly that the state and federal governments were caught flat-footed. Families usually provided for their own members. By the early 1970s, the self-help tradition was deeply embedded when a group of Latinos and their allies seized the old Beacon Hill School (which had been built in 1904) and began to turn it into a community center with their own hands. Winter was coming, and soon another wave of immigrants would be cresting the mountains from the east, in need of language and job training as well as medical care and emergency housing in the cold rain. A SIT-IN INCUBATES A COMMUNITY CENTER The sun shone through chill fog, looking like a weak lightbulb during the early morning of October 10, 1972, the day before Columbus Day (called Dia de la Raza in Latin America). Seattle Chicanos and their allies walked into the shuttered, unheated, cavernous, and abandoned Beacon Hill School, sat down, and refused to leave. They had brought sleeping bags, which soon became clammy in the moist chill, behind boarded windows, in the unlit hallways. The next morning, about sixty people—students, Chicano activists, elderly ladies from the neighborhood—rose slowly, shaking off the cold. The abandoned building had no plumbing; the nearest toilet was in a service station two cold, foggy blocks down the street. El Centro was occupied as Seattle was struggling with the so-called Boeing bust, the area’s worst recession since the 1930s. At one point, someone erected

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a billboard reading, “Will the last person leaving Seattle turn off the lights?” Native Americans were seeking restoration of their treaty-based fishing rights as farmworker strikes were being organized in the Yakima Valley. Asian residents in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood were fighting the gentrification of the area. Many university campuses in Seattle recently had been the scene of mass demonstrations against the Vietnam War. The United States had been stunned by killings of protesting students at Jackson State and Kent State Universities, coming so soon after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. The sit-in was initiated after several dozen Latino students of the Chicano English and Adult Basic Education Program at the Duwamish branch of South Seattle Community College found themselves without an educational home. On October 11, 1972, core staff, students, and their families peacefully occupied the abandoned Beacon Hill School near downtown Seattle. The Chicanos and their allies had been negotiating with school district officials since early summer 1972 and were getting nowhere. By October, with permission to inspect the building in hand, they decided to enter, sit down, and refuse to leave. According to Maestas, “We tried to talk the public schools into letting us gather in an abandoned elementary school. When they rejected our idea, I proposed that we occupy the building. We ended up living there for three months” (Fields, 2001). In October 1972, before the occupation, the building’s paint was peeling and chipped. Graffiti decorated the walls, inside and out. Windows were shattered and the lawn unkempt. Weeds grew where a basketball court once stood. Garbage littered the property and was collected by the wind along the Cyclone fence that stretched one square block around the school. “At first,” said Maestas, “the building was a terrible eyesore; it had a decaying roof and no heating system. But together, our staff and students, and supporters of all races transformed it into one of the busiest, most active, most unpredictable and inviting community centers in the nation” (Fields, 2001). A nearby Mexican restaurant provided water by hooking up a hose to its water tank. Latino and African American radio stations broadcast the struggle, helping to acquire donations of sleeping bags, kitchenware, flashlights, a telephone, and other essential items. As they repaired the building, the occupants were beginning to build a community inside, fused by common purpose. Spanish music burst from a small, battery-powered boom box, lending some warmth to the chilly Seattle morning. A few bare bulbs lit up the pale green, peeling walls of dusty classrooms. Over the main door, they posted a three-faced white, green, and yellow flag tracing Chicano ancestry (Spanish and Indian faces merging into a mestizo Chicano in the center). Signs opposing the Vietnam War also were posted nearby, with reminders that Chicanos, Indian, and black soldiers were dying in unusually large proportions on the battlefronts of the war (Johansen, October 12, 1972). The people who occupied the building remarked, with some irony, that they were implementing advice from the state’s governor, Dan Evans, “advocating use of empty schools for community needs, such as child care” (Johansen, October

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14, 1972). With such rhetorical support, leaders of the building takeover quickly won a pledge from School Superintendent Forbes Bottomly that no effort would be made to evict them by force. The school district even arranged to open a back door for fire safety. The school had a sprinkler system, but its water long had been cut off. NEGOTIATING A COMMUNITY Downtown meetings were being held with representatives of the Seattle City Council and School Board. The old school’s occupants sought a lease for $1 a year from the city of Seattle, which was to lease it from the school district for the same amount (this roundabout arrangement was required by a legal technicality; the school district was prohibited from leasing property for noneducational purposes). In the meantime, the occupants continued to renovate the school slowly with their own hands, using donated materials. Ken Keeler, the school district’s chief inspector, said at the time that about $18,000 would be required to bring the long-shuttered building’s main floor up to various city health and fire codes (Johansen, October 14, 1972). At a minimum, the building required repair of its heating plant (an old boiler), plumbing, light fixtures, and many broken window panes. Negotiations for the school dragged on much longer than expected into one of Seattle’s coldest winters. By early December, people in the building were remarking that the air inside an old refrigerator was warmer than the kitchen in which it stood (Johansen, December 8, 1972). In some rooms, small space heaters radiated feeble warmth as some occupants suggested that members of the City Council bring their sleeping bags and spend a night in the clammy cold. The temperature in the unheated building had fallen nearly to freezing. Heated or not, the occupants prepared a reception for members of the Trail of Broken Treaties who had marched to Washington, DC, the previous fall, occupying the head offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs a week before national elections. In two months, the estimated cost of making the building habitable had risen to about $80,000, and negotiations were being undertaken with federal officials for supplementary funding. After three months of occupying the building and countless rallies, petitions, and letters, the City Council finally agreed to hear their case. At one point, pressing for an audience, supporters of the occupation had laid siege to the City Council’s chambers in an attempt to speed things up. The City Council finally approved the lease, but the mayor vetoed the action. Supporters then occupied the mayor’s office and were arrested. The raid bore fruit, however; a five-year lease was signed on January 20, 1973, at a $1 annual rent. Many of the occupiers were blue-collar tradespeople who set to work cleaning the building, repairing light fixtures and windows, and painting peeling walls. Artists created murals “depicting life on the old family farms as well as the agonies of migrant work. On one wall, a young boy stood beside a burro; on another, an older man lay across the field of a factory farm, nailed

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to a cross, surrounded by tractors whose grills took the ghastly gray shape of skulls” (Johansen and Maestas, 1983, 128). What had been a vacant, decaying shell was becoming a home. This was a home full of unlikely allies: blue-collar tradespeople and white-collar intellectuals and Native American, Asian, Latino, black, and European American men and women. It was a diverse world united in singular purpose in one large building. Although the founding of El Centro de la Raza was sparked by Latinos and acquired a Spanish name, it began, and remains, “The Center of the People of all Races,” in a broad ethnic sense. It is home for all people who are interested in making a better and more just world in which, to borrow from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. “I found that the only way to get things done in this city is to do it—and then work it out,” Maestas said more than twenty years later, slapping his fist on a table for emphasis. “It took five to six years for the building to become up to code. Everything had to be repaired, replaced or installed. With the help, love and dedication of the community, the organization’s building was refurbished piece by piece. Money was donated. Grants were awarded. Materials were donated, as well. Laborers volunteered time. Plumbers gave services. Heating and plumbing were installed. The roof was fixed. Vinyl siding was put in place. The classrooms were spruced up” (Martin, 1996). Ten years later, by 1982, the main floor of the old building was a beehive of activity. Twenty-three years after the initial occupation, in 1995, all three floors of the building were in use. Direct action was the challenge of the day. When Washington Natural Gas Company cut off El Centro’s heat, for example, the teachers and children of the child-development center moved to a place they knew would remain warm: the reception area of Washington Natural Gas’s chief executive officer’s office (Johansen and Maestas, 1983, 133). In ensuing years, Latino culture became very familiar in Seattle. Taco-bearing carts, trailers, trucks, and buses became more common along Seattle’s arterials, even in neighborhoods such as Ballard, heretofore known for their Norwegian lutefisk. In the decade ending in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Latino population in King County jumped 115 percent, to 95,242. Maestas said he guesses there are another 10,000 undocumented Latinos, “and that’s a conservative figure” (Lacitis, 2003). NATIVE AMERICAN TIES El Centro nurtured Native American ties from its beginnings. It grew up with the fishing-rights battles. Maestas was married to Estela Ortega behind barricades in an Indian ceremony at El Centro, and they spent their honeymoon at Wounded Knee during winter 1973; they joined the American Indian Movement in the 71-day occupation on the site of the 1890 massacre. The occupation that created El Centro during fall 1972 was modeled after the earlier, similar takeover of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay by a coalition of

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American Indians. Closer to home, but less well-known nationally, the takeover of the Beacon Hill School was patterned on an occupation of another piece of abandoned public property, Seattle’s Fort Lawton, by Native peoples and their allies in 1970. Although the Alcatraz occupation netted little in the long range except media attention (the site was abandoned), the similar takeover at Fort Lawton resulted in the creation of the Daybreak Star Center, a world-renowned Native American cultural meeting place. The takeover of the Beacon Hill School also was aimed at tangible, enduring results. El Centro de la Raza’s scope of community activism was shaped fundamentally during its early years by farmworker struggles and fishing-rights controversies the length of Puget Sound. Maestas and other founders of El Centro formed an early and enduring alliance with the Frank family of Franks Landing, near Olympia. As a young man, Billy Frank Jr. established himself as an Indian activist, fishing for salmon and steelhead on the Nisqually River in defiance of state authorities but with the support of century-old treaties. In the years that followed the 1974 federal court decision by George H. Boldt, which opened up half the salmon harvest to Native Americans, Frank became a tribal leader and negotiator who strove to ensure that tribal treaty fishing rights were upheld. As the years passed, Frank became a nationally, even internationally, renowned American Indian statesman, “casting a wide net of influence, and starting to pile up the honors afforded by his lifetime achievements” (Dodge, 2004, 1). Frank, a plain-talking Nisqually who dropped out of school after the ninth grade and, starting at age 14, was arrested by police and game wardens about fifty times during the so-called fishing wars that lasted from the 1940s to the early 1970s. He was seen often in the halls of El Centro. El Centro nurtured other practical ties to Native American communities in the city. For example, the first Boys and Girls Club for urban American Indians in the United States opened there on January 29, 2004. The IWASIL Boys & Girls Club serves King County’s Native American youths with programs and activities relevant to their culture. In the Lushootseed language, IWASIL means “to make positive change in one’s life” (Turnbull, January 29, 2004). An organization of the same name has existed in Seattle for twenty years, providing cultural activities, juvenile-court advocacy, career guidance, and education to urban Native American youths. Boys & Girls Clubs of America is a nationwide network of more than 3,300 neighborhood-based facilities offering guidance to disadvantaged young people. Boys & Girls Clubs started its first group for American Indian youths in rural Pine Ridge, South Dakota, in 1994. During the following 10 years, 143 other clubs opened on reservations, but none in urban areas, where more than half the American Indian population lives. EL CENTRO’S FOREIGN POLICY During the early 1980s, when the Reagan administration was supporting the Nicaraguan contras, El Centro played a major role in convincing the Seattle City

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Council to adopt Managua, Nicaragua, as a sister city, an extraordinary achievement considering opposition by local media and a White House occupied by Ronald Reagan. El Centro’s bond with Nicaragua was forged before the Sandinistas took power in 1979. The same fall that the Beacon Hill School was occupied, a devastating earthquake leveled much of Managua. El Centro coordinated relief efforts in the Seattle area. Over the years, dozens of writers, poets, and musical troupes exchanged visits as part of the Managua-Seattle Sister City Association. Hundreds of people gyrated to a salsa beat in Seattle University’s Campion Towers Ballroom as they clapped and shouted in unison: “Viva Nicaragua Libre! Viva Sandino!” a political rally with drums and guitars (Johansen, 1985, 16). In 1983, Seattle voters passed a referendum opposing U.S. intervention in Latin America’s political affairs, including aid for the contras. During the 1980s, El Centro coordinated several dozen trips from Seattle to Nicaragua; Maestas led about forty multiracial, politically and economically diverse delegations between 1982 and 1990. Viewed from Nicaragua, the Reagan administration’s rhetoric (he called Nicaragua a “dungeon of totalitarianism” and part of a “Cabal of terrorism”) sounded surreal (I visited twice, in 1985 and 1987), as Oliver North complained that the Sandinistas, backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union, soon might be wiping their boots in Texas. The context was very neatly Orwellian: In a century and a half, the United States had invaded Nicaragua 16 times. Thus, support for the contras was required to safeguard U.S. national security. A trade embargo was justified for similar reasons, a measure that made toilet paper and toothpaste rare in Managua—so rare that Seattle visitors took extras to share. Children lacked pens in school, and Nicaraguans drank Coca-Cola from plastic bags. What did toothpaste and toilet paper have to do with totalitarianism? The Nicaraguan initiative was one of many international ties that El Centro fostered. Some people there said, only half in jest, that it is one of very few community-based organizations with a foreign policy. El Centro has sponsored a continuing cultural exchange with Cuba, including, in June 2003, Una Rosa Blanca, a celebration of the cultural and educational exchanges occurring between the Seattle community and Cuba, with live music, a short documentary presentation, and a panel discussion. Proceeds benefited the Learning across Borders project of El Centro de la Raza. Some locally oriented Seattleites robustly criticized El Centro for its international focus. Maestas countered that international ties are a natural outgrowth of the organization’s history. One article in the Seattle Times commented in 1998, “Of late, though, Maestas’ way with people hasn’t overcome a growing sense he cares more about international issues than what’s happening in his back yard. A recent cartoon in El Mundo, Washington’s leading Spanish-language publication, depicted Maestas milking a cow with the name El Centro emblazoned across it. Maestas squirts the milk not into a nearby pail marked social services but into other containers marked international relations. The cartoon captures a resounding complaint, that Maestas spends more time in Mexico, Nicaragua and other Spanish-speaking countries than in El Centro’s community” (Varner, 1998).

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The same account continued, “This year [1998], El Centro has budgeted nearly $434,000 on international relations” (Varner, 1998). The same article offered this defense: “Maestas said his high profile means he is often asked to play a role in international events such as the peace talks between Mexico and the Chiapas Indians. That explanation doesn’t stop critics from complaining he spends too much of the agency’s $1.7 million annual budget on travel and international relations and not enough on local programs to help the poor” (Varner, 1998). (El Centro’s annual budget had risen to $3.7 million by 2005.) EL CENTRO AND IMMIGRANTS’ RIGHTS Having originated from immigrants’ roots, El Centro long has been a steadfast defender of the many people who have arrived in Seattle, legally or not, seeking work. El Centro made a staple of supporting immigrants such as Miguel (an assumed name) and his family, who have learned how to live in the shadows. Among the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, these West Seattle residents know they must never draw attention to themselves. They drive the speed limit, resolve disputes without involving authorities, and learn not to make enemies on the job or in the neighborhood. In 2003, when Miguel had a shot at a $35-per-hour temporary contracting job with the city of Seattle, he removed himself from consideration when he learned that application would include a full immigration-status check. “I’ve had to let a lot of jobs like that go: government jobs; jobs at military bases, the airport,” Miguel said. To protect his identity, he asked that his full name be withheld “I can’t take the chance of being found out. You have to be cautious in everything you do” (Turnbull, January 30, 2004). Gradually, Miguel learned English. By 1999, he was hired by a building contractor, after which he completed training required to achieve journeyman status, which paid $21 per hour. The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services estimated in 2000 that about 136,000 undocumented immigrants were living in Washington State— about 2.3 percent of the state’s population. That number was up more than 249 percent from 10 years earlier. Current estimates as of early 2004 put that figure near 200,000 (Turnbull, January 30, 2004). “Regardless of how bad the economy here gets, people will continue to come,” said Maestas. “For some, it’s better to be jailed, to take a chance crossing the desert, than to die of hunger … where they live.” “Living in the shadows is a euphemism for a minute-to-minute nightmare for many of these folks,” Maestas said (Turnbull, January 30, 2004). More than half of Washington State’s undocumented population usually finds work in the apple, pear, and cherry orchards and asparagus farms of eastern Washington, where more than 60 percent of the state’s farmworkers are undocumented (Turnbull, January 30, 2004). In Seattle, they are among the day laborers who line up along Western Avenue each morning hoping to land short-term jobs or those who work in restaurants, hotels, and office towers as dishwashers, construction workers, cooks, office cleaners, housekeepers, and gardeners. Often

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they hold two or three such jobs to support families in Seattle and at home, usually in Latin America (Turnbull, January 30, 2004). On September 8, 2003, with El Centro lending support, the Metropolitan King County Council unanimously adopted a resolution that affirms the rights of immigrant workers and promoted a cross-country Freedom Ride on their behalf. The resolution called for “appropriate paths” for undocumented workers to apply for legal immigration status. The Freedom Ride, which sent busloads of immigrant workers and supporters from Seattle and nine other cities to Washington, DC, and New York City starting on September 23, 2003, promoted legalization of illegal immigrants, providing an opportunity to seek citizenship, reunifying families, assuring rights in the workplace, and protecting civil rights and civil liberties. The Seattle City Council and Mayor Greg Nickels endorsed the demonstration. Along with many other urban areas in the United States, Seattle was a site of very large demonstrations advocating immigrants’ rights during spring 2006, after Republican politicians proposed a law making entry into the United States without official authorization a felony. TENT CITY: AN EXPERIMENT IN ORGANIZED HOMELESSNESS Situated at the top of a hill about two miles from the center of a vibrant urban area with spectacular views of the Cascade Range on the east and the Olympic Mountains on the west, El Centro de la Raza’s location is a real-estate agent’s dream. Time and again, propertied interests have knocked on doors at City Hall, attempting to wrest the property from its working-class occupants, seeking zoning changes for “higher and better” (i.e., more expensive) use, usually for construction of expensive condominiums. It was with some sense of irony, therefore, that El Centro established a tent city for the homeless on its grounds. The area has a history of organized homelessness. Late in the nineteenth century, the northeastern face of Beacon Hill, now the International District and trendy Pioneer Square, was the country’s first skid road, so named not because its residents were on the skids (although many were) but because it was at the end of a logging sluiceway between nearby hills (then being harvested for timber) and Elliott Bay, Seattle’s harbor. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the same area hosted one of the country’s larger Hoovervilles, a mass gathering of jobless and homeless people living in tents. After 1990, a similar village, called Tent City, was organized by homeless people who were tired of sleeping in alleys or on shelter floors. Tent City started during March 2000 with about twenty residents at Martin Luther King Jr. Way South and South Charlestown Street in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, down the hill from El Centro. El Centro’s grounds hosted Tent City from July 2000 until January 15, 2001, Martin Luther King Day. Taking in about 100 people a night by that time, Tent City departed El Centro de la Raza after a local church offered to host it for 90 days. The city also rejected El Centro’s application for a permit that would have allowed Tent City to remain there and threatened to fine it as much as $24,000. Soon, however, the residents found that life in Tent City had its own perils, one of which was the necessity of keeping one step ahead of the Seattle Police

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Department. Living outdoors in an organized fashion is legally defined as trespassing in Seattle and, therefore, illegal. Unlike other forms of nonviolent illegal activity that take place in profusion inside the city limits (discreetly smoking marijuana indoors is one obvious example), the trespassing laws are rigorously enforced. Tent City quickly acquired a number of pro bono attorneys as well as other advocates. Most of Tent City’s residents were out of work or underemployed, including several construction workers who were laid off after they had been injured. Many of the residents had some money but not the two months’ rent required to get into apartments. Some women in Tent City were hiding from husbands who beat them. Others were mentally ill. Single men, who made up most of the community, stayed in the large tents and slept in rows of green cots. Single women stayed in smaller tents. Couples got their own tents, which they often furnished with air mattresses and milk crates that served as dressers (Chang, 2002). The camp had an elected adviser, who mediated disputes between residents. Residents of Tent City also elected a governing committee that enforced a code of conduct prohibiting drug or alcohol use, abuse, theft, and other crimes. Most people abided by the rules, and the few who did not were kicked out. Anyone who came in drunk or disorderly was expelled. “When they came to us,” said Maestas, “we asked to meet with the leaders of the group and we were impressed at how organized they were. We also saw that they were a rainbow community representing nearly every racial group in the city.” “They want it to just go away,” said Maestas. “They will not disappear. They are our brothers, our sisters and they cannot be ignored.” Maestas said he discovered they had a code of conduct that was superior to most communities. “They do not allow drugs or guns in their community. People treat each other with respect and they respect each other’s properties. They have demonstrated that women and our children don’t have to be vulnerable just because they are homeless” (James, 2000). In other words, the residents of Tent City had built a sense of community that was missing in homeless shelters and alleys, and the people of El Centro, who had built a community nearly three decades earlier in an abandoned building, appreciated that. “We gave one of the brothers a job and now he and his wife have an apartment for the first time in years,” said Maestas, who was invited to dinner at their apartment. “That amazed me. They had a place and were now inviting me to come and eat with them. This shows that these people are serious and just need a hand up and not a hand out” (James, 2000). LEGAL SUPPORT FOR TENT CITY Soon, the city’s legal rationale for refusing residence to Tent City began to crumble. In April 2001, code-enforcement authorities decided not to fine a Ballard church for hosting Tent City, citing a new federal law giving churches the right to ignore land-use codes while carrying out religious practices, such as aiding the homeless of Tent City. On September 27, 2001, King County Superior Court Judge Thomas Majhan ruled that the city had erred when it refused a permit to

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El Centro. The military, Scouts, and disaster-relief groups all have histories of establishing safe tent cities, Judge Majhan said (Kaiman, 2002). Majhan’s ruling stated that Seattle’s Department of Design, Construction and Land Use (DCLU) and City Hearing Examiner Meredith Getches not only had erred in denying the permit but made the decision without evidence to support their belief that a tent city was “detrimental to public welfare” and “injurious to property in the vicinity” (Green, 2001). “I’m feeling redeemed. Our joy is that the moral imperative won out over practical, outdated regulations,” said Maestas. “I believe, if I read the judgment correctly, we don’t owe ’em a penny” (Green, 2001). The DCLU initially had rejected the Tent City’s request to make its six-month stay at El Centro legal, insisting that tents, portable toilets, and hand-washing stations for 100 homeless people were not compatible with a neighborhood of single-family houses. Two months later, Getches upheld that ruling, saying that Tent City did not meet minimum standards for human habitation (Green, 2001). Early in March 2002, on a foldout table on the muddy grounds of the North Seattle Church of the Nazarene, a city attorney, El Centro, and Tent City signed an agreement recognizing Tent City as legal. “We were determined to keep this community going, with or without the city’s approval,” said Anitra Freeman, president of Seattle Housing and Resource Effort (SHARE), the homeless-advocacy group that organized the roving tent city, which was two years old by then. “But to get their approval? It’s pretty great” (Kaiman, 2002). For the first time, Seattle’s mayor, City Council, and city attorney officially allowed homeless citizens to sleep outdoors in what may be the largest, longest-running, and (against its desires) only city-approved tent city in the United States. By early 2004, two other tent cities were established in Seattle’s suburbs, populated by residents who were coping with escalating rents in the area. During two years of evading city attempts to shut it down (ending with its court-ordered legalization), Tent City had moved about thirty times. Its residents spent much of the year after leaving El Centro in various church parking lots. In mid-December 2002, the 80 members of Tent City moved into Seattle’s Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church, where they occupied a front lawn and the chapel. On January 20, 2003, the traveling homeless community returned to El Centro. “Just being here saved my life,” said Cory Preder, who lived on the streets before joining Tent City with his fiancée. “Being on the streets is not good. I don’t know how a lot of other people can survive that way” (Chang, 2002). Charlie James, publisher of Seattle’s African-American Business & Employment Journal, commented in the Seattle Times, “They were also amazed at how many tent people actually got up in the morning and went to work.” “Many of the residents have jobs and they still cannot afford a place to live,” said Maestas. “They are not lazy people who don’t want to work” (James, 2000). Wrote James, “Maestas quietly watches over this community and realizes that this is part of something that is bigger than 100 people in a tent city.” “This is about where our society is headed and how we will eventually get there,” Maestas

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says, almost sadly. “We are the richest nation in the world and we have so many homeless. Imagine how people in nations a lot poorer than ours are doing in this age of globalization” (James, 2000). MARTIN LUTHER KING COUNTY El Centro strongly supported the renaming of King County, Washington (which includes Seattle), for Martin Luther King Jr. In 1986, the King County Council voted, by a narrow majority, to rename King County for Dr. King. Originally, the name King County was adopted in the nineteenth century after the 13th vice president of the United States, William Rufus DeVane King, who (ironically) had been a slaveholder. The vote stirred some controversy, but because the county retained its crownshaped symbol, many residents remained unaware of the decision. Many (to be fair) also did not know why the county had been named King to begin with. In 2000, petitions were delivered to the Metropolitan King County Council urging its members to add Dr. King’s profile to the county’s logo, on stationery and the shoulder patches of law-enforcement officers, for example. Speaking during a forum hosted by the Seattle Times, Maestas said, “We must not underestimate the power of symbols. It would be a beautiful message to send. We can seize the moral high ground” (Godden, 2000). Joining Maestas on the panel were Robert Jeffrey Sr. of New Hope Baptist Church, Bernie Whitebear of the United Indians for All Tribes, and Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen. Jeffrey stressed the need for doing more than just remembering Dr. King for his “I have a dream” speech. He said, “If Dr. King were here, we would be a long ways along the road.” Blethen cited a quote of Dr. King’s, “The worst thing that can happen is when good people are silent in the face of evil.” Blethen said it reinforced his decision to oppose a state referendum, I-200, the anti-affirmative-action initiative. He said, “It was driven by mean-spirited, divisive people” (Godden, 2000). Whitebear described how he came to realize the movement he had joined in the 1950s, fishing for salmon on the Puyallup River to assert Native American treaty rights, was actually part of the civil-rights movement as defined by Dr. King. “You can move mountains through nonviolence,” Whitebear said. “We’ve had an Indian logo (a profile of Chief Seal’th’l, Seattle’s namesake) at City Hall for a long time. It’s there, not because it’s politically correct, but because that individual deserved it. You don’t have people clamoring to name streets after Newt Gingrich” (Godden, 2000). The sate legislature approved the name change; later, the logo also was changed by the county through a resolution sponsored by Larry Gossett, by then a member of the County Council. Martin Luther King County thus became the largest jurisdiction (in terms of population) on earth named for Dr. King. A POINT OF LIGHT By 2000, El Centro’s budget had grown to more than $3 million per year, with a payroll of about 60 people. Its many diverse programs included a food bank,

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an after-school youth program, a youth leadership program structured around poetry, and a child-development center named for Jose Marti, a children’s author who led the Cuban War of Independence against Spain in the late 1800s. El Centro has grown no less controversial over the years, even as its initial leadership aged and the organization became an institution. I find it ironic that when I return to Seattle that El Centro seems more stable (as well as, paradoxically, sometimes more open to change) than other, larger institutions I have known there, such as the Seattle Times and the University of Washington. The faces are more familiar at El Centro than at the university or the Times, where I also worked during the 1970s. “The difference between them and a lot of organizations is they’re not afraid to take positions on controversial issues that will upset the powers that be,” said Guadalupe Gamboa, state director of the United Farm Workers of America (Ramirez, 1997). It is ironic, Maestas believes, that El Centro de la Raza, which began life by occupying a vacant building and for the past three-plus decades has disagreed with just about everything Republican U.S. presidents have done, was recognized by President George H. W. Bush when he named the 250 volunteers there as the country’s 670th Point of Light, a designation for those who address pressing social problems through community service (Ostrom, 1992). It is doubly ironic that the award came two years after Nicaragua’s Sandinistas gave El Centro an award as well. Commented Seattle Times reporter Carol Ostrom, “He [Maestas] knows Bush would likely not approve of El Centro’s bookstore, where selections range from Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America to The Age of Imperialism and Corporations and the Cold War. “He would be a little uptight in here,” Maestas said of Bush, with a laugh. And Bush certainly wouldn’t approve of Maestas’s themes in the past two decades: criticizing the U.S. government for involvement in Central America and elsewhere, decrying defense spending, and slamming the Republicans’ “neglect of the American people” (Ostrom, 1992). Very likely, however, Maestas believes, Bush would have been pleased to observe El Centro’s volunteers of every race and age, who come to El Centro to stuff bags for food-bank recipients, work to give preschoolers a good start in life, or help people find housing, food, clothing, and jobs. He probably would be pleased to meet Kelly Tenorio, who is the single parent of two young boys and who volunteers at El Centro every day, supporting himself on a janitorial job at night. According to a statement from the White House, about 40,000 people in the Seattle area have been helped by the volunteers at El Centro (Ostrom, 1992). As controversial as El Centro de la Raza may be, the backbone of daily life there comprises services that rarely make the front page or the evening news. Many of these services are dispensed through the Frances Martinez Community Service Center (founded in 1983), which was named in honor of a Chicana farmworker who devoted herself to helping her community, even when she was terminally ill.

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Among other services, El Centro offers home-ownership workshops as well as the English as a second language program that originally led to the 1972 occupation. El Centro’s leaders also believe that economic development in poor and working communities is essential for progress and survival. Economic-development programs seek to meet the needs of businesses and families in the community by providing training and creating jobs. El Centro also hosts a community kitchen (La Cocina Popular), a 14-unit low-income apartment building, and several transitional homes for families moving from rural areas to the city. El Centro also provides space for office leasing, a printing business, an art gallery, as well as meeting space for seniors’ programs and a sports court (Centro de la Raza, 2000). El Centro’s International Relations Department and Community Outreach not only raises money through the sale of art and craft items from all the Americas but it also builds people-to-people relations through tours, speakers, and workshops. A Community University is offered free to people and focuses on the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. El Centro also has purchased and is renovating two Housing and Urban Development–repossessed houses that will be used to provide shelter for people going through employment and job-training programs with the idea of easing their concerns about housing so they can devote full attention to education. SUMMING UP: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? In 1996, a reporter from the University of Washington Daily wrote, “Roberto Maestas sits in his office, surrounded by shelves spilling over with books of diverse subject matter, size, content and style, too many to count. Most of them, however, deal with issues that affect people of color. Past and present. Nationally and internationally…. The Revolution in Mexico, The Catholic Peace Tradition. The United States and Japan, The Slave Trade Today. One book’s message is louder than all the others [however]: Where Do We Go from Here? Chaos or Community?, written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Like a voice calling in the darkness offering solace, it cannot be ignored” (Martin, 1996). “This is M.L.K.’s biggest masterpiece. The greatest gift he left the world,” Maestas said. “It should be required reading for every person in the nation.” The book, which Maestas has read five times, outlines the current state of political affairs in the United States. “King outlines exactly what we were going through in 1996,” he said. King’s “visionary view” states that individuals, as well as the government, will be forced to choose between either chaos or community. And they will clash (Martin, 1996). “Maestas was frustrated with the apparent contradictions in the system—joblessness, homelessness, hunger and poverty are rampant, yet the government is cutting programs and funding for the poor.” Maestas remembers thinking, “Here we are, the richest country in the world,” he said with a hint of bitterness, “and all I want is the damn building.” Tired of haggling with the city government, who for one reason or another would not grant their request, they decided to take matters into their own hands” (Martin, 1996).

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AN ACCOLADE FROM BILL MOYERS On the 30th anniversary of El Centro’s founding, October 11, 2002, Bill Moyers observed on his Public Broadcasting Service program Now: We’re sending a valentine tonight … to El Centro de la Raza…. If that sounds very 60-ish, well … unlike so much else from that period, El Centro de la Raza is still around, trying to break down barriers of race and class, feeding the hungry, sheltering the needy—and teaching English to Latino children and adults seeking a foothold in America. (Moyers, 2002)

“Language is a passion for the center’s founder, Roberto Maestas,” said Moyers. “He considers language the soul’s music, and finds it in the youngest hearts. Nothing earth shattering has happened at El Centro; no miracles have appeared to the naked eye. But they are celebrating their 30th birthday this month—and that, given the odds, is something” (Moyers, 2002). Maestas was quoted, reflecting, “This is a home for the left out, the locked out, the people with noble intentions, and the people who want friendship and love…. Now that we have this huge building, what do we do, and how do we do it…. We have learned to use language to define our terms, to express ourselves, and to bring out of our children the noblest and most beautiful sentiments that human beings have. That’s how powerful language can be” (Moyers, 2002). Said Regino Martinez, a son of Samuel Martinez, one of El Centro’s founders, “I always tell people that I’m a generation away from being in the fields. My grandparents, my parents … all my aunts and uncles were migrant farm workers, so I never forget them” (Moyers, 2002). Moyers observed, with some sense of irony, that El Centro de la Raza may be the only organization in the United States to receive the Reagan-Bush Thousand Points of Light Award (in 1991) and the anniversary medal of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua (in 1989). “As we say,” he concluded, “nothing earthshaking here … no miracles … no miracles, that is … to the naked eye” (Moyers, 2002). FURTHER READING Centro de la Raza, El. “Our History.” 2000. February 11, 2004. . Chang, Young. “Chapel Kitchen for City of Tents.” Seattle Times, December 16, 2002. . Dodge, John. “Struggle for Rights Defines Frank’s Life.” The Olympian (Olympia, Washington). February 9, 2004: 1. Ervin, Keith. “King County Resolution Affirms Rights of Immigrant Workers.” Seattle Times, September 9, 2003. . Fields, Elyse. “Working for Life—Re-imagining Your Life.” Yes Magazine, Spring 2001. .

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Godden, Jean. “King Merits a Place on County Logo.” Seattle Times, January 17, 2000. . Green, Sara Jean. “City Erred in Tent-City Rejection, Judge Says.” Seattle Times, September 28, 2001. . James, Charlie. “Is Seattle’s Tent City a Reflection of Our Future?” Seattle Times, October 25, 2000. . Johansen, Bruce E. “Beacon Hill Confrontation: Chicanos Were Following Slogan ‘Power to the People.’” Seattle Times, October 22, 1972: n.p. Johansen, Bruce E. “Chicanos Vow Holdout, Seek Lease, Renovation.” Seattle Times, October 14, 1972: n.p. Johansen, Bruce E. “Reagan’s Policies Spur Ties between Northwest and Nicaragua.” La Voz (Seattle), August 1985: 16–18. Johansen, Bruce E. “School Occupied by Chicanos Is Unheated.” Seattle Times, December 8, 1972: n.p. Johansen, Bruce E. “Take-over on Beacon Hill: Chicanos Achieve Sense of Community.” Seattle Times, October 12, 1972: n.p. Johansen, Bruce E., and Roberto Maestas. El Pueblo: The Gallegos Family’s American Journey. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983. Kaiman, Beth. “Roving Tent City Can Build on Its Legal Foundation.” Seattle Times, March 28, 2002. . Lacitis, Erik. “Taco Trucks Offer Mexican Cuisine North of the Border.” Seattle Times, July 19, 2003. . Martin, Cecilia. “El Centro de la Raza: A Look Back.” University of Washington Daily, September 3, 1996. . Moyers, Bill. “Now Transcript: El Centro de la Raza.” PBS.org. October 11, 2002. . Ostrom, Carol M. “El Centro Recognized as ‘Point of Light’; Social-Service Agency that Battled Government Is Honored by Bush.” Seattle Times, January 18, 1992. . Ramirez, Marc. “El Centro: 25 Years on the Edge—Latino Center Still Growing Leaders.” Seattle Times, October 10, 1997. . Turnbull, Lornet. “Boys & Girls Club Celebrates Indian Culture.” Seattle Times, January 29, 2004. . Turnbull, Lornet. “Illegal Immigrants Prefer to Live in Shadows.” Seattle Times, January 30, 2004. . Varner, Lynne. “Union Organizing Splits El Centro.” Seattle Times, May 12, 1998. .

CHAPTER 5

Back to Bushmeat and Berries

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ative Americans today often wax nostalgic about fry bread and commodity cheese, two staples of Indian humor. According to an old reservation joke, “You could be Indian if you think that the Four Basic Food Groups are Spam, commodity cheese, fry bread, and Pepsi.” In point of historical fact, however, fry bread is what creative minds and hungry stomachs came up with after the buffalo had been slaughtered, guns and horses had been seized, and the only things the residents of open-air concentration camps had to cook with was a fire, a skillet, lard, and white flour, often of questionable quality. Fry bread also was the Native introduction to a diet of so-called commods— government-provided surplus food—and all the health problems associated with them, beginning with diabetes, which is still epidemic in Indian Country. Today, Native Americans across Turtle Island (North America) are reclaiming their traditional diets as well as reconstructing age-old agricultural systems. Often, the “food movement” is taking place collectively, in a conscious effort to bring the era of commodity cheese to a close. Along the way, Native peoples also are finding that maintaining sustainable traditional agriculture requires fending off environmental challenges, from proposed mines to a galaxy of contaminants in country food and fish. Remarked Kim Severson in the “Dining and Wine” section of the New York Times: One result is the start of a new sort of native culinary canon that rejects oily fry bread but embraces wild rice from Minnesota, salmon from Alaska and the Northwest, persimmons and papaws from the Southeast, corn from New York, bison from the Great Plains and dozens of squashes, beans, berries and melons…. Modern urban menus are beginning to feature three sisters soup, built from the classic Indian trilogy of beans, squash and corn. At the Mitsitam

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Cafe, opened last year in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, cooks create dishes with roasted salmon, chilies and buffalo meat. (Severson, 2005)

At the Cave B Inn, a resort east of Seattle, Fernando Divina, the chef and a coauthor of Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions (2004), uses fresh corn dumplings, local beans, squash, and Dungeness crab as part of a sophisticated menu meant to pair with wines from local vineyards. Smoked whitefish chubs from Lake Superior and sassafras gelée ended up on the table at Savoy restaurant in Manhattan, and pine-roasted venison with black currants and truffled hominy starred at a $100 indigenous foods dinner at the Equinox restaurant in Washington, D.C. (Severson, 2005). Move over, Dr. Atkins. Bushmeat, fish, and berries were the original low-carb diet. Generous portions of protein, low carbohydrates, and high fiber may be the latest dietary avant-garde, but there is nothing new here. The hunter-gatherer’s diet was twenty-first-century politically correct: rich in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids but relatively low in overall fat and very low in that dietary villain saturated fat (Fallon and Enig, 2000). For people who lived without modern health and dental care, hunter-gatherers seemed to have been relatively healthy. The Weston A. Price Foundation noted “an almost complete absence of tooth decay and dental deformities among Native Americans who lived as their ancestors did. They had broad faces, straight teeth and fine physiques. This was true of the nomadic tribes living in the far northern territories of British Columbia and the Yukon” (Fallon and Enig, 2000). Most of the diseases that afflict Native Americans set in after contact with Europeans. These included diabetes and alcoholism as well as more devastating pathogens such as smallpox. Major problems with internal organs, such as the gall bladder, kidney, stomach, and appendix, tend not to occur among people on a traditional Native diet. The same problems are very common, however, among the same peoples when they consume a diet of commodities. Traditional Native diets were fashioned from whatever nature offered in any particular locale. Most were heavy on bushmeat (including fish) and berries as well as cultivated foods, including corn, beans, and squash. Range-fed meat often was much lower in fat than the feedlot products sold today. Pemmican (a variation of which is sold in some grocery stores today) combined meat with berries, crushed and dried for easy transport. A RETURN TO BUSHMEAT FOR THE CREE The Crees’ diet and lifestyle have changed dramatically during the past twentyfive years, mainly because hydroelectric development has brought European American styles of living (including eating) to their once-isolated homelands. The Cree now find themselves facing a major diet-based health crisis. More than 15 percent of adults now suffer from diabetes, more than three times the rate for other Canadians, in an area where it was unknown before 1979. Sixty percent


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of children aged 6 to 12 are overweight or obese. “We never used to have the pot bellies we have now,” said Eddy Tapiatic, patting his own paunch, which reached to the steering wheel of his V-8 Chevy pickup. “We are really out of shape” (Montgomery, January 25, 2004). At first glance, Chisasibi, a village of 3,500 people on the eastern side of James Bay, seems relatively affluent due to the 1975 James Bay Northern Quebec Agreement. New trucks abound, and the local schools are well equipped, as is a modern sports arena. Behind this facade of prosperity, however, the townspeople still suffer cultural disorientation after being uprooted from their island home of Fort George in 1980. They were moved inland to make way for dams along the La Grande River (Montgomery, January 25, 2004). Diabetes did not exist in Chisasibi before 1979. By 2004, the disease was epidemic. The number of obese people was striking. Their diet, which had consisted mainly of fish, switched mainly to store-bought processed foods during that quarter-century. Hydro-Québec’s own tests found an unusually high level of mercury in the fish, thanks to the dams, and warned people not to eat it (Montgomery, January 25, 2004). The hamlet of Radisson, about 75 miles from Chisasibi along a paved road, was initially meant to be a temporary site for Hydro-Québec workers building the dams. It became a permanent settlement, however, and a ready supplier of alcoholic beverages to a community that is legally dry. Bootleggers who charged up to $150 Canadian for a case of 24 beers struck fear in the hearts of anyone in Chisasibi who tried to put them out of business (Montgomery, January 25, 2004). Nellie House, a Cree, grew up in the bush eating traditional foods. She said that the changes in her community of Chisasibi have brought suicides, family violence, and alcoholism. “Our hearts, our spirits are still on the island,” House said (Montgomery, January 25, 2004). Tapiatic drove along a smoothly paved road between Chisasibi and Radisson in his pickup truck. In the passenger seat beside him sat Bobby Pashagumeskum, dressed in camouflage jacket and pants and caribou-hide eeyishchin, or moccasins. “I was born out in the bush—with a gun in one hand and an arrow in the other,” said Tapiatic, director of the Cree Trappers Association. Their mission on a bitterly cold but sunny January day was to kill a caribou and, for the first time, donate the meat to a local hospital, where patients wanted a taste of their traditional food. Their hunt was part of a larger plan to get 14,000 Cree in northern Quebec to eat healthier—less prepackaged, processed food found in grocery stores and more of their traditional bushmeat, caribou, fish, and berries (Montgomery, January 27, 2004). At –20 degrees Fahrenheit, the heavy coating of salt on the road on which Tapiatic drove did little to alleviate the slick coating of black ice, but the caribou love it. Sitting in the back seat behind Tapiatic and Pashagumeskum is a bit like watching two dogs on high alert for rabbit or squirrels. Both heads snap to the side as the men sense something has moved in the bush, even though the truck is doing 80 kilometers [50 miles] an hour. Every once in a while, Tapiatic stops

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the vehicle, reverses and peers through the sparse black spruce trees. “The Cree believe that the animal will show himself to us,” Tapiatic says when asked why they don’t get out of the truck and walk into the woods. And sure enough, after about an hour and a half of driving, two caribou “show themselves” ahead in the middle of the road. Tapiatic stops the vehicle and Pashagumeskum hops out, rifle in hand. He kneels, fires a shot, but misses. The caribou keep licking the road, seemingly unaware their lives are in danger. Two more shots ring out, and the caribou saunter off the road into the woods. (Montgomery, January 27, 2004)

Tapiatic and Pashagumeskum strapped on their snowshoes and followed the caribou tracks across the bright-white snow into the woods. About 55 yards in, a caribou lay on its side, blood trickling thinly from between its shoulder blades and landing on the snow. Pashagumeskum pulled out a tiny Swiss Army knife—its blade no more than three inches long. He cut the throat and then slit the animal down the middle. The caribou has to be gutted immediately to prevent contamination of the meat, Tapiatic explained (Montgomery, January 27, 2004). Pashagumeskum removed the insides, emptied the stomach of its contents, and then stuffed the intestines and other organs into an orange garbage bag, all in about 15 minutes. The two men then wrapped a heavy rope around the animal’s snout and legs and dragged it to the truck. The animal was loaded into the cab, along with the bag of entrails. The two men then climbed into the vehicle. Pashagumeskum, his hands covered in dry blood, opened a thermos of tea and unwrapped a tinfoil package. As Tapiatic tuned the radio to a tense town-hall meeting about health care that was being broadcast live from Chisasibi, Pashagumeskum devoured his snack of three cold hot dogs (Montgomery, January 27, 2004). The Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay now asserts that obesity may be the Crees’ worst public-health problem. “Young people don’t eat traditional foods anymore,” Tapiatic said. “They prefer store-bought, and we’re trying to get away from that. How do you do that? It’s a very good question.” As elders die and more youth develop a taste for junk food, the number of hunters has dropped dramatically. Just twenty years ago, about 75 percent of the population lived off the land—hunting, fishing, and trapping. By early 2004, Tapiatic estimated, only 30 percent of the population were full-time hunters (Montgomery, January 27, 2004). The 1975 accord between Hydro-Québec, the Cree, and the Quebec government stipulated that the Cree would be paid to spend a minimum of 120 days a year in the bush, up to a maximum of 240. The Cree Hunter and Trappers Income Security Program is run on the honor system, however, and administrator Allen Neacapo said that a lot of people sign up not so much out of a love for hunting but because there are no other jobs available (Montgomery, January 27, 2004). To deal with ailments introduced by imported food, the Cree are relearning the traditional art of preparing bear and caribou, as in Traditional Indian


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Recipes from Fort George, a cookbook put together in 1971 by a group of Cree women. How to Feast on Bear and Caribou Cooking Bear Meat First, you skin the bear. Then you cut the front of the bear down the middle. Then, take all the things inside the bear out. First, you cut the front feet, with three big bones, and take them off. And then, the back feet, also with three bones. Then, cut off the head of the bear. Then you cut along the long bones and ribs of the bear’s back. Then cut around the big bones near the bottom of the bear. That is the part of the bear we put on a string and cook on an open fire. It goes ’round and ’round, ’round and ’round, back and forth, many times until it gets brown. —Martha Pachano Drying Caribou Blood You will kill a caribou and bring it to the tent. You carry it by toboggan. You break it in pieces and take the blood and dry the blood. You make a wood tray to dry it. When it is dry, you break in pieces. When you want to eat it, you put a little in warm water for about one night. Sometimes you put in rice or oats. You eat it when it’s cool, with salt and pepper. —Lilly Pepabino

RESURGENCE FOR INUIT COUNTRY FOOD Living in the vast expanses of the Arctic, which are not hospitable to agriculture of any kind, the Inuit traditionally have subsisted on many forms of animal protein from land and sea, including caribou, walrus, arctic char (and other fish), seabirds (and their eggs), rabbit, walrus, polar bear, and seal. Iqaluit (pronounced “Eehalooeet”), population 7,000, the largest town in Nunavut and capital of the semisovereign Nunavut Territory, translates as “fishing place,” an indication of the importance of sustenance from the sea in the traditional diet. During the late twentieth century, the traditional Inuit diet began to change swiftly due to the encroachment of industrialized society from the south. This encroachment has taken two forms: expansion of the cash economy and urbanization that has drawn many Inuit who once lived off the land to towns

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and urban employment. At the same time, the traditional Inuit diet was being exposed to toxic pollution from southern sources (see chapter 6, “The New Inuit”). Iqaluit contains a large supermarket of a size that matches stores in larger urban areas, except that the prices (mainly because of air-freight charges) are three to four times higher than in Ottawa or Omaha. If one can afford the bill, mangograpefruit juice and precooked buffalo wings (as well as many other items of standard so-called southern fare) are readily available. The village of Pangnirtung, north of Iqaluit, is home to a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. In his book Native Nutrition, Ronald F. Schmid described the dangers of processed foods among the Inuit, many of whom are only a generation or two from living on a traditional diet. When foods like white flour and sugar were introduced, the occurrence of previously rare conditions such as diabetes increased dramatically. Tooth decay also has become common and, because the Inuit often lack dental care, some have endured severe pain from rotting teeth. According to Schmid, the introduction of sugar in a community without fluoridation of water and dental services “is tantamount to homicide” (Aloi, n.d.). For such reasons, as well as the spiritual connections to traditional hunting, Inuit traditionalists have been developing ways to maintain, at least partially, a diet of country food, even as people move from a hunting-and-gathering lifestyle to town life. Iqaluit, on Baffin Island, includes businesses that catch and dry traditional foods (arctic char, moose, seal, etc.) for commercial sale. Many Inuit also take time off their city jobs to engage in traditional hunting. Inukshuk Catering in Ottawa specializes in Inuit country food for cultural events sponsored by the Inuit community in that area. Country food also is catching on again in the daily diets of many Inuit. Iqaluit’s newspaper, the Nunatsiaq News, described a country food buffet there: “Elder Inuapik Sagiaktok made her way around the tables of country food, nibbling on some caribou meat, pieces of arctic char and fresh bannock before digging in to the platter of iodine-rich seaweed. She was surrounded by a mix of smells, from fish to fermented walrus meat” (Rideout, 2002). “It’s a feast fit for an elder,” commented Denise Rideout in the Nunatsiaq News, “and a dozen of them who are gathered at the Elders’ Centre in Iqaluit are munching away on the treats. Having grown up on the land, country foods have always been a staple of the elders’ diet. Now, Nunavut’s health department is promoting traditional Inuit food as an important part of healthy eating” (Rideout, 2002). On March 5, 2002, Nunavut health officials unveiled a new food guide for the elders that lists nutritious foods that are essential to strong muscles, bones, and teeth, as well as foods that provide energy and help fight infections. It is patterned after the Canada food guide, which promotes meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, and breads as healthy foods. Nunavut’s new food guide has some interesting country-food additions, however, including fish-head soup, bannock, muktuk, and mountain


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sorrel (Rideout, 2002). The guide also is being incorporated into the health curriculum in Nunavut’s schools. Nunavut Health Minister Ed Picco said that caribou, arctic char, and other country foods kept Inuit healthy long before they were introduced to qallunaat, store-bought food imported from the south. “Inuit elders never had an opportunity to grow vegetables or have bananas and apples,” Picco said in Inuktitut, the Inuit language. “But Inuit are some of the healthiest people” (Rideout, 2002). Picco’s department used elders’ knowledge of traditional foods to help develop the food guide. “It takes into consideration the traditional foods of Nunavut, which the other guides don’t,” explained Brenda McIntyre, Nunavut’s health-promotion specialist. The guide includes a combination of traditional and store-bought foods. For instance, it suggests that to get the proper amount of calcium, people can drink a glass of milk or eat some fish-head bones. “We are seeing more diet-related health problems, like diabetes and high cholesterol,” McIntyre said. “Any research we’ve had shows that Inuit traditional food is very high in nutrition” (Rideout, 2002). According to Rideout’s account, elder Inuapik Sagiaktok does not follow the research, but she knows from firsthand experience the value of traditional foods. The 72-year-old was born in a camp near Kimmirut and migrated to Iqaluit when she was a young girl. “My family ate traditional foods, like polar bears, caribou and lots of mammals,” Sagiaktok said through an interpreter. “As long as I’m able to and as long as it’s available, I’ll never stop eating country foods.” Because her father was a guide for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, she also tasted qallunaat food. She jokes that among her friends she was one of few Inuit at the time to have had the luxury of eating candy. “I was accustomed to eating both traditional and non-traditional food,” she said (Rideout, 2002). RETURN TO TRADITIONAL DIET AMONG ALASKA NATIVES Decades of consuming Western foods such as soda, candy, beef, potatoes, and white rice and avoiding traditional foods such as berries, roots, greens, sea mammals, moose, fish, and caribou has greatly contributed to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems, according to a study from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the preeminent cancer research agency in the United States. “Prior to contact with Europeans, Alaska Natives were primarily healthy and relatively well-nourished,” the NCI study stated. “The change to a diet low in vegetables and fruit and high in fat and sugar has contributed to the increased rate of many diseases formerly rare among Alaska Natives” (Campbell, 2004). One indicator of the continuing change in health status caused by changes in diet and exercise comes in looking at weight. In 1995, about 18 percent of Alaska Native adults were considered obese, defined as having a body mass index—a measurement of body fat based on height and weight—of 30 or more. Five years later, 30 percent of adult Alaska Natives were found to be obese, according to the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.

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Obesity has been associated with breast, uterine, colon, gall bladder, and kidney cancers, according to a 2003 Alaska state report. The National Cancer Institute report said that obesity is responsible for 25 percent to 30 percent of colon, postmenopausal breast, endometrial, kidney, and esophageal cancers, many of which have high rates among Alaska Natives (Campbell, 2004). Traditional Alaska Native diets provided foods such as game meat, salmon, and sea mammals, good sources of balanced omega fatty acids. Berries, roots, and greens offer fiber and vitamins. “There was nothing in their diet to throw them off balance,” said Madeline Patterson-O’Dell, a registered dietitian at Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center in Fairbanks, Alaska (Campbell, 2004). As more Alaska Natives move from hunting and gathering and into sedentary work, physical exercise has become less frequent, according to a report from the NCI. Historically, Alaska Natives were nomadic, following the game and the seasons, but now snow machines, all-terrain vehicles, and motorized riverboats are commonplace, even on the hunt, replacing the long walks or travel by dog team. Reduced physical activity contributes to increasing obesity and, therefore, chronic diseases such as cancer among Alaska Natives, according to health care officials there. State and Alaska Native health care providers have been trying to increase the rate of exercise and other physical activity (Campbell, 2004). In Fairbanks, the Chief Andrew Isaac Health Clinic has had a similar program for its 42 member villages for a number of years. One activity has Interior Alaska Natives who are overweight or obese, prediabetic or diabetic, walking 1,050 miles, the distance from Anchorage to Nome, in small installments, said John Martin, a personal trainer at the clinic. The walk is based on the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Patients, in Fairbanks or in one of the 42 villages the clinic serves, walk the segments either outside or on a treadmill, record them, and send the logs to Martin (Campbell, 2004). MOHAWK MOTHERS’ MILK TOXIC Toxic chemicals have endangered breast milk of the Akwesasne Mohawks, just as they have for mothers in the Arctic. Katsi (pronounced “Gudgy”) Cook, a “vibrant, down-to-earth Mohawk midwife,” has spent many years confirming in scientific terms what many Mohawk mothers have suspected: toxic PCBs and other chemicals from factories around the reservation have turned their own milk into a poison. “Through our own breast milk, our sacred link to our babies, our children stand the chance of getting concentrated dosages,” she said (Armour and Brown, 1992). Cook pointed out that as the children grow and ingest more PCBs and the chemicals accumulate in the second and third generations, the effects become more serious. PCBs affect neurobehavioral development, she said. “If you imagine a brick wall and see the neurons as the mortar, having pollutants in a fetus’ brain would be the same as having weak mortar or, some would say, as having no mortar at all” (Armour and Brown, 1992).


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Beginning during the 1980s, several scientific studies raised awareness and concerns about pollutants but did not provide conclusive evidence of their health impact. In 1987, Cook and several other women started their own research, contacting a number of scientists to help them conduct a study that would answer the women’s own questions and concerns. Cook’s own breast milk was at a level of 22 parts per billion after having nursed five children (Armour and Brown, 1992). Cook undertook her studies not only to confirm toxicity but also to advance the value of mothers’ milk. “We mustn’t let these numbers frighten us away from nursing our babies. We must always keep in mind that there are many benefits to be had from mother’s milk, even ones we don’t know about yet, so unless the level of toxic chemicals is extremely high I would always recommend that women nurse their babies” (Armour and Brown, 1992). “The chemicals that industry dumps into the Great Lakes ultimately reach all of us who are living in the Great Lakes Basin…. Can you imagine the level of PCBs that would be in the Mohawk community if they ate as much fish as the Inuit?” said Cook (Armour and Brown, 1992). Even so, fish are a major protein source in the traditional Mohawk diet. Fish also are central to the entire social web of Mohawk life. The Saint Lawrence River transects Akwesasne, so people who live there traditionally have eaten a large amount of fish. The Longhouse has a ceremony called the Fish Dance. The fish are contaminated, however, because they are high on the food chain. “The people at Akwesasne have been told for ten years not to eat fish, but they’re still eating it…. They don’t have a lot of money,” said Cook (Armour and Brown, 1992). Restoring traditional ways means, first and foremost, restoring the environment that sustains the people. “We must stand up and send out a voice that we want this destruction of our ecosystem to stop,” Cook said (Armour and Brown, 1992). FIGHTING TO PROTECT WILD RICE FROM MINING WASTES IN WISCONSIN Sustaining traditional Native agriculture and diet very quickly becomes intertwined with environmental issues, as Native peoples have been forced to battle toxic threats. Several thousands years ago, the Sokaogon Chippewa settled in the Mole Lake, Wisconsin, area, following their elders’ belief that they would find a home where food grows on the water. On a body of water that later immigrants from Europe called Rice Lake, they found the wild rice that has since become their economic lifeblood, both as food and as a source of income. The wild rice also is a sacred part of Sokaogon Chippewa religious life. Women collect the rice, which grows so thick that it looks like water-borne wheat, and then shuck it in the wind with birch-bark baskets (Naparalla, n.d.). A sulfide mine proposed at Crandon, two miles east of the reservation, could poison the water in which the wild rice grows. “Our biggest concern is the possibility of contamination of the wild rice beds,” said Roger McGeshick, chairman of the Sokaogon. “There’s a lot of concern over some of what Nicolet

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Minerals Company is planning to do,” McGeshick said. “They say there will be no contamination, but it’s hard to say that. What happens if it leaks 40 years down the road?” (Naparalla, n.d.). The same waters that grow wild rice also are used for bathing, drinking, and cooking; they also sustain the local Chippewa with fish. Even a small amount of acid leakage from a mine could destroy the wild rice beds, said David Anderson, executive director of the nonprofit environmental consulting firm Flintsteel Restoration Association. Furthermore, if the ground or surface waters are contaminated by mining, the Chippewas would not be able to eat the fish, drink the water, or eat the wild rice. As early as 1914, the rice beds have been protected, Anderson said. That year, a federal Indian agent shut down a logging dam on the Wolf River because it might affect the rice beds. “Rice is life, and life is tradition. I’d like to see my children have everything I had, and I believe the beds will be contaminated if the mine goes through,” McGeshick said (Naparalla, n.d.). The Chippewa have been fighting mining in the area for decades. During the 1970s and the 1980s, Exxon wanted to open a mine. Exxon and Nicolet Minerals aimed to exploit the same body of ore, which lies upstream of the tribe’s waters. Exxon proposed a similar mine that would have included a 350-acre waste pond that would have reached, in some locations, to within 15 feet of the water table, raising fears that sulfuric acid and heavy metals would leach into local water supplies. Conflict over sulfide mining in Wisconsin began in 1975, when Exxon Minerals Company located one of the largest zinc-copper sulfide deposits in North America adjacent to the Mole Lake reservation. The company planned to extract approximately 50 million tons of sulfide ore over the life of the mine, about thirty years. This volume of waste could fill Egypt’s Great Pyramid about ten times. The environmental alliance against sulfide mining in the area began in earnest during the 1980s when Kennecott Copper, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto Zinc, developed plans for an open-pit copper sulfide mine near Ladysmith, Wisconsin. In 1993, a small mine was started on this site, but local opponents feared that a larger mine operated by Exxon would follow. Native Americans in northern Wisconsin united with neighboring non-Indians to defeat the Exxon bid to open what could have been one of the world’s largest sulfide mines. Once word of the mine’s possible effects spread, sportsmen’s groups, many of which had opposed local Native Americans’ fishing rights a few years earlier, allied with them because their own access to healthy wildlife now was being threatened. The Chippewas also have been joined by several non-Indian environmental groups, including the Green Party. The political movement that grew out of resistance to mining in this area, the Watershed Alliance to End Environmental Racism (WATER), went head-to-head with Exxon lobbyists in the Wisconsin statehouse over a proposed mining moratorium. Opposition to mining intensified as Wisconsin residents discovered


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what the mining wastes could do to the earth on which they depended. Metallic sulfides, combined with air and water, can create sulfuric acid as well as residues of several toxic metals, including mercury, lead, and arsenic. Both Nicolet Minerals and Exxon asserted that new technologies would mitigate the spread of sulfide by-products from the mine wastes, but few people in the area bought the company’s argument. Mine opponents worked with Wisconsin State Representative Spencer Black, Democrat of Madison, to fashion a bill that would prohibit the opening of a sulfide mine in Wisconsin until a similar mine in another state had been closed for 10 years with no contamination of surrounding groundwater (Johansen, 1998, 6). “Local landowners can lease their land to the company and move to a different area,” McGeshick said. “We can’t. We were given the land by the federal government. We aren’t going to sell. We can’t move our families. We see [Nicolet Minerals Company] coming in … [as a way of] trying to force us out of our homeland. We fought to stay here, and we will” (Naparalla, n.d.). According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the proposed mine site does not lie within any of the tribes’ reservations but does lie within ceded territory in which the tribes, by treaty, have guaranteed various fishing, hunting, and gathering rights on public land. Nicolet Minerals has said that it would do everything possible to ensure the protection of the wild rice beds, including regulating the air and water near the reservation closely, said Dale Alberts, a company spokesman. The company also has asserted that it will remove pyrite, a metal that becomes acidic when mixed with oxygen and water, from the waste mine ore. The wastewater would be treated through a filtration system and then deposited in absorption beds that will, in theory, allow it to flow through the soil and reenter the water table (Naparalla, n.d.). Native peoples in the area remained skeptical in the face of such promises. The Indians ultimately prevailed in this conflict, arranging a mortgage on the Crandon mine, which B.H.P. Billiton donated back to them. B.H.P. spokeswoman Tracey Whitehead said that the gift gave her company a successful and permanent exit from the defunct mine, while also achieving a company goal of contributing lasting benefits to local communities. In 2003, the Mole Lake and Forest County Potawatomi agreed to pay $16.5 million for the mine, and the company consented to donate the same amount. The last payment was made in May 2006. B.H.P. Billiton also helped finance Mole Lake’s portion of the purchase. Tribal Chairwoman Sandra Rachal said that the mining company’s gift, to be placed in a trust fund managed by the Madison Community Foundation, will help meet needs of the tribe for generations to come (“Mining Company,” 2006). FIRST NATIONS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE FOOD SUMMITS The importance of the food movement among Native peoples is illustrated by the number of recent meetings related to the subject as well as the number of groups formed to address aspects of it. Some of the more important

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continent-wide meetings have been the Food Summits convened by the First Nations Development Institute (FNDI) of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The first such meeting was convened in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in November 2002. The second was held in September 2004 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and featured experts in food policy and enterprise development from around the world, including Native food-project managers, food-related entrepreneurs, traditional farmers, policy advocates, health and environmental activists, and other leaders from Indian Country. The Albuquerque Food Summit, which convened people from 83 Native, public, and private organizations, strengthened a network of reservation and Native community-based agriculturalists. The FNDI also launched the Native Agriculture and Food Listserv, designed to cultivate relationships between Native agricultural interests across the continent and necessary to achieving the long-term goals for food security in Native American communities. Participants in the first Food Summit listed among their goals: • To forge new partnerships and strengthen networks of people who are working in Native food systems to network and share information. • To provide information and expertise in a variety of areas related to food systems. •

To help coalesce a Native food movement.

• To provide a showcase for successful food systems and models in Indian Country. • To demonstrate potential for developing a food-related economy in Native communities that can have other benefits, including reviving traditional foods and agriculture, invigorating cultural systems, and improving diet and health (Native Food Summit, 2004).

Session subjects at the 2004 Food Summit in Milwaukee included: •

“A Native Food Movement: Creating a Recipe for Change.”

•

“Building from Our Traditions.”

• “Using Traditions and Regaining Good Health.” •

“Understanding the Nutritional Value of Native Foods.”

•

“Adding Value to Your Agricultural Business.”

•

“Culture, Diet & Health: Building Native Food Systems into Education.”

• “Resource Development Track: USDA Funding: Beyond Commodity Cheese.” •

“Revitalizing Traditional Food Systems.”

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“Exciting, Tried and True, and New Recipes: [A] Native Food Systems Model.”

•

“Building a Healthy Future with Native Youth.”

•

“Native Chefs and Their Role in Native Food Systems.”

•

“Rebuilding Native Food Systems: A New Role for the BIA.”

•

“Our Food Systems and the Environment: What Is Safe to Eat or Use?” (Native Food Summit, 2004).


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COMMUNITY-BASED FOOD SYSTEMS Traditionally, Native food systems have been community-based, as people shared in clearing, planting, harvesting, and other endeavors. Today, the FNDI has been applying this collective spirit on a continental level to rebuild Native American agricultural systems, using its Food Summits to convene people who will return home to improve local food-production efforts. Native governments are among the largest agricultural landowners in the United States, but much of their land has been leased to non-Indians. The Indian Land Working Group, among other organizations, seeks to consolidate holdings lost to allotment and to increase the number of Native Americans making productive uses of this land in the market economy (Dewees, 2003, 5). The first Food Summit, held in November 2002 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, identified several important common themes: •

The importance of culture in development of food systems. On many reservations, agricultural workers are reclaiming traditional practices that have been disrupted or lost due to relocation, assimilation, and other colonial efforts meant to (as President Teddy Roosevelt once said), “Pulverize the tribal mass.” This effort includes rediscovery of the spiritual and ceremonial context of agriculture.

•

The vital nature of environmental issues. The quality of food should be among the foremost considerations.

•

Protection of treaty-guaranteed fishing, hunting, and gathering rights.

•

Realization that local efforts occur in a global context of “common challenges to indigenous peoples worldwide, including loss of culture and traditions, loss of land, and threats from commercial interests” (Dewees, 2003, 2).

The first Food Summit produced a number of specific recommendations: •

Adoption of specific policies by reservation-based governments “to increase local access to healthy foods, support the local food system, and stimulate the local agricultural economy” (Dewees, 2003, 2).

• Support for local farmers’ markets and agricultural enterprises. This may include use of reservation economic-development resources to help support local foodrelated businesses. • Native control of local food systems, “to reduce diet-related diseases in [the] community” (Dewees, 2003, 3). For example, the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin’s Integrated Food Systems include ownership of an orchard, a beef herd, a bison herd, a traditional food enterprise, and a cooperative grocery store. The Wisconsin Oneidas and Tohono O’odham have provided healthy food to local food-assistance programs with an eye to reducing diet-related disease and keeping money in the local economy.

A food-system redevelopment program has been revitalizing the production and distribution of traditional Tohono O’odham foods in an effort to combat the

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diabetes that is devastating its community. In 1960, no tribal member had ever suffered from the disease; by 2000, more than half of the population had type 2 diabetes, the highest rate in the world. The loss of a sustainable food system is the primary cause of the epidemic. Traditional Tohono O’odham foods have been shown to regulate blood sugar levels, thereby helping prevent and regulate diabetes. Support has been expressed for efforts to integrate local agricultural efforts with the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), heretofore best known for pumping reservation stomachs full of surplus commodity cheese. Native farmers have been asking why this federal program can not buy local produce, benefiting both producers and consumers. This is one of a number of proposals aimed at making the United States Department of Agriculture a partner in development of Native food-production systems. The Diabetes Talking Circle in Winnebago, Nebraska, for example, “Provides a local forum for discussing issues related to diabetes and helps reduce fatalistic attitudes” (Dewees, 2003, 4). SALMON POISONED BY PCBS Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest fought to preserve access to salmon and other fish, their traditional dietary staple, only to find them tainted by PCBs, dioxins, and other contaminants. Natives earned a right to catch up to half the fish returning to the area through fish-ins and the Boldt decision (United States v. Washington, 1974). Today, some of the most toxic fish are being caught near Franks Landing, Washington, site of the most notable fishing-rights protests. Wild fish caught in this area contain PCB levels at least as high as farmed salmon, which are fed PCB-laced fish meal. Especially impacted are chinook salmon, which eat other fish. Some scientific authorities have advised people not to eat more than one serving of salmon per month, whereas Washington State health officials maintain that the health benefits of salmon outweigh the risks (McClure and Stiffler, 2004). Traditionally, salmon has been Northwest Native peoples’ main source of protein. David Carpenter, a researcher at the University of Albany, who wrote a study calling for restrictions on consumption of salmon laced with PCBs, dioxins, and pesticides, called Washington State officials “totally irresponsible” (McClure and Stiffler, 2004). Terry Williams, commissioner of fisheries and natural resources for the Tulalip Tribe, called Carpenter’s study “kind of alarming.” It came as Native peoples were being told to increase their use of salmon as a traditional alternative to processed foods to combat diabetes and heart disease. “It sounds like now it’s reached the point where we’re going to have to take this [contamination] into serious consideration,” Williams said (McClure and Stiffler, 2004). PCBs were outlawed in the United States late in the 1970s, but they may have become established in the life cycle of Puget Sound, where they recycle from debris of dead fish back into worms, then into small fish that are eaten by bigger


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fish. The Duwamish area of downtown Seattle has been declared a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. Research completed during the late 1990s indicates that Native peoples who eat large amounts of salmon caught in the Columbia River have higher than usual cancer rates because of PCBs, dioxins, and other pollutants. THE BENEFITS OF BERRIES Traditional Mohawks and other Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) have such a high regard for berries that they are regarded as sacred; thanksgivings are celebrated in their names, especially the wild strawberry, the first berry food to appear in the spring, which is eaten as a blood purifier. Elderberries, red raspberry, and tender sumacberry sprouts also are used for their blood-building properties (Cook, n.d.). “Wild berries remind us of our childhood,” wrote Mohawk Katsi Cook. “Indeed, they are a special gift of Creation to the children and to women. Over 250 species or berries and fruits—strawberry, red raspberry, currant, elderberry, juniper berry, cranberry, bearberry, to name a few—in Native America are gathered and utilized for their nutritional and medicinal value” (Cook, n.d). Berries are eaten raw, crushed, and mixed with water and maple syrup or honey for drinks; mixed with soups, bread, puddings, and meats; and dried for winter storage. The berries, leaves, and roots can be collected and used together or separately and drunk as a medicine tea (Cook, n.d.). Wild berries are very rich in vitamin C, a water-soluble nutrient that detoxifies the body, promotes healing, strengthens connective tissue, helps absorb iron, and cooperates with the B-vitamin complex in maintaining the endocrine system. A severe deficiency of vitamin C leads to scurvy, a disease that was common in Europe, where it was attributed to so-called bad air. Native peoples of Turtle Island already had recognized the dietary basis of the disease and knew how to prevent and cure it with a variety of medicines from natural sources. Cranberries are antiscorbutic, meaning that they are effective in preventing and treating scurvy. They can be used alone or in combination with other berries like sumacberry and other natural sources high in vitamin C, like the new tips of evergreens (Cook, n.d.). Berries also benefit the urinary tract. They act as diuretics, promoting the flow of urine. They also acidify the urine to create a hostile environment for bacteria. Cranberry and bearberry long have been used in the treatment of cystitis (urinary bladder infection). Berries also have astringent properties, meaning that they cause contraction of tissue and arrest bleeding. In this capacity, they are proved remedies for diarrhea. Blackberry root, in combination with wild strawberry leaves, long has been known as an effective remedy of diarrhea (Cook, n.d.). “Still today,” wrote Cook, “Indian woman and children prize the various wild berries that grow in our territories and we will travel long distances and make camp and harvest those berries which aren’t quite as near to home. We join our elders in their lament that gravel pits and concrete are causing the berry and other plants to turn their faces from the people and disappear” (Cook, n.d).

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TRADITIONAL FOODS FOR ELDERS AT WHITE EARTH On the White Earth Anishinabe Reservation in Minnesota, the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) maintains a program called Mino-Miijim, which delivers wild rice and other traditional foods, such as hominy and buffalo meat, to elderly people who are afflicted with type 2 diabetes. The program was initiated by Winona LaDuke (known nationally as Ralph Nader’s vice presidential candidate on the Green Party ticket in 1996 and 2000) and Margaret Smith, an elderly former teacher. The program is meant to substitute traditional foods for high-fat fast foods and government commodities that contribute to diabetes. “Oh,” a tribal member exclaimed to one WELRP intern who accompanied Smith on her monthly delivery route, “here come the good commodities” (Kummer, 2004, 148). WELRP also offers an Internet organic-foods catalog featuring wild rice, maple syrup, maple candy, maple butter, hominy, raspberries, plum jelly, strawberry jam, strawberry and raspberry teas, and buffalo sausage (Native Harvest, 2006). Each product is explained in a Native cultural context. For example: Bagesaan Baashkiminasigan (Plum Jelly) Starting from a very early age Anishinaabeg learn the seasonal harvests and around mid-August we look forward to the picking of the bagesaan (plum). They grow wild on large bushes in swampy areas of White Earth. Abinoojiiyag (children) often have a hard time waiting for the dark juicy fruit to grow ripe and may just use them for some mischief. Not us though, we use them to make this delicious jelly offered to you.

This program also maintains an activist presence on Native agricultural issues, lobbying, for example, against a patent application in which scientists were inserting DNA from wild rice into other plant and animals. CINNAMON AS A POSSIBLE DIABETES TREATMENT Cinnamon may be a natural and inexpensive treatment for type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes because of its molecular similarity to insulin. Research on mice and a preliminary human trial suggest that the spice, when taken regularly with water, behaves remarkably like insulin in controlling type 2 diabetes. “Cinnamon has a … component that we believe has the potential to prevent or overcome diabetes,” said Don Graves, a molecular biologist at the University of California–Santa Barbara (“Cinnamon Seen,” 2004). Cinnamon “helps bring down the sugar level to normal again,” said Francis Alexis, a First Nations elder. Although some remedies involve extracts from blueberry roots and evergreen trees, it does not work for everyone because everybody has a different body of metabolism (Floren, 2004, 49). Sometimes other plants and roots may be used, sometimes in mixtures, said Alexis, who spoke at the Metis Nation of Alberta’s conference on Living with Diabetes.


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Native traditional remedies have been used for all kinds of illnesses for thousands of years. “We’ve got cold medicines, flu medicines, medicines to bring temperatures down,” Alexis said. “Doctors are starting to get interested in this” (Floren, 2004, 49). So are scientists. THE NATIVE AMERICAN FOOD SYSTEMS PROJECT The Native American Food Systems Project, a collaborative effort between the Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute, South Puget Intertribal Planning Agency, and The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, is designed to assist tribal communities address serious nutrition and health problems. The project encourages Native peoples in the Puget Sound area to return to production and consumption of the healthy, traditional foods enjoyed by their ancestors, before the Food Distribution Program on Indian reservations brought them surplus commodities, including those infamous bricks of government cheese. Native nutrition is familiar to many Native peoples in the Pacific Northwest, who are only two or three generations removed from diets based on game animals and fish, a time when obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, all common today, were rare. The Native American Food Systems Project started with a Native American food production and marketing conference sponsored by the Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute in 1998. Nutritionists, health workers, elders, and other interested individuals congregated from several Western states to discuss everything from the ecological restoration of Native crops to greenhouse production on reservations (Montana, 2000). Alan Parker, executive director of the institute, hired Alysha Waters, an expert in the organic food industry, to direct the project and develop programs. An Anishinabe of the Great Lakes area in Michigan, Waters said that “Cutting-edge research is indicating that because Native Americans’ and other Indigenous people’s diets were so rapidly switched to industrialized processed diets that they have not had time to adapt. Traditional foods really need to come back into play to deal of some of that” (Montana, 2000). Working with members of the Shoalwater Bay, Nisqually, Skokomish, Squaxin Island, and Chehalis peoples, Waters helped design program models for intergenerational gardens, foraging programs, health and nutrition education, support groups, medicinal plant reserves, ecological restoration, and the development of Native American food product lines (Montana, 2000). Nutritionists, gardeners, and marketing educators from The Evergreen State College also provided assistance. Carmen Kalama, community-services manager for South Puget Intertribal Planning Agency and a Nisqually tribal member, said that she is excited about the traditional food program and how it has helped her people culturally. “For a lot of us, just like in a lot of places, we don’t know the language or we know very little of our traditions because they just haven’t been carried on,” Kalama said. “I would say the same thing for a lot of our traditional foods and plants. Growing your traditional foods and assisting your tribal members in incorporating those things

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back into their diet … results in more healthy communities and it … creates awareness in the youth” (Montana, 2000). THE INTERTRIBAL BISON COOPERATIVE The Intertribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC) dates from February 1991, when people who raise buffalo from 19 Native nations met in the Black Hills with the common purpose of restoring bison to Indian nations in a manner that is compatible with Native spiritual and cultural beliefs and practices. The systematic raising of buffalo across the plains and prairies of North America has recovered since more than 60 million were slaughtered during the nineteenth century in an organized effort to cripple the independent Native economy that was based on them. The buffalo therefore long have been an important symbol of a broader Native resurgence, with important implications for sovereignty, self-sufficiency, and independence. Members of the cooperative understand that reintroduction of the buffalo to Native lands will help heal the spirits of Native people and the buffalo. Although some Native peoples have been engaged in the production of buffalo for sale, subsistence, and cultural use, these activities until 1991 were conducted by individual groups with little or no collaboration. Congress appropriated funding for tribal bison programs in June 1991. The cooperative met again in December 1991 to discuss how these appropriations should be spent. At this meeting, plans were discussed to help existing bison herds expand and develop into successful, self-sufficient programs. Fred DuBray has been executive director of the cooperative, at its national office in Rapid City, South Dakota, since early 2002. DuBray, an enrolled Cheyenne River Sioux, one of the founders of the cooperative, also has been executive director of Pte Hca Ka, Inc., the Cheyenne River Sioux bison program, the largest tribal bison operation in the United States. By 2004, ITBC had a membership of 42 tribes with a collective herd of more than 8,000 bison. The ITBC is a nonprofit organization that is committed to reestablishing buffalo herds on Indian lands in a manner that promotes cultural enhancement, spiritual revitalization, ecological restoration, and economic development. The ITBC is governed by a board of directors, comprised of one tribal representative from each member tribe. The role of the ITBC, as established by its membership, is to act as a facilitator in coordinating education and training programs, developing marketing strategies, coordinating the transfer of surplus buffalo from national parks to tribal lands, and providing technical assistance to its membership (Intertribal Bison Cooperative, 2004). THE IROQUOIS WHITE CORN PROJECT The Pinewoods Community Farming project was created in 1997 as the brainchild of John Mohawk. This ma-and-pa organization began with the hope that Native Americans would begin, once again, to use and appreciate the Iroquois


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White Corn that for so long had been their traditional food. John Mohawk, who is Seneca, long had been an advocate of Iroquois white corn. This corn is renowned for its slow-released carbohydrates. These carbohydrates can be crucial in the fight against diabetes, a disease that has reached epidemic proportions in the Native American community. The white corn project has grown quickly. A restaurant situated in the Cattaruagus Reservation is still open. There the corn is hulled and milled after being collected by Iroquois farmers. John Mohawk realized that if the corn is healthful for Native Americans, it might also find a market among non-Native Americans. Not only have the health benefits warranted interest but so have the grain’s earthy aroma and unusual flavor. In a society in which we expect corn so be unnaturally sweet, this corn has grown a sort of cult following. It has been such a sensation that the project attained national coverage and praise on the pages of Gourmet magazine. Iroquois White Corn may be used in many ways. Two flours can be made from it, according to Mohawk. The roasted corn flour has the hulls removed by roasting. Then the flour can be used as a healthful substitute for white bread or for wheat bread. Tamales can be made from it, as can pancakes, stuffing, and muffins. Master chef Bobby Flay even has added the products to his personal line. The corn can be used in essentially every dish as a replacement for common sweet corn. It also adds a unique flavor that can bring new life to ordinary dishes. The leaders of the project have not forgotten their goals at home, even as they expanded nationally. At a local Native American historical site, the project has supplied Ganondagan with Iroquois White Corn for festivals and pageants. By supplying the corn, they are teaching people what they are missing. Local growers are encouraged to share their knowledge of the crop. Currently, mainly men have showed interest in the project, but efforts have been made to include women. The group operates a small restaurant in Gowanda, New York, where diners can sample many of the ways that the corn can be prepared. The menu includes corn and bean soups and chili made with buffalo meat. Diners also can sample meals with all of the three components of the Iroquois diet represented. Known as the three sisters, beans, corn and, squash often are included in dishes. THE PIMA AND TOHONO O’ODHAM (PAPAGO) REDISCOVER DESERT FARE The Pima and Tohono O’odham (Papago) of Arizona have been rediscovering the desert foods their people routinely ate as recently as the 1940s and relearning their cultural roots along the way. This rediscovery has been prompted by the realization that the present-day diet of the North American mainstream is making many of them sick. Where once most of them were lean, now many weigh 200 to 300 pounds, fattened by carbohydrate-laced commodity foods. As many as half the Pima and Tohono O’odham have been developing diabetes by the age of 35, an incidence 15 times higher than the average for the United

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States as a whole. Before 1940, diabetes was nearly unknown among the Pima and Tohono O’odham. Increasingly, they are returning to nature’s table, where one tablespoon of buds from the cholla cactus contains as much calcium as eight ounces of milk. The buds also are rich in soluble fiber that helps regulate blood sugar. A return to such desert fare, along with traditional beans, corn, grains, greens, and other low-fat, high-fiber plant foods can normalize blood sugar, suppress between-meal hunger, and probably also aid in weight loss, while helping alleviate high blood pressure and heart disease. Along with the buds of the cholla, the Pima and Tohono O’odham have been rediscovering the edible parts of such indigenous plants as the mesquite and the prickly pear cactus as well as tepary beans, choa seeds, and acorns from live oaks. Elders recall these foods, which had been all but forgotten among younger people who eat mainly hamburgers, fries, soft drinks, and other fatty, sugary, overly refined fast and packaged foods. As recently as the 1930s, Tohono O’odham farmers grew more than 1.5 million pounds of tepary beans a year. None of them had even so much as heard of diabetes. By 2000, the beans had become scarce, and more than half of Tohono O’odham adults had diabetes, most of which was attributed to poor diet (Severson, 2005). By 2005, Noland Johnson was harvesting 14,000 pounds of tepary beans per year, selling them for about $2.50 per pound at small stores on the reservation. The beans look a little like flattened black-eyed peas. The white ones cook up creamy; the brown ones may be simmered like pinto beans. Tepary beans also are rich in fiber and are drought-resistant, the only cultivated beans with heat-resistant enzymes that can withstand the climate of the Sonoran Desert. Like mesquite pods, teparies are rich in protein, iron, and calcium. Amaranth, called pigweed by some gardeners, thrives in the desert, producing edible greens and seeds, both rich in calcium. The seeds are rich in high-quality protein. Protein-rich chia seeds come from a salvia plant that produces two crops per year. When mixed with water, the fiber in chia forms a gel that lowers cholesterol and stabilizes blood-sugar levels. Home cooks pay as much as $9.50 per pound for teparies online. Big-city chefs are in love with the little beans, too, turning them into cassoulet, salads, or beds for braised local pork. Johnson began farming beans partly as a tribute to his grandfather, who died from complications related to diabetes. He always saves some beans for his grandmother, who likes to simmer the white ones with oxtail. “I see my grandmother telling her friends, ‘Yeah, I can get some beans for you,’” Johnson said. “The elders, they’re so glad to see them” (Severson, 2005). Native peoples of the Southwest also have been rediscovering acorns from live oaks, which can be eaten whole or ground into meal, to help maintain stable blood sugar levels. Although the sweet corn consumed by most Americans contains rapidly digested starches and sugars (which raise sugar levels in the blood), the hominy-type corn of the traditional Indian diet has little sugar and mostly starch that is slowly digested. Commodity pinto beans that the federal government gives to the Indians (along with lard, refined wheat flour, sugar, coffee, and processed


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cereals) are far more rapidly digested than local tepary beans. Government food programs replaced the tepary bean with the pinto bean. Mesquite, which occupies 70 million acres in the U.S. Southwest is considered a pesky weed by many Anglos, but it grows nutritious pods that have a natural caramel-like sweetness (Severson, 2005). Mesquite pods, which are 40 percent protein, also are good sources of calcium, manganese, iron, and zinc. Mesquite flour ground from the pods produces fructose, which can be processed in the body without insulin, and soluble fibers, which are absorbed slowly without a rapid rise in blood sugar. Carolyn J. Niethammer has authored American Indian Cooking and The Tumbleweed Gourmet, a cookbook published by the University of Arizona Press. Gary Paul Nabhan, a professor at Northern Arizona University, directs Native Seeds/SEARCH (Southwestern Endangered Arid-Lands Resource Clearing House), which studies the value of native desert foods in controlling diabetes among Indians and Hispanic Americans of the border region and preserves Native plants in the Southwest and northwestern Mexico. The group, housed on the grounds of the Tucson Botanical Gardens, teaches health professionals about Native foods and promotes their use through school and community programs, seed distribution, and cooking instruction. Johnson’s tepary bean farm has its roots in Native Seeds/SEARCH. In 2004, Nabhan started Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT), a coalition of seven nonprofit food, agricultural, and conservation organizations that has published a so-called red list of 700 endangered U.S. foods, including heritage turkeys and Louisiana Creole cream cheese (Severson, 2005). THE HOPIS PRESERVE DRYLAND CORN Corn bred over hundreds of years on the high mesas of the Hopi Reservation can grow in sand or clay, withstanding heat, drought, wind, and snow. “Hopi corn has a unique feature. It has long roots and only grows three or four feet high,” said Emory Sekaquaptewa, author, translator, and research anthropologist at the University of Arizona (Henry, 2004). Corn and other Native crops have been preserved via Native Seeds, an initiative founded in Tucson, Arizona, in 1983, which collects and stores seeds from traditional crops, sharing them with Indian farmers of the Southwest. “In Hopi land, you have hot, drying winds, a short season, early frost, late frost and at least 5,000-foot elevation,” says Kevin Dahl, executive director of Native Seeds. The organization long has been involved with the Hopi in seed banking and workshops, said Dahl. “In almost every family, you will have someone who farms” (Henry, 2004). The growth and use of corn is intertwined with the Hopi culture, part of a survival ethic that adapted farming techniques to a harsh, arid land. As farmers, the Hopis grew soil beans, squash, and more than a dozen varieties of corn. “White, blue, yellow, spotted, black and white,” said Sekaquaptewa. “When I was a child, it [growing corn] was a necessity. Now it’s more of a religious duty…. It is a symbol in everything that the Hopi people do.” For example, during a marriage ceremony, the bride will grind corn to demonstrate “her willingness to care for

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her coming family,” said Sekaquaptewa. When a child is born, it is wrapped in a cradle along with an ear of corn, he adds. “The corn signifies mother. We nurse from the corn” (Henry, 2004). A RETURN TO TRADITIONAL TARO IN HAWAII Native Hawaiians have been clearing forest, rebuilding crumbling rock walls, and planting traditional crops like taro, sweet potatoes, and breadfruit as part of a community effort, Kipahulu ‘Ohana, to restore ancient lo’i kalo (taro fields) near their ancestral homes, part of a traditional agricultural renaissance throughout Hawaii (“Come Experience,” n.d.). Many of these farms are cooperating with schools to including traditional foods in students’ meals. Some of the students also are participating in the entire cycle of raising taro, learning the cultural protocols for planting and sharing the harvest. Makaluapua Ka’awa, director of the Ke Kula ‘o Samuel Kamakau Hawaiian language immersion school in Oahu, calls this ike kino, or body knowledge (Cummings, 2005). Mehana Blaich, a Hawaiian language teacher on the island of Kauai, says that the lo’i kalo is her favorite classroom. It is there that children reconnect to food and themselves. As Mehana tells the story of taro to her students, she weaves in what she calls “the lessons of the lo’i.” This is where we learn to honor taro, she says, because, as Native Hawaiians, “Taro teaches us who we are” (Cummings, 2005). According to a description by Claire Hope Cummings, an environmental journalist who has worked with Native Hawaiian groups for more than fifteen years, traditional Hawaiians consider taro to be their older brother. Their creation story relates how the first baby born to their procreators was stillborn. When the little boy’s body was buried, the taro plant grew from it. Their second child lived and became the ancestor of the Hawaiian people. Thus, the cultivation of taro always has been an act of reverence, both for the land and for a person’s genealogy (Cummings, 2005). Traditional Hawaiians, concerned about how children eat these days and how disconnected their diet has become from traditional ways of life, bring local school groups to the taro farms to taste something other than their typical school lunch of processed foods. The children also are shown how Hawaiians integrated local wild plants and animals into their diet. Wild plants growing nearby can be used for medicine. Ancient Hawaiians used farming methods that today would be recognized as sustainable and organic. Ditches, for example, have been built to divert water slowly from nearby streams, so soil and nutrients are not washed away. This system returns the water, clear and clean, back to the streams to continue to the ocean, later to come back to the mountains again as rain (Cummings, 2005). FURTHER READING Aloi, Peg. Review of Native Nutrition, by Ronald F Schmid. Obsidian Magazine, n.d. Accessed December 23, 2006. .


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Armour, Adriane, and Sue Brown. “Study Shows PCBs a Problem at Akwesasne.” Peace and Environment News, June 1992. . Campbell, Diana. “A Culture out of Balance: Increasingly Sedentary Lifestyle, Westernized Diets Boosting Natives’ Cancer.” Fairbanks News-Miner, December 7, 2004, n.p. “Cinnamon Seen as New Diabetes Treatment.” Montreal Gazette, April 16, 2004, n.p. “Come Experience Life in Old Hawaii, with Native Hawaiian Farmers at Kipahulu!” Kipahulu ‘Ohana Web site. n.d. Accessed December 23, 2006. . Cook, Katsi. “Using the Berry Plants for Nutrition and Medicine.” Indians.org. n.d. May 10, 2004. . Cordain, Loren, and Boyd Eaton. “Evolutionary Aspects of Diet: Old Genes, New Fuels. Nutritional Changes since Agriculture.” World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics (1997): 81. Cummings, Claire Hope. “The Meaning of Food.” Thinking outside the Lunchbox series. Center for Ecoliteracy. October 2005. . Dewees, Sarah. Native Food Summit: November 15–17, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Time for Harvest: Renewing Native Food Systems. Summit Report. Fredericksburg, VA: Native Assets Research Center, First Nations Development Institute, 2003. Divina, Fernando, and Marlene Divina. Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2004. Fallon, Sally, and Mary G. Enig. “Guts and Grease: The Diet of Native Americans.” Weston A. Price Foundation. January 1, 2000. Accessed May 7, 2004. . Floren, Eric. “Fight Diabetes with Berries; Scientists Take New Interest in Traditional First Nation Medicines.” Edmonton Sun, March 19, 2004: 49. Henry, Bonnie. “Corn: The Kernel of Hopi Culture.” Arizona Daily Star, July 14, 2004, n.p. Intertribal Bison Cooperative. 2004. . Johansen, Bruce E. “Exxon vs. Chippewas in Wisconsin.” Native Americas 15, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 6. Kummer, Corby. “Going with the Grain: True Wild Rice, for the Past Twenty Years Nearly Impossible to Find, Is Slowly Being Nurtured Back to Market.” Atlantic Monthly, May 2004: 145–48. McClure, Robert, and Lisa Stiffler. “Sound’s Salmon Carry High PCB Levels but State Says Health Benefits of Eating Fish Outweigh Risks.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 15, 2004: A-1. “Mining Company Gives $8 Million to Local Native American Tribe.” Associated Press, June 2, 2006 (in LEXIS). Montana, Cate. “Project Develops Native American Food Systems Models.” Indian Country Today, August 30, 2000. <www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=2482>. Montgomery, Sue. “Getting Cree Back into the Bush; Hunting and Fishing Part of Larger Plan to Foster Healthy Diet.” Montreal Gazette, January 27, 2004, n.p. Montgomery, Sue. “Our Greed for Energy Takes Its Toll.” Montreal Gazette, January 25, 2004, n.p. Naparalla, Melinda. “Rice Lake Is Priceless to the Chippewa.” Green Bay News-Chronicle, n.d. Accessed June 29, 2004, n.p. .

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Native Food Summit 2004: Creating a Recipe for Change. September 9–11, 2004. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. First Nations Development Institute. Accessed December 23, 2006. . Native Harvest On-line Catalogue. Whole Earth Land Recovery Project, 2006. . Niethammer, Carolyn J. American Indian Cooking: Recipes from the Southwest. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Niethammer, Carolyn J. The Tumbleweed Gourmet: Cooking with Wild Southwestern Plants. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987. Rideout, Denise. “GN Unveils Made-in-Nunavut Food Guide; Good Nutrition, Inuit-style.” Nunatsiaq News, March 8, 2002. . Severson, Kim. “Native Foods Nourish Again.” The New York Times, November 23, 2005.. Traditional Indian Recipes from Fort George, Quebec. Cobalt, Ontario: Highway Book Shop, 1971.

CHAPTER 6

The New Inuit

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n North American popular imagination, the Arctic is still a pristine place where people live in igloos and guide dogsleds across snow-swept vistas in search of wild meat on the hoof. Many people used to call them Eskimo, which is a corruption of an Algonquian word meaning “eater of raw meat” that means nothing to them; Inuit means “the Living Ones Who Are Here” (Qitsualik, 2005, 287). Today’s Inuit usually live in towns. They still hunt and fish on the land but just as often shop in grocery stores. They may have satellite dishes, live in town houses, and eat arctic char sushi. When they take food from the land, today’s Inuit may worry about the level of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in their prey’s body fat. The Arctic is a very different place than it was a few decades ago. Popular imagination down South has been slow to catch up with the reality of today’s Inuit world. That world has emerged into the age of the jet and the computer from the age of the igloo and dogsled in one or two generations, with profoundly destabilizing results. Welcome to ground zero on the road to environmental apocalypse: a place and a people that never asked for any of the travails that industrial societies to the south have brought to them. The bevy of environmental threats facing the Inuit is entirely outside their historical experience. Today’s Inuit survival agenda includes rapid global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, and levels of chemical pollution so noxious that mothers have been warned to avoid breast-feeding their babies. Very suddenly, the Inuit, who lived in relative isolation for many thousands of years, have found their bodies afflicted with toxic chemicals, such as PCBs and dioxins, generated at lower latitudes, for which the Arctic has become an atmospheric sink. Levels of these toxins have become so high that Inuit mothers cannot breast-feed their babies without poisoning them. Global warming also is advancing more quickly in the Arctic than anywhere else on earth. At the same

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time, rapid sociopolitical changes are threatening Inuit youth with a plague of suicide as the moorings of traditional cultures erode. SHEILA WATT-CLOUTIER’S WORLD Raised in the traditional world, Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s “dogsled” today may be a Boeing 757. During the half of her days that are spent traveling, she may be circling the Arctic, meeting with Nelson Mandela, or addressing scientists in Seattle or environmental activists in New York City. Watt-Cloutier, who has two grown children and a grandson, was, until 2006, chairwoman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC). Formed in 1977, the ICC represents the common interests of approximately 155,000 Inuit in northern Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and Russia. As head of the ICC, Watt-Cloutier ranged the world trying to protect her people, many of whom are only a generation off the land, from the effluvia of the industrialized world and to, as she told a world conference on climate change in Milan, Italy, on December 10, 2003, “bring a human face to these proceedings.” She travels the world injecting “life,” as she phrases it, into international negotiations with the delicacy of a diplomat and the verve of a social activist (Watt-Cloutier, December 10, 2003). A matrix of geographic and cultural factors has placed the Inuit and other Arctic peoples “at the very top of the natural world’s dietary hierarchy” (Cone, 2005, 22). In the world of persistent organic pollutants, that position is extremely hazardous for a people’s health. The atmosphere has turned the Arctic into a chemical garbage dump in an area where the climate fosters a diet of meat-eating animals. The peoples of the Arctic thus find themselves at the end of the line. The Inuit “eat 194 different species of wild animals, most of them inhabiting the sea. Often, on a daily basis, they consume the meat or blubber … of fish-eating whales, seals, and walrus four or five links up marine food chains” (Cone, 2005, 22). “Today, about 200 toxic pesticides and industrial chemicals have been detected in the bodies of the Arctic’s indigenous people and animals, including all twelve of the ‘Dirty Dozen,’” as well as mercury, which is released by coal-burning power plants and chemical factories (Cone, 2005, 23). Thus, the Inuit and other Arctic peoples have become “the industrial world’s lab rats, the involuntary subjects of an accidental human experiment that reveals what happens when a boundless brew of chemicals builds up in an environment” (Cone, 2005, 45). The Inuit diet, which is very nutritious (containing an average of 40 times the omega-3 fatty acids of typical industrial-world fare, for example) has become a death trap (Cone, 2005, 48). Although heart disease and prostate cancer are very rare among the Inuit, toxicity-related maladies have been exploding in recent years. Watt-Cloutier’s own life illustrates how the Inuit struggle to maintain some semblance of tradition in a swiftly changing, melting (and often polluted) ice world. Watt-Cloutier watches global warming manipulate the seasons from her home overlooking Frobisher Bay in Iqaluit, capital of the semisovereign Canadian

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Inuit province of Nunavut, on Baffin Island. The name of the capital is pronounced “Eehalooeet,” not as it would seem from its English spelling. Pronounced the way it is written in English, the word means something mildly salacious and may cause a native speaker to giggle. Iqaluit means “fishing place,” an indication of the importance of sustenance from the sea in the traditional Inuit diet. Nunavut means “our home” in the Inuktitut language. Nunavut, a territory four times the size of France, has a population of approximately 25,000, 85 percent of whom are Inuit. Born in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik (northern Quebec), Watt-Cloutier was raised traditionally on the land for 10 years before attending school in southern Canada and in Churchill, Manitoba. Watt-Cloutier has an educational background in counseling, education, and human development. Her early experience as an Inuktitut interpreter for the Ungava Hospital in Nunavik led to a lifetime commitment improving health conditions and education in aboriginal communities. Youth issues are a priority for Watt-Cloutier. She contributed significantly to Silatunirmut: The Path to Wisdom, the 1992 report of the review of educational programming in Nunavik, and she cowrote, produced, and codirected a youth-awareness video Capturing Spirit: The Inuit Journey. A consummate diplomat, as well as Inuit traditionalist, Watt-Cloutier is concerned that all be reciprocal and in balance. This concern can manifest itself in small, personal ways. Visiting her home in 2001, I gave her grandson a plastic Power Ranger, a gift from my granddaughter Samantha. Minutes before I departed Iqaluit, Sheila breezed into the airport, reached around the metal detector, and handed me a tiny pair of Inuit booties from her grandson. Watt-Cloutier has long been a political representative for the Inuit. From 1995 to 1998, she was corporate secretary of Makivik Corporation, established under the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Land Claims Agreement. She was elected President of ICC Canada in 1995 and reelected to this position in 1998, becoming international chair of ICC in 2002. During her years at ICC Canada, Watt-Cloutier was speaker for a coalition of northern indigenous peoples that persuaded states to conclude a global agreement, signed in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2001, to ban the generation and use of persistent organic pollutants, such as dioxins, DDT and PCBs, that contaminate the Arctic food web. She received the inaugural global environment award from the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations in recognition for this work. After that, Watt-Cloutier became intensely engaged in climate-change initiatives to persuade nations around the world to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. THE INUIT: DIOXIN AND OTHER PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS The toxicological and climatic due bills for modern industry at the lower latitudes are being left on the Inuit’s table in Nunavut. Native people whose diets consist largely of sea animals (whales, polar bears, fish, and seals) have been consuming a concentrated toxic chemical cocktail. Abnormally high levels of dioxins and other industrial chemicals are being detected in Inuit mothers’ breast milk. Other

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traditional Inuit food sources also have been threatened by widespread pollution that has made many traditional food sources unsafe. Warming temperatures and erratic weather patterns (including out-of-season ice storms and thaws, which cause thinning of the ice) also have made hunting riskier to human health. Despite urbanization, pollution, and warming temperatures, many Inuit still hunt country food for a portion of their sustenance, citing its spiritual connection to tradition as well as nutritional benefits. To environmental toxicologists, the Arctic by the 1990s was becoming known as the final destination for a number of manufactured poisons, including, most notably, dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which accumulate in the body fat of large aquatic and land mammals (including human beings), sometimes reaching levels that imperil their survival. Thus the Arctic, which superficially seems so clean, has become one of the most contaminated places on earth—a place where a traditional diet of country food has become dangerous to the Inuit’s health. Most of the chemicals that now afflict the Inuit are synthetic compounds of chlorine; some of them are incredibly toxic. For example, one millionth of a gram of dioxin will kill a guinea pig (Cadbury, 1997, 184). As Watt-Cloutier was being raised in an Inuit community in remote northern Quebec, toxic chemicals were being absorbed by her body and those of other Inuit in the Arctic. To a tourist with no interest in environmental toxicology, the Inuit’s Arctic homeland may seem as pristine as ever during its long, snow-swept winters. Many Inuit still guide sleds onto the pack ice surrounding their Arctic island homelands to hunt polar bears and seals. Such a scene may seem pristine, until one realizes that the polar bears’ and seals’ body fats are laced with dioxins and PCBs. Geographically, the Arctic could not be in a worse position for toxic pollution, as a ring of industry in Russia, Europe, and North America pours pollutants northward on prevailing winds. Arctic ecosystems and indigenous communities are particularly at risk because POPs biomagnify—that is, they increase in potency by several orders of magnitude—with each step up the food chain. “As we put our babies to our breasts we are feeding them a noxious, toxic cocktail,” said Watt-Cloutier. “When women have to think twice about breast-feeding their babies, surely that must be a wake-up call to the world” (Johansen, 2000, 27). More than mother’s milk is at stake here. “Greenland has no trees, no grass, no fertile soil,” wrote Marla Cone in Silent Snow (2005), “which means no cows, no pigs, no chickens, no grains, no vegetables, no fruit. In fact, there is little need for the word ‘green’ in Greenland. The ocean is its food basket” (Cone, 2004). “Beluga whale, for example, has 10 times the iron of beef, twice the protein, and five times the vitamin A. Omega-3 fatty acids in the seafood protect the indigenous people from heart disease. A 70-year-old Inuit in Greenland has coronary arteries as elastic as those of a 20-year-old Dane eating Western foods,” says Dr. Gert Mulvad of the Primary Health Care Clinic in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. Some Arctic clinics do not even keep heart medications like nitroglycerin in stock. Although heart disease has appeared with the introduction of Western foods, it remains “more or less unknown,” Mulvad said (Cone, 2004).

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“Our foods do more than nourish our bodies,” Inuit rights activist Ingmar Egede said. “When many things in our lives are changing, our foods remain the same. They make us feel the same as they have for generations. When I eat Inuit foods, I know who I am” (Cone, 2004). “Imagine for a moment,” said Watt-Cloutier, “the shock of the Inuit as they discovered that what has nourished them for generations, physically and spiritually, is now poisoning them. Some Inuit now question whether they should eat locally gathered food; others ask whether it is safe to breast-feed their infants. What sort of public outcry and government action would there be if the same levels of POPs found among Inuit were found in women in Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver as a result of eating poultry or beef?” (Johansen, 2002a). Watt-Cloutier has a way of bringing scientific conferences to their feet in a most unusual manner of injecting life and a human face into otherwise staid proceedings when she said such things as, “A poisoned Inuk child, a poisoned Arctic, and a poisoned planet are all one and the same” (Cone, 2005, 200). After negotiation of the Stockholm Convention, which outlaws many of the pollutants that afflict the Inuit, Watt-Cloutier evoked tears from some delegates with her note of thanks on behalf of the Inuit. The treaty, she said, had “brought us an important step closer to fulfilling the basic human right of every person to live in a world free of toxic contamination. For Inuit and indigenous peoples, this means not only a healthy and secure environment, but also the survival of a people. For that I am grateful. Nakurmiik. Thank you” (Cone, 2005, 202). The Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants, negotiated in 2001, included a clause in its preamble that singled out the Arctic and its indigenous peoples because of the especially serious risks faced by the Inuit and the Arctic environment from these chemicals. The Stockholm Convention bans or dramatically reduces the legal uses of the most frequently manufactured POPs, including dioxins and PCBs. WE FEEL LIKE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES Persistent organic pollutants have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and other neurological, reproductive, and immune-system damage in people and animals. At high levels, these chemicals also damage the central nervous systems of human beings and other animals. Many of them also act as endocrine disrupters, causing deformities in sex organs as well as long-term dysfunction of reproductive systems. These chemicals also can interfere with the function of the brain and endocrine system by penetrating the placental barrier between mother and unborn child, scrambling the instructions of the naturally produced chemical messengers. The latter tell a fetus how to develop in the womb and postnatally through puberty; should interference occur, immune, nervous, and reproductive systems may not develop according to the contents of the genes inherited by the embryo. Pesticide residues in the Arctic today may include some used decades ago at lower latitudes. The circulation of ocean and atmosphere both conduct these

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poisons northward. In addition, the Arctic’s cold climate slows the natural decomposition of these toxins, so they persist in northern environments longer than at lower latitudes. The Arctic thus acts as a cold trap, collecting and maintaining a wide range of industrial pollutants, from PCBs to toxaphene, chlordane to mercury, according to the Canadian Polar Commission (PCB Working Group, n.d.). As a result, “Many Inuit have levels of PCBs, several forms of DDT, and other persistent organic pollutants in their blood and fatty tissues that are five to ten times greater than the national average in Canada or the United States” (PCB Working Group, n.d.). TRACKING TOXICS During the late 1990s, ecologist Barry Commoner and his colleagues used a computer model to track dioxins released from each of their 44,091 sources in North America, a list that includes trash-burning facilities and medical-waste burning plants. For one year, the scientists followed dioxins as weather patterns scattered them from their sources. Winds blew some of the pollution northward in a hurry. Riding strong air currents, dioxin molecules can travel 250 miles in one day, according to Mark Cohen, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Maryland, who adapted the model for the study (Rozell, 2000). Dioxins can travel from a smokestack in Indiana, for example, to the breast milk of a woman in Coral Harbour, Nunavut. After riding air currents northward, dioxins drop with snowflakes into Hudson Bay. During summer, heat may promote evaporation of pesticides in the fields of the United States, for example, feeding a so-called molecular trickle of toxaphene, chlordane, and other compounds that makes its way to the Arctic, condenses, and falls to earth. In water, algae absorb the dioxins. A fish eats the algae; a bearded seal eats the fish, and dioxins build up in the animal’s fatty tissues. The woman in Coral Harbour eats the seal meat, and her body transfers the dioxins to the fatty molecules of her breast milk (Rozell, 2000; Schneider, 1996, A-15). “The Arctic is more than myth and dreams…. The fish and whales carry scary amounts of contaminants,” Canadian Environment Minister Sergio Marchi said (Schneider, 1996, A-15). “This is an important issue for indigenous people in the Arctic,” Commoner said. “There’s no way of protecting [areas from dioxin fallout]. You can’t put an umbrella over Nunavut” (Rozell, 2000). Persistent organic pollutants have been taking a toll on Arctic peoples in Russia as well as in Canada. With regard to persistent organic pollutants, “The peoples of the Arctic of Russia are at the edge of an abyss, physical disappearance,” said Yeremei Danilovich, president of an association representing the more than two dozen native groups in Russia’s Arctic. “The reforms have mercilessly hit the people of the North. The oil and gas companies, the logging companies, the gold and silver companies, have given nothing to the indigenous people…. I hope the world understands how important this entire area is” (Schneider, 1996, A-15).

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“At times,” said Watt-Cloutier, “we feel like an endangered species. Our resilience and Inuit spirit and of course the wisdom of this great land that we work so hard to protect gives us back the energy to keep going” (Watt-Cloutier, March 28, 2001). “We are the miner’s canary,” said Watt-Cloutier. “It is only a matter of time until everybody will be poisoned by the pollutants that we are creating in this world” (Lamb, n.d.). The United Nations Environmental Programme’s Governing Council has passed a resolution effectively recognizing the Arctic as a so-called barometer or indicator region of the globe’s environmental health. This resolution called upon Arctic states to significantly increase environmental monitoring arrangements in the Arctic (Watt-Cloutier, January 16, 2004). One can scan lists of scientific research funding around the world and add up what ails the Arctic. In addition to a plethora of studies documenting the spread of persistent organic pollutants through the flora and fauna of the Arctic, many studies aim to document the saturation of the same area by levels of mercury, lead, and nuclear radiation in fish and game (Johansen, 2002b). Following is a sampling of titles of research projects directed at documenting ongoing ecological troubles in the Arctic. The listed studies have been generated by scientists in the United States, Canada, Sweden, Norway, and Russia. “Assessment of Organochlorines and Metal Levels in Canadian Arctic Fox.” “Concentrations and Patterns of Persistent Organochlorine Contaminants in Beluga Whale Blubber.” “Contaminants in Greenland Human Diet.” “Effects of Metals and POPs on Marine Fish Species.” “Effects of Prenatal Exposure to Organochlorines and Mercury in the Immune System of Inuit Infants.” “Effects and Trends of POPs on Polar Bears.” “Endocrine Disruption in Arctic Marine Mammals.” “Estimation of Site Specific Dietary Exposure to Contaminants in Two Inuit Communities.” “Follow-up of Pre-school Aged Children exposed to PCBs and Mercury through Fish and Marine Mammal Consumption.” “Heavy Metals in Grouse Species.” “Lead Contamination of Greenland Birds.” “Metals in Reindeer.” “New Persistent Chemicals in the Arctic Environment.” “Persistent Toxic Substances, Food Security, and Indigenous Peoples of the Russian North.” “Retrospective Survey of Organochlorines and mercury in Arctic Seabird Eggs.” “Temporal Trends of Persistent Organic Pollutants and Metals in Ringed Seals of the Canadian Arctic.” “Ultraviolet (UV) Monitoring in the Alaskan Arctic.” “UV-Radiation and Its Impact on Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Foodwebs of Arctic Freshwater.” (Johansen, 2002b)

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The bodies of some Inuit on the northernmost islands of Nunavut, thousands of miles from sources of pollution, contain some of the highest levels of PCBs ever found, except for victims of industrial accidents. Some Native people in Greenland have several dozen times as much of the pesticide hexachlorobenzene (HCB) in their bodies compared to temperate-zone Canadians. On the Faeroe Islands, high mercury levels have caused irreversible neurological damage to fetuses, contributing to reduced learning ability later in life. Generation of POPs has become an issue in Watt-Cloutier’s home town, Iqaluit, on Baffin Island, where the town dump burns wastes that emit dioxins. The dump’s plume provides only a small fraction of Iqaluit residents’ POP exposure, but it became enough of an issue to provoke a three-month shutdown of the dump that caused garbage to pile up in the town. The dump was reopened after local public-health authorities warned that the backlogged garbage could spread disease and that “the hazard posed by the rotting piles of garbage outweighed the risks of burning it” (Hill, 2001, 5). In 2001, Iqaluit’s government asked residents to separate plastics and metals from garbage that can be burned without adding POPs to the atmosphere. INUIT INFANTS: A LIVING TEST TUBE FOR IMMUNOLOGISTS Eric Dewailly, a Laval University scientist, accidentally discovered that the Inuit were being heavily contaminated by PCBs. During the mid-1980s, Dewailly first visited the Inuit as he sought a pristine group to use as a baseline with which to compare women in southern Quebec who had PCBs in their breast milk. Instead, Dewailly found that Inuit mothers’ PCB levels were several times higher than the Quebec mothers in his study group. Dewailly and colleagues then investigated whether organochlorine exposure is associated with the incidence of infectious diseases in Inuit infants from Nunavut (Dewailly, Ayotte, Bruneau, Gingras, Belles-Isles, and Roy, 2000; Dewailly, Bruneau, Laliberte, Belles-Isles, Weber, and Roy, 1993; Dewailly, Dodin, Verreault, Ayotte, Sauve, and Morin, 1993; Dewailly, Ryan, Laliberte, Bruneau, Weber, Gringras, and Carrier, 1994). Dewailly and his colleagues reported that serious ear infections were twice as common among Inuit babies whose mothers had higher than usual concentrations of toxic chemicals in their breast milk. More than 80 percent of the 118 babies studied in various Nunavut communities had at least one serious ear infection in the first year of their lives (Calamai, 2000). The three most common contaminants that researchers found in Inuit mothers’ breast milk were three pesticides (dieldrin, mirex, and DDE) and two industrial chemicals (PCBs and hexachlorobenzene). The researchers could not pinpoint which specific chemicals were responsible for making the Inuit babies more vulnerable to illnesses because the chemicals’ effects may amplify in combination. Due to their diet of contaminated sea animals and fish, Inuit women’s breast milk by the early 1990s contained six times more PCBs than that of women in urban areas of Quebec, according to government studies. Their babies have experienced strikingly high rates of meningitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, and other

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infections compared with other Canadians. One Inuit child out of every four has chronic hearing loss due to infections. Born with depleted white blood cells, the children suffer excessive bouts of diseases, including a 20-fold increase in lifethreatening meningitis compared to other Canadian children. These children’s immune systems sometimes fail to produce enough antibodies to resist even the usual childhood diseases. “In our studies, there was a marked increase in the incidence of infectious disease among breast-fed babies exposed to a high concentration of contaminants,” said Dewailly (Cone, 1996, A-1). A study published on September 12, 1996, in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed that children exposed to low levels of PCBs in the womb grow up to have low IQ scores, poor reading comprehension, difficulty paying attention, and memory problems (Jacobson and Jacobson, 1996). According to the Quebec Health Center, a concentration of 1,052 parts per billion of PCBs has been found in some Arctic women’s milk fat. This compares to a reading of 7,002 parts per billion in polar bear fat, 1,002 parts per billion in whale blubber, 527 parts per billion in seal blubber, and 152 parts per billion in fish. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) safety standard for edible poultry, by contrast, is 3 parts per billion, and in fish, 2 parts per billion. At 50 parts per billion, soil is often classified as hazardous waste by the EPA. Research by the Canadian federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs indicates that Inuit women throughout Nunavut experience DDT levels nine times the average of women in Canadian urban areas. The milk of Inuit women of the eastern Arctic has been found to contain as much as 1,210 parts per billion of DDT and its derivative, DDE, whereas milk from women living in southern Canada contains about 170 parts per billion (Suzuki, 2000). The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, a joint activity of the Arctic nations and organizations of indigenous Arctic people, found in its study Pollution and Human Health that “PCB blood levels, while highest in Greenland and the eastern Canadian Arctic, were high enough (over 4 micrograms of PCBs per liter of blood) that a proportion of the population would be in a risk range for fetal and childhood development problems” (PCB Working Group, n.d.). TOXIC CONTAMINATION OF TRADITIONAL INUIT FOODS IN ALASKA AND RUSSIA Toxic contamination of traditional foods has become an issue in Alaska as well as in Nunavut. Some Alaska Natives are avoiding their traditional foods out of fear that wild fish and game species are contaminated with pesticides, heavy metals, and other toxins, native delegates told an international conference on Arctic pollution in Anchorage on May 1, 2000. “I have a son who has quit eating seal meat altogether,” said St. Paul Island resident Mike Zacharof, president of the Aleut International Association. The association was formed because indigenous people in western Alaska and Russia are worried about pollution that crosses their countries’ boundaries, Zacharof said.

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In a report in the Anchorage Daily News, Zacharof said, “Fear that seal livers may contain mercury has made many islanders wary of eating the staple of their diet, though most still do” (Dobbyn, 2000). “Many people in Prince William Sound no longer eat their traditional foods because of the [Exxon Valdez] oil spill. This impacts not only our physical wellbeing but our emotional and spiritual lives as well,” said Patricia Cochran, director of the Alaska Native Science Commission (Dobbyn, 2000). “Natives from every region of Alaska have been noticing more tumors, lesions, spots and sores on land and sea animals,” Cochran said (Dobbyn, 2000). Indigenous reports are being compiled in a report for the Alaska Native Science Commission, called the Traditional Knowledge and Contaminant Project, started in 1997. The report was funded by the EPA. Research by the multinational Circumpolar Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program revealed high levels of DDT in the breast milk of Russian mothers in Arctic regions. Another study, by the University of Alaska–Anchorage, indicated that pregnant Alaska Native women who eat subsistence foods may be exposing their fetuses to potentially dangerous pollutants. “There’s no question that people are concerned not only about what it’s going to do to them but to their unborn children,” Cochran said (Dobbyn, 2000). The Tanana Chiefs’ Conference, a tribal social services agency for interior Alaska, has detected high levels of DDT in salmon. Because of toxic contamination, Alaskan Inupiat hunters now examine animals they are preparing to butcher more closely. It is called playing doctor, wrote David Hulen of the Los Angeles Times, as he described one hunter as he “slips on a pair of rubber gloves, wipes clean a titanium-blade knife and begins cutting tissue samples from the seal to be sent off and tested for PCBs, DDT and nearly 50 other industrial and agricultural pollutants” (Hulen, 1994, A-5). The hunters, in this case, were accompanied by Paul Becker, a Maryland-based scientist from the National Marine Fisheries Service. Becker has been working with native hunters since 1987, collecting samples for a national marine mammal tissue bank. He has trained several groups of villagers in Nome, Barrow, and other Alaska settlements to take samples as part of their regular hunts. Hulen reported, “All of this has caused no small amount of anxiety in the villages, where oil from rendered seal fat is a staple consumed like salad dressing and where people routinely dine on dishes such as dried seal meat, walrus heart and whale steaks” (Hulen, 1994, A-5). Charlie Johnson, executive director of the Eskimo Walrus Commission, a native group that works with the government to help manage Pacific walrus populations, said, “We’ve seen a huge increase in cancer rates. People hear about these things turning up and wonder if that has anything to do with it. I don’t think there’s enough known yet to say there’s a problem here in Alaska … but I think we have to be aware that we could have a problem eventually” (Hulen, 1994, A-5). Because of their role in handling body wastes, the kidneys of mammals are especially vulnerable to accumulation of toxic chemicals. Natives continue to eat

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the kidneys of the bowhead whale, however, because the kidney is one of the best-tasting parts of the animal. THE INUIT CONFRONT CLIMATE CHANGE In addition to some of the planet’s highest levels of toxicity, the Inuit have been forced to confront some of Earth’s most rapid rates of global warming. Climate change arrived swiftly and dramatically in the Arctic during the 1990s, including such surprises as warm summer days, winter freezing rain, thunderstorms, and invasions of Inuit villages by heretofore unseen insects and birds. Although U.S. President George W. Bush said he could find no “sound science” to support the theory of global warming, the temperature hit 78 degrees Fahrenheit on July 28, 2001, in Iqaluit, which nudges the Arctic Circle, following a string of days that were nearly as warm. It was the warmest summer anyone in the area could remember. Travelers joked about forgetting their shorts, sunscreen, and mosquito repellant—all now necessary equipment during a globally warmed Arctic summer. Watt-Cloutier and other residents of Iqaluit have experienced an unusual problem during recent summers: too much warmth. In Iqaluit, a warm, desiccating westerly wind sometimes raises whitecaps on nearby Frobisher Bay and rustles carpets of purple saxifrage flowers as people emerge from their overheated houses (which have been built to absorb every scrap of passive solar energy), swabbing their foreheads with ice cubes wrapped in hand towels. On July 28, 2001, the temperature, at 78 degrees Fahrenheit, was 25 degrees above the July average of 53 degrees, comparable to a 105- to 110-degree day in New York City. The wind raised eddies of dust on Iqaluit’s gravel roads as residents swatted slow, corpulent mosquitoes. Around the Arctic, in Inuit villages now connected by the oral history of traveling hunters as well as e-mail, weather watchers have been reporting striking evidence that global warming is an unmistakable reality. Sachs Harbour, on Banks Island, above the Arctic Circle, was sinking into the permafrost as its 130 residents swatted mosquitoes. Summer downpours of rain with thunder, hail, and lightning have swept over Arctic islands for the first time in anyone’s memory. Swallows, sand flies, robins, and pine pollen are being seen and experienced by people who have never known them. Sachs Harbour residents also report new species of birds, insects, and fish, including barn owls (“Inuit don’t have barns!” remarked Watt-Cloutier), pin-tailed ducks, salmon, mosquitoes, and black flies (Watt-Cloutier, December 10, 2003). Shishmaref, an Inuit village on the far western lip of Alaska 60 miles north of Nome, was being washed into the newly liquid (and often stormy) Arctic Ocean as its permafrost base dissolved. By the turn of the millennium, global warming was being felt most intensely in the Arctic, where a world based on ice and snow was melting away. In Iqaluit, people describe a natural world that is being turned upside down in startling ways. “We have never seen anything like this. It’s scary, very scary,” said

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Ben Kovic, Nunavut’s chief wildlife manager. “It’s not every summer that we run around in our T-shirts for weeks at a time” (Johansen, 2001, 18–19). The weather reports in Iqaluit and other parts of the Arctic read like the projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—on fast forward. At 11:30 A.M. on a midsummer Saturday, Kovic was sitting in his Iqaluit back yard, repairing his fishing boat, wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans in the warm wind, with many hours of Baffin Island’s 18-hour July day remaining. On a nearby beach down the hill, Inuit children were building sand castles with plastic shovels and buckets, occasionally dipping their toes in the still-frigid seawater. Nunavut’s premier, Paul Okalik, lost his nephew, who was swept away by a torrent that once was a small stream. “The melting of our glaciers in summer is now such that it is dangerous for us to get to many of our traditional hunting and harvesting places,” Watt-Cloutier said. Inuit hunters and elders have for years reported changes to the environment that are now supported by many computer models that conclude climate change is amplified in high latitudes (Watt-Cloutier, December 10, 2003). In Iqaluit, thunder and lightning used to be extremely rare. Thunderstorms are now much more common across the Arctic; the same day that the high temperature hit 78 degrees in Iqaluit, the forecast for Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories, called for a high of 85 degrees Fahrenheit with scattered thunderstorms. The previous winter in Iqaluit had been notable for liquid precipitation (freezing rain) in December. Snows in the area also had become heavier and wetter. Winter cold spells, which still occur, generally have become shorter, according to longtime residents of the area. WARMING IN WINTER AS WELL AS IN SUMMER Warming at Iqaluit is evident in winter as well as in summer. In early December 2001, Watt-Cloutier e-mailed news that the ice had just formed on Froshiber Bay within eyesight of her home, several weeks later than usual. Two weeks later, on December 18, she e-mailed again to say that freezing rain was falling in Iqaluit. Snow had been unusually scarce, and now the streets of Iqaluit were streaked with ice, a real novelty in the Arctic during December. “The hunters,” she wrote, “will not be pleased.” “We have been hoping for blizzards and snowfall but certainly not rain,” Watt-Cloutier wrote. “The ice will get messy and more dangerous for the seal hunters and fishers…. Indeed we are living climate change already. It is not in the future!” (Watt-Cloutier, December 3, 2001). In early January 2004, Watt-Cloutier wrote to me that Frobisher Bay had just frozen over for the season, at a record late date: We are finally into very “brrrrrr” seasonal weather and the Bay is finally freezing straight across. At Christmas time the Bay was still open and as a result of the floe edge being so close we had a family of Polar bears come to visit the town a couple of times. Also in Pangnirtung families from the outpost camps came into town for Christmas by boat! Imagine that the ice was not frozen at all there by

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Christmas. But this week our temperatures with the wind-chill reached minus 52 so we are pleased. (Watt-Cloutier, January 4, 2004)

Climate change has been rapid and easily detectable within a single human lifetime. “When I was a child,” said Watt-Cloutier, “We never swam in the river [Kuujjuaq] where I was born an Inuk in Nunavik, Northern Quebec. Now kids swim there all the time [in the summer].” Watt-Cloutier does not remember even having worn short pants as a child. “Think about that for a moment,” said WattCloutier. “Emission of greenhouse gases from cars and factories threatens our ability far to the North to live as we have always done—in harmony with a fragile, vulnerable, and sensitive environment. I am sure you can all see the unhappy irony” (Johansen, 2001, 19). POLAR BEARS IN PERIL Polar bears usually obtain their food (ringed seals, most often) from the ice. Without ice, they can become hungry, miserable creatures during spells of unaccustomed warmth. During Iqaluit’s weeks of record warmth in July 2001, two tourists were hospitalized after they were mauled by a bear in a park south of town. On July 20, a similar confrontation occurred in northern Labrador as a polar bear tried to claw its way into a tent occupied by a group of Dutch tourists. That time, the tourists escaped injury, but the bear was shot to death. “The bears are looking for a cooler place,” said Kovic (Johansen, 2001, 19). As a wildlife officer, Kovic has seen changes that scare him. Polar bears, for example, are “often becoming shore dwellers rather than ice dwellers,” sometimes with dire consequences for unwary tourists (Johansen, 2001, 19). The harbor ice at Iqaluit did not form in 2000 until December, five or six weeks later than usual. The ice also has been breaking up earlier in the spring, sometimes in late May in places that once were icebound into early July. Until recently, polar bears had their own food sources and usually went about their business without trying to steal food from humans. Beset by late freezes and early thaws, however, hungry polar bears are coming into contact with people more frequently. In Churchill, Manitoba, polar bears waking from their winter’s slumber have found Hudson Bay’s ice melted earlier than usual. Instead of making their way onto the ice in search of seals, the bears walk along the coast until they get to Churchill, where they block motor traffic and pillage the town dump. Churchill now has a holding tank for wayward polar bears that is larger than its human jail. Canadian Wildlife Service scientists reported in December 1998 that polar bears around Hudson Bay were 90 pounds to 220 pounds lighter than thirty years previously, apparently because earlier melting of ice has given them less time to feed on seal pups. When sea ice fails to reach a particular area, the entire ecological cycle is disrupted. When the ice melts, the polar bears can no longer use it to hunt for ring seals, many of which also have died, having had no ice on which to haul out. The offshore ice-based ecosystem is sustained by upwelling

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nutrients that feed the plankton, shrimp, and other small organisms that feed the fish, which feed the seals, which feed the bears. The native people of the area also occupy a position in this cycle of life. When the ice is not present, the entire cycle collapses. For generations uncounted, WattCloutier told a world climate-change conference in Milan, Italy, on December 10, 2003 (at which 140 countries were negotiating the finishing touches on the Kyoto Protocol), Inuit have observed the environment and have accurately predicted weather, enabling them to travel safely on the sea ice to hunt seals, whales, walrus, and polar bears. They do not hunt for sport or recreation. Hunters put food on the table. “You go to the supermarket,” she said. “We go on the sea-ice. Eating what we hunt is at the very core of what it means to be Inuit. When we can no longer hunt on the sea-ice, and eat what we hunt, we will no longer exist as a people” (Watt-Cloutier, December 10, 2003). WARMING IMPERILS HUNTERS The Arctic’s rapid thaw has made hunting, never a safe or easy way of life, even more difficult. Hunters in and around Iqaluit said that the weather has been seriously out of whack since about the mid-1990s. Simon Nattaq, an Inuit hunter, fell through unusually thin ice and became mired in icy water long enough to lose both his legs to hypothermia, one of several injuries and deaths reported around the Arctic due to thinning ice. Pitseolak Alainga, another Iqaluit-based hunter, said that climate change compels caution. One must never hunt alone, he said (Nattaq had been hunting by himself). Before venturing onto ice in fall or spring, hunters should test its stability with a harpoon, he said. Alainga knows the value of safety on the water. His father and five other men died in late October 1994 after an unexpected late-October ice-and-snow storm swamped their hunting boat. The younger Alainga and one other companion barely escaped death in the same storm. He believes that more hunters are suffering injuries not only because of climate change but also because basic survival skills have not been passed from generation to generation as they were when most Inuit lived on the land. Some of the rivers to which arctic char return for spawning have dried up, according to Kovic; summer 2001 brought drought as well as record warmth to Iqaluit and its hinterland. Flying above glaciers in the area, Kovic has noticed that their coloration has changed. “The glaciers are turning brown,” he said, speculating that melting ice may be exposing debris and that air pollution may be a factor. Some ringed seals have been caught with little or no hair, said Kovic. Asked why seals have been losing their hair, Kovic answered, “That is a big question that someone has to answer” (Johansen, 2001, 20). In 1993, 3,000 Peary caribou lived on Bathurst Island in the high Arctic. By 1997, all but 75 of them had died after three unusual winters during which heavy, wet snows and frequent freezing rain sealed the caribou’s food under “a nearly impenetrable crust” (Jaimet, 2000, A-4). During ordinary winters, the Peary caribou, which are notable for their small size and large hooves, use their hooves to

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scatter snow in search of buried vegetation. Climate models foresee heavier, icier precipitation in the Arctic. The suffering falls most heavily on the caribou calves, whose mothers have been unable to feed them. Caribou also have been killed as they fall through unusually thin ice. THE SEA CLAIMS SHISHMAREF, ALASKA Six hundred people living in the Alaskan Eskimo village of Shishmaref, near Siberia in the far western reaches of Alaska, have been watching their village erode into the sea. The permafrost that had reinforced its coast is thawing. “We stand on the island’s edge and see the remains of houses falling into the sea,” people in the town told Anton Antonowicz of the London Daily Mirror. “They are the homes of poor people. Half-torn rooms with few luxuries. A few photographs, some abandoned cooking pots. Some battered suitcases” (Antonowicz, 2000, 8). Percy Nayokpuk, a village elder, owned a local retail store that by 2001 perched dangerously close to the edge of the advancing sea. “When I was a teenager, the beach stretched at least 50 yards further out,” said Percy. “As each year passes, the sea’s approach seems faster” (Antonowicz, 2000, 8). Five houses had washed into the sea by 2000; the U.S. Army had moved or jacked up others. The villagers had been told they would soon have to move. Year by year, the hunting season, which depends on the arrival of the ice, starts later and ends earlier. “Instead of dog mushing, we have dog slushing,” said Clifford Weyiouanna, a reindeer herder (Antonowicz, 2000, 8). Villagers have been catching fish, such as flounder, which are usually associated with warmer water. In Alaska as a whole, where 80 percent of glaciers are receding, forests of dead spruce surround Anchorage, a casualty of a spruce beetle epidemic caused at least in part by rising temperatures, which accelerate the insect’s life cycle. MOSQUITOES ON BANKS ISLAND Mosquitoes have come to Banks Island, in the Canadian Arctic, along with various species of beetles. The insects now arrive earlier and stay longer. “We can’t read the weather like we used to,” said Rosemary Kuptana, one of about 130 Inuit who live in the Inuvialuit town of Sachs Harbour, the only community on Banks Island (Johansen, 2001, 20). Kuptana grew up in Sachs Harbor and raised three children there. She said that autumn freezes now occur a month later than earlier; spring thaws come earlier as well. Residents of Sachs Harbour still suffer through winters that most people from lower latitudes would find chilling, with temperatures of minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. Although such temperatures once were commonplace, they now are rare. “What happens in the Arctic environment is what is in store for other regions of the world,” said Kuptana (Duffy, 2000). “The permafrost is melting at an alarming rate,” said Kuptana (Herbert, 2000). Foundations of homes in Sachs Harbour are cracking and shifting. Melting seaside permafrost, which is carrying Shishmaref to the sea, also threatens Sachs Harbour. Kuptana expressed fear that her community would slide into the Beaufort Sea

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because once-solid mud is now thawing earlier and freezing later. “What’s scary is the uncertainty,” she said. “We don’t know when to travel on the ice and our food sources are getting farther and farther away” (Herbert, 2000). At Sachs Harbour, sea ice is thinner and now drifts far away during summer, taking with it the seals and polar bears upon which the village’s Inuit residents rely for food. Young seals are starving to death because melting sea ice separates them from their mothers. In winter, the sea ice often is thin and broken, making travel dangerous for even the most experienced hunters. In fall, storms have become more frequent and severe, making boating difficult. Thunder and lightning have been seen for the first time, arriving with another type of weather that is new to the area: dousing summer rainstorms. “When I was a child, I never heard thunder or saw lightning, but in the last few years we’ve had thunder and lightning,” Kuptana said. “The animals really don’t know what to do because they’ve never experienced this kind of phenomenon” (Johansen, 2002a). “We have no other sources of food. The people in my community are completely dependent on hunting, trapping and fishing,” said Kuptana. “We have no means of adapting to a different environmental reality, and that is why our situation is so critical” (Johansen, 2001, 20). In 1990, caribou migrating to the coastal plain of northern Alaska found that the earliest spring in nearly forty years had caused their principal forage to go to seed, depriving them of crucial nourishment (Rauber, 1997). RAPID WARMING IN ALASKA Yupik elders in the small coastal Alaskan village of Kipnuk report that their village is sinking due to thawing permafrost. Buildings in the village show signs of subsurface thawing. In Kotzebue, Alaska, the town hospital was relocated because it was sinking into the ground. Rising seas and coastal erosion directly threaten Tuktoyaktuk, a Dene and Inuit community located at the edge of the Arctic Ocean. Ice that once protected the coast has receded. Extensive erosion washed away the school and forced the village to relocate many other structures. In Arctic Village, Alaska, home to the Gwichen people, “Summers are hotter, winter days when the temperature plunges far below zero are fewer, and the timberline is creeping higher up the mountainsides” (Knickerbocker, 2001, 9). Caribou are giving birth before they reach the coastal plain, which reduces survival chances of their young. Lakes in which people recall having hunted ducks into the fall are now gone (dried up) by mid-July. “Everything is out of whack,” said one resident who was raised in Arctic Village. “Last year, in the village, it only went below minus 40 degrees [Fahrenheit] once.” “I don’t remember it being this hot when I was a kid,” said Gideon James during the last week of July. He was wearing a tank top and shorts with temperatures near 80 degrees Fahrenheit (Knickerbocker, 2001, 9). GLOBAL WARMING AS A HUMAN-RIGHTS ISSUE IN THE ARCTIC The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) has assembled a human-rights case against the United States (specifically the George W. Bush administration)

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because global warming is threatening the Inuit way of life. The ICC has invited the Washington, DC,–based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to visit the Arctic to witness the human effects of rapid warming. Introducing the legal action, Watt-Cloutier, said, “We want to show that we are not powerless victims. These are drastic times for our people and require drastic measures” (Brown, December 11, 2003, 14). The Inuit say that by repudiating the Kyoto protocol and refusing to cut carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, which make up 25 percent of the world total, the White House imperils their way of life (Brown, December 13, 2003). The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has been asked to rule against the U.S. federal government but has no power to enforce any action. The ICC believes that the publicity the case will provide, particularly with hearings in Washington, DC, will embarrass the government and influence U.S. public opinion. Watt-Cloutier described for a climate-change convention in Milan, Italy, ways in which rapid warming have changed Inuit’s lives: “In the spring, the ice melts not at the end of June but weeks earlier. Sometimes the ice is so thin hunters fall through. The ocean is too warm. Our elders, who instruct the young on the ways of the winter and what to expect, are at a loss” (Brown, December 13, 2003). “People worry about the polar bears becoming extinct by 2070 because there will be no ice from which they can hunt seals,” said Watt-Cloutier. “But the Inuit face extinction for the same reason and at the same time…. This is a David and Goliath story. Most people have lost contact with the natural world. They even think global warming has benefits, like wearing a T-shirt in November, but we know the planet is melting and with it our vibrant culture, our way of life. We are an endangered species, too” (Brown, December 11, 2003, 14). “Last Christmas [2002], after the ice had formed,” said Watt-Cloutier, “the temperature rose to 4 degrees C. [39 degrees Fahrenheit] and it rained. We’d never known it before” (Brown, December 11, 2003, 14). Watt-Cloutier told a climate-change conference in Seattle on October 27, 2003, “I am not being alarmist when I say that many Inuit leaders have concluded that the long-term impacts of climate change is the ‘ultimate’ threat facing [the] Inuit.” By 2070 to 2090, said Watt-Cloutier, scientific projections suggest that year-round sea ice will be limited to a small portion of the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole. The rest of the Arctic will be ice-free in summer. “Imagine what that means for [the] Inuit. Polar bears, walrus, ringed seals and likely other species of seals are projected to virtually disappear. Our ecosystem will be transformed with tragic results. Where will we go then for our food? What then will become of [the] Inuit?” (Watt-Cloutier, December 10, 2003). “Climate change in the Arctic is not just an environmental issue with unwelcome economic consequences. It is a matter of livelihood, food, and individual and cultural survival. It is a human issue. The Arctic is not wilderness or a frontier, it is our home and homeland,” Watt-Cloutier summarized (Watt-Cloutier, December 10, 2003). Watt-Cloutier said that she and the ICC were not asking the world to take a backward economic step; they were saying, instead, that governments must

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develop their economies using appropriate technologies that limit emissions of greenhouse gases significantly. Short-term business interests will not accede to this unless governments around the world require it, she said. Inuit and other northerners are at peril because some governments are taking a short-term view favored by some businesses. “This must change,” she said (Watt-Cloutier, December 10, 2003). THE EARTH IS LITERALLY MELTING Addressing a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on global warming on August 15, 2004, Watt-Cloutier described the disorienting effect of rapid change on the Inuit: “The Earth is literally melting. If we can reverse the emissions of greenhouse gases in time to save the Arctic, then we can spare untold suffering.” She continued, “Protect the Arctic and you will save the planet. Use us as your early-warning system. Use the Inuit story as a vehicle to reconnect us all so that we can understand the people and the planet are one” (Pegg, 2004). The Inuit’s ancient connection to their hunting culture may disappear within her grandson’s lifetime, Watt-Cloutier said. “My Arctic homeland is now the health barometer for the planet” (Pegg, 2004). Committee chair John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said a recent trip to the Arctic showed him that “these impacts are real and consistent with earlier scientific projects that the Arctic region would experience the impacts of climate change at a faster rate than the rest of the world. We are the first generation to influence the climate and the last generation to escape the consequences” (Pegg, 2004). I e-mailed news accounts of her speech to Watt-Cloutier, along with reports that yellow jacket wasps had been sighted for the first time on northern Baffin Island. Sheila replied as she returned home to Iqaluit, “Just getting in from D.C. It went well and we can only hope it will do a little shaking within the State Department. Good that we also have you down there doing this work on behalf of the planet…. As I said we have to do it all together. Yes, indeed wasps!” (WattCloutier, September 16, 2004) How quickly is Arctic climate changing? On February 27, 2006, WattCloutier wrote to me describing a heretofore unheard of event in Iqaluit: rain, lightning, thunder, and mud in February. The temperature had risen to 43 degrees Fahrenheit, average for June, winds had reached 55 miles per hour, and the town was paralyzed in a sea of dirty slush. “Much of the snow has melted on the back of my house and all the roads are already slushy and messy. All planes coming up from the south were cancelled because the runways were icy from the rain,” she wrote. “Unfortunately the predictions of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment are unfolding before my very eyes” (Watt-Cloutier, 2006). Iqaluit hunters expressed concern for the caribou, which would go hungry once freezing temperatures returned and encased the lichen, their food source, in a crust of ice. Instead of waiting until spring, the usual hunting season, Inuit were taking caribou in early March, believing that they would be too skinny later to be useful as food.

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THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ON FAST FORWARD The way many Inuit live has undergone fundamental transformation in less than a century, often in two to three generations. In the Arctic, the industrial revolution has been squeezed into 50 years, instead of 250 years at lower latitudes. Many Inuit have become urbanized as the tendrils of industrial life infiltrate the Arctic. Where visitors once arrived by dogsled or sailing ship, they now stream into Iqaluit’s busy airport on Boeing 727s in which half the passenger cabin has been sequestered for freight. Lacking highways to the outside, freight as large as automobiles is sometimes shipped to Iqaluit by air. “We have,” Watt-Cloutier remarked on one occasion, “gone from the ‘snow age’ to the ‘space age’ in one generation. I was born on the land in Nunavik, northern Quebec and we were still traveling by dog team when I was sent to school in southern Canada at the age of ten. Notwithstanding significant economic and social changes, Inuit remain connected with the land and in tune with its rhythms and cycles.” “Inuit live in two worlds—the traditional and the modern,” she said. “To this day our hunting based culture remains viable and important. We depend on seals, whale, walrus and other marine mammals to sustain our nutritional, cultural and spiritual well being” (Watt-Cloutier, January 16, 2004). The population of Iqaluit jumped from about 3,500 to 6,500 in less than three years during the late 1990s. Substantial suburban-style houses with mortgages worth hundreds of thousands of dollars sprang up around town, rising on stakes sunk into the permafrost and granite hillsides. In other areas, ranks of walk-up apartments march along the high ridges above Frobisher Bay. Every ounce of building material had been imported from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles away. Inuit had been moving into the town from the backcountry; the town was awash in a sea of children. People in Iqaluit subscribe to the same cable television services (as well as the Internet) available in the so-called South. Bart Simpson and Tom Brokaw are well-known personages in Iqaluit, where some homes have sprouted satellite dishes. Iqaluit also now hosts a large supermarket of a size that matches stores in larger urban areas, except that the prices are three to four times higher than in Ottawa, Ontario, or Omaha, Nebraska. If one can afford them, mango-grapefruit juice and ready-cooked buffalo wings (as well as many other items of standard southern fare) are available. Modern industrial life may be necessary, but it is only rarely appealing to people who are only a generation or two removed from a traditional nomadic style of life. According to Watt-Cloutier: Those who do find serenity, often do it by going back, as we say, “on to the land.” To be inspired by the wisdom of generations Inuit who have lived at peace with the land. If climate change takes that source of wisdom away from us, just as we are coming through our struggle with modernization then—I profoundly fear for my people. Climate change will be the last straw. To the outside eye, the Arctic environment seems harsh and unforgiving, but to us, Inuit, it has provided us all we needed to thrive sustainably. Yet, with these

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dramatic changes, the reverse is occurring, and the changes to our climate and our environment will bring about the end of the Inuit culture. (Watt-Cloutier, December 10, 2003)

THE INTRUSION OF THE MONEY ECONOMY IN THE ARCTIC Inuit elders describe the coming of qallunaat (the non-Inuit money economy) in natural metaphors, as a time when the old world shifted, “They say, like a storm they could not read in the clouds…. Against the wind, the people first had to brace themselves, then they had to adapt, then they had to try to stop the wind.” The change has come with a stunning swiftness, in some cases within a generation or two. According to one report: Jamaise Mike was born in 1928 in an igloo, but now he is sitting in a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Pangnirtung, Nunavut [population 1,300, on Baffin Island about 100 miles north of Iqaluit]. “Most elders were born and raised on the land,” Mike said, through an interpreter, speaking in the Inuktitut language. “Everything people needed to survive surrounded them on the land. Today it is different, living in a community with a store. Everything is different from when you had to do everything yourself to survive. You depended on yourself. Now, you need money.” (Brown, 2001, A-1)

As in many other parts of the world, today’s Inuit story is shaped, first and foremost, by the collision of the money economy and traditional, environmentally based economies. Many Inuit who are the first generation in their families to leave the land have moved to towns at the behest of the Canadian federal government. In some cases, the government’s agents systematically killed many of the dogs that pulled their sleds, giving people no choice except to come in from the land. Children were put in Christian boarding schools. “White people from the south,” said Mike, “were more terrifying than polar bears” (Brown, 2001, A-1). As the economic system of the south set down roots and began to take control of their lives, the Inuit sense a more acute need to preserve traditions that are slipping away. “We live in wooden houses, drive Jeep Cherokees, and fly in jumbo jets all over the world. But we are still Inuit. It is our spirit, our inner being, that makes us Inuit,” said John Amagoalik, former chief commissioner of the Nunavut Implementation Commission (Brown, 2001, A-1). A PLAGUE OF SUICIDES Results of such rapid change can be tragic. Where, a few decades ago, consumption of alcohol was rare, Baffin Island Inuit now have Canada’s highest rates of drunkenness, as well as suicide. In 1999, 58 of Nunavut’s 27,000 people committed suicide: 52 by hanging, 6 by firearms (Brown, 2001, A-1). Suicide has touched nearly every family in Nunavut. Says Watt-Cloutier, “I, as many of you, have lost loved ones be they relatives, friends and young people I have worked with (Watt-Cloutier, April 18, 2003).

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“The impacts of global economic forces on Inuit are telling,” said Watt-Cloutier. “High rates of suicides, alcohol and substance abuse, and spousal violence reflect the pressures upon our way of life. In the rapid transformation of Inuit society as it encounters the global economy, many of our youth are losing their way. Not all are willing to throw themselves into the wage economy, yet they know they cannot go back to live as our ancestors did but a few generations ago” (Watt-Cloutier, May 12–23, 2003). Suicide rates are the highest in North America among the Inuit. Watt-Cloutier said, “Many of our people have resorted to destructive behaviors as they attempt to make sense of the modern world” (Watt-Cloutier, December 10, 2003). “People really feel they’re losing their social and cultural identity,” said Jose Kusugak, president of the Inuit Tapiriiksat Kanatami, an umbrella organization of regional Inuit groups created to coordinate different land claims (Powell, 2002). “The first ten years of my life were rich in Inuit culture, tradition, values and principles,” Watt-Cloutier related at a conference on suicide prevention in Iqaluit in April 2003: At the age of ten I was sent away for school and experienced a severe and sudden detachment to this rich culture and as a result almost lost my language and missed out on the important teenage development years that my Inuit culture would have given me. I have since had to reclaim those lost years not only in terms of my language and culture but also in terms of coming to terms with how some of those wounds have come to form who I am today…. The big question for me of course has always been: “How is it that we as ingenious and resourceful people that we were coming from such an independent way of life rooted in wisdom are now so attached to such a highly dependent way of life, be it to substances such as alcohol [and] drugs, institutions such as welfare and unemployment, and processes such as gambling and sex … ultimately making such unwise choices leading directly to self destruction?” (Watt-Cloutier, April 18, 2003)

Self-destructive behaviors have risen, most notably among the young, as the structure and disciplines of the traditional way of life have been removed. WattCloutier described a traditional Inuit culture based on the wisdom derived from a relationship with the land, into which character-building is woven. For example, she said, this holistic way teaches not only the aiming of the gun or skinning the seal but also “the character skills of courage, patience, to be reflective, to be bold under pressure, to withstand stress, sensitivity, creativity, sense of humor, cooperation, focus, judgment, all of which ultimately lead to wisdom [Silatunirq]” (Watt-Cloutier, April 18, 2003). “In essence,” she said, “the land taught our spirit and shaped who we were as a people. The coming of the new learning institutions and new organizations severely separated this way of preparing our children for life’s challenges and opportunities and was not replicated or replaced in any other teaching/learning setting” (Watt-Cloutier, April 18, 2003).

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The parents of that era, thinking that the new ways were as wise as the old, gave up a lot of their control, she said. This surrender of control led to a sense of dispiritedness. When people become dispirited and their emotional and spiritual wounds were not addressed, they turned to other means to try to improve the quality of what they are experiencing. “People can become destructively dependent on anything that is a substitute for wise management and control,” WattCloutier said. “Addictions set in and rather then being well known and written about of our wonderful child rearing ways, we Inuit are now better known to be those who put our children through repetitive precarious, traumatic, abusive and violent situations” (Watt-Cloutier, April 18, 2003). Therefore, the eroding of our Inuit wisdom based on our rich culture and the coming of more and more dependencies have truly fostered and led to what we are experiencing today—young people not only carrying and struggling with unresolved generational wounds but added to that their own traumatic stories of their lifetimes—wound upon wounds and without the skills to survive such trauma are understandably choosing to end their young lives. The historical circumstances have created a generation of young people not being prepared with the necessary character [and] life skills to have the built-in avoidance capability to say no to the unhealthy and self-destructive choices such as addiction, addictive patterns and suicide. (Watt-Cloutier, April 18, 2003)

Watt-Cloutier believes that to break free from despair and self destructive patterns, the Inuit must look at the big picture and think seriously about restructuring and refocusing existing learning systems, education and health institutions, and living arrangements. “At every level,” she said, “we must attempt to make our institutions dependency liberating rather then dependency producing. The issue of self-destruction and suicide cannot be dealt with by only looking at one piece of the problem. The larger issues of healing, life skills, being in control of one’s life” (Watt-Cloutier, April 18, 2003). Watt-Cloutier illustrated the rapid changes in Inuit relationships with the land and its sustenance with the example of the ringed seal. Inuit have always respectfully hunted seals for food, clothing, shelter, and the well-being that is brought by sharing, she said. Recently, however, this relationship has been changed by external events. The health of the seal is, in part, determined by global environmental factors, including climate change and contaminants. Hunting the seal is hindered as a result of climate change. Eating the seal is questioned because of the contaminants it contains. Some governments refuse to import sealskins and other marine mammal products, depriving hunters of cash they need to buy equipment to go hunting in the first place. “These external events erode our relationship with the seal,” Watt-Cloutier explained, and “threaten our relationship with the land, and devalue a proven path to wisdom and sustainability” (Watt-Cloutier, May 12–23, 2003). “The seal is being pushed to the periphery of our life,” Watt-Cloutier continued. “We need to bring it back to the center. Traditional ways of making a living

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should be preserved as an element of local economies. As Inuit seek to continue the development of our communities, we look to find ways to support and expand this economy. But we will not develop our economies at the expense of our communities and individuals. Our economic development will be synonymous with human development” (Watt-Cloutier, May 12–23, 2003). FURTHER READING Antonowicz, Anton. “Baking Alaska: As World Leaders Bicker, Global Warming Is Killing a Way of Life.” London Daily Mirror, November 28, 2000: 8–9. Brown, DeNeen L. “Culture Corrosion in Canada’s North; Forced into the Modern World, Indigenous Inuit Struggle to Cope.” Washington Post, July 16, 2001: A-1. Brown, Paul. “Global Warming Is Killing Us Too, Say Inuit.” London Guardian, December 11, 2003: 14. Brown, Paul. “Inuit Blame Bush for Impending Extinction.” London Guardian, December 13, 2003, n.p. Cadbury, Deborah. Altering Eden: The Feminization of Nature. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Calamai, Peter. “Chemical Fallout Hurts Inuit Babies.” Toronto Star, March 18, 2000, n.p. Cone, Marla. “Dozens of Words for Snow, None for Pollution.” Mother Jones, January–February 2004. . Cone, Marla. “Human Immune Systems May Be Pollution Victims.” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1996: A-1. Cone, Marla. Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic. New York: Grove Press, 2005. Dewailly, E., P. Ayotte, S. Bruneau, S. Gingras, M. Belles-Isles, and R. Roy. “Susceptibility to Infections and Immune Status in Inuit Infants Exposed to Organochlorines.” Environmental Health Perspectives 108 (2000): 205–11. Dewailly, E., S. Bruneau, C. Laliberte, M. Belles-Isles, J.-P. Weber, and R. Roy. “Breast Milk Contamination by PCB and PCDD/Fs in Arctic Quebec: Preliminary Results on the Immune Status of Inuit Infants.” Organohalogen Compounds 13 (1993): 403–6. Dewailly, E., S. Dodin, R. Verreault, P. Ayotte, L. Sauve, and J. Morin. “High Organochlorine Body Burden in Breast Cancer Women with Oestrogen Receptors.” Organohalogen Compounds 13 (1993): 385–88. Dewailly, E., J. J. Ryan, C. Laliberte, S. Bruneau, J.-P. Weber, S. Gringras, and G. Carrier. “Exposure of Remote Maritime Populations to Coplanar PCBs.” Environmental Health Perspectives 102, suppl. 1 (1994): 205–9. Dobbyn, Paula. “Contaminated Game Has Natives Worried.” Anchorage Daily News, May 2, 2000, n.p. . Duffy, Andrew. “Global Warming Causing Arctic Town to Sink, Says Inuit Leader ‘Warning Signal.’” Montreal Gazette, April 18, 2000.. Dumont, Charles, Manon Girard, François Bellavance, and Francine Noël. “Mercury Levels in the Cree Population of James Bay, Quebec, from 1988 to 1993/94.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 158 (June 2, 1998): 1439–45. Gabrielsen, Geir Wing. “The Arctic Paradox: The Traditional Diet of Inuits Has Health Benefits but Exposes Them to Dangerous Levels of Pollutants.” Nature 436 (July 14, 2005): 177–78.

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Herbert, H. Josef. “Inuit Say They Are Witness to Global Warming in the Arctic.” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, November 19, 2000, n.p. Hill, Miriam. “Iqaluit’s Waste Woes Won’t Go Away; City Sets Up Bins Where Residents Can Dump Plastics, Metal.” Nunatsiag News, July 27, 2001: 5. Hulen, David. “Hunt Is on for Pollutant Traces in Bering Sea; Alaska Villagers, Scientists Wonder if Toxic Substances Are Endangering Animals and People Who Eat Them.” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 1994: A-5. Jacobson, Joseph L., and Sandra W. Jacobson. “Intellectual Impairment in Children Exposed to Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Utero,” New England Journal of Medicine 335, no. 11 (September 12, 1996): 783–89. Jaimet, Kate. “Global Warming ‘Lethal’ to Rare Northern Caribou.” Ottawa Citizen, November 30, 2000: A-4. Johansen, Bruce E. “Arctic Heat Wave.” The Progressive, October 2001: 18–20. Johansen, Bruce E. “The Inuit’s Struggle with Dioxins and Other Organic Pollutants.” American Indian Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2002): 479–490, (2002b). Johansen, Bruce E. “Pristine No More: The Arctic, Where Mother’s Milk Is Toxic.” The Progressive, December 2000: 27–29. Johansen, Bruce E. “Sound Science, Common Sense, and Global Warming.” Z Magazine, December, 2002. (2002a). Knickerbocker, Brad. “To Some Here, Global Warming Seems Real Today.” Christian Science Monitor, August 1, 2001: 9. Knight, Danielle. “Inuits Tell Negotiators of Climate Change Impact.” Interpress Service, November 16, 2000. . Lamb, David Michael. “Toxins in a Fragile Frontier.” Transcript. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News, n.d. . PCB Working Group, IPEN. “Communities Respond to P.C.B. Contamination.” n.d. . Pegg, J. R. The Earth Is Melting, Arctic Native Leader Warns.” Environmental News Service. September 16, 2004. Powell, Alvin. “Future of Inuit Explored: Kennedy School Program Hosts Native Americans.” Harvard University Gazette, April 11, 2002. . Qitsualik, Rachel Attituq. “Is It ‘Eskimo’ or ‘Inuit’?” America Is Indian Country. Ed. Jose Barreiro and Tim Johnson. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2005: 287–89. Rauber, Paul. “Heat Wave.” Sierra Magazine, September 1997. <www.sierraclub.org/ sierra/199709/HeatWave.asp>. Rozell, Ned. “Dioxins: Another Uninvited Visitor to the North.” Alaska Science Forum. November 9, 2000. . Schneider, Howard. “Facing World’s Pollution in the North.” Washington Post, September 21, 1996: A-15. . Suzuki, David. “Science Matters: POP Agreement Needed to Eliminate Toxic Chemicals.” David Suzuki Foundation Archive, December 6, 2000. . Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. “Canada and Inuit: Addressing Global Environmental Challenges, Remarks by Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Conference at the Inaugural Environmental Protection Service Inuit Speaker Series.” Ottawa, Ontario, January 16, 2004. .

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Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. “Canadian Association on Suicide Prevention Sivummut—Moving Forward Conference.” Iqaluit, Nunavut Political Panel. Intervention by Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Conference. April 18, 2003. . Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. “Climate Change in the Arctic: Perspectives of Indigenous Peoples. Arctic Research Consortium of the United States Open Science Meeting for the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH).” Seattle, Washington, October 27, 2003. . Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. “Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Second Session. Economic and Social Development.” Intervention by Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Conference. New York City, May 12–23, 2003. . Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. Personal communication with the author. March 28, 2001. Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. Personal communication with the author. November 29, 2001. Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. Personal communication with the author. December 3, 2001. Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. Personal communication with the author. January 4, 2004. Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. Personal communication with the author. September 16, 2004. Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. Personal communication with the author. February 27, 2006. Watt-Cloutier, Sheila. “Speech Notes for Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Conference. Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.” Milan, Italy, December 10, 2003. .

CHAPTER 7

The High Price of Uranium in Navajo and Dene Country

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avajo uranium miners during the 1940s and 1950s hauled radioactive uranium ore out of the earth as if it was coal. Some ate their lunches in the mines and slaked their thirst with radioactive water. Their families’ homes sometimes were built on radioactive earth, and their neighbors’ sheep may have watered in small ponds that formed at the mouths of abandoned uranium mines called dog holes because of their small size. On dry, windy days, the gritty dust from uranium waste tailings piles covered everything in sight. The Navajo language has no word for “radioactivity.” No one told the miners that within two or three decades many of them would die of radiation-induced cancers. In their rush to profit from uranium mining (and the lives of the miners), very few mining companies provided ventilation in the early years. Some miners worked as many as twenty hours per day, entering the mines just after the blasting of sandstone had filled them with silica dust. Many mine owners did not even provide toilet paper. When miners relieved themselves, they wiped with fists of radioactive yellowcake—uranium ore. About half the recoverable uranium within the United States lies within New Mexico, and about half of that is beneath the Navajo Nation. Because a large number of former Navajo uranium miners have died of lung cancer, many Navajos have come to oppose any further uranium mining. They have joined forces with nonNative environmentalists who oppose the mining of uranium and its use in power plants and weapons. By 2005, the Navajos’ government had banned any future mining or processing of uranium on its lands. The memory of death dies hard. EARLY NAVAJO URANIUM MINING Uranium has been mined on Navajo land since the late 1940s; the Indians dug the ore that started the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons. For thirty years after the

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first atomic explosions in New Mexico, uranium was mined much like any other mineral. More than 99 percent of the rock the mines produced was waste, cast aside as tailings near mine sites after the uranium had been extracted. One of the mesalike waste piles grew to be a mile long and 70 feet tall. On windy days, dust from the tailings blew into local communities, filling the air and settling into water supplies. At the time, beginning during the 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission assured worried local residents that the dust was harmless. In February 1978, however, the Department of Energy released a Nuclear Waste Management Task Force report that disclosed that people living near the tailings ran twice the risk of lung cancer as the general population. The Navajo Times carried assertions that one in six Navajo uranium miners had died, or would die prematurely, of lung cancer. For some, the news came too late. As Navajo miners continued to die, children who played in water that had flowed over or through abandoned mines and tailing piles came home with burning sores. According to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report distributed in October 1975, an estimated 16 percent of U.S. uranium reserves that were recoverable at market prices were on reservation lands; this was about two-thirds of the uranium on land under the legal jurisdiction of the United States government. At that time, almost 400 uranium leases existed on these lands, according to the FTC, and between 1 million and 2 million tons of uranium ore a year, about 20 percent of the national total, was being mined from reservation land. The Kerr-McGee Company, the first corporation to mine uranium on Navajo Nation lands (beginning in 1948), found the reservation location extremely lucrative. At the time, there were no taxes; no health, safety, or pollution regulations; and few other jobs for the many Navajos who had recently arrived home from service in World War II. Labor was cheap, and uranium, in demand for stockpiles of nuclear armaments, was expensive. The first uranium miners in the area, almost all of them Navajos, remember being sent into shallow tunnels within minutes after blasting. They loaded the radioactive ore into wheelbarrows and emerged from the mines spitting black mucus from the dust, coughing so hard that many of them experienced headaches, according to Tom Barry, energy writer for the Navajo Times (June 15, 22, and 29, 1978) who interviewed the miners. Such mining practices exposed the Navajos who worked for Kerr-McGee to between 100 and 1,000 times the level of radon gas later considered safe. Officials for the Public Health Service estimated these levels of exposure after the fact; no one was monitoring the Navajo miners’ health in the late 1940s. When mining was initiated, no one considered environmentally appropriate ways to deal with the tailings piles. Even if the tailings were to be buried—a staggering task—radioactive pollution could leak into the surrounding water table. A 1976 Environmental Protection Agency report found radioactive contamination of drinking water on the Navajo Reservation in the Grants, New Mexico, area near a uranium mining and milling facility (Eichstaedt, 1994, 208).


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OPPOSITION TO MINING Opposition to uranium mining in the area, among Indians and non-Indians alike, evoked a deep concern for the long-term poisoning of land, air, and water by low-level radiation. These concerns provoked demands from Indian and nonIndian groups for a moratorium on all uranium mining, exploration, and milling until the issues of untreated radioactive tailings and other waste-disposal problems are faced and solved. Doris Bunting of Citizens against Nuclear Threats (a predominantly non-Native group that joined with the Coalition for Navajo Liberation and the National Indian Youth Council in opposition to uranium mining) supplied data indicating that radium-bearing sediments had spread into the Colorado River basin, from which water is drawn for much of the Southwest. The specter of death that haunted former Navajo uranium miners came at what company public-relations specialists might have deemed an inappropriate time. By late 1978, more than 700,000 acres of Indian land were under lease for uranium exploration and development in an area centering on Shiprock and Crownpoint, both on the Navajo Nation. Atlantic Richfield, Continental Oil, Exxon, Humble Oil, Homestake, Kerr-McGee, Mobil Oil, Pioneer Nuclear, and United Nuclear were among the companies exploring, planning to mine, or already extracting ore. During the 1980s, mining activity subsided somewhat as recession and a slowing of the nuclear arms race reduced demand. Some ore still was being mined, but most of it lay in the ground, waiting for the next upward spike in the market. Even as the boom ended, many of the miners who had been condemned to slow death by lung cancer did not know that the yellow ore they had mined was killing them. Peter Eichstaedt’s painstakingly detailed study (If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans, 1994) described how the miners learned what had been done to them and how they went about winning at least a possibility of compensation from the U.S. government. Using a combination of interviews and scientific data, Eichstaedt demonstrated that the U.S. government (particularly the Atomic Energy Commission) knew that uranium mining was poisoning the Navajos almost from the beginning, a key point in the debate over compensation that thus far has resulted in a small number of miners collecting $100,000 each. The government and the mining companies kept this knowledge from the miners out of concern for national security and profits. THE EFFECTS OF PERVASIVE RADIOACTIVITY Breathing uranium mine dust produces silicosis in miners’ lungs in addition to lung cancer and other problems associated with exposure to radioactivity. As early as 1950, government workers were monitoring radiation levels in the mines that were as much as 750 times limits deemed acceptable at that time. By the end of the 1960s, nearly 200 miners already had died of uranium-related causes. That number had doubled by 1990. Radiation-contaminated drinking water in parts of the Navajo reservation produced birth defects and Down syndrome, both previously all but unknown among

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the Navajo. Of all infant deaths in areas served by the Navajo Indian Health Service (IHS) for the years 1990 through 1992, 35.0 percent were caused by congenital anomalies. Mortality attributed to malignant neoplasms (age-adjusted rate) was 78.5 percent for the Navajo IHS in the years 1990 through 1992 (Colomeda, 1998). The most wrenching parts of Eichstaedt’s book are the personal stories of miners who watched members of their families die because of radiation poisoning that permeated their entire lives. Some miners were put to work packing thousandpound barrels of yellowcake. They carried the radioactive dust home on their clothes. Some of the miners inhaled so much of the dust that it was “making the workers radioactive from the inside out” (Johansen, 1995, 11). Downwind of uranium-processing mills, the dust from yellowcake sometimes was so thick that it stained the landscape a half-mile away. Dry winds blew dust from tailings piles through the streets of many Navajo communities. “We used to play in it,” said Terry Yazzie of an enormous tailings pile behind his house. “We would dig holes and bury ourselves in it” (Johansen, 1995, 11). The neighbors of this particular tailings pile were not told it was dangerous until 1990, 22 years after the mill that produced the tailings pile closed and 12 years after the U.S. Congress authorized the cleanup of uranium mill tailings in Navajo country. Abandoned mines also were used as shelters by animals, which inhaled radon and drank contaminated water. Local people milked the animals and ate their contaminated meat. THE LARGEST NUCLEAR ACCIDENT IN THE UNITED STATES Thanks to its location between the U.S. media capital, New York City, and its political capital, Washington, DC, as well as the coincident opening of the movie The China Syndrome, Three Mile Island became the best-publicized nuclear accident in the United States. It was not the largest such accident. The biggest expulsion of radioactive material in the United States occurred on July 16, 1978, at 5:00 A.M. on the Navajo Nation. On that morning, more than 1,100 tons of uranium mining waste tailings gushed through a packed-mud dam near Church Rock, New Mexico. Along with the tailings, 100 million gallons of radioactive water gushed through the dam before the crack was repaired. Although no one in New York City or Washington, DC, had much to worry about, the Navajo and non-Indian residents of the Rio Puerco area did. The area is high desert, and the Rio Puerco is a major source of water. By 8:00 A.M., radioactivity was monitored in Gallup, New Mexico, nearly 50 miles away. The contaminated river, the Rio Puerco, showed 6,000 times the allowable standard of radioactivity below the broken dam shortly after the breach was repaired, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The few newspaper stories about the spill outside of the immediate area noted that the area was “sparsely populated” and that the spill “poses no immediate health hazard” (Grinde and Johansen, 1995, 211). The Los Angeles Times sent a reporter, Sandra Blakeslee, to the area a month after the spill occurred. By that time, United Nuclear Corporation, which owned the dam, had cleaned up only 50 tons of the 1,100 tons of spilled waste. Workers


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were using pails and shovels because heavy machinery could not negotiate the steep terrain around the Rio Puerco. And where were cleanup crews going to put 1,100 tons of radioactive mud when the next substantial rain would carry it back into the river? Along the river, officials issued press releases telling people not to drink the water. They had a few problems; many of the Navajo residents could not read English and had no electricity to power television sets and radios. Another consumer of the water—cattle—did not read the press releases either. In the meantime, the local newspaper in Grants, New Mexico, which displayed an atomic symbol on its masthead at the time, blamed the publicity that followed the spill on “Jane Fonda and the anti-nuclear weirdos [who] have scared the hell out of people” (Johansen, 1997, 11). John Bartlitt, of New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air and Water, expressed perplexity over the lack of attention paid to the accident. About 80 percent of the radioactivity in uranium ore remained in the tailings, he said. “The radioactivity which remains in a pile of tailings after 600 years is greater than that remaining in [nuclear] power-plant water after 600 years,” Bartlitt said (Johansen, 1997, 11). GRANTS ENCHANTS Since 1950, when a Navajo sheepherder named Paddy Martinez brought a strange-looking yellow rock into Grants, New Mexico, from nearby Haystack Butte, the area had boomed with uranium mining. Grants styled itself the Uranium Capital of the World, as new pickup trucks appeared on the streets and mobilehome parks grew around town, filling with non-Indian workers. For several years, before the boom abruptly ended in the early 1980s, many workers in the uranium industry earned $60,000 or more per year. After the Rio Puerco spill and the collapse of demand for uranium in the early 1980s, Grants dropped the nickname and began promoting itself as a haven for retirees under the new slogan “Grants Enchants.” A report from the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Division said that although the spill had been “potentially hazardous … its short-term and long-term impacts on people and the environment were quite limited” (Johansen, 1997, 11). Although it issued these soothing words, the same report also recommended that ranchers in the area avoid watering their livestock in the Rio Puerco. The same report noted that the river water was not being used for human consumption and, “The extent to which radioactive and chemical constituents of these waters are incorporated in livestock tissue and passed on to humans is unknown and requires critical evaluation” (Johansen, 1997, 12). The report also said that the accident’s effect on groundwater should be studied more intensely. Several Navajos said that calves and lambs were being born without limbs or with other severe birth defects. Other livestock developed sores, became ill, and died after drinking from the river. Tom Charley, a Navajo, told a public meeting at the Lupton Chapter House, “The old ladies are always to be seen running up and down both sides of the [Rio Puerco] wash, trying to keep the sheep out of it” (Johansen, 1997, 12). The

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined a dozen dead animals and called for a more complete study in 1983 and then dropped the subject. More problems began to appear. A waste pile at the United Nuclear mill that had produced the wastes that gushed down the Rio Puerco in 1979 was found to be leaking radioactive thorium into local groundwater. On May 23, 1983, the state of New Mexico issued a cease-and-desist order to United Nuclear to halt the radioactive leakage. The company refused to act, stating that its leak did not violate state regulations. Allendale and Appalachian, two insurance companies that were liable for a $35 million payment to United Nuclear because of losses related to the accident, sued the company on the belief that it knew the dam that burst was defective before the spill. The dam was only two years old at the time of the accident. Along the Rio Puerco, several ranchers reacted to state assurances that the spill left no long-term effects by selling their land, for millions of dollars, to the federal government. The ranchers sold out under the 1974 Relocation Act, meant to move Navajos from the former joint-use area claimed by the Hopis. The land was purportedly acquired to relocate Navajos who had lost their homes in the land dispute with the Hopis. The Navajos asked the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Relocation Commission for assurance that the land was safe. All three declined to provide the requested written assurance to the Navajos. The Navajos raised several questions, including the extent of contamination in underground aquifers, the extent of remaining radioactivity in surface waters and soils, the effects of windblown dust from the contaminated area, and the long-term effects of the contamination on livestock and people in the area. As a result of mining for uranium and other materials, the United States Geological Survey forecast that the water table at Crownpoint would drop 1,000 feet and that it would return to present levels thirty to fifty years after the mining ceased. Much of what water remained could be polluted by uranium residue, the report indicated. The Indians owned the surface rights; the mineral rights in the area were owned by private companies such as the Santa Fe Railroad. “If the water supply is depleted, then this [Crownpoint] will become a ghost town,” said Joe Gmusea, a Navajo attorney. “The only people left will be the ones who come to work in the mines” (Johansen, 1997, 11). John Redhouse, associate director of the Albuquerque-based National Indian Youth Council, said that the mining of uranium is “an issue of spiritual and physical genocide.” “We are not isolated in our struggle against uranium development,” Redhouse said. “Many Indian people are now supporting the struggles of the Australian aborigines and the Black indigenous peoples of Namibia against similar uranium developments. We have recognized that we are facing the same international beast” (Johansen, 1997, 11). THE STRUGGLE FOR COMPENSATION By 1978, the Navajos were beginning to trace the roots of a lung-cancer epidemic that had perplexed many of them because the disease was very rare among


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Navajos before World War II. Harris Charley, who worked in the mines for 15 years, told a U.S. Senate hearing in 1979, “We were treated like dogs. There was no ventilation in the mines.” Pearl Nakai, daughter of a deceased miner, told the same hearing, “No one ever told us about the dangers of uranium” (Grinde and Johansen, 1995, 214). The Senate hearings were convened by Sen. Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, who was seeking compensation for disabled uranium miners and for the families of the deceased. “The miners who extracted uranium from the Colorado Plateau are paying the price today for the inadequate health and safety standards that were then in force,” Domenici told the hearing, held near the uranium boom town of Grants (Grinde and Johansen, 1995, 214). Senate hearings in 1979 initiated proposals to compensate the miners for what investigators called deliberate negligence. Tests in Europe by 1930 had associated radioactivity in uranium mines with lung cancer. Scientific evidence linking radon gas to radioactive illness existed after 1949, but measures to ventilate the Navajo mines never were implemented, as the government pressured Kerr-McGee and other producers to increase the amount of uranium they were mining. The Public Health Service recommended ventilation in 1952, but the Atomic Energy Commission said it bore no responsibility for the mines, despite the fact that it bought more than 3 million pounds of uranium from them in 1954 alone. The Public Health Service monitored the health of more than 4,000 miners between 1954 and 1960 without telling them of the threat to their health. Dr. Joseph Wagoner, special assistant for occupational carcinogens at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency, said that of 3,500 persons who mined uranium in New Mexico, about 200 had died of cancer by the late 1970s. In an average population of 3,500 persons, 40 such deaths could have been expected. The 160 extra deaths were not the measure of ignorance, he said. Published data regarding the dangers of radon was widely available to scientists in the 1950s, according to Wagoner. Health and safety precautions in the mines were not cost-effective for the companies, he said. “Thirty years from now we’ll have the hidden legacy of the whole thing,” Wagoner told Molly Ivins of The New York Times (Johansen, 1997, 12). For a dozen years, bills that would have compensated the Navajo miners were introduced, discussed, and left to languish in Congressional committees. By 1990, the cancer-related death toll among former miners had risen to 450 and was still rising. By the early 1990s, about 1,100 Navajo miners or members of their families had applied for compensation related to uranium exposure. The bureaucracy had approved 328 cases, denied 121, and withheld action on 663, an approval rate that Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, characterized as “significantly lower than in other cases of radiation compensation” (Johansen, 1997, 12). Representative Miller said that awards of compensation were being delayed by “a burdensome application system developed by the Department of Justice” (Johansen, 1997, 12). Miller’s committee was investigating not only the Navajo death toll from radiation poisoning but also many other reports that indigenous peoples were willfully

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and recklessly exposed to radiation during the Cold War. The geographic range of purported radiation poisonings spans half the globe—from the Navajos in the U.S. Southwest, to Alaskan Natives whose lives were endangered when atomic waste products from Nevada secretly were buried near their villages, to residents of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific, an area in which the United States tested atomic and hydrogen bombs in the atmosphere between 1946 and 1958. As investigations developed, it appeared that the treatment of Navajos was not the exception but one example of a deadly pattern of reckless disregard for indigenous life, human and otherwise, in colonized places. DELAYS IN COMPENSATION By the beginning of 2001, former Navajo uranium miners and millers, as well as their families, were holding meetings and protest marches in a renewed attempt to collect compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act for cancers associated with radiation exposure. Meetings and protest marches were held in Grants, New Mexico, and Cortez, Colorado, as well as in or near several towns on the Navajo Nation. National legislation compensating victims of uranium mining and fallout had been enacted in 1990, guaranteeing up to $100,000 to miners and so-called downwinders, who suffered radiation exposure downwind of nuclear-weapons tests. The program was not funded until 1992, and even then only at very low levels. It ran out of money in 1993, when the government began issuing IOUs. In July 2000, President Bill Clinton signed an amendment to the 1990 law extending its provisions to millers and transporters of radioactive uranium ore, once again without adequate funding to implement the law’s provisions. In the meantime, former uranium miners and their families continued to suffer illnesses and deaths due to their exposure. The amendments expanded the list of eligible afflictions and slashed the amount of time a miner had to have spent working with uranium to be eligible for the compensation program. The measure also extended the program to those who had worked in open-pit uranium mines and uranium milling plants, as well as underground mines. Many miners had complained that they were excluded by the overly stringent rules of the original law. Melton Martinez, who has been instrumental in the struggle to gain compensation for miners and millers, said that the government knew uranium had caused many cancers and organ failures. Even wives of workers who washed the yellowcoated clothes of their miner husbands were experiencing cancers, Martinez said (Purdom, 2001). Elisabeth Lopez-Rael, mayor of Milan, New Mexico, told a gathering there that she knew a man in Grants who was given an IOU by the government. “He told me he probably wouldn’t live long enough to spend it and he has lost a lot of friends already” (Purdom, 2001). Several former miners raised the possibility that aquifers in the area remain contaminated by radioactivity from the former uranium mines. One man asked, “Where does the contamination go? Into the water” (Purdom, 2001). Because of radioactivity’s persistent nature, Martinez said, “We are doing this not only for


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ourselves and our neighbors, we are doing this for our children too” (Purdom, 2001). “They did experiment on us like guinea pigs. It makes me angry,” one former miner said as he sat on the steps outside the U.S. House of Representatives. “I would have lived longer, but they gave me a shorter life on this Earth” (“Uranium Miners,” 2000). Gilbert Badoni of Shiprock, New Mexico, said he and his siblings played in uranium mine tailings and drank radioactive water during the decades his father worked in uranium mines in Colorado in the 1950s and 1960s. Badoni said his father would come home covered in yellow uranium dust, which covered everything in their small home when their mother brushed it off the clothes (“Uranium Miners,” 2000). Badoni blamed his lung problems and his siblings’ cancers on that exposure. “The U.S. government has abused innocent women and children. They have abused my family,” Badoni said, choking back tears. “They have abused my Navajo people. That’s not right” (“Uranium Miners,” 2000). NAVAJOS OUTLAW URANIUM MINING AND PROCESSING The Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005, signed by Navajo Tribal Chairman Joe Shirley, declared that “No person shall engage in uranium mining and processing on any sites within Navajo Indian Country” (LaDuke, 2005, 7). The law was the first of its kind in Indian country. Outside the Navajo Council’s headquarters, Navajos who had lost family members from radioactive contamination and those fighting new proposals for uranium development hugged each other and celebrated. “It’s very simple, uranium kills,” Mark Maryboy, council delegate said. “This legislation just chopped the legs off the uranium monster” (LaDuke, 2005, 7). Even with the Navajo law, miners may be able to develop in situ leach and other mines on lands adjacent to the Navajo Nation at Churchrock. In communities such as Cove, Arizona, by 2005 at least one member of every Navajo family probably has died from cancer or other diseases resulting from uranium mining. More than l,000 abandoned uranium mines still pose environmental and health hazards on the reservation (LaDuke, 2005, 7). The law was enacted in part because proposals for in situ uranium mining operations have surfaced in the Eastern Navajo agency on lands held by individual allottees. Hydro Resources International proposed to mine in four areas near Crownpoint and Church Rock, and a new corporation, Strathmore, a Canadian mining corporation, has purchased additional uranium interests in the Grants mineral belt adjoining the Navajo Reservation (LaDuke, 2005, 7). In the case of Hydro Resources’ proposals, the uranium would be removed by in situ leach (ISL) mining, a process of injecting chemicals into the ground to strip the uranium from the host rock of sandstone in the aquifer. The ISL process used in uranium mining has been shown to increase the concentrations of uranium and other radioactive elements and heavy metals in the groundwater by up to l00,000 times (LaDuke, 2005, 7). Citing the threat to Navajos’ water supply, Eastern Navajo and Dine against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM) and the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research Information Center have spent more than $l million mounting

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challenges to the uranium proposals by Hydro Resources. Speaking in Dine and English, Michael Capitan of ENDAUM said, “Our water is sacred and our water is clean; they want to dirty the water in our communities” (LaDuke, 2005, 7). Contamination projected by the in situ process of the sole source of drinking water for l5,000 Navajos could be dangerous. These wells are the sole source of drinking water for thousands of people that live in the area, explained Mike Wallace, a groundwater hydrologist who has worked at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a radioactive-waste repository, in New Mexico and at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. “It is enough to cause renal damage,” Wallace reiterated, concurring with Dr. John Fogerty, the Indian Health Service Director in Crownpoint, at Eastern Navajo. “I’ve never seen such poor science, poor accountability and poor traceability,” Wallace added. On March 7, 2005, ENDAUM, Southwest Research and Information Center, and two Navajo women filed a 1,200-page brief outlining why the project will illegally contaminate underground sources of drinking water in the Church Rock and Crownpoint, New Mexico, areas. The brief was the first in phase two of the interveners’ challenge of a license issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff in January 1998 (LaDuke, 2005, 7). “‘Water is life’ is not just a political slogan—it’s a description of some of the fundamental principles we live by every day. Water is used in our religious ceremonies, just like it is used in the ceremonies of the Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim faiths. It is essential to our survival in an arid climate,” Capitan explained. Echoing those words, Richard Abitz, geochemist and environmental scientist, said, “Water is needed for life, uranium is not needed for life. We can get by without uranium, we can not get by without water.” “The people have spoken and our leaders have listened to the people,” said delegate Alice Benally of Crownpoint. “Our people are still dying from this. This legislation was important to Navajo Nation, a very big step for Navajo people” (LaDuke, 2005, 7). THE DENE: DECIMATED BY URANIUM MINING In far northern Canada, the Dene experienced a so-called yellow death, much like that of the Navajo, at about the same time. At the dawn of the nuclear age, Paul Baton and more than thirty other Dene hunters and trappers who were recruited to mine uranium called it “the money rock” (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1). Paid $3 per day by their employers, the Dene hauled and ferried burlap sacks of the grimy ore from one of the world’s first uranium mines at Port Radium across the Northwest Territories to Fort McMurray. Since then, according to an account by Andrew Nikiforuk in the Calgary Herald, at least 14 Dene who worked at the mine between 1942 and 1960 have died of lung, colon, and kidney cancers, according to documents obtained through the Northwest Territories Cancer Registry (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1). The Port Radium mine supplied the uranium to fuel some of the first atomic bombs. Within half a century, uranium mining in northern Canada had left behind more than 120 million tons of radioactive waste, enough to cover the


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Trans-Canada Highway six feet deep across Canada. By 2000, production of uranium waste from Saskatchewan alone occurred at the rate of more than 1 million tons annually. The experiences of the Dene were similar to those of Navajo uranium miners in Arizona and New Mexico. Since 1975, a thirty-year latency period after uranium mining began in the area, hospitalizations for cancer, birth defects, and circulatory illnesses in northern Saskatchewan had increased between 123 percent and 600 percent. In other areas impacted by uranium mining, cancers and birth defects have increased, in some cases to as much as eight times the Canadian national average (LaDuke, 1995). “Before the mine, you never heard of cancer,” said Baton. “Now, lots of people have died of cancer” (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1). The Dene were never told of uranium’s dangers. Declassified documents have revealed that the U.S. government, which bought the uranium, and the Canadian federal government, at the time the world’s largest supplier of uranium outside the United States, withheld health and safety information from miners, as well as the native miners and their families. A 1991 federal aboriginal health survey found that the Deline Dene community reported twice as much illness as any other Canadian aboriginal community. While mining, “many Dene slept on the ore, ate fish from water contaminated by radioactive tailings and breathed radioactive dust while on the barges, docks and portages. More than a dozen men carried sacks of ore weighing more than 45 kilograms [100 pounds] for 12 hours a day, six days a week, four months a year…. Children played with the dusty ore at river docks and portage landings. And their women sewed tents from used uranium sacks” (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1). Although many of the Dene blame uranium mining and its waste products for their increased cancer rates, some Canadian officials compiled statistics indicating only marginally increased mortality from uranium exposure. André Corriveau, the Northwest Territories’ chief medical officer, noted that high cancer rates among the Dene do not differ significantly from the overall territorial profile. He said that the death rate was skewed upward by high rates of smoking (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1). The Dene, in the meantime, maintain that the fact that almost half the workers in the Port Radium mine (14 of 30) died of lung cancer can not be explained by smoking alone. Until his death in 1940, Louis Ayah, one of the North’s great aboriginal spiritual leaders, repeatedly warned his people that the waters in Great Bear Lake would turn a foul yellow. According to Ayah, the yellow poison would flow toward the village, recalled Madelaine Bayha, one of a dozen scarfed and skirted so-called uranium widows in the village (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1). The first Dene to die of cancer, or what elders still call “the incurable disease,” was Old Man Ferdinand in 1960. He had worked at the mine site as a logger, guide, and stevedore for nearly a decade. “It was Christmastime and he wanted to shake hands with all the people as they came back from hunting,” recalled Rene Fumoleau, then an Oblate missionary working in Deline. After saying goodbye to the last family that came in, Ferdinand declared, “‘Well, I guess I shook hands with everyone now,’ and he died three hours later” (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1).

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According to Nikiforuk’s account, others died during the next decade. Victor Dolphus’s arm came off when he tried to start an outboard motor. Joe Kenny, a boat pilot, died of colon cancer. His son, Napoleon, a deck hand, died of stomach cancer. The premature death of so many men has not only left many widows but also interrupted the handing down of culture. “In Dene society it is the grandfather who passes on the traditions and now there are too many men with no uncles, fathers or grandfathers to advise them,” said Cindy Gilday, Joe Kenny’s daughter and chair of the Deline Uranium Committee (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1). “It’s the most vicious example of cultural genocide I have ever seen,” Gilday said. “And it’s in my own home” (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1). According to Nikiforuk, “Watching a uranium miner die of a radioactive damaged lung is a job only for the brave.” He described Al King, an 82-year-old retired member of the steelworkers union in Vancouver, British Columbia, who has held the hands of the dying. King described one retired Port Radium miner whose chest lesions were so bad that they had spread to his femur and exploded it. “They couldn’t pump enough morphine into him to keep him from screaming before he died,” said King (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1). In exchange for their labors in the uranium mines, the Dene received a few sacks of flour, lard, and baking powder. “Nobody knew what was going on,” recalled Isadore Yukon, who hauled uranium ore for three consecutive summers during the 1940s. “Keeping the mine going full blast was the important thing” (Nikiforuk, 1998, A-1). The Dene town of Deline was described by one of its residents as: Practically a village of widows. Most of the men who worked as laborers have died of some form of cancer. The widows, who are traditional women, were left to raise their families with no breadwinners, supporters. They were left to depend on welfare and other young men for their traditional food source. This village of young men are the first generation of men in the history of Dene on this lake to grow up without guidance from their grandfathers, fathers and uncles. This cultural, economic, spiritual, emotional deprivation impact on the community is a threat to the survival of the one and only tribe on Great Bear Lake. (Gilday, n.d.)

FURTHER READING Colomeda, Lori A. “Indigenous Health.” Speech. Brisbane, Australia, September 9, 1998. . Eichstaedt, Peter. If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans. Santa Fe, NM: Red Crane Books, 1994. Gilday, Cindy Kenny. “A Village of Widows.” Arctic Circle. n.d. . Grinde, Donald A., Jr., and Bruce E. Johansen. Ecocide of Native America: Environmental Destruction of Indian Lands and Peoples. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light, 1995. Johansen, Bruce E. “The High Cost of Uranium in Navajoland.” Akwesasne Notes New Series 2, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 10–12. .


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Johansen, Bruce E. “Victims of Progress: Navajo Miners.” Review of If You Poison Us, by Peter Eichstaedt. Native Americas 12, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 60–61. LaDuke, Winona. “The Indigenous Women’s Network Our Future, Our Responsibility.” Statement at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, August 31, 1995. . LaDuke, Winona. “Navajo Uranium Ban: Leading the Way into the New Millennium.” Honor the Earth, Fall 2005: 7. Nikiforuk, Andrew. “Echoes of the Atomic Age: Cancer Kills Fourteen Aboriginal Uranium Workers.” Calgary Herald, March 14, 1998: A-1, A-4. . Purdom, Tim. “Radiation Victims Rally; Marchers Complain about IOUs, Delays in Payments.’ Gallup Independent, March 13, 2001, n.p. . “Uranium Miners, Families Bring Tales of Pain to Washington.” Arizona Republic, April 15, 2000. .

CHAPTER 8

Catharsis vis-à-vis Oppression: Contemporary Native American Political Humor

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thnic humor can be a barb to the heart of intercultural understanding—a key to truths that years of diligent scholarly research can not otherwise unlock. Vine Deloria Jr. wrote: “One of the best ways to understand a people is to know what makes them laugh. Laughter encompasses the limits of the soul. In humor life is redefined and accepted. Irony and satire provide much keener insights into a group’s collective psyche and values than do years of research” (Deloria, 1975, 152). Humor can be a history lesson; all that banter one hears on reservations about Lakotas’ and Cheyennes’ fondness for dog meat is a reminder of a time when the buffalo were dead, the peoples’ rifles were surrendered, and dogs were eaten to survive (Lowe, 1994, 197). Thus, also, the role of humor associated with fry bread, what one makes with rancid commodity flour, lard, a frying pan, and an open fire. So, too, all the jokes regarding those ubiquitous blocks of commodity cheese—all, like a good joke about the white man at the right time, essential to survival in the worst of times. Among some non-Natives, American Indians sometimes have an undeserved reputation for being stoic and humorless. The reality is quite the contrary. Native life is richly laced with humor, much of it sharply politically pointed. This chapter provides examples of contemporary humor, both reservation- and urban-based, from Native sources in a sociological and historical context that traces its origins and functions in Native American life. My emphasis is on the use of humor as a catharsis vis-à-vis enduring political oppression. Some Native American humor also is aimed inward; an ability to laugh at oneself, to impart values, and to transmit one’s culture through humor, Portions of this chapter are reprinted from the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, volume 22, number 4, by permission of the American Indian Studies Center, UCLA. © 1998 Regents of the University of California.

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sometimes to achieve societal change through humor, is itself sometimes used by Native peoples to overcome oppression. For example, Western Shoshone Jack Malotte supplied “Things That Make Me Laugh,” each of which speaks volumes culturally and historically: Prize-winning traditional dancers make me laugh. White Indian experts make me laugh. Christian Indians make me laugh. White artists who paint Indian things better than Indians make me laugh. Indian tacos being called a traditional food makes me laugh. Indians who call themselves cowboys make me laugh. Mixing Indian culture with the dominant society makes me laugh. (Malotte, 2003).

A LONG HISTORY When asked, “Why do you suppose that Indian humor has been so little recognized by the majority culture? And so little understood?” N. Scott Momaday responded, “It’s probably been kept a secret. It’s one of the strongest elements of language within Indian cultures” and “humor is really where the language lives, you know. It’s very close to the center, and very important” (Lincoln, 1993, 3). Native American humor has a long history. Sally L. A. Emmons wrote in her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Oklahoma that humor assumes “a sacred position within ceremonials” across Native North America, from Trickster traditions to the Pueblo clown societies, Cherokee ‘Booger’ dances, and aspects of the Northwest Coast Potlatch” (Emmons, 2000, ix). Humor has long been woven into the very fabric of Native American life, to the point where it serves many purposes related to sacred rituals and social cohesion. Much of this humor bears the “millennia-old tribal legacies of Trickster, most often a coyote, an antiheroic comic teacher and holy fool—scruffy, spunky, satiric, sneaky, sharp-eyed … [who] loves to laugh at the moon and man—to fashion a new image of the surviving Indian as comic artist more than tragic victim, seriously humorous to the Native core” (Lincoln, 1993, 5). The Uncle Remus and Tar Baby tales, which today are identified with black folk humor, started as Trickster stories among the Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles (Emmons, 2000, 11). Booger in English became bogeyman, a ghost figure (Emmons, 2000, 24). Humorous ceremonials are adaptable; the Pueblo clowns quickly added lampoons of tourists as well as parodies of missionaries (Emmons, 2000, 20–21). Northwest Coast potlatch masks include such figures as the Conceited White Woman as well as missionaries (Emmons, 2000, 31–32). Many Native American cultures made use of contrary clowns, who turned social conventions on their heads and who served “as a counterbalance on solemn occasions [who] are authorized to ridicule, burlesque, and defile even sacred and religious traditions and sexual mores”(Nilsen and Nilsen, 2000, 28).

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One of the best-known contrary clowns in U.S. popular culture appeared in the movie Little Big Man, riding backward on a horse, painting his body a rainbow of colors, saying “goodbye” when he meant “hello,” and cleansing himself with sand. In summer, a contrary might dress up in heavy clothing and pretend to shiver; in winter, he might stand naked in the snow and act as if he was burning up. Like the contrary clowns, the idea of a Trickster was shared by many otherwise diverse Native cultures. The best-known pan-Indian Trickster is the Plains Coyote, but in the Pacific Northwest, the character often was portrayed as a Raven. In the East, the Trickster often was a Rabbit; deer, spiders, blue jays, and wolverines also played the part. In U.S. popular culture, the Trickster has been adapted in cartoon characters such as Wile E. Coyote, Roadrunner, and Bugs Bunny (Nilsen and Nilsen, 2000, 30–31). “Travelers and historians have written many vivid pages describing how the melancholy red man of the forest’s darksome shade reflected his surroundings by expressing himself in terms of dignity or sullen taciturnity,” wrote the Seneca Arthur C. Parker (Parker, 1946, 132). Humor has been a survival tool and a means of facilitating self-awareness and identity among Native Americans for centuries. Northern Cheyenne artist Bently Spang observed that “Regardless of how the experts define the function of humor in my culture, the bottom line is that we are a pretty darn funny people. Humor has helped us deal with incredible adversity and hardship over the years and is still an integral part of life today. I just can’t imagine going back to the Northern Cheyenne rez and not being teased and not laughing until my stomach hurts” (Bates, 1995). THE FOREST RANG OF LAUGHTER Stoic Indians? Anyone who knows Native peoples closely knows that the stereotype does not fit. “The only writers who ever said such things are those who never knew the joy-loving red man. Indeed, the Indians did joke, and the forest more often rang of laughter than war whoops” (Parker, 1946, 132–33). The socalled face of inscrutability was adopted, wrote Parker, “to conceal all emotions in the presence of strangers” (Parker, 1946, 133). Indian jokes often are based upon puns, have a keen sense of the ludicrous, and are told with straight faces. Parker cited one straight-faced chief at Onondaga who, upon hearing the Jesuits’ story of the Garden of Eden, replied laconically, “I always did believe it is wrong to eat apples. Hereafter I will never eat apples. I will make cider of them—it tastes so much better!” (Parker, 1946, 135). Native Americans generally, and Navajos in particular, remarked Willard W. Hill in Navajo Humor, are “excellent mimic[s] and pantomimist[s], with a superb sense of timing and climax” (Hill, 1943, 7). The Navajos honor infants with a First Laughter Ceremony, including a feast provided by the person who provoked the child’s first laugh. Navajo humor often is associated with kinship relations, ritual performance, and oral literature. Humor also often is used to characterize foreign cultures, most notably European Americans’—for example, mocking the revulsive

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faces made when European Americans were offered certain items of Navajo cuisine, such as fried intestines (Hill, 1943, 12). Deloria, an astute student and practitioner of Indian humor, pointed out that “The image of the granite-faced grunting redskin has been perpetuated by American mythology” (Deloria, 1969, 148; Edmunds, 1976, 142). Some of this mythology was cultivated by Francis Parkman, who, in The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851), described what he took to be a typical Algonquian warrior as a collection of illhumored stereotypes: [He has] a hard and stern physiognomy. Ambition, revenge, envy, jealousy are his ruling passions…. [He is] overcast by much that is dark, cold, and sinister…. In his feasts and his drinking bouts we find none of that robust and full-toned mirth which reigned at the rude carousals of our barbaric ancestry. He is never jovial…. Over all emotions he throws the veil of iron self-control … a mask of icy coldness. (Edmunds, 1976, 142; Parkman, 1962, 61–62)

Parkman had little direct contact with Native peoples during the nineteenth century. European Americans with boots on the ground in the West reported differently. The artist George Catlin, for example, who was a contemporary of Parkman, “emphatically documents for the Mandans of Missouri, and for all of the tribes he observed, pointing out their continuous indulgence in laughter” (Dorson, 1946, 114). Indian humor’s “combination of verbal slapstick and social comment has a double cutting edge,” observed Shirley Hill Witt and Stan Steiner in The Way: An Anthology of American Indian Literature (Witt and Steiner, 1972, 73). A working illustration of this cutting edge has been provided by Oneida comic Charlie Hill, who mentioned an acquaintance who is both Native and African American: “They not only stole his land. They made him work it for free” (“Charlie Hill,” 2001; in McMaster and Trafzrt, 2004, 242). The Pueblo clowns also serve a social-control function, according to Emmons, “to maintain the spiritual integrity of the Pueblos by publicly warning those tribal members who have conducted themselves inappropriately that their actions have serious spiritual consequences” (Emmons, 2000, 34). The various Tricksters also are very complex cultural figures, “jokester and god, destroyer and healer, criminal and moralist, all in the same package” (Emmons, 2000, 73). Certain subjects are usually considered outside the bounds of proper humor. Among the Navajo, for example, these include jokes related to death and witchcraft. Jokes of a sadistic nature that ridicule personal afflictions and the infirmities of old age are usually (but not always) avoided as well. Children who make fun of blind people may be told that their eyes may fall out (Hill, 1943, 13). Two major subjects of ironic Indian humor have been Christopher Columbus and George Armstrong Custer. Upon seeing Columbus’s ships, one Indian is said to have said to another, “There goes the neighborhood!” Upon seeing a flying saucer, one Indian said to another, “Oh, no, not again!” (Deloria, 1969, 150). Custer


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was said to have bragged that he could ride through Sioux and Cheyenne country with his Seventh Cavalry. A favorite Indian joke has been, “He was half right. He got half-way through” (Deloria, 1969, 151). The Refrain of Johnny Cash’s “Custer” (1963) goes, “The general, he don’t ride well, anymore.” “Now Custer split his men, but he won’t do that again” echoes through many Native Custer jokes. The literature of contemporary Native American humor is both oral and written; it has been aided immensely by the diffusion of the Internet, on which jokes are swapped and embellished across wide geographic expanses. New technology allows many people in diverse locations to swap stories over what amounts to an electronic campfire. The electronic campfire of the Internet frees Indians from confines of place but at the same time creates a new, bigger common realm. On the Internet, in a sense, Native American oral history meets Einsteinian notions of space and time. Indian humor can be dangerously subversive of established interests. The Bureau of Indian Affairs realized the political potency of Native jesting when, in some cases up to the 1920s, it banned native clowns (prominent especially in the U.S. Southwest) along with other ceremonies (including the Sun Dance) as part of its religious crimes code (Lincoln, 1993, 43). HUMOR AS A DEFENSE MECHANISM In Custer Died for Your Sins (1969), Deloria pointed out that the needling of European Americans has long been a staple of American Indian humor. Edmunds described such humor as having a dual role: to illustrate the strength of Native cultures and as a defensive mechanism against oppression (Edmunds, 1976, 145). Early in the twentieth century, a young anthropologist visited the Coast Salish peoples of the Olympic Peninsula to gather their folklore. He was greeted with a story of a massive war—“numerous and magnificently carved war canoes came down from the North to do battle with the local people amidst much bloodshed and treachery” (Holden, 1976, 271). The visitor prepared to tell of Salish folklore in a war-making context. In fact, however, the entire “war” was an elaborate, collective joke, and the “great battle” actually was a whimsical tale about how to find a decent toilet. “Among the Coast Salish,” wrote Madronna Holden, “such items of folklore are part of an elaborate tradition, the creation of a kind of folkloric ‘tradition’ for those first whites who came to their territory” (Holden, 1976, 272). The jokes were crafted with abundant irony and satire, and woe to any scholar who tried to deadpan their folklore in scholarly journals. Much of this humor delineates how Native American peoples deal with nonNative prejudices as well as with each other. Taken as a whole, Native American humor often functions as a catharsis (a purification of emotion by vicarious experience) in the face of oppression, contemporary and historical. Kenneth Lincoln observed that “Indians generally respond to these gold-rush crusades with sharp humor, a good dose of sarcasm, resigned laughter, and a flurry of ironic ‘rez’ [reservation] jokes that travel the Moccasin Telegraph like wildfire” (Lincoln, 1993, 5). Today, the Moccasin Telegraph also travels the Internet at the speed of light.

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Lincoln quoted UCLA’s Navajo librarian Velma Salabiye, wielding her “sense of humor as daily survival” (Lincoln, 1993, 6, 133). Paula Gunn Allen told Lincoln that Indian humor is “the best and sharpest weapon we’ve ever had against the ravages of conquest and oppression” (Lincoln, 1993, 7). According to Jane Quickto-See Smith, “Humor has been a panacea for what ails…. Humor is a mainstay of Indian life” (Lincoln, 1993, 142, 151). This catharsis takes several forms. Some “Indi’n” humor needles stereotypes that Native Americans face on a daily basis. For example, “10 Things You Can Say to a White Person When You First Meet One” (listed in the section “How Much White Are You?”) holds a mirror to statements that Native people hear so often that they grate. Non-Indians’ ignorance of Native language and culture (and their tendency not to have a clue just how much they are missing) is a favorite subject of jokes. A frequent target is those who are selling something, including politicians and plastic (fake) medicine men. The most potent political points involve jokes that give an oppressor his just deserts. Modern governmental institutions and assumptions may be lampooned, with an indigenous twist at the end that supports traditional Native perspectives. The so-called Great White Father has been a target of Native humorists for many years, right up to the present. As one might expect, policies of the United States government also present a rich source for Native humorists. Of Native American humor that is directed at the dominant culture, some of the sharpest ironic wit is reserved for jokes that—like the Ghost Dance of the nineteenth century—prescribe a future from which European American invaders have been exorcised. Such humor often bares a sharp cutting edge that reveals what many Native Americans think of the white man’s character. Will Rogers, for example, often told people that he had just enough white blood to make his honesty questionable (Nilsen and Nilsen, 2000, 27). In such humor, Indian ways endure. Many Native jokes poke fun at Native peoples themselves. Native peoples’ ability to laugh at themselves is, according to Edmunds, a “remarkable” trait, given “the problems that Indians have faced” (Edmunds, 1976, 149). Self-deprecation goes back to traditional tribal societies, where it was sometimes used as a socialcontrol mechanism. The Trickster (Coyote) displays comic antics that often are used to teach group mores and values (Edmunds, 1976, 150). Likewise, among the Inuit, “boys and girls who act inappropriately for their age or sex [gender] are ridiculed until they conform” (Horn et al., 1974, 88). In Custer Died for Your Sins (1969), Vine Deloria Jr. wrote that “For centuries before the white invasion, teasing was a method of control of social situations by Indian people. Rather than embarrass members of the tribe publicly, people used to tease individuals they considered out of step with the consensus of tribal opinion. This way, egos were preserved and disputes within the tribe of a personal nature were held to a minimum. Gradually, people learned to anticipate teasing and began to tease themselves as a means of showing humility and at the same time advocating a course of action they believed in” (Deloria, 1969, 149).


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Although Native American political humor that has spread worldwide via the Internet explores subjects as recent and germane as today’s news, it also extends cultural roots that are centuries old. For thousands of years, America’s many hundreds of Native peoples have made humor part of their rituals. For hundreds of years, humor has been used to critique the self-assumed rectitude of immigrants from across the oceans. For as many years, or more, Native peoples, as shown in the previous examples, have used humor as social catharsis by laughing at each other. Far from having the stoic nature perpetuated by stereotypes, Native Americans practice humor rich in lessons for themselves as well as non-Natives. Some such stories have a factual tinge. For example, Hal Tecker, a rancher in southwestern Nebraska who has an interest in Native American history and culture, brought a Teton Sioux elder, Kenneth Bordeaux, to his place to do a pipe ceremony calling for rain. Tecker’s ranch was in an area that, at the time, had had less than one inch of rain during the last nine months before Bordeaux’s visit. It was so dry that even the tumbleweeds were dying. Most of Tecker’s neighbors laughed at him. Bordeaux performed the ceremony one sunny mid-June day. Four or five days later, it rained 2.5 inches. What is more, the rain began roughly at the western edge of Tecker’s ranch, moved to its eastern edge, and stopped. Two days later, another 2.5 inches of rain fell, also over Tecker’s land. His grass turned green—the only patch of green in a very large area of parched brown and grays. The other ranchers quit laughing. CHARLIE HILL: A PROMINENT NATIVE COMEDIAN Charlie Hill may be the most prominent contemporary Native American comedian, a master at stand-up improvisational humor with a biting ethnic wit who sometimes reminds listeners of Chris Rock crossed with Will Rogers. Hill is Oneida, Mohawk, and Cree; growing up, he was exposed to the urban world of Detroit, Michigan, as well as the Wisconsin Oneidas’ reservation, thus his humor has both rural and urban attributes. Hill’s humor also has a national and a multiethnic character shaped, in part, by his residence as an adult in New York City, Seattle, Sacramento, and Los Angeles, where he has been a regular performer at The Comedy Store. Hill also has on his résumé televised appearances with Richard Pryor, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Rosanne Carter. Hill is known for humor that addresses Indian sensibilities. “I try to get people to laugh with us instead of at us,” he said. “If I put on a headdress and acted stupid, I could be a millionaire in [Las] Vegas. But people who do that don’t have to answer because they don’t belong to Indian communities. Real Indian humor is grassroots stuff, it’s about things in the community” (Price, 1998, 257). “Charlie is good at making you laugh, and after you finish laughing, you think, that’s really true,” said Jay Leno, host of the National Broadcasting Company’s Tonight Show, where Hill has appeared as a guest (Charlie Hill’s Official Web Page, 2004). Leno first met Hill during the 1970s.

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Hill believes that if people enjoy his show but laugh at the expense of indigenous people, they have missed the joke. “My point was always to laugh with Indian people and not at us,” he said. “Anytime I am in front of an Indian audience, I take the approach I am in front of Royalty. My favorite crowds are Indian colleges and Indian Elders. Indian Elders are fun, and they have seen it all” (Charlie Hill’s Official Web Page, 2004). According to Hill, multiethnic humor works well with urban audiences because they tend to be demographically mixed. Multiethnic jokes often combine stereotypical traits of the parents’ ethnicities: “I met a guy, he was Jewish and his wife was Indian, they named their son ‘Bargain Hunter.’” “In my own family I have relatives that are Irish and Indian—there’s no drinking problem in that family!” Hill continued, “I met some of the most beautiful people in America that are of African and Indian heritage, and boy are they strong people because not only did they get their land stolen, they got to work on it for free” (Price, 1998, 257). Audiences in Los Angeles, where Hill performs most frequently, often include many Latinos, who share indigenous heritage. He readily incorporates Latino historical themes into his routine, with Davy Crockett a favorite target: “Since there’s Latinos here tonight I need to thank them for kicking Davy Crockett’s ass!” Inverting the image of Davy Crockett as a heroic figure, Hill jokes, “They always say, ‘Oh, Davy Crockett he was a famous Indian fighter.’ That means, oh, he murdered people, in fact, he was a terrorist. What are we going to have fifty years from now?” Hill breaks into a song, to the tune of “Davy Crockett,” “Oh Omar, Oh Omar Khadaffi!” (Price, 1998, 261–62). Hill’s humor has a very serious political edge; he works to establish common interests between various indigenous peoples while tweaking everyone’s nose. From time to time, his routine emphasizes similarities between Native North Americans and Hawaiians. At a Native American benefit that included Hawaiian musicians, Hill commented, “I love the Hawaiian people. They’re the same as us…. They have their medicine people and we have our medicine people. They have their tragedies like us. We have Wayne Newton. They’ve got Don Ho” (Price, 1998, 263). Some of Hill’s biggest laughs come from his relentless skewering of New Agers and their Native pretenses. “You get this a lot in the Bay Area,” he has said. “‘I was an Indian in a previous life.’” Hill asks New Agers to cease their imitation of Native cultures: “And all the New Agers [should] stop pimping our religions and our ceremonies. You can pray with us in our circles but you need to figure out who you are. This Lynn Andrews bullshit, or this guy Swift Deer—we call him Fast Buck. Anytime you see a medicine man with a 900 number, run!” (Price, 1998, 265–66). Occasionally, a comedy routine turns into a lecture on interethnic respect: “We talk to our ancestors with our ceremonies. White people can’t talk to their ancestors with our ceremonies. It’s impossible because they’re the ones who killed them. [Laughter.] So relax, find out who you are. Then we can all get healed together” (Price, 1998, 266).


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Hill is an expert at putting the moccasin on the other foot. Observing that European American tourists who visit reservations often ask naive questions such as, “What Indian tribe was the fiercest,” or “Can I take your picture?” Hill exclaims, “We Indians ought to be tourists in the suburbs in a white neighborhood and see how they like it: ‘Are you really white people? Godamn! Can I take your picture? How do you survive in these suburbs? My god!’” (Price, 1998, 266). Performing in Los Angeles, Hill often teases an audience with their city’s violent reputation: “There’s so much crime in Los Angeles, the women, this is how they rock a baby to sleep at night.” He makes a police siren sound. “Third-graders bring handguns to school. Third-graders with handguns, when I was in third grade all we shot was spit wads” (Price, 1998, 266). The mainstream of U.S. political life often is fodder for Hill’s comedic routine. “Last week I did a show for the American Indian Republican Party. Three of the nicest gentlemen I ever met in my life.” Putting liberals in perspective, he quips, “Liberals aren’t quite sure about Indians: ‘Oh, we love the Indians.’ Then give us back our land! ‘Okay, we’re not that liberal’” (Price, 1998, 266). And if you are offended by the way Hill skewers ethnic arrogance, he has a line for that, too: “I had a heckler last night. I know I shouldn’t judge a man by the color of his neck or anything like that, but he said, ‘I don’t want to hear any of that crap, I’m an American goddamn it, why don’t you go back to where you came from?’ So I camped in his backyard” (Price, 1998, 266). Hill laughs about airport security: “I mean, where’s an Indian going to hijack a plane to anyway? ‘Take me to Oklahoma!’” (Price, 1998, 267). In his Indi’n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native America (1993) Kenneth Lincoln briefly refers to Charlie Hill, whom, he wrote: Keeps the Moccasin Telegraph humming with one-liners on and off The Tonight Show. The first English immigrants, he snaps, were illegal aliens— “whitebacks, we call ’em.” Hill imagines the Algonquians asking innocently, “You guys gonna stay long?” His Custer jokes are not printable (“Look at all those f—ing Indians!”—a barroom nude painting of Custer’s last words). A Sioux fast-food chain: “Pups on a Pole.” Getting the “munchies” while watching Lassie on the tube, Hill’s Sioux roommate ate the landlady’s dog. (Lincoln, 1993, 6–7)

THE OPPRESSOR GETS HIS JUST DESERTS The most potent political barbs in Indian humor involve jokes that give an oppressor his just deserts. This kind of humor is an exercise in taking back the country, as in the standard Indian response to the question, commonly invoked by Deloria, “What did we call this country before Europeans came? Answer: Ours!” Or, in the words of a classic reservation bumper sticker, “Give them an inch and they’ll take 2,576,000 square miles,” the figure a reference to the size of the United States of America (Gunn Allen, 2006).

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One story set in San Francisco involves a bronze rat. A Cheyenne guy went to Chinatown in San Francisco. While there, he found a bronze rat at a thrift store. “How much do you want for the rat?” he asked. “Three dollars for the rat and $1,000 for the story that goes with it,” said the shopkeeper. “Just give me the rat,” the Cheyenne said, and then he left with it. As he walked down the street, he noticed a couple of rats following him. As he walked farther, more and more rats started chasing him. By the time he got to the bay, thousands of rats were chasing him. So he climbed up a pole and threw the bronze rat into the water. To his amazement, all the rats jumped into the water. The Cheyenne then returned to the thrift store. “Ahh,” the shopkeeper said. “Now you would like to hear the story?” “No,” said the Cheyenne, “I just came back to see if you had any bronze white men!” (Cramblit, May 17, 2003). In another joke that dispatches one white man as a proxy for all others, four men gathered on the top of a 30-story building: an East Indian, a Japanese, an American Indian, and a white man. The East Indian guy says, “This is for my people!” and he jumps off. The Japanese man says, “This is for my people!” and jumps off. The American Indian says, “This is for my people” and pushes the white man off. The following joke plays on both white perfidy and stupidity. Various versions have taken place on a jet airplane, a tall cliff, or a skyscraper, as well as in heaven. An Indian dies and goes to heaven. He is sitting outside the pearly gates with a black guy, an Oriental guy, and a white guy. God’s voice booms out, “All you guys, from the darkest to the lightest, run off the edge of the cloud, make a wish and you will become it!” The black runs and jumps off the cloud. He says, “Condor!” He becomes a majestic condor. The American Indian runs, jumps, and says “Eagle!” and he flies away as a beautiful spotted eagle. The oriental guy runs, jumps, says “Dragon!” Then he flies away as the strange, powerful creature. The white guy runs, slips, falls off the cloud, and yells “Oh, shit!” (Cramblit, October 1, 2003). Another refrain on a similar theme involves an Islamic punishment for drinking booze. A Mexican, a white man, and an American Indian in Saudi Arabia were sharing a smuggled crate of liquor. All of a sudden, Saudi police rushed in and arrested them. The mere possession of alcohol is a severe offense in Saudi Arabia. For the terrible crime of being caught consuming booze, they all could be sentenced to death. By a stroke of luck, however, it was a Saudi national holiday on the day of their sentencing. So, an extremely kind sheikh decided they all could be released after receiving just 20 lashes with a whip. They were preparing for their punishment when the Sheikh announced, “It’s my first wife’s birthday today, and she has asked me to allow each of you one wish before your whipping.” The Mexican was in line first; he thought for a while and said, “Please tie a pillow to my back.” This was done, but the pillow lasted only 10 lashes before the whip tore through it. The Mexican was carried away bleeding and crying in pain. The white man was up next. After watching the Mexican in horror, he said smugly, “Please fix two pillows to my back.” This was done, but even two pillows


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lasted only 15 lashes before the whip tore through again. The white man also was soon led away bleeding and crying. The Indian was up last, but before he could say anything, the sheikh turned to him and said, “I have never met an Indian in Saudi Arabia. Your culture is one of the finest in the world. For these reasons, you may have two wishes!” “Thank you, your most royal and merciful highness,” the Indian replied. “In recognition of your kindness, my first wish is that you give me not 20, but 100 lashes.” “Not only are you an honorable, handsome, and powerful man, you also are very brave. If 100 lashes is what you desire, then so be it,” the sheikh replied. “And your second wish?” the Sheikh asked. “Tie the white man to my back,” the Indian replied (Cramblit, June 1, 2003). THE TALKING DOG In another joke, even an Indian’s talking dog can get the better of an ignorant white man. A tourist saw a sign in front of a house on the Rosebud Reservation that reads: “Talking Dog for Sale.” He knocked on the door, and the Indian owner told him that the dog was in the backyard. The tourist went into the backyard and saw a mangy reservation dog just sitting there. “You talk?” he asked. “Yep,” the mutt replied. “So, what’s your story?” The mutt looked up and said, “Well, I discovered my gift of talking pretty young and I wanted to help the government, so I told the Bureau of Indian Affairs about it, and they told the Central Intelligence Agency. In no time, the CIA had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies eight years running. The jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn’t getting any younger, and I wanted to settle down. So I signed up for a job at the Department of Interior to do some undercover security work, mostly wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings there and was awarded a batch of medals. After that, I had a wife and a mess of puppies. After that I came back to the reservation, and now I’m just retired.” The tourist was amazed. He went back in and asked the Indian what he wanted for the dog. The Indian said, “Ten dollars.” The tourist said, “This dog is amazing. Why on earth are you selling him, so cheap?” And the Indian replied, “He’s just a big liar. He didn’t do any of that shit” (Barreiro, 2003). HOYA! HOYA! HOYA! Non-Indians’ ignorance of Native language and culture (and their tendency not to have a clue about what they are missing) is a favorite joke target. The most frequent targets are those who are selling something, including politicians.

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At election time, begins one such joke, a politician decided to pursue Indians’ votes at the local reservation. The local Indians assembled at the council hall to hear his speech. The politician worked up to his finale, and the crowd was getting excited. “I promise better educational opportunities for all Native Americans!” he shouted. The crowd went wild, shouting, “HOYA! HOYA! HOYA!” The politician was a bit puzzled by the word but was carried away by their spirit of enthusiasm. “I promise gambling reforms to allow a casino on the reservation!” he shouted next. “HOYA! HOYA! HOYA!” the crowd shouted, feet stomping, hands waving in the air. “I promise social reforms and job opportunities for Native Americans!” he continued. The crowd reached a frenzied pitch: “Hoya! HOYA! HOYA!!!” After the speech, the politician was touring the reservation and saw a very large herd of cattle. Because he had been raised on a ranch, the politician knew a thing or two about cattle. He asked a local chief if he could approach the herd to get a better look. “Sure,” said the chief. “Just be careful not to step in the Hoya” (Billejax, 2000) WALKING EAGLE The Great White Father has been a target of Native humorists for many years, right up to the present, as illustrated by the following joke distributed over the Internet early in 2005: In a 2004 campaign trip through Wisconsin, President George W. Bush visited the city of Green Bay and met with the elders of the Oneida Nation. He said he had a plan to improve the income of every Native American by $40,000 a year. Details of the plan were not presented, despite frequent requests to do so. Bush also informed the elders that, during his gubernatorial career, he had supported every Native American issue to cross his desk. George W. Bush was adopted as a member of the Oneida Nation and given the name Walking Eagle. After the president left, one of the elders was asked the significance of the name Walking Eagle. His response—“The bird is so full of shit it can’t fly.” (Fadden, February 6, 2005)

The same joke has been told on Democrats by Republicans. For example, one version begins: Senator Hilary Clinton was invited to address a major gathering of the American Indians in upstate New York. She spoke for almost an hour on her future plans for increasing every Native American’s present standard of living, should she one day become the first female President …. ([email protected], 2005)

THE VACUUM-CLEANER SALESMAN Another Anglo without a clue is a hypothetical vacuum-cleaner salesman on the Navajo Reservation. The salesman went to the first hogan he saw. He knocked,


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and a grandmother opened the door. Before she had a chance to say anything, the salesman ran inside and dumped cow patties all over the floor. He said, “Lady, if this vacuum cleaner doesn’t do wonders cleaning this up, I’ll eat every chunk of it.” She turned to him with a smile and asked, “You want salt on that?” The salesman, surprised, said, “Why do you ask?” Grandma replied, “You’re on the rez, sonny. We don’t have electricity” (Brenda at Kahnawake, 2005). THE INDIAN WEATHER FORECAST Modern science may be lampooned, with an indigenous twist at the end, as in a joke poking fun at a long-range weather forecast. It was autumn, and the Indians on a remote reservation asked their chief if the winter would be mild or cold. Because he was a chief in a modern society and had never been taught the old secrets, he had no idea, so he told the people to collect firewood to be on the safe side. Being a practical man, after a few days, the chief got a good idea. He called the local office of the National Weather Service and asked about the coming winter. A forecaster told him that, indeed, the winter would be severely cold. The chief then went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood. A week later, he called the National Weather Service again and was told that indications were stronger than ever that the winter would be cold and nasty. The chief returned to his people and told them to gather every scrap of wood they could find. Three weeks later, the chief called the National Weather Service again and asked about the winter. He was told indications were stronger than ever that it would be very, very cold. “How can you be so sure?” he asked. The forecaster replied, “The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy!” (Fadden, 2001). A SHEEPHERDER TELLS A DOG STORY The foolishness of government agents is fair game. One joke involves a government agent and a Navajo sheepherder. The agent drove a black Chevy Suburban and was dressed in a black suit with a badge hung around his neck. He got out of the Suburban, approached the Navajo, and asked, “If I can tell you how many sheep you have in your herd and how may acres they are grazing on, can I have one of your sheep?” The Navajo thought for a minute and then said, “Sure.” The BIA agent returned to his car, pulled out a small satellite dish and laptop computer, turned on the computer, set the dish, and punched a few buttons. He proudly announced to the Navajo that he had 550 sheep grazing on 330 acres. “Is that correct?” asked the agent. “Why, yes,” said the Navajo. “So I get one of your sheep?” insisted the agent. “Of course,” replied the Navajo. The agent promptly grabbed an animal and forced it into his Suburban.

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Just before he drove off, the Navajo said, “Can I try to do you one better?” The agent replied, “Sure.” “Well,” said the Navajo, “If I can tell you where you came from, who you work for, and what you do, can I have my sheep back?” “Of course,” said the agent smugly. The Navajo then said, “You are from Washington, DC, you work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, you are in land management, and you don’t know what the hell you are doing.” “Wow,” said the agent. “How did you know that? And what do you mean, ‘I don’t know what I am doing?’” “Well,” said the Navajo, “You come out here unprepared for our culture and environment. You want something for nothing. You tell me information I already know. And, besides that, you just stuffed my dog into your truck” (Fiscus, August 18, 2003). B.C. In yet another way of giving the invader his just deserts, the term B.C. has been described in Indian time. Most of society has B.C. and A.D. to measure time. Native people have the five B.C.s to measure time: Before Columbus Before Custer Before Commodities Before Casinos Before Costner

PARABLE OF THE DEAD HORSE Bureaucracy is always a favorite target. Consider, for example, the parable of the dead horse. The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In modern education and government, however, a whole range of other strategies are often employed, such as: Buying a stronger whip. Changing riders. Threatening the horse with termination. Appointing a committee to study the horse. Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses. Lowering standards so that dead horses can be included. Reclassifying the dead horse as “living impaired.” Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse. Harnessing together several dead horses to increase the dead horse’s performance.


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Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance. Declaring that because the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than living horses. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position (Mann, 2004). (And, I might add, as a college professor of long experience: Giving the dead horse tenure.)

THE BIA GENIE Here is another joke about bureaucracy with a moral attached. An Indian man had spent many days crossing eastern Montana without food or water. His horse died of thirst, and he was crawling through the tall, dry grass, certain that he was about to take his last breath, when—all of a sudden—he saw something sticking out of the ground several yards ahead of him. He crawled toward the object, pulled it out of the dirt, and discovered an old briefcase. He opened it, and out popped an Indian genie! This was no ordinary genie, however. He was wearing a Bureau of Indian Affairs dull-gray suit, with a calculator in his breast pocket and a pencil tucked behind one ear. “Well, lad,” said the BIA genie, “you know how it works. You have three wishes.” “I’m not falling for this,” said the Indian man. “I’m not going to trust a BIA employee!” “What do you have to lose?” asked the BIA genie. “You’ve got no transportation, and it looks like you’re a goner anyway.” The man thought for a minute and decided that the genie was correct. “Okay, I wish I were on a lush reservation with plenty of food and drinks.” POOF! The man finds himself in the most beautiful rez he had ever seen. He was surrounded by jugs of rum and platters of delicacies. “And what is your second wish?” asked the genie. “My second wish is that I be rich beyond my chief’s wildest dreams.” POOF! The man finds himself surrounded by treasure chests filled with rare gold coins and precious gems. “Now you have just one more wish. Better make sure it’s a good one!” declared the genie. “I wish that no matter where I go, beautiful Indian women will want and need me.” POOF! The man turned into a tampon! Moral of the story: If the BIA offers you anything, there is going to be a string attached (Fiscus, 2005). Another jibe at the BIA involves two boys bragging about their fathers.

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Two young Native boys were bragging about how fast their fathers are. One stood tall and boasted, “My Dad is so fast that he can shoot a deer with an arrow and get to it before it drops to the ground!” The second boy said, “Wow that is fast.” Then he replied, “Well, my Dad works for the BIA, and he’s so fast that he gets off work at five and he’s home at four thirty!” (“My Dad,” 2003). GETTING THE BETTER OF THE COPS Indian humor (old and new) is laced with jokes that make fools of people in authority, whether they are the president of the United States, government bureaucrats, or the local police. Here are two examples. An older man was speeding down the road at 80 miles per hour when he looked in his rearview mirror and saw a Navajo Nation Police Ford Explorer coming up fast with its lights flashing and siren blaring. Thinking he could outrun the Navajo Nation police, the man speeded up to 100 miles per hour. Suddenly, he realized his foolishness and pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. The Navajo Nation police officer pulled up, walked up to the car, and said, “Sir, my shift ends in 30 minutes and it’s Friday. If you can give me a reason why you were speeding, that I’ve never heard before, I’ll let you go.” The man looked at the Navajo Nation police officer and said, “Last week my wife ran off with a Navajo Nation cop, and I thought you were bringing her back.” The cop replied, “Have a nice day” (Fiscus, August 18, 2003). Pursuing justice by a wayward road is a humorous staple, as in the following joke, which involves a favor rendered unknowingly by the Navajo Police. “Hello, is this the Navajo Police?” “Yes. How can I help you?” “I’m calling to report about my neighbor, Joe Two Weasels. He is hiding marijuana inside his firewood.” “Thank you very much for the call, sir.” The next day, the Navajo Police descended on Joe’s house. They searched the shed where the firewood was kept. Using axes, they busted open every piece of wood but found no marijuana. They swore at Joe and left. The phone rang at Joe’s house. “Hey, Joe! Did the Navajo Police come?” “Yeah!” “Did they chop your firewood?” “Yeah.” “Happy Birthday, buddy” The same joke has been repeated on the Pine Ridge Reservation with FBI agents serving as the fall guys. “Hello, is this the FBI?” “Yes, this is the FBI. What do you want?” “I’m calling to report my neighbor Billy Two Teeth. He’s an Indian, and he’s hiding marijuana inside his firewood.”


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“Thank you very much for the tip, sir.” The next day, FBI agents descended on Billy Two Teeth’s house. They searched the shed where the firewood was kept. Using axes, they busted open every piece of wood but found no marijuana. They swore and cursed at Billy Two Teeth and left. Later, the phone rang at Billy Two Teeth’s house. The call was from his neighbor, who asked, “Hey, Billy! Did the FBI come?” “Yeah!” “Did they chop your firewood?” “Yep.” “Well, Merry Christmas Buddy!” (“Wood Gift,” 2004). I’D BE AN AMERICAN Some jokes that put members of the majority culture in their place are, more than anything else, expressions of Native American identity. In one example, a first-grade teacher explained to her class that she was an American. She asked her students to raise their hands to indicate whether they were American, too. Not really knowing why, but wanting to be like their teacher, the students’ hands exploded into the air like flashy fireworks. There was, however, one exception, one young girl who had not gone along with the crowd. The teacher asked her why she had decided to be different. “Because I am not an American,” replied the girl. “Then,” asked the teacher, “what are you?” “I’m a proud Native American,” boasted the little girl. The teacher was a little perturbed now, her face slightly red. She asked the student why she was a Native American. “Well,” she replied, “my mom and dad are American Indians, so I’m an American Indian, too.” The teacher now was angry. “That’s no reason,” she said loudly. “If your mom was an idiot, and your dad was an idiot, what would you be then?” After a pause, and with a smile, the little girl replied, “I’d be an American” (Cramblit, May 3, 2005). MESSAGE TO THE MOON Government duplicity with regard to land rights is a perennial favorite, as in this communication from Navajos to anyone who might be listening on the moon, from Iowa State University political science professor Jerry Stubben. When NASA was preparing for the Apollo project, they did some astronaut training on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona. One day, a Navajo elder and his son were herding sheep and came across the space crew. The old man, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question, which his son translated. “What are these guys in the big suits doing?” A member of the crew said they were practicing for their trip to the moon. The old man got all excited and asked if he could send a message to the moon with the astronauts. Recognizing a promotional opportunity for the spin doctors, the

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NASA folks found a tape recorder. After the old man recorded his message, they asked the son to translate it. He refused. So, the NASA representatives brought the tape to a tribal office, where some Navajo officials listened to it and laughed but refused to translate the elder’s message to any people on the moon. Finally, the NASA crew called in an official Bureau of Indian Affairs government translator. He reported that the moon message said, “Watch out for these bastards, they have come to steal your land” (Stubben, 2002). Here is another version of the same joke. NASA asked an elder Dine [Navajo] to record a message to put on their newest SETI satellite, along with messages from other cultures and in other languages. He recorded the message, the satellite was launched, and one day CNN broadcast the messages sent into outer space from the spacecraft. A huge belly laugh was detected by satellite coming from the entire northern portion of Arizona. When CNN asked why people were laughing, a man from Chinle told them, “The message says that if they are hearing this, to stay quiet and don’t respond, because as soon as the white man knows where those aliens live, they’ll come over for dinner, and end up NEVER going home!” (Douglas Spotted Eagle Home Pages, n.d.). IN THE WILD WEST The Old West is a frequent venue for Indian humor. One favorite joke featured two blond cowpokes, Jeff and Dave, who were a few apples shy of a bushel. One day, the two were enjoying a strong sarsaparilla in the local saloon, when a man walked into the bar. The barkeeper shook Jeff’s and Dave’s hands and said, “I hate Indians. Last week the sons of bitches burned my barn to the ground, assaulted my wife, and killed my children.” He then said, “If any man brings me the head of a dead Indian, I’ll give him one thousand dollars.” The two blond cowpokes looked at each other happily then walked out of the bar to go hunting for an Indian to kill. Finding one, Jeff threw a rock that hit the Indian on the head. The Indian fell off his horse and tumbled 70 feet into a ravine. The two white men made their way down the ravine, where Dave pulled out a knife to claim their trophy. Suddenly, Jeff shouted, “Dave, take a look at this!” “Not now, I’m busy,” Dave replied. Jeff tugged him on the shoulder and said, “I really think you should look at this.” Annoyed, Dave replied, “Look, you can see I’m busy. I’ve got a thousand dollars nearly in my hand.” Jeff was adamant, however. “Please, Dave, take a look at this.” So Dave looked up and saw that standing at the top of the ravine were 5,000 Indians. Dave just shook his head and said, “Oh my God! We’re going to be millionaires!” In another joke along the same lines, a wagon train was heading across the desert when, all of a sudden, the wagon master noticed Indians surrounding the valley. He quickly formed the wagons into a Hollywood-style circle to protect the families


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in the train. Nothing happened. Soon, drums were heard pounding in the distance: BUM, bum, bum, bum, BUM, bum, bum, bum, BUM, bum, bum, bum—the famous Hollywood drumbeat from John Ford movies. The wagon master declared, “I don’t like the sound of this.” From out in the distance came another voice, saying, “We don’t like the sound of it either. He’s not our regular drummer!” (Douglas Spotted Eagle Home Pages, n.d.). HOW TO GET A FREE TRAIN TICKET Sometimes, giving the white man his just deserts can be as small, and as personal, as finding a way to hustle a free train ticket. Three Indians and three white guys were traveling to a conference by train. At the station, the three white guys each bought tickets and watched as the three Indians bought only a single ticket. “How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?” asked one of the white guys. ”Watch, and you’ll see,” answered one of the Indians. They boarded the train. The white guys took their respective seats, but all three Indians crammed into a restroom and closed the door. Shortly after the train departed, the conductor came around to collect tickets. He knocked on the restroom door and said, “Ticket, please.” The door opened just a crack and a single arm emerged with a ticket in hand. The conductor took it and moved on. The white guys saw this and agreed it was quite a clever idea. So, after the conference, they decided to borrow the Indians’ idea on the return trip to save some money (being clever with money, as white people are). At the station, they bought a single ticket for the return trip. To their astonishment, the Indians bought no tickets at all. “How are you going to travel without a ticket?” asked one of the white guys, perplexed. “Watch, and you’ll see,” answered one of the Indians. When they boarded the train, the three white guys crammed into a restroom, and the three Indians crammed into another one, across the aisle. The train departed. Shortly afterward, one of the Indians left his restroom and walked over to the restroom where the white guys were hiding. He knocked on the door and said, “Ticket, please.” INDIAN GUY AND A HAIRCUT If these Indian guys were not hustling a free train ticket, they might be lining up at a barbershop. One day, a florist went for a haircut. After the cut, he went to pay the barber, who replied, “I’m sorry. I can’t accept money from you. I’m doing community service.” The florist was happy and left the shop. The next morning when the barber opened his shop, he found a card and a dozen roses waiting at his door. A policeman went for a haircut at that same barbershop. When he tried to pay the barber, the barber replied, “I am sorry, I can’t accept money from you. I’m doing community service.” The policeman was happy and left the shop. The

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next morning when the barber opened his shop, he found a thank-you card and a dozen doughnuts waiting at his door. An Indian guy went for a haircut at the same place and tried to pay the barber. The barber replied, “I’m sorry. I can’t accept money from you. I’m doing community service.” The next morning when the barber opened his shop, guess what he found at the door? Can you guess? Come on, think like a Indian!!! A DOZEN INDIANS WAITING FOR A FREE HAIRCUT!!!! WHITE GUYS IN THE WOODS European Americans’ ignorance of the natural world rises to the fore from time to time as fodder for Native jokes, as in the following fanciful advisory about grizzly bear scat from the Montana Department of Fish and Game. In light of the rising frequency of human/grizzly bear conflicts, the Montana Department of Fish and Game is advising hikers, hunters, and fishermen to take extra precautions and keep alert for bears while in the field. “We advise that outdoorsmen should wear noisy little bells on their clothing so as not to startle bears that aren’t expecting them,” a spokesman said. “We also advise outdoorsmen to carry pepper spray with them in case of an encounter with a bear.” It is also a good idea to watch out for fresh signs of bear activity. Outdoorsmen should recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear paw prints and scat. A grizzly’s paw is larger and its claws are longer than that of a black bear. Black bear scat contains lots of berries and squirrel fur. Grizzly bear scat has little bells in it and smells like pepper (Douglas Spotted Eagle Home Pages, n.d.). In another Native wilderness scenario, two Lakota guys and a dude from New York went on a hunting trip. On the first day, one Lakota departed and, less than an hour later, returned with a deer. The guy from New York was amazed and asked, “How did you get your deer so fast?” “Easy,” said the Lakota guy. “I looked for tracks, found them, followed them, and got my deer.” The next day, the second Lakota guy went out and, less than an hour later, returned with a deer. The guy from New York again was astounded, even flabbergasted. “How did you get your deer so fast?” he asked the Lakota. “It’s simple,” said the Lakota guy. “I looked for tracks, found them, followed them, and there was the deer.” On the third day, the New York guy went hunting. He didn’t return, and when darkness began to fall, the two Lakota guys went looking for him. They found the white guy lying at the base of a hill, bloodied, his clothes torn, and his bones broken. “What happened to you?” they asked. “I did just what you told me to do—I looked for tracks, found them, followed them, and the damn train ran me over” (Douglas Spotted Eagle Home Pages, n.d.). Echoing the same theme, an Indian and a priest were walking through the woods. The priest was teaching the Indian the English language so he could be


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integrated into the white man’s society. As they walked along, the priest saw a tree and said to the Indian, “Tree.” They continued walking along and come upon a bush, and the priest said to the Indian, “Bush.” Continuing their trek, the Indian and the priest eventually reached a small clearing, where they came upon a man and a woman having sex. The priest was so upset that he was not sure what he should tell the Indian. The only thing he could say was, “Man riding a bicycle.” The Indian then pulled out his bow and arrow, aimed, and instantly killed the man. The priest turned to the Indian and said, “What did you do that for?” The Indian replied, “My bicycle!!” ([email protected], 2003) TONTO TEACHES THE LONE RANGER In the world of Indian humor, Tonto has many chances to tell the world just how thick the Lone Ranger can be. In one joke, the Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After they pitched their tent, both men fell sound asleep. Some hours later, Tonto woke the Lone Ranger and said, “Kemo Sabe, look toward the sky, what do you see?” The Lone Ranger replied, “I see millions of stars.” “What that tell you?” asked Tonto. The Lone Ranger pondered for a minute then said, “Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Timewise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, it’s evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What’s it tell you, Tonto?” Tonto was silent for a moment, then says, “Kemo Sabe, you are dumber then a buffalo chip. Someone has stolen the tent.” CHIEF FORGET-ME-NOT Talking to an Australian travel writer, the manager of a exquisite old hotel said, “The hotel is built on an Indian reservation, and part of the agreement is to allow the chief free use of the premises for the rest of his life. He is known as Big Chief Forget-Me-Not because of his phenomenal memory. He is 92 years old and can remember the slightest detail of his life.” The Aussie took this in and, as he was waiting for a cab, decided to put the chief’s memory to the test. “What did you have for breakfast on your 21st birthday?” asked the Aussie. “Eggs,” was the instant reply, and, indeed, the Aussie was impressed. He went off on his travel-writing itinerary, right across to the East Coast, and on his return to the same hotel six months later was surprised to see the Indian chief still sitting in the lobby whittling away on a stick. “How,” said the Aussie, greeting the old chief. “Scrambled,” said the chief (“Old Indian Chief,” n.d.).

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PUTTING THE MOCCASIN ON THE OTHER FOOT Some of the most delicious humor in Indian Country is aimed at the white man—but not always directly. Unlike the jokes in which the invader gets his just desserts, this genre of Indian humor puts the moccasin on the other foot by inverting stereotypes and the facts of history with slicing irony and satire. HOW MUCH WHITE ARE YOU? Some of this type of humor needles stereotypes that Native Americans face on a daily basis. For example, “10 Things You Can Say to a White Person When You First Meet One” holds a mirror to statements that Native people hear so often that they grate. (This routine has been used by Charlie Hill, but I am not sure whether it is original with him.) 10. How much white are you? 9. I’m part white myself, you know. 8. I learned all your people’s ways in the Boy Scouts. 7. My great-great-grandmother was a full-blooded white Canadian princess. 6. Funny, you don’t look white. 5. Where’s your powdered wig and knickers? 4. Do you live in a covered wagon? 3. What’s the meaning behind the square dance? 2. What’s your feeling about riverboat casinos? Do they really help your people, or are they just a short-term fix? 1. Oh wow! I really love your hair! Can I touch it? (“Humor Can Be Good Medicine,” 2002).

Museums are targets of humor because Native Americans who visit exhibits maintained by whites sometimes come away feeling like tourists from the past in a present designed by someone else. Consider, for example, Rayna Green’s “The Museum of the Plains White Person”: The thing I’m most excited about is the grand project. This is a multi-million dollar project [that is] being funded by all the major foundations in the country. I know you will be thrilled. This is an institution that is meant for Indian people, something we’ve been needing for a long time, something that is particularly needed to meet a very special critical need…. THE MUSEUM OF THE PLAINS WHITE PERSON. The first big collection that we are working on, and this is really inspiring, is the bone collection. As you know, all museums have to have a bone collection. We have begun a national campaign to acquire the bones of famous white people. Indian scholars want to pore over them, the different skull shapes, and so forth. When we do acquire them, we want to acquire them permanently. As you know, they cannot be given back once they have been handled. We do


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need to study them for years. We have just acquired the bones of John Wayne. (Green, 1995, 184–85)

RESERVATIONS FOR EUROPEAN AMERICANS Another example of putting the moccasin on the other foot is a tongue-in-cheek proposal of reservations for European Americans. This parody satirizes the AngloAmerican practice of signing treaties with Native Americans with no leadership positions who had been appointed as so-called chiefs for the occasion then, loaded with alcohol, presented with documents that they could not read that gave Indians useless land in places no non-Indian would want (until, of course, uranium or oil was found under the tumbleweeds). This jest may have been written by Lehman L. Brightman, California Native professor and longtime activist who is named in the piece as “Commissioner of Caucasian Affairs.” This account also parodies boarding schools, the seizure of Native American remains for scientific study, and the use of Native burial grounds for profane purposes. The Bureau of Caucasian Affairs, Department of the United Native Americans (UNA) are proud to announce that it has brought the state of California from the whites and is throwing it open to Indian settlement. UNA bought California from three winos found wandering in San Francisco. UNA determined that the winos were the spokesmen for the white people of California. These winos promptly signed the treaty, which was written in Sioux, and sold California for three cases of wine, one bottle of gin, and four cases of beer. Lehman L. Brightman, the Commissioner of Caucasian Affairs, has announced the following new policies: The Indians hereby give the whites four reservations of 10 acres each at the following locations: Death Valley, the Utah Salt Flats, the Badlands of South Dakota, and the Yukon in Alaska. These reservations shall belong to the whites “for as long as the sun shines or the grass grows” (or until the Indians want it back). All land on the reservations, of course, will be held in trust for the whites by the Bureau of Caucasian Affairs, and any white who wants to use his land in any way must secure permission from Commissioner Brightman. Of course, whites will be allowed to sell handicrafts at stands by the highway. Each white will be provided annually with one blanket, one pair of tennis shoes, an ample supply of Spam, several bricks of commodity cheese, and a copy of the Bible. You also may be able to serve as a BCA reservation superintendent. Applicants must have less than one year of education, must not speak English, and must have an authoritarian personality, proof of dishonesty, and a certificate of incompetence. No whites need apply. Commissioner Brightman also announced the founding of four boarding schools, to which white youngsters will be sent at the age of six (6). “We want to take those kids far away from the backward culture of their parents,” he said. The schools will be located on Alcatraz Island; the Florida Everglades; Point Barrow,

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Alaska; and Hong Kong. All courses will be taught in Indian languages, and there will be demerits for anyone caught speaking English. All students arriving at the school will immediately be given IQ tests to determine their understanding of Indian languages and hunting skills. Hospitals will be established for the reservations as follows: Whites at Death Valley may go to the Bangor, Maine, Hospital; those at the Utah Salt Flats may go to the Juneau, Alaska, Hospital; those at the Yukon may go to the Miami Beach Hospital; and those at the Badlands may go to the Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. Each hospital will have a staff of two part-time doctors and a part-time chiropractor who have all passed first-aid tests. And each hospital will be equipped with a scalpel, a jackknife, a saw, a modern tourniquet, and a large bottle of aspirin. In honor of the whites, many cities, states, counties, and products will be given traditional white names. A famous Indian movie director even has announced that in his upcoming film, Custer’s Last Stand, he will use real white actors to play the parts of soldiers, speaking authentic English—although, of course, the part of Custer will be played by noted Indian actor Wes Studi. Certain barbaric white customs will, of course, not be allowed. Whites will not be allowed to practice their heathen religions and will be required to attend Indian ceremonies. Missionaries will be sent from each tribe to attend Indian ceremonies. Missionaries will be sent from each tribe to convert the whites on the reservations. White churches will be turned into amusement parks or museums and golf courses. The churches themselves will be demolished and the bricks and ornaments sold as souvenirs and curiosities. Anglos’ bones will be disinterred from cemeteries and housed in museums. Skeletal remains of Anglos will be put on display, and their skulls will be studied, measured, scrutinized, and analyzed so that Indian people can determine just what is wrong with white people. White cemetery land will be distributed among people wishing to build roller-skating rinks and convenience stores. There will be two separate but distinct legal and judicial systems: one for Indians and one for whites. Indians will hold all the judicial and legislative seats and will staff all police and fire departments. Whites can become police officers and firefighters on their designated reservations but may act only in minor roles. Legal and judicial authority comes directly from the Bureau of Caucasian Affairs. Several holidays will be developed to honor white people’s contributions to society. To further honor them, corporations and schools will be encouraged to develop pageants, festivals, sporting events, and for-profit items that can carry the images and names of the white people. Educational books (history, archeology, astronomy, medicine, music, literature, art, etc.) will reflect the many contributions of white people on pages 1, 2, and part of page 3 of every book. The rest of the pages will focus strictly on Indian history and contributions (“Reservations for Whites,” 2003). Another parody on the theme of reservations for whites spoofs the government’s practice of holding Native land in trust because its original owners are assumed to be incompetent as well as its widespread bans of Native ceremonies.


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The 500-year lease of Turtle Island is now up. If you are not of aboriginal descent, leave. If by some chance you have some affinity for this land, you may stay, but you are subject to the Whiteman Act. SECTION 1. All whites must carry cards identifying that they are white. SECTION 2. All whites must live on reservations. This is to protect the white culture from any influence of Indian culture. These reservations will be set out, but the ruling Indians and all whites must move to one immediately regardless of ability to travel. Note: Property will be held in trust for the whites because they do not know how to use the land. Thus, the Indian government has full control of housing and resources on the reservation. SECTION 3. No whites are allowed to leave the reservation for longer than six months or else he or she will no longer be classified as white. They will be thrown off the reservation, away from home, family, and friends. Regardless of whether the white person in question has gone to fight in the U.S. armed forces, has found work off the reservation, or has gone to a university, the person will lose his or her white status. SECTION 4. All reservations will be forced to elect a chief. If the Department of White Affairs does not like the elected chief and council, it reserves the right to replace them without appeal. SECTION 5. Christian ceremonies are now banned. Because it is known that whites have bad knees and that Christianity has a savage kneeling ritual, all Christians must be converted to Native Spirituality. SECTION 6. No white is allowed to consume alcohol on or off the reservation because all whites are alcoholics. SECTION 7. All reservations will have a white agent who will decide everything from who will be chief to who can have a child. SECTION 8. If at any time the ruling Indian government needs land, it reserves the right to take the land from the reservation (Fiscus, August 18, 2003).

SURVIVOR ON THE REZ Another modern institution that has been lampooned is reality TV. In Survivor on the Rez, 10 white people are dropped onto a remote reservation where they endure “one week of hardship, gossiping, backstabbing, jealousy, powwow music, commods [government-issued commodity food] … and, of course, the inevitable real Tribal Council.” The 10 Survivor contestants receive: five sacred rocks, one rez car with no doors and no rear window glass, a HUD house with no insulation, three days’ worth of food stamps, cigarettes, five days of continuous “Powwow Highway” clips, and moccasins, headbands, and feathers to wear around the rez (which demonstrates cultural sensitivity to reservation inhabitants). The lone survivor will receive: a casino coupon book (a $10 value), one authentic, handmade Indian dream catcher, homemade hand tattoos (with ink pen), and a “Princess Pale Moon” edition Pendleton blanket (“Survivor on the Rez,” 2002).

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THE BUREAU OF IRAQI AFFAIRS (BIA) U.S. foreign policy played against Native American history is a favorite theme among Native humorists. The “Bureau of Iraqi Affairs (BIA)” brings to mind a comment from Mohawk John Kahionhes Fadden: “Maybe they’ll bring democracy to the Iraqis like they brought it to us!” (Fadden, 2003). This wildly satirical parody of the Bureau of Indian Affairs hit the Internet within a week of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in late March 2003. BIA Bureau of Iraqi Affairs Formed March 20, 2003 (the day the U.S. invaded Iraq) Dear People of Iraq, Now that you have been liberated from your tyrannical oppressors, we at the BIA look forward to our relationship with you. Below you will find a list of what to expect from the services of our good offices. 1. Henceforth, English will be the spoken language of all government and associated offices. If you do not speak English, a translator fluent in German will be provided. 2. All Iraqi people will apply for a spot on a citizen roll. Citizenship will be open to those people who can prove that they are Iraqi back four generations with documents issued by the United States. Christian church records also may be given in support. 3. All hospitals will be issued with a standard emergency aid kit. The kit contains gauze, Band-Aids, burn cream, iodine, tweezers, and duct tape. 4. Your oil is to be held in trust for you. We will appoint your new U.S.-approved government a lawyer with a background in the oil industry. Never mind that he works for the company that he will eventually cut a deal with. This close relationship will guarantee you more money for your oil. 5. Each citizen will be allotted 100 acres of prime Iraqi desert. They will be issued with plows, hoes, seed corn, and the King James Bible. All leftover land will be open to settlement by Israelis. 6. Each citizen is entitled to draw a ration of milk, sugar, flour, and lard. If you cannot use the rations for health or religious reasons, you may file a complaint with your BIA-appointed liaison, Crisco. Those Iraqis showing signs of diabetes, heart disease, or glaucoma will be issued with double rations in place of adequate health care. 7. We will mismanage your trust monies, allowing any five-year-old with minimal computer skills to hack into the system and set up his or her own accounts. Records or your accounts will be kept, but you must receive express written permission from the head of the BIA to examine them. 8. In keeping with the separation of church and state supported by the U.S. Constitution, Christian missionaries will be sponsored through government funding. Only Iraqis who convert to Christianity will be allowed to hold jobs within the government.


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9. For the purposes of treaty-making, any one Iraqi will be found to sign on behalf of all other Iraqis (Bone Shirt, 2003).

THE REZBONICS DICTIONARY Many bloggers have had a hand in compiling “The Rezbonics Dictionary,” a list of so-called indigenousities or indigenous idioms, commonly known as Rezbonics, your reservation handbook to Native slang (Cramblit, August 23, 2005). True understanding of humor as practiced on the rez today requires knowledge of “NDN” slang, as described in several Rezbonics dictionaries distributed by various Internet chat rooms (“Rez Bonics,” 2004). The following is a combination of several listings. AIMSTER: Member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). ALTER-NATIVE (alter NAY TIV): An individual who was born and raised in the non-Indian culture but who recently has “discovered” a “hidden” Indian ancestor so now assumes a name such as Laughing Rainbow, White Wolf, or Dreams of Eagles, calls all Indian people “Brother” and “Sister,” and wears genuine Hong Kong beadwork; usually found in the East Coast and West Coast region but with documented sightings in other regions as well. APPLE: Red on the outside, white on the inside; for example, Indian genetically but non-Indian (usually white) culturally. See also: COCONUT. AYE: Term of jest meaning “I’m just kidding” or “Don’t take what I said seriously.” AYE-CHANA: Oklahoma phrase; a response to “Aye”; also lighthearted “bullshit.” BI-AILMENT (BEE EYE ALE ment): An affliction within the Bureau of Indian Affairs, characterized by the inability to keep track of millions of dollars of government or Indian money. BIG WARRIOR: Someone who takes his or her role as a warrior too seriously or without proper humility, a prized virtue in many traditional cultures; used with considerable sarcasm. See also: CHIEF. BOO-SHET: “Bullshit.” BRAH: “Brother.” BUH: Original to Oklahoma Natives; usually accompanies an expression of shock or surprise, meaning, “Oh, really,” “I’ll be damned,” or “No shit!” CHEBON: “Man.” Usage: “Whassup chebon?” CHIEF: Someone who thinks he is a leader but is not; usually this title is used ironically or sarcastically. See also: BIG WARRIOR. CHOOCH: An immature man or boy who is acting stupidly. COCONUT: Brown on the outside, white on the inside. See also: APPLE. COMMOD: Short for “commodity.” COMMOD BOD: Obese; what happens to a person’s body upon eating too many commods. COMMODIFY (kah MOD if eye): Uncanny ability of Indian women to create any standard cookbook recipe with commodity ingredients, such as powdered milk, powdered eggs, and canned meat.

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COMMODITY CHEESE: Government-surplus food given to Indians. COSIN: Related, but more distant than a cousin. COUNCILMENOPAUSE (cown sil MEN oh paws): A disorder characterized by hot flashes, profuse sweating, impairment of speech, and loss of memory that usually occurs only to tribal councilmen when cornered by a constituent. CRIPES: Usually used in the North; originated from Rocky Boy Crees; similar to “Geez” or “Holy ****!” CRY is another derivative. CUZ: A familiar form of “cousin.” DISUNDERSTANDING (DISS inder stand ing): When non-Indians think that they understand why Indians are the way they are but attribute any and all behavior to the overall culture or the race. ENNIT (also INNIT): Usually inserted at the end of a sentence as a confirmation-seeking phrase meaning “Isn’t that right?”; corresponds to “You know?” in mainstream U.S. English. ERBZ: Started with Crows, meaning “yuck” or “nasty.” ERR RAHT: Cheyenne expression meaning “gross” or “sick.” ESKIMO: Inappropriate name for Inuit, Inupiat, and Yupik people; a term with no meaning in their languages. FBI: Full-blooded Indian. FORDRUM (FORD drum): An instrument used for singing purposes when a regular drum is not available; usually the dented hood of a one-eyed Ford. FROGSKINS: Money, usually of the folding kind. FRY BREAD GIRL: Girl or woman who eats too much. See also: COMMOD BOD. FRYBREADTH (FRY bredth): A unit of measurement based on the standard size of a piece of auntie’s fry bread. GEE ENNIT (or INNIT): An exclamation, usually in agreement. GOING CUSTER: Sudden anger (similar to “going postal”). GOOT: “Good” (“RELLA GOOT” = “really good”). GOT DAMN: Most people can figure this one out. HEEEELL NO: “No,” without qualification. HUPROK: Local Indian of mixed intertribal blood. IMAREALA: A BIA card-carrying Native who brags about having a card and is rude to those without such credentials or those with them who do not take them seriously. INDIAN DEVIL: Person who uses bad thoughts or magic. INDIAN LAW 101: Reality; comes up in the context of a non-Indian lawyer who is competent but has never been exposed to Indian weirdness and starts prattling about the Constitution in cases in which it does not apply. Usage: “He was talking about Marbury v. Madison, so I had to give him Indian Law 101.” INDIAN TACO: Plate meal made from commodity foods served on fried dough. INDIAN TIME: Whenever; signifying a disregard for Anglo-style punctuality. INDINFERIOR (IN din FEER ee your): A manifestation of self-oppression; the practice of Indians who look down on other Indians either for not speaking the language, not being full-blooded, not participating in ceremonies, not living on the rez, not wearing braids, not dancing in powwows, etc. JOKES: Another translation of “I’m just kidding”; similar to “Aye,” only not as popular as it used to be.


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KAW!: Expression of surprise; usually accompanied by an exclamation point. Also the name of an Oklahoma tribe. MOCCASHOE (Mock ah shoe): Contemporary dance footwear designed by beading the top of tennis shoes or aqua-socks instead of making moccasins the old-fashioned way. MOCCASIN TELEGRAPH: Informal talk or gossip. NDN (Internet slang): “Indian.” NGE: “Non-government enrolled”; an Indian not officially a member of a federally recognized tribe. See also: IMAREALA. OSI: Out-of-state Indian (relocated from another area). OUCH-I-TAY: Used by Navajos, meaning “Damn, that hurts!” OWICH: “Ouch,” resulting from pain. PINAFICH: Karuk Coyote-Trickster figure, an antihero. PLASTIC: Fake, as in a fake medicine man or woman. Usage: “Don’t waste your money on that plastic shaman.” POW-WOW-WOW: The standard pledge of the powwow Romeo. Usage: “Sure, baby, I’ll meet you at the next powwow. You’re the only jingle-dress dancer for me. Really! Look at this face. Would I lie?” RED NIGGER: Someone who is too Indian to suit a non-Indian. Usage: “When a blue-eyed Oglala went into a bar with his brown-eyed cousins, the bartender said, “You can stay, but your red niggers have to go outside.” Often used as a compliment. REGALIA: Dance items, including necklaces, dresses, beadwork, bustles, etc.; often used to perform at powwows. REZ: Reservation. REZ BOOTS: Moccasins. REZ DOG: (1) Indian who hangs around the reservation or (2) a dog on the rez. REZERCIZE (REZ er size): The involuntary health regime of walking everywhere on the rez because your NDN rez rocket broke down for good. REZ ROCKET: Reservation car, usually in need of repairs. REZZED OUT: Done in true Indian style. Usage: “His NDN car is really rezzed out.” Usually a compliment. REZZY: Words or actions typical or congruent to what occurs on a reservation. RIVER MAIL: Similar to the moccasin telegraph; a roundabout way to deliver information and goods via friends and relatives. SHAMAN: A misnomer, used among Non-Natives. Native peoples did not have shamans. SHE-YAHT: Meaning “serious shit”; Anglo equivalent “deep shit” or “deep do-do.” SHINOB or NAABE: Anishinaabe (Chippewa or Ojibway). SKIN, SKINJUN, SKIN INJUN: Native, a play on “Redskin”; Used mostly among the young. SLIPPERY EEL: Unsigned gossip letter usually slamming politicians. SNAG: A partner for a date or a one-night stand. SNAGGIN: Searching for a snag. STAY RED: “Keep it real”; to be true to your Indian self. SUITS: Government agents or representatives; may also be applied to representatives of corporations wishing to do business in Indian Country.

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TONTO: Sidekick of the Lone Ranger; lackey for whites, Indian Uncle Tom. TREATY TALK: White man’s lies. TRIBALISTIC: To become irrational and incoherent upon hearing about the latest self-serving, short-sighted, and illogical decision made by the local tribal council. TWINK, TWINKIE: Non-Indian who believes in New Age mysticism. See also: SHAMAN; WANNABE. U.S. HISTORY (sometimes: HISTORY 101): The story of the genocidal move west. WANNABE: A Non-Indian who wants to be an Indian. See also: TWINK, TWINKIE. URBAN: Native person living in a large city, separated from his or her people, often because of federal relocation policies.

PLAYING INDIAN A major historical paradox of the early twenty-first century involves the number of otherwise pale faces who have abruptly located a sliver or two of Native American heritage. Because the U.S. census allows citizens to self-identify ethnic heritage, its statistics are one handy index not only of who we are but of what some of us would like to be. Thus, the number of self-identified Native Americans in the United States nearly doubled between 1990 and 2000. Some of this increase was real population increase, but an unknown portion of it was wishful thinking, here in the land of the plastic medicine man and the proliferating ranks of Cherokee princesses. The exploding population of wannabes has nourished a genre of Native humor, notably among anyone who knows enough history to be on speaking terms with a time when recognizing a degree of Native American heritage could be hazardous to one’s health. Until early in the twentieth century, the U.S. government subsidized several dozen boarding schools on the assumption that the open expression of Native American heritage was contrary to the national interest. In these schools, which were widely imitated in Canada, so much as a whisper of Native languages, practice of Native customs, or wearing of Native clothing could provoke punishment ranging from a mouthful of soap to a severe beating. Many middle-aged Native people are old enough to have experienced such retaliation. To them, and to younger people they have taught, today’s wave of wannabes are a source of endless annoyance and ironic humor. Commented Will Chavez in the Cherokee Phoenix: There is the all-time favorite among Cherokee people and other tribes—“My grandmother was a Cherokee princess.” No one ever had a Cherokee prince or princess in his or her family or for that matter not many of these people ever had a Cherokee grandfather. Nine times out of ten, these people, whom I assume know what they are talking about, have a Cherokee grandmother in their past somewhere, but I never hear of the Cherokee grandfather. He gets left out a lot. I


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guess it’s nobler to have a Cherokee grandmother because of the “princess” thing. Get over it, people. Except for our ambassador Miss Cherokee, who is chosen every year, the Cherokee never had princesses or princes or kings and queens. We had various chiefs for various towns, but that’s another story. I’m sure the “Cherokee princess” will never go away. She’ll always be around to joke about. As a Cherokee/Choctaw buddy of mine likes to say, “We had a Cherokee princess in our family, but we don’t like to talk about him much.” (Chavez, 2001)

Some days, it is easier being Indian than others, runs one often-repeated Native narration. For those who are not Indian every day, however, it is a sad chore. Non-Native Americans, who, for all we know, may number in the millions, need help. So for those of you who wish to be like an Indian and for those who did not remember you were (until the advent of per capita payments and land settlements), we have the “Skin-tacular Insta-Indian kit.” For a mere $39.95 a month of never-ending but nonetheless easy installment payments, you will receive these unique and wonderful goods: Clip-on braids (for matching hair dye add $14.95, plus shipping and handling). Faded bandana of red or blue. Certificate of genuine Indian ancestry, choice of “Princess” or “Chief.” Tanning solution with extra oil for that “just-off-the-rez glow.” Old set of keys to car “left on the rez” and parked in “some cousin’s” yard. Set of razor blades (Indians are not very hairy). Fringed vest with complimentary “Indian Power” button. Beaded earrings for women, blurred tattoos for men. Powwow schedule for those wanting to observe Indians in a social environment without detection. (Warning: Anthropologists beware. All your sad theses and previous conclusions will be shattered.) Individualized and company-registered nickname (all Indians have some sort of personal appellation, such as Sun Dog, Pooky, Skin, Buck, Wabooz, Brokedown, Jr., and such like). Recipe book for commodity rations (including a no-fail, absolutely delicious macaroni soup nourishment that saved our Nations). AND, only if you hurry! a video list of Indian movies to see and talk about (movies not included).

BONUS! For those who order really early: A phrase book that includes the proper way to say “Ayyyy!” with the appropriate head movements and some slang from the NDN Nation of your choice. The book also includes fail-safe vague references to the “rez” and some handy-dandy pan-Indian sayings such as, “walking the Red Road,” “circle of life,” “seven generations,” and “all my relations”—at no extra cost! PLUS: Definitions of cultural gestures, such as asking, “Where are you from?” that are cross-referenced in a glossary of Native terms and customs. SUPER BONUS!! Add $100 for postage and handling, and you will receive an irregularly published newsletter with vague, libelous rumors circulating in Indian

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Country! This way you will never be out of the loop in any conversation with real Indians. Why, you may ask, are we making such a precious package available? Why are we selling trade secrets that will certainly infuriate some Authentic Natives? Well, we real Indians could all use a little break now and then. After all, there are only so many Natives to go around, and we are spread so very, very thin across the country that we end up being some kind of advocate whether we wanted the job or not. Besides, this will free up more time for us to get the important work done, like suing the U.S. of A. for back rent, mineral, natural resources, and trademarkinfringement rights (Hey, somebody’s got to do it!). For help, call 909-WAN-NABE! Now! Genuine Indians are waiting to take your call! (Family packages available.) If you find yourself inexplicably craving government commodity cheese, do not give in! Send a brick of it to me for a barter-bargain and get as much as 20 percent off your total order! (Debra Picotte-Hargreaves, 2003). Plastic (i.e., fake) medicine men are a frequent target of many a well-practiced Indian humorist and an indication of how easily some non-Indians will accept a scam as the real thing. TOP 10 SIGNS YOUR MEDICINE MAN IS A SCAM ARTIST 10. He tries to sell you your own personal mile of the Red Road. 9. You begin to suspect his traditional herbal medicine is really just crushed up Tylenol from the IHS [Indian Health Service]. 8. His Sun Dance is sponsored by Frito-Lay. 7. Suddenly, all his ceremonies seem real familiar after you watch the movie Billy Jack again. 6. The only tribal nation he is affiliated with is Donation. 5. Rich ladies from California are convinced he needs a brand new different-colored 4x4 truck for each of the four directions. 4. Not only does he have a Web site, but the address is www.sellout.com. 3. The only thing in his pipe bag is a portable credit-card machine. 2. In order to attend one of his sweats [sweat baths], you need to contact Ticketmaster first. 1. His sacred white buffalo reeks of spray paint

The usual Native name for New Age fakers is Twinkie. Some have offered a Twinkie test to non-Natives who want to find out whether they are living dangerously. An abbreviated list (the original ran to 145 items) of behavior patterns that most of us have seen and have nudged each other over follows. If these are offensive to anyone, skip the list, quit having a bad hair day, and uncross your eyes because we were doing what Indians everywhere have learned to do, no


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matter what type of circumstances we are in, and that is to laugh with ourselves (“Twinkie Defense,” 2005). You Might Be a Twinkie If … You don’t know what a twinkie is. You think twinkie is a brand name of golden sponge cake. You’re a shaman, and all your friends are shamans, too. Your Indian spirit guide speaks only English. You have a plastic Indian headdress hanging from your rearview mirror. You don’t drive a rez rocket. You don’t know what a rez rocket is. You think apples are for eating. You gave all your dogs authentic Native American names. Your great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess. Your great-grandfather was a Cherokee princess, too. You bought the collectible Barbie with authentic Native costume. You named your dog, cat, or hamster after a famous Native American. You think Dances with Wolves is a great movie. You don’t know who Leonard Peltier is. You want to know where to apply to get your Indian name. You’ve been studying Native American spirituality for three months and are now ready to lead a sweat bath. You send greeting cards with images of noble red men on them. You refer to a drum as a tom-tom. You bought the soundtrack to Disney’s Pocahontas and sang along. You had a dream in which you discovered your “true name” is Spirit of the Red Wolf Who Runs with Crystals. Your bumper sticker has a quote from Chief Seattle instead of the American Indian Movement. You bought “genuine Indian moccasins” made in a factory in Minnesota (or Taiwan). When you meet a real Indian, you hold your hand out like a stop sign and say, “How!” When you meet a man with a Mohawk, you assume he must be a punk rocker. You have a Mohawk haircut—and you’re female. You have no idea whether the headband you’re wearing is intended for men or women. You didn’t notice your “Indian jewelry” was stamped “Made in Thailand.” You think militant Indians are a disgrace to the red race, but you just adore Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. You interrupt an elder to tell him or her that he or she is wrong because a book you read said so. If you’re a man, you don’t have footprints on your back from your woman walking all over you. You were an Indian princess in a previous life. You were a medicine man in a previous life. You want people to call you “Chief,” even though you are not the leader of a fire department, police department, or a tribe. You made up your own tribal affiliation.

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You think you are the great, great, great, great, grandson of Tecumseh, putting the number of his offspring at 24,473—more than the entire population of the Shawnee tribe today. You think you are the great-great-great-great-grandson of Tecumseh, and you don’t know that Tecumseh was Shawnee. You get annoyed if people are late. You call the Sioux people “Lakota”—even if they are Dakota or Nakota. You think all Native Americans spend their days communing with Mother Nature. You willingly pay $300 for an “authentic” sweat bath with a plastic shaman. You’ve never used an outhouse. When served Indian steak, you complain, “Hey, this is bologna!” You use words like squaw, buck, berdache, and shaman, and wonder why Native people are disgusted with you. You bought a medicine bag, but you don’t know what’s in it. You’re proud of the fact that you can name all five North American Indian tribes. You’ve never eaten commodity cheese. You’ve never used commodity cheese as a doorstop. You hang Indian corn on your front door instead of eating it. You won’t eat fry bread because it has too much fat in it. None of your relatives has diabetes. You think you are one-third Native American. You think Native Americans should put up with your crap because after all “we’re all related.” You have to have the last word every single time. You think Indians have no sense of humor. You don’t realize why you are so funny to Indians. You think this list isn’t funny (this page is close-captioned for the humorimpaired). You say, “You don’t look like an Indian” to an Indian (or you think all Indians look like Geronimo).

NDN HUMOR AT THE EXPENSE OF INDIANS Native peoples’ ability to laugh at each other is, according to David Edmunds, a “remarkable” trait, given “the problems that Indians have faced” (Edmunds, 1976, 149). Self-deprecation goes back to traditional tribal societies, where it was sometimes used as a social-control mechanism. The Trickster (Coyote) displays comic antics that often are used to teach group mores and values (Edmunds, 1976, 150). Likewise, among the Inuit, “boys and girls who act inappropriately for their age or sex [gender] are ridiculed until they conform” (Horn, 1974, 88). Humor is a social tool among Native peoples, who often needle each other. Barbara Mann provided the following take on relocation that she heard as a child: Question: What do you call an enrolled Indian? Answer: Slow Runner (Mann, 2004).


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Lampooning of Cheyenne and Sioux taste for canine cuisine, for example, goes back many years. Consider the following from Ward Churchill: Question: What’s the fastest animal on four legs in North America? Answer: A dog getting out of Pine Ridge (Lincoln, 1993, 311).

And from Vine Deloria Jr.: “The Sioux-Korean Diet Exercise Book: 101 Way to Wok Your Dog” (Lincoln, 1993, 312). Charlie Hill, the Oneida comic, conjured Sioux fast food as “Puppies on a Pole” (Lincoln, 1993, 7). And what constitutes a Sioux picnic? “A six-pack and a puppy” (Emmons, 2000, 73). Edmunds shared a tale told to him by a Sisserton Dakota in which two young men from the Cheyenne River Reservation at the beginning of World War I took a train to San Francisco to enlist in the Navy. Once there, they approached a vending cart advertising “HOT DOGS.” Being Native men from the Plains, they thought they were familiar with such a menu. Each ordered a hot dog, and the vendor gave them sandwiches wrapped in paper. One of the young men opened his “dog,” took a long look at it, and turned pale as he asked the other, “What part of the dog did he give you?” (Edmunds, 1976, 151). The same joke in another rendition has it that two Rosebud guys on relocation spied a sign in a San Francisco cafe window that said “hot-dogs.” Thinking they were some other kind of dogs, they ordered two to go and went to a park to have lunch. The first Rosebud guy looked inside his sack and then threw it down in disgust. “What part did you get?” asked his buddy. An anonymous reservation resident provided the following poke at the supposed Plains Indian penchant for dog meat, asking that no one take offense: Question: What do you call a Sioux walking one dog? Answer: A vegetarian. Question: What do you call a Cheyenne with two dogs? Answer: A rancher. Question: What do you call a dog waggin’ its tail on the Sioux rez? Answer: A Happy Meal. Question: What do Sioux and Hopis eat when they barbecue together? Answer: Corn dogs. Question: What do Sioux and Pueblos eat when they barbecue together? Answer: Chili dogs.

And what defines a good dog, Lakota style? A Lakota guy walked into a bar followed by his three-legged dog. The bartender said, “Hey!!! What happened to your dog?” The Lakota guy replied, “This is some special dog. We had a fire at my house the other night. This dog ran into the burning house, got my infant

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daughter, and laid her at my feet. The dog ran back into the house, grabbed my insurance papers, and brought them out to me.” The bartender then asked, “So he lost his leg in the fire?” The Lakota guy replied, “Nope, a dog like this you don’t eat all at once.” The dog in Indian humor does not always end up being eaten. “How can you spot the difference between a regular canine and a real rez dog?” goes one joke. Throw each one in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. The regular canine should come out tender and moist. The rez dog will come out with a towel wrapped around his waist saying, “Dang, that was a good sweat!” Another variation of this joke involves a turtle rather than a dog. When Lakotas finish a ceremony, it is tradition to say, “All my relations,” or “Mitakuye Oyasin.” They also say this to get in and out of the sweat lodge. One year ago for Christmas, an old Lakota guy got a microwave from his kids. All winter, he never used it. When spring came, he got an urge for turtle soup. But he did not want to go through all the trouble killing a turtle and cleaning it. One fine morning, he went out and caught a turtle and carried it home. “Turtle soup sounds awfully good,” he said to himself. “But it is an awful lot of trouble to kill it and clean.” As he eyes the microwave, he is struck by sudden inspiration. He grabbed the turtle and shoved it into the microwave. He set the timer for one hour and turned it on. Every 25 minutes he would open the door to check on the turtle’s progress. When at last the microwave dinged, he went to see if the turtle was done. As he approached the microwave, he heard a scratching sound, when he opened the door, out came the turtle saying, “Mitakuye Oyasin! Mitakuye Oyasin!” (“Turtle Soup,” 2003). TECHNOLOGY AND TRADITION Reconciliation of technology with tradition is a staple of Internet “NDN” humor, as with “Top 10 Signs You Are a Techno-Indian.” As with many other Internetbirthed lists, this one has been composed by many people, tossed back and forth. What follows is a selection from several long lists. Your wife doesn’t want to hear that lame old “my server was down” excuse anymore. You think a floppy disk slot crammed with tobacco and flat cedar will somehow increase your connection speed. At least 2 gigabytes of powwow, flute, Joy Harjo, hand game, traditional, indigenous, Ulali music, and so forth are in your MP3 files. You send aaaayyyyyymail. Your mail address is [email protected]. Before you attend a powwow, you need to check its Web site first. Your mouse is coated with fry bread grease. You have a beaded Zip drive. You now know a hard drive is not just the road home from the 49! (“Techno Indian,” 2005).

A specific genre of Techno Indian is the “NDN Jedi” from Star Wars.


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You might be an Indi’n Jedi if …. You ever heard the phrase “May the Force be with you … aayyy!” Your Jedi robe is beaded. You have ever used your light saber to butcher a buffalo or sheep. You discover that Ewoks taste like dogs. The worst part of spending time with Yoda is eating his commodity food. Wookies are offended by your use of buffalo robes. You have ever used the Force in negotiations with the feds. Your councilman has ever said to you, “Come over to the dark side … selling out ain’t so bad, enit!” You have ever fantasized about Princess Leia’s fry bread. Your light saber has duct tape on the handle (“Native Jedi,” 2005).

SELF-IDENTIFYING HUMOR: YOU MIGHT BE NATIVE IF … The king of NDN Internet self-identifying humor comes under the general heading of “You Might Be Native If ….” This particular (very selective) list includes 13 items. Others run in the hundreds. Like many other self-identifying lists, this one lampoons Native American ways of doing and being. 1. You could be Indian if someone asks you your stance on immigration, and you just laugh. 2. You could be Indian if you use commodity can labels for your art collage project. 3. You could be Indian if your car starts with a screwdriver. 4. You could be Indian if your relative gets a nice jacket that you wish you had and say, “Geez Hey, I REEEAAALLLY like that jacket” (and he gives it to you). 5. You could be Indian if you have a dog named Bear. 6. You could be Indian if you think that the basic food groups are Spam, commodity cheese, fry bread, and Pepsi. 7. You could be Indian if your new history teacher is talking about a completely different Columbus then the one your grandmother told you about. 8. You could be an Indian if you walk down the hall of a big corporation and someone asks you if you could mop up the mess that they made and you do it with a smile, but don’t tell them you’re their new boss. 9. You could be Indian if you see a rattlesnake after a ground squirrel and the first thing you think is “appetizer and main course.” 10. You could be Indian if someone asks you what you think the meaning of life is, and you (jokingly) say, “Fry bread.” 11. You could be Indian if every time you saw people doing the Tomahawk Chop, you wish you had one. 12. You could be an Indian if your car has almost as much personality as you do. 13. You could be Indian if your car’s three best friends are duct tape, baling wire, and WD-40 (“You Might Be Native If … ,” 2003).

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HOW REZ ARE YOU? A QUIZ Similarly, a quiz has been fashioned with tongue in cheek to score a person’s Indian identity: “How rez are you.” Add up how totally rez you are: 1. If you’ve ever used a screwdriver to open your car trunk. (5 points) 2. If you’ve ever used duct tape to patch your dance mocs. (10 points) 3. If you’ve had to feed five rez dogs and none of them was yours. (5 points, +5 if you feed more than 5) 4. If you ever had to pick your own two-step partner or snag. (3 points for each) 5. If you have ever been expelled from boarding school. (2 points) 6. If you have ever used laundry detergent for bubble bath. (5 points) 7. If you ever cut the mold off commodity cheese to use for a midnight sandwich. (5 points) 8. If you have ever played any of the following games: peon games, stick game, box lacrosse, stickball game, or wild horse race. (2 points each) 9. If your rez had Head Start Halloween parties. (2 points, +2 if they trick-or-treated at the tribal offices) 10. If you ever used bailing wire to hold up the muffler on your rez rocket. (5 points) 11. If you ever ran from the tribal police at a 49er. (5 points, + 5 points if the tribal cop was your uncle) 12. If you ever had more than five bottles of commodity corn syrup in your house. (5 points, + 15 points if you still do) 13. The battery terminals in your rez rocket were cleaned using a can of Coke. (5 points) 14. If you have ever worn any of the following fragrances: Aqua Net, Deep Woods Off, any Avon perfume, fry bread grease, smoked leather, or smoke from your fire. (1 point each) 15. If you’ve ever used nail polish to fix a run in your panty hose. (5 points) 16. If you’ve never been elected to a tribal council. (15 points) 17. If you have a friend or family member whose nickname is a one-word animal, such as Fish, Bear, Horse, Buffalo, Wolf, Pony, Mustang, etc. (10 points) 18. If you have ever had to use your neighbor’s phone number on a reservation job application. (3 points) 19. If you’ve ever worn anything besides sweatpants outside of the house. (2 points) 20. You always chop wood for your grandmother on the weekends. (5 points) 21. You use “AYE,” “BUH,” “SSSSH,” “EH,” “ENNIT,” at least once a day. (5 points) 22. You’ve ever driven on all doughnuts [nearly bald tires] for more than two weeks. (5 points) 23. Your child drops his or her candy and you sanitize it by pouring water on it. (10 points)


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24. You have ever slept in a chair to avoid waking up your grandparents after a 49. (10 points) 25. You’ve ever left a feast with a couple of plates covered in aluminum foil. (2 points) 26. You can’t leave the rez because you have outstanding warrants in town. (10 points) 27. You can sing the song “John Wayne’s Teeth.” (5 points) 28. You have your own HUD house but all your in-laws and/or extended family live with you. (15 points) 29. You think Will Sampson is still alive. (20 points) 30. You have housed 12 people in a single Motel 6 room. (5 points) 31. You used plastic and duct tape to fix your broken windows. (5 points)

Score Chart 0–40: Either you’re not Native or you’re lying. 41–80: Why do you still have to lie? 81–90: Okay, you’re semi-Native. 91+: Straight-up rez (“How Rez Are You?” 2004).

WOMEN’S WISHES: THE ONE-WISH GENIE The following parable reflects a Native woman’s search for a man who meets her needs. A Native woman was walking along the beach when she stumbled upon an old, empty bottle. She picked it up and rubbed it, and lo and behold, a genie appeared. She talked with him awhile, then the genie told her he would grant her one wish. She said she heard from a cousin that she would get three wishes if she ever found a genie. The genie said, “Nope, sorry. Three-wish genies are a story-tale myth. I’m a one-wish genie. So, what’ll it be?” The woman didn’t hesitate. She said, “I want peace in the Middle East. See this map? I want these countries to stop fighting with each other, and I want all the Arabs to love Jews and Americans and vice versa. It will bring about world peace and harmony.” The genie looked at the map and exclaimed, “Lady, PLEASE BE REASONABLE! These countries have been at war for thousands of years. I’m out of shape after being in a bottle for five hundred years. I’m good, but NOT THAT GOOD!!! I don’t think it can be done. PLEASE make another wish and please be reasonable.” The woman thought for a minute and said, “Well, I’ve never been able to find the right Indian man. You know, one that’s considerate and fun, likes to powwow, and helps with the house cleaning, is great in bed, gets along with my family, speaks his language, knows all his relatives, can survive in the woods or New York City, doesn’t drink alcohol, and is faithful. That’s what I wish for … a good Native man.”

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The genie let out a long sigh, shook his head, and said, “Let me see that map again” (“One Wish Genie,” 2003) Women’s wisdom versus machismo is illustrated in another joke. One day, three Indian men were hiking and unexpectedly came upon a large, raging, violent river. They needed to get to the other side but had no idea how to do so. The first man prayed to Creator, saying, “Please Creator, give me the strength to cross this river.” Poof! Creator gave him big arms and strong legs, and he was able to swim across the river in about two hours, after almost drowning a couple of times. Seeing this, the second man prayed to Creator, saying, “Please Creator, give me the strength … and the tools to cross this river.” Poof! Creator gave him a rowboat, and he was able to row across the river in about an hour, after almost capsizing the boat a couple of times. The third man had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to Creator, saying, “Please Creator, give me the strength and the tools … and the intelligence … to cross this river.” And, poof! Creator turned him into an Indian woman. She looked at the map, hiked upstream a couple of hundred yards, and then walked across the bridge (Beauvis, 2003). Women’s wisdom also figures into the following conversation between a Navajo woman and a visitor. A saleswoman was driving toward home in northern Arizona when she saw a Navajo woman hitchhiking. Because the trip had been long and quiet, she stopped the car and the Navajo woman climbed in. During their small talk, the Navajo woman glanced surreptitiously at a brown bag on the front seat between them. “If you’re wondering what’s in the bag,” offered the saleswoman, “It’s a bottle of wine. I got it for my husband.” The Navajo woman was silent for a little while, nodded several times, and said, “Good trade” (Imogenelumen, 2004). WHY DID THE NATIVE CHICKEN CROSS THE TRAIL? Clichés from the majority culture may be mixed with parodies of Native reservation life, as in “Why Did the Native Chicken Cross the Trail?” with the chicken described by various categories of Indians. Sovereign Indian: This is the chickens’ inherent right, as he is indigenous to this land! Lawyer Indian: It was the chicken’s sovereign right. Militant Indian: That chicken should block the road, not cross the road! Grassroots Indian: If the darn chiggens need to get across the road, let ’em cross the darn road! Colonized Indian: Chiggens should never cross the roads that white men built before the Great White Father crosses it first. If the White Father crosses it, it is good. We must then follow. Americanized Indian: We must have roads. We must cross the roads that the white man built for us. We have to be thankful to the white man for this. I don’t know


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why you Indians are always complaining. You embarrass us. Chickens are good for us. Republican Indian: It’s true that that white man built those roads for us. We are merely chickens. We will always be chickens until we learn to build those roads ourselves—for profit. Democratic Indian: The chicken crossed the road because he didn’t have enough funding. Traditional Indian: Those chiggens weren’t traditional because what they heck were they doing trying to cross the road, when they were supposed to be on it—not crossing it! Indian grandma: Oh, poor thing! I hope he had enough to eat. Indian grandpa: I think that chiggen was runnin’ away from boarding school. Indian dog: Come on, let’s get them chiggens! Indian in recovery: To go to his Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Urban Indian: That chicken crossed the road ’cause it was a city, man. You know what I mean? New Age Indian: It was basically because of Jungian dream therapy, drumming, sweat lodges, my shaman, and long walks on the beach, near my beach house. Powwow Indian: That chicken must have been heading to a 49! Another powwow Indian: Howah, more road-kill feathers for my bustle!! Educated Indian (a.k.a. Dartmouth Indian): I think it has to do with Einstein’s theory, which basically posits, “Did the chicken really cross the road or did the road move beneath the chicken?” Rez Indian (A): What’s a chicken? Rez Indian (B): Depends upon which rez they were from. IHS (Indian Health Service) Indian (A): I really don’t care why he crossed that road. We still aren’t paying for no stinkin’ hospital bills. IHS Indian (B): Because I think the medical model didn’t work for him. BIA Indian: They crossed it because of CFR 49, Section 11299, gives them the authority to do so, under Department of Interior regulations, in the executive branch. They wrote a grant and we funded them. We are very proud of them. KFC Indian: I’ll take a leg, a thigh, with corn and potatoes. Extra crispy, please. Incarcerated Indian: That poor chicken is doing seven years to life for jaywalking on the rez. Red Road Indian: This chicken took 12 steps in the wrong direction, for sure. Commodity Day Indian: Aiiii—tonight it’s chicken a la cheese! Tribal chair Indian: No chicken relative of mine would be seen out trying to cross a road if I could get him a good office job. Tribal Indian Council: The chicken crossed the road before we did? Fire his family!!! Casino Indian: To claim his bingo prize. Committee Indian: Because they was having a potluck. AISES (American Indian Student Education Society) Indian: Because after he was dropped in a lab experiment, he had forward momentum of 8.9 meters per second squared. NIEA (National Indian Education Association) Indian: To benefit our future generations of chickens. Elder Indian: Back in the day we didn’t get any chicken. Teenage male Indian: He didn’t need no reason—because he felt like it.

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Teenage female Indian: To meet the cute rooster on the other side—the one with the nice feathers. Grant-funded NDN: We only have enough funding to get the chicken halfway cross that road; the rest will have to be in-kind under “travel.” Punk Indian: The chicken was safety pinned to my cheek (“Indian Chickens,” 2003).

MY LAST WISH The perfect Indian joke does not pull a punch line on one person; it pulls a joke on everyone at once. The following jest is good for wall-to-wall laughs on nearly any reservation. A bus carrying 20 ugly Indians on their way to a casino crashed into an oncoming truck and everyone inside died. Because of the grief they had experienced, God decided to grant each of them one wish before he or she could enter paradise. When they all were lined up, God asked the first Indian for his wish. “I want to be gorgeous,” he said. God snapped His fingers and it was done. The second Indian in line heard this and said, “I want to be gorgeous, too”. Another snap of His fingers, and the wish was granted. This went on for a while. When God was halfway down the line, the last Indian guy in line started laughing. When there were only 10 Indians left, this guy was rolling on the floor holding his stomach and laughing uncontrollably. Finally, God reached this guy and asked him his wish. The last Indian calmed down and said, “Make ’em all ugly again!” (“My Last Wish,” 2004) POWWOWS IN THE SPIRIT WORLD From Carolyn Fiscus came a joke about two elderly Kiowa men who determined to find out whether they would be able to take part in powwows once they had passed over to the other world. This one is enduringly multiethnic. In the form I first knew it, the same joke involved two Irish Americans from Boston who liked baseball. The sequence is the same. At the end, the first guy, who had passed away, says to the second at their postmortem meeting, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there is, indeed, baseball in the hereafter. The bad news is that you are scheduled to pitch tomorrow night.” In the powwow version, two 90-year-old Kiowa men, Joe and Sam, have been friends all their lives. Sam was dying, and Joe visited him. “Sam,” said Joe, “You know how we have both loved to sing and dance all our lives. Sam, you have do me one favor. When you go, somehow you’ve got to tell me if there’s powwows in the spirit world.” Sam looked up at Joe from his deathbed and said, “Joe, you’ve been my friend many years. This favor I’ll do for you.” And with that, Sam passed on. At midnight a couple of nights later, Joe was sound asleep when a distant voice called out to him, “Hey Joe … Joe…. ”


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“Who is it?” asked Joe, sitting up suddenly. “Who is it?” “Joe, it’s me, Sam.” “Come on. You’re not Sam. Sam died.” “I’m telling you,” insisted the voice. “It’s me, Sam!” “Sam? Is that you? Where are you?” “I’m in the spirit world,” said Sam, “and I’ve got to tell you, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.” “Tell me the good news first,” Joe requested. “The good news,” says Sam “is that there are powwows in the spirit world. You should see the grand entries. They are really goot ones!” “Really?” Joe exclaimed. “That’s goot, man! What’s the bad news?” “They’ve got you down as head singer on Saturday!”

FURTHER READING Allen, Paula Gunn. “Does Euro-Think Become Us?” Daughters of Mother Earth. Ed. Barbara A. Mann. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006, 1–28. Barreiro, Jose. Personal communication, July 7, 2003. Via Internet. Bates, Sara, ed. Indian Humor. San Francisco: American Indian Contemporary Arts, 1995. Cited in Native Universe: Voices of Indian America. Ed. Gerald McMaster and Clifford E. Trafzrt. Washington, DC: National Museum of the American Indian and National Geographic, 2004, 242. Beauvais, Jan. “Indian Women at the River.” E-mail to Carolyn Fiscus. October 27, 2003. Billiejax of Tempe, Arizona. E-mail to John Kahionhes Fadden. September 11, 2000. Bone Shirt, Alfred. E-Mail to Marcel Guay. Canadian Aboriginal News/First Nations Skyvillage. 2003. Brenda at Kahnawake. E-mail to John Fadden. January 22, 2005. “Charlie Hill Offers a Taste of Indian Humor.” American Indian 2, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 30. Charlie Hill’s Official Web Page. “Welcome to Club Red.” Accessed December 23, 2006. . Chavez, Will. “My Grandmother Pale Moon Rising Was a Cherokee Princess.” Cherokee Phoenix 25, no. 2 (Spring 2001): n.p. Cramblit, Andre. [email protected]. May 17, 2003. Cramblit, Andre. [email protected]. June 1, 2003. Cramblit, Andre. [email protected]] Issue 176. October 1, 2003. Cramblit, Andre. Via Internet. May 3, 2005. Cramblit, Andre. “Rezbonics 2.” E-mail to the author. August 23, 2005. Deloria, Vine, Jr. “Indian Humor.” Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. New York: Avon Books, 1969, 148–68. Deloria, Vine, Jr. “Indian Humor.” Literature of the American Indians: Views and Interpretations. Ed. Abraham Chapman. New York: Meridian New American Library, 1975. 152–69. “Dine Rez” to Andre Cramblit. Indigenous News Network. September 27, 2004. Dorson, Richard M. “Comic Indian Anecdotes.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 10 (1946): 113–28. Douglas Spotted Eagle Home Pages. Silly Jokes Page. n.d. June 22, 2005. .

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Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen. “American Indian Humor.” Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000, 26–31. “Old Indian Chief.” Native American-Indian Jokes. n.d. . “One Wish Genie.” Andre Cramblit E-mail to the author. July 30, 2003. Parker, Arthur C. “How Indians Cracked Their Jokes.” The Indian How Book. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1946, 132–40. Parkman, Francis. The Conspiracy of Pontiac. 1851. New York: Collier Books, 1962. Picotte-Hargreaves, Debra. September 18, 2003. Via Carolyn Fiscus, October 2, 2003. Also published as Debra Picotte-Hargreaves, Lakota Nation Journal 1, no. 15 (May 22–28, 2000), [email protected]. August 8, 2003. Price, Darby Li Po. “Laughing without Reservation: Indian Standup Comedians.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 22, no. 4 (1998): 255–71. “Reservations for Whites.” Andre Cramblit. Via Digest for IndigenousNewsNetwork@ topica.com, no 114, June 19, 2003. “Rez Bonics.” Via Andre Cramblit. [email protected]. September 14, 2004. Salabiye, Velma S. “Humor and Joking of the American Indian: A Bibliography.” American Indian Libraries Newsletter 10 (Fall 1986): 2–4. Stubben, Jerry. E-mail to the author. October 30, 2002. “Survivor on the Rez.” Andre Cramblit. [email protected]. October 25, 2002. “Techno Indian.” Via Andre Cramblit. [email protected]. July 7, 2003; June 13, 2005. [email protected]. “Priest Teaches Indian English.” Native American-Indian Jokes. July 25, 2003. . “Turtle Soup.” Via Andre Cramblit. [email protected]. December 13, 2003. “Twinkie Defense.” From Andre Cramblit. [email protected]. March 5, 2005. Witt, Shirley Hill, and Stan Steiner, eds. “Indian Humor.” The Way: An Anthology of American Indian Literature. New York: Knopf, 1972, 73–77. “Wood Gift.” E-mail from Andre Cramblit. August 7, 2004. “You Might Be Native If ….” E-mail from Andre Cramblit. IndigenousNewsNetwork@ topica.com. March 31, 2003.


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Comprehensive Index

Aboriginal Languages Revitalization and Affirmation Act, 24 Aboriginal Rights and Research Office, 220 Acoma Language Retention Program, 37 Acoma Pueblo community, 7 Acomita Pueblo community, 36–37 Adams, Hank, 202 Adamson, Rebecca, 116 Administration for Native Americans, 37 Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Economic Development Corporation, 81 Ahtna Athabascan language, 23 Akwesasne Freedom School, 225 Akwesasne Mohawk Counselor Organization, 212 Akwesasne Mohawks: and banishment, 193; roots of strife, 92; and smuggling activities, 79, 92–94; Warrior Society, 91, 92 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971), 111–12 Alaska Native Language Center, 22 Alaska Native Language Program, 19 Albuquerque Food Summit, 256 Alcoholism: continuing toll of, 94–96; decline of, 85; as leading cause of death, 94; on Pine Ridge Reservation,

98; and poverty, 95. See also Beer business; Crazy Horse Malt Liquor Alcoholism Task Force, 95 Alger, Horatio, 122 Allen, Paula Gunn, 175–76 Almaside, Amar, 17–18 American Indian Cooking (Niethammer), 265 American Indian Early Childhood Leaders Circle, 32 American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI), 11, 12 American Indian Movement (AIM), 144, 197, 198, 201–2 American Indian Policy Review Commission, 95 The American Scholar (Cohen), 213 American Spirit Award Dinner, 115 Amnesty International, and Leonard Peltier, 198 Ancestral discipline, 185 Antisovereignty groups, 121 Aquash, Anna Mae, death of, 206–8 Arapaho Indians, 8 Arapahos’ Wind River College, 8 Arctic: and global warming as humanrights issue, 284–86; intrusion of money economy, 288; and PCB impact on food web, 271. See also Inuits

380

Comprehensive Index

Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, 277 Aristar, Anthony, 17 Arthur Bremer Foundation grants, 64 Assembly of First Nations, Canada, 219, 223 Association of American Indian Affairs, 32–33 Athabascan Language Development Institute, 22–24 Atlanta’s Braves, 148–49 Atomic Energy Commission, 297, 301 Attucks, Crispus, 121 Aztec Danza (dance), 18 Babbitt, Bruce, 63, 67 Balaran, Alan, 70 Banishment: at Akwesasne, 193; to combat drug sales/usage, 187–88; for dangerous behavior, 186–87; as death sentence, 185; and Lummi reservation, 188–90; of non-Indians, for offensive behavior, 193–94; revival of, 186; usage by Chippewas, 190–91; usage by Council of Chiefs, 191–93; usage by Onondagas, 191–93; v. incarceration, 189 Banking: “offshore”, 112–14; on reservations, 79 Banks, Dennis, 202, 203 Bartlitt, John, 299 Baruch, Bernard, 83 Beacon Hill School, of Seattle, 230; community negotiations for, 232–33; sit-in, 230–32 Beer business, of Whiteclay Lakotas, 96–98 Benedict, Charlie Kiorenhakwente, 220 Benedict, Daniel Kiorenhakwente, 220 Benedict, Ernest Kaientaronkwen, 209; as educator, 225; family of, 220–21; founding of North American Indian Traveling College, 222; founding of War Whoop newspaper, 221; and International Bridge blockade (1968), 222–24; as inventor, 219–20; as Mohawk spiritual leader, 226; National Aboriginal Achievement Award received by, 220; quiet way of, 224–26

Benedict, Florence Katsitsienhawi, 220 Benedict, Ira, 220 Benedict, Jeff, 121, 122, 131–32 Benedict, Julia Kiohawihtoh Jandrew, 220 Benedict, Salli M. Kawennotakie, 220, 221 Benedict, Sarah Kanataiehwas Claus, 220 Benintende, Barry, 163 Berlitz language company, 42 Berries, benefits of, 259 BIA. See Bureau of Indian Affairs Bill of Rights (U.S.), 191 Blackfeet Confederacy, 6 Blakeslee, Sandra, 298 Blethen, Frank, 240 Bluewolf, James, 38 Border-crossing (U.S.-Canada) conflict, 222–24 Boys & Girls Clubs of America, 234 Brando, Marlon, 205 Breath of Life conference, 10, 16 Bronitsky, Gordon, 12–13 Brown, Dee, 205 Bryan, William Jennings, 82–3 Bunting, Doris, 297 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), 49, 50, 56; abusive management of Indians, 56, 60, 61–62, 73–74; challenged by Cobell, 53–55; and death of Anna Mae Aquash, 206–8; harassment of vocal Native Americans, 69; McCain’s solution to accounting mess, 59–61; privatization plans, 61; rebuffing of Cobell, 52, 53; and Trail of Broken Treaties, 202, 203; and tribal genealogies, 136; and wardship, 56, 57, 82. See also Homan, Paul; IIM Related System Improvement Project Report; Tribal Trust Funds Reconciliation Project, an “Agreed-upon Procedures and Findings Report” Burns, Shannon, 4 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Brown), 205 Bush, George W., 65, 68 Bushmeat, and Crees, 246–49

Comprehensive Index Campbell, Ben Nighthorse, 75, 137 Canada: apology to First Nations, 24; dialects of, 25; Federal Task Force on Aboriginal Cultures and Languages, 25; languages of, 25; linguistic rights in, 24–25 Canadian Polar Commission, 273 Canadian Wildlife Service, 281 Canandaigua Treaty (1794), 192 Capturing Spirit: The Inuit Journey (Watt-Cloutier), 271 Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 12 Casinos, 79, 84; Foxwood casino of Mashantucket Pequots, 106–7; Little Sioux Casino, 101–2; and Mashantucket Pequots, 100; Morongo Casino, Resort, and Spa, 115; Omaha Nation Casino, 108; Seven Cedars Casino, 107; Shakopee’s Little Six Casino, 101, 102; Sun Casino (Mohegans), 127; Sycuan’s Gaming Center, 103 CERT. See Council of Energy Resource Tribes Cherokee Indians, 39–40 Cheyenne language, 4, 5 Chicano English and Adult Basic Education Program, 231 Chief Andrew Isaac Health Clinic (Alaska), 252 The China Syndrome movie, 298 Chippewas (of Grand Portage): fight against mining, 254; and use of banishment, 190–91 Chisasibi community: health crises, 248; and suicide, 247 Choctaws, of Mississippi, 80 Chomsky, Noam, 152 Christmas carols, in Inupiaq, 22 Cigarette smuggling, 79 Cinnamon, as diabetes treatment, 260–61 Citizens Against Nuclear Threats, 297 Citizens Alliance (anti-sovereignty group), 121 Citizenship and Immigration Services Bureau, 236 Civilized Tribes (original five), 134 Civil Rights Commission (U.S.), 154, 163, 207

381

Claims Settlement Act, Maine Indian, 111 The Cleveland Indian: The Legend of King Saturday (Salisbury), 148 Cleveland’s Indians, 147–48 Climate change. See Global warming Clinton, Bill, 99–100 Coalition for Navajo Liberation, 297 Coast Nations First Nations, 26 Cobell, Eloise, 49–50, 58; accounting lesson, 51–52; aided by Matheson, 57; challenge of BIA, 53–55; filing of lawsuit, 62–65; and on-reservation banking, 79; rebuffed by BIA, 52, 53; reservation stories, 52–53 Cobell v. Kempthorne case, 76 Cobell v. Norton class action case, 49; Lamberth’s ruling, 66–67, 69–70; offer of settlement made by, 71–73 Cochiti Pueblo community, 7, 36–37 Cody, William (Buffalo Bill), 154 Cohen, Felix, 57, 213 Coler, Ronald, 197, 198, 200 Collier, John, 82 Comanche language, 7 Commission on Indian Recognition, 137 Committee of One Hundred, 82 Commodity food (government sponsored food), 52, 190, 245, 260, 263, 333 Commodore, Kay, 189 Community-based food systems, 257–58 Conferences: Indian Energy Solutions (2005), 116; on native language revival, 9–11; in Santa Fe, 13–14 The Conspiracy of Pontiac (Parkman), 312 Coulter, Robert T., 57 Council of Chiefs: of Mohawk Nation, 209, 221; usage of banishment, 191–93 Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT), 82, 114–16; American Spirit Award Dinner, 115; and Native education, 115; Tribal Internship Program, 116 Counterpunch (Wise), 156 Crazy Horse Defense Project, 177 Crazy Horse Malt Liquor, 96, 143, 176–77 Cree Hunter and Trappers Income Security Program, 248

382

Comprehensive Index

Cree Indians: Board of Health and Social Services, 248; health crisis of, 246–49; suicide in Ojibway Cree village, 86–88 Crime, and punishment by banishment, 185 “Critical Moment: Funding the Perpetuation of Native Languages” conference, 13 Crue, Cyd, 144 Cultural appropriateness, and economic development, 108–10 Culture, recovery of, and native language, 8 Custer Died for Your Sins (Deloria, Jr.), 314 Dakota language, 3; in rap music, 32–33; revival in Minnesota/Wisconsin, 31–32 Dance, and language revival, 17–18 Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy over American Indian Mascots (Spindel), 153 Dauenhauer, Richard, 20, 21 Daughters of Mother Earth (Allen), 175–76 Dawes, Henry, 49 DeCocteau, Tammy, 32–33 Deer, Ada, 63 Deg Hit’an (Ingalik Athabascan) people, 19 Deloria, Vine, Jr., 314 Dena’ina language, 23 Dene Indians, and uranium mining, 304–6 Desert fare, of Pima/Tohono O’odham, 263–65 Diabetes: cinnamon as possible treatment, 260–61; Indian Country epidemic, 245, 246, 247; and Iroquois White Corn Project, 262 Diet, of Native Americans: of Alaska Natives, 251–52; benefits of berries, 259; Cree’s return to bushmeat, 246–49; desert fare of Pima/Tohono O’odham, 263–65; health problems associated with, 246; Hopi Indians dryland corn preservation, 265–66; of Inuits, 249–51, 270; recipe for bear/caribou, 249; taro in Hawaii, 266; traditional

foods for White Earth elders, 260. See also Diabetes; Intertribal Bison Cooperative; Native American Food Systems Project; Native Seeds/SEARCH project Dillon, Jenni, 8 Divina, Fernando, 246 Documenting Endangered Languages project, 16 Domenici, Pete, 301 Donaghy, Keola, 31 Dorgan, Byron L., 72 Douglass, Frederick, 121, 133 Drug smuggling, 79, 189, 190 Drug use: banishment as punishment, 189; by Lummi Indians, 188–90 DuBray, Dan, 72–73 Eastern Navajo and Dine Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM), 303, 304 Eastman, Tristan, 33 Eaton Fighting Reds controversy, 162, 168–69 Echohawk, John, 63, 65 Economic development, and cultural appropriateness, 108–10 Eggsman, Mabie “Neva,” 26–27 Eichstaedt, Peter, 297 Eight-step language-revitalization scale, 23 Einhorn, Art, 218 Eisler, Kim Isaac, 122 El Centro de la Raza (“The Center of the People”), 229; action by/against Washington Natural Gas Company, 233; bond with Nicaragua, 235; comments by Bill Moyers, 243; diverse social programs of, 240–42; foreign policy of, 234–36; founding of, 233; future paths of, 242; and immigrant’s rights, 236–37; Learning Across Borders project, 236; nurturing of Native American ties, 233–34; support for Martin Luther King County, 240; tent city establishment, 237–40; Thousand Points of Light Award presented to, 243. See also Frances Martinez Community Service Center; Freedom Ride; Maestas, Roberto; Martinez, Samuel; Reagan administration; Seattle

Comprehensive Index Elder’s Council, Canadian Assembly of First Nations, 219 Emmons, Sally L. A., 310 ENDAUM. See Eastern Navajo and Dine Against Uranium Mining Environmental alliance, against sulfide mining, 254 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 296, 300 Environmental toxics, tracking of, 274–76 Esther Martinez Native Languages Preservation Act, 15 Evergreen State College, Washington, 261 Fadden, Carrol, Sr., 211 Fadden, David, 214 Fadden, Donald, 214 Fadden, John, 214, 215, 218 Fadden, Ray Tehanetorens: affinity for birds/animals, 214; anger at ecological/ environmental damage, 215–16; early years, 210–11; educational efforts of, 209; intellectual dust-ups with Fenton, 216–17; as living legend, 210; progressive dementia of, 217–18; promotion of Haudenosaunee culture, 217; return to Akwesasne, 217–18; and revitalization of Mohawk language, 210; as steward of Earth, 215–16; teaching career of, 211–13; work at Six Nations Indian Museum, 213–15 Fairfield Language Technologies, 40 Fawcett, Melissa, 176 FBI: arrest of Peltier, 197; and Native American crime, 85, 86, 97; probe of offshore banking, 113; shootout with Peltier, 198 Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 296 Fenton, William N., 216–17 Fighting Sioux mascot, of University of North Dakota, 151–52, 153, 157 Fighting Whities controversy, 160–62, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 169–70 First Americans Trust Company (Apaches), 112 First Laughter Ceremony, of Navajos, 311 First Lenape Nation Bank, 112 First Nation, 24, 25

383

First Nations Confederacy of Cultural Education Centers (FNCCEC), 24 First Nations Development Institute (FNDI), 116, 255–56 First People’s Heritage Language and Cultural Council, 26 First Seminole War, 135 First Voices web site, 26 Fiscus, Carolyn, 154 Fish canneries, 82 Fishman, Joshua, 5, 14, 17, 23 Flathead Reservation (Montana), 4 Fond du Lac Reservation, 31 Foods, of Native Americans: berries, 246, 259; bushmeat, 246; community-based systems, 257–58; Cree’s return to bushmeat, 246–49; desert fare of Pima/ Tohono O’odham, 263–65; fish, 246; frybreads, 245; Hopi Indians dryland corn preservation, 265–66; pemmican, 246; recipe for bear/caribou, 249; taro in Hawaii, 266; toxic contamination of Inuit foods, 277–79; traditional foods for White Earth elders, 260. See also Commodity food Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions (Divina), 246 Food summits, of First Nations Development Institute, 255–56 Foreign policy, of El Centro de la Raza, 234–36 Fountain, John “Chick,” 93–93 Four Winds magazine, 144 Foxwood casino: as money machine, 106; size statistics, 126–29 Frances Martinez Community Service Center, 241 Freedom Ride demonstration, 237 Fry bread, 245, 246 FTC. See Federal Trade Commission Funmaker, Kenneth, 4 Gambling, 79, 84; of Akwesasne Mohawks, 90–91; as new buffalo, 100–102; and Oglala Lakotas, 102–3; reservation history, 101. See also Casinos Gamboa, Guadalupe, 241

384

Comprehensive Index

Gasoline businesses, 80 Gejdenson, Sam, 138 Genealogies, mixed: and BIA, 136; common nature of, 133–35; and single-ethnicity question, 132–33 General Allotment Act, 49, 53–54, 61, 65, 98 George-Kanentiio, Doug, 210, 212 Ghost Ridge mass grave, 75–76 Gingold, Dennis, 50, 57, 69 Gingrich, Newt, 240 Global Energy Decisions (CERT), 115 Global warming: dangers to hunters, 282–83; as human-rights issue in Arctic, 284–86; influence on Alaska, 284; influence on Inuits, 269–70, 279; influence on polar bears, 281–82; and mosquitoes on Banks Island, 283–84; and thawing of Shishmaref permafrost, 283; and Watt-Cloutier, 285, 286 GOONs. See Guardians of the Oglala Nation Gossett, Larry, 229, 240 Grants: for Acomita Pueblo, 37; Arthur Bremer Foundation, 64; for documentation endangered languages, 16–17; John D./Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 64; National Science Foundation, 42 Grants, New Mexico: and Rio Puerco spill, 299, 300; as Uranium Mining Capital of the World, 299 Greenstone digital program, 30 Grindstone Indian Rancheria, 10 Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs), 206 Haidas: language, 20; native corporation of, 112 Handbook of Indian Law (Cohen), 213 Hand puppets, and teaching of Pomo dialect, 37–38 Hangings, by Pikangikum youth, 87 Harjo v. Pro-Football, Inc. lawsuit, 145 Harrington, John Peabody, 42–44 Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Indians, 17, 211; and Fadden, 217; and Fenton,

217; oral tradition of, 212; regard for berries, 259 Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Law of Peace, 192 Hauptman, Laurence M., 128, 132 Hawaii: language revival, 6–7, 29–31; return to taro, 266; Ulukau: The Hawaiian Electronic Library, 30; University of Hawaii, Hilo, 30, 31 Hayes, Enrestine, 7 Heath issues: child obesity, 247; of Cree Indians, 246–49; diabetes epidemic, 245, 246, 247; environmental poisoning of salmon, 258–59; of hunter-gatherers, 246; of Inuits, 269, 270; toxic mother’s milk of Mohawks, 252–53; wild rice toxicity in Wisconsin, 253–55 Henry, David, 53 Hess, Thom, 28 Hill, Charlie, 315–17 Hill, Willard W., 311 Hinton, Leanne, 12, 16 His Horse is Thunder, Ron, 34 Ho-Chunk Nation (Winnebago), 4 Homan, Paul, 61, 62 Homelessness. See Tent city Homicide rates, decline of, 85 Hoopas, of Eureka, CA, 81 Hoover, Herbert, 83 Hopi Indians: “Learning through Hopi Songs” CD, 35; preservation of dryland corn, 265–66 House Committee on Government Operations, 50 Hualapai Bilingual/Bicultural Program, 12 Hughes, Langston, 121 Human being smuggling, 79 Humboldt State University, 43 Humor, ethnic (Native American): of Cherokees/Creeks/Chicksaws/Seminoles, 310; as defense mechanism, 313–15; and fry bread, 309; history of, 310–11; and mimicking/pantomime, 311; non-Indian’s ignorance as topic of, 319–20; as political catharsis, 309–10, 317–19; reconciliation of technology/tradition, 344–45;

Comprehensive Index as sacred, 310; self-deprecation aspect, 342–44; slapstick/social commentary components, 312; topics of, 312, 314; barbershop/haircuts, 327–29; B.C., 322; BIA genie, 323–24; Bureau of Iraqi Affairs, 334–35; chicken crossing trail, 348–50; Chief Forget-Me-Not, 329; dead horse parable, 322–23; fry bread, 309; getting the better of cops, 324–25; Great White Father, 320; How rez are you quiz, 346–47; hustle of white man, 327; I’d be an American, 325; Indian weather forecast, 321; last wish, 350; medicine man as scam artist, 340–41; NASA, 325–26; needling of stereotypes, 330–31; Old West, 326–27; playing Indian, 338–40; powwows in spirit world, 350–51; putting moccasin on other foot, 330; reality TV, 333; reservations for European Americans, 331–33; “Rezbonics Dictionary,” 335–38; selfidentifying humor, 345; sheepherder dog story, 321–22; talking dog jokes, 319; Tonto/Lone Ranger, 329; Trickster stories, 310, 311, 314; Twinkie defense, 341–42; Uncle Remus tales, 310; white man’s ignorance of natural world, 328–29; women’s wishes/onewish genie, 347–48; vacuum-cleaner salesman as topic of, 320–21. See also First Laughter Ceremony, of Navajos; Hill, Charlie; Indi’n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native America Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, 252 If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans (Eichstaedt), 297 IIM Related System Improvement Project Report, 59 Immersion programs: Acoma Language Retention Program, 37; as aid to learning English, 8–9; Arapahos’ Wind River College, 8; Cochiti Pueblo, 36; federal funding, 15–16; Hawaiian language, 29–31; hours requirement, 18; Hualapai Bilingual/Bicultural Program, 12; Laguna-immersion instruction, 6;

385

Salish pre-school program, 4; of Tlingit, 20–21; University of Hawaii, Hilo, 30, 31; White Clay Immersion School, 35 Immigrants, and El Centro de la Raza, 236–37 Incarceration, v. banishment, 189 Incident at Oglala documentary, 201 Income levels, fluctuations of, 84–85 Indian Affairs Committee (U.S. Senate), 61, 74 Indian Claims Commission, 220 Indian Country, 245; acknowledgment of Benedict as spiritual leader, 226; and BIA, 61; and economic development, 108; and FBI unpopularity, 207; and gambling, 100; and growth of business enterprises, 80–8; and growth of Native American enterprise, 80, 82; and language revival, 12; and reservation poverty, 79; suffering in, 72 Indian Country Crime Report, 85 Indian Country Today, 11, 105, 108, 146, 158, 172, 245 Indian Defense League, of America, 211, 221 Indian Energy Solutions (2005) Conference, 116 Indian Health Service (IHS), 85, 95, 298 Indian Law Resource Center, 57 The Indian Problem (Committee of One), 83 Indian Recognition Commission, 137 Indian Time newspaper, 3–4 Indian Trust Reform Act, 74 Indi’n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native America (Lincoln), 317 Individual Indian Monies accounts, 52, 55, 58; dimensions of BIA mismanagement, 61–62; and exploitation, 66; and Interior Department, 58–59; and NARF lawsuit, 63 Individual Indian Monies Trust Correction and Recovery Project, 63 Inouye, Daniel, 117 Insect problems, 283–84 “Instant Hawaiian Immersion” CD series, 30 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 285

386

Comprehensive Index

Intercourse Act (1790), 111 Interior Department, 53; abusive management of Indians, 56; accounting plan victory of, 71; Balaran’s accusations against, 70; fantasy-like negotiations by, 65; and Individual Indian Monies accounts, 58–59 International Bridge blockade (1968), 222–24 Intertribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC), 262 In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (Matthiessen), 201 Inuit: language revival, 25 Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), 270 Inuits: and climate change, 279–80; health issues of, 269; industrial life’s influence on, 287–88; infants influenced by PCB pollution, 276–77; intrusion of money economy, 288; and language, 25; meaning of Inuit, 269; and PCB pollution, 269, 276–77; and pollution, 271–73; resurgence for country food, 249–51; small town living by, 269; and suicide, 288–91. See also Global warming Inupiaq language, 22 Iqaluit, and climate change, 280–81 Iroquois Indians: Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy, 192; White Corn Project, 262–63 Isolationism, 86 ITBC. See Intertribal Bison Cooperative Jackson, Andrew, 53, 74, 134, 156–57, 215 Jackson, Jesse, 121 James Bay Northern Quebec Agreement, 247, 271 Jay Treaty (1794), 93, 211 Jeffrey, Robert, Sr., 240 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 64 Jones, James Earl, 121 Justice Department (U.S.), 70 Kaagwaantaan clan, 7, 20 Kalama, Carmen, 261 Kamana, Kauanoe, 6, 29, 30

Kanien’keha (Mohawk language), 3–4, 40–42 Kaw language, 16 Keisler, Peter, 74 Kenai Peninsula, new curriculum, 21–22 Kennerly, James Mad Dog, 52 Kerr-McGee Company, 296 King, C. Richard, 156 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 242 Kipp, Darryl, 6, 7 Klamath language, near extinction of, 26–27 Krauss, Michael, 5, 19 Kushner, Julia, 12 Kwakw’ala language, 25 Laguna (Pueblo community), 7 Lake County (CA) Tribal Health Consortium, 38 Lakota Indians: Lakota Language Camp, 34–35; Lakota Language Consortium, 33–34 Lakota Sioux community, 18 Lamberth, Royce C.: and Cobell case, 66–67, 69–70, 76; investigations ordered by, 67–69; opinion of Interior Department, 73–74 LaMere, Frank, 98 Language Revitalization Alliance, 32 Language-revitalization scale, eight-step, 23 Language revival: via dance, 17–18; via music, 17–18; via radio, 18–20; via telephone, 18–20 Languages: Athabasca, 22–24; Cherokee, 39–40; Cheyenne, 4, 5; Comanche, 7; Dakota, 3, 31–33; Dena’ina, 23; English, 8–9; Haida, 20; Hawaiian, 6–7; Inuit, 25; Inupiaq, 22; Kaw, 16; Klamath, 26–27; Kwakw’ala, 25; Lakota, 33–35; Metis, 25; Miami, 38–39; Mohawk, 3–4, 40–42, 210; Muckleshoot, 28–29; Nahuatl, 18; Nuuchahnulth, 25–26; Ojibwemowin, 31–32; Oneida, 40–42; Pomo, 37–38; Potawatomi, 17; Saanich, 26; Sugi’stun, 21; Tsimshian, 20; Western Ojibwa, 3; White Clay, 35; Whulshootseed dialect, 28; Wintun, 10; Yurok, 27–28

Comprehensive Index Languages, native: as basis of sovereignty, 4–5; as communities of speech, 6; consequences of loss, 5–7; development resources, 11–12; diversity in North America, 3–4; as English learning aid, 8–9; immersion programs, 4, 6; and recovery of culture, 8; written v. oral, 17 Lannan Foundation, 13 The Lasting of the Mohegans: The Story of the Wolf People (Fawcett), 176 Latino community, of Seattle. See El Centro de la Raza Law of Peace, of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), 192 Lazore, Dorothy, 14 Learning Across Borders project, 236 “Learning through Hopi Songs” CD, 35 Leech Lake Reservation, in Minnesota, 81 Lester, David, 82 Limbaugh, Rush, 162, 163 Linguistic rights, in Canada, 24–25 Lippman, Walter, 79 Liquor bottles, and names/mascot controversy, 171–72 Liquor smuggling, 79 Literature of the American Indian (ed. Sanders), 173 Littlebear, Richard, 4–5, 6, 15 Little Big Man movie, and ethnic humor, 311 Little Bull, Jim, 52 Littlefeather, Sacheen, 205 Little Sioux Casino, 101–2 Logging, in Alaska, by Sealaska Corporation, 112 Lucas, Phil, 144 Lummi reservation, and banishment, 188–90 Lung cancer epidemic, of Navajos, 300–302 Maestas, Roberto, 229, 230, 233, 236, 240, 241 Maine Indian, Claims Settlement Act, 111 Malotte, Jack, 310 Managua-Seattle Sister City Association, 235 Mann, Barbara A., 175–76

387

Mann, Charles, 3 Maori Language Commission, 14 Maori Language Newspaper Project, 30 Marshall, John, 56, 74 Martinez, Esther, 15–16 Martinez, Regino, 243 Martinez, Samuel, 243 Mascots (Indian): and Atlanta’s Braves, 148–49; Chomsky’s parody of, 152; and Cleveland’s Indians, 147–48; controversy origins, 144–45; and Dartmouth College, 150; and Fighting Whities controversy, 160–62, 163, 164, 165, 167, 169–70; and Harjo v. Pro-Football, Inc. lawsuit, 145; and Marquette University, 150; and Michigan State Board of Education, 145; national controversies, 149–50; and National Education Association, 155; and NCAA, 144, 157–60; racial context of, 153–57; and Stanford University, 144; and University of California-San Diego, 150; and University of Illinois-UrbanaChampaign, 153; and University of Nebraska at Omaha, 144; and University of North Dakota’s Fighting Sioux mascot, 151–52; and Washington Redskins, 145–47; and Wisconsin Education Department, 145, 170–71. See Crazy Horse Malt Liquor; Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy over American Indian Mascots; Liquor bottles; Nomenclature, freedom of; Politically Correct Creek Matheson, David, 57 Matthiessen, Peter, 201 MCA. See Mohawk Council of Akwesasne McCain, John, 117, 286; and BIA accounting mess, 59–61, 64; and Indian Trust Reform Act, 74; suggestion for settlement road map, 72 McKeown, William P., 223, 224 Means, Russell, 202 Meriam Report, 83 Metis language, 25 Miami Tribe (Oklahoma), 38–39 Migrant laborers, 230 Miller, George, 301

388

Comprehensive Index

Misplaced Trust: The Bureau of Indian Affairs Mismanagement of Indian Trust Funds report, 50, 58, 64 Mitchell, Michael Kanentakeron, 223 Modern Tribal Development: Paths to Self-Sufficiency and Cultural Integrity in Indian Country (Smith), 108, 110 Mohawk, John C., 81–82 Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (MCA), 217, 219, 223, 225 Mohawk Counselor Organization, 210 Mohawk Immersion Program, 4, 14 Mohawk language (Kanien’keha), 3–4, 40–42, 210 Mohawk Wolf Clan, 220 Mohegans, 123, 125 Monigarr Legacy Corp. Mohawk program, 41–42 Moniture, Michael, 88–89 Monteith, Daniel, 21 Morningstar Institute, 143 Morongo Casino, Resort, and Spa, 115 Mother’s milk toxicity, of Mohawks, 252–53 Moultrie Creed Treaty, 134 Moyers, Bill, 243 Muckleshoot language, 28–29 Murder on reservations, 85 Music: Hopi songs CD, 35; and language revival, 17–18 Muwekma Ohlone tribe, 43 Nahuatl language, 18 Name calling. See Crazy Horse Malt Liquor; Eaton Fighting Reds controversy; Fighting Whites controversy; Liquor bottles; Mascots (Indian); Nomenclature, freedom of; Politically Correct Creek NARF. See Native American Rights Fund National Aboriginal Achievement Award, 220, 225 National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development, 117 National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media, 143 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), 143, 157–60

National Congress of American Indians, 115 National Education Association, 155 National Executive Education Program for Native American Leadership (NEEPNAL), 108 National Indian Gaming Association, 102 National Indian Youth Council, 297, 300 National Science Foundation, 42 National Tribal Justice Resource Center, 191 The Nation magazine, 197 Native Agriculture and Food Listserv, 256 Native American Food Systems Project, 261–62 Native American nations: choices for cultural appropriateness/economic development, 108–10 Native American Rights Fund (NARF), 62–63, 64, 65, 138 Native Americas (Wollock), 85 Native Californian Action Network, 10 Native Hawaiian Library, 30 “Native Nations, Native Voices” festival, 12–13 Native Nutrition (Schmid), 250 Native Seeds/SEARCH project, 265 Native Studies Wall of Honor, 225 Natural Resources Protection Act (2004), 303 Navajo Humor (Hill), 311 Navajo Nation, 19; code talkers, 5; First Laughter Ceremony, 311; lung cancer epidemic, 300–302, 300–303; mimicking/pantomime by, 311; outlawing of uranium mining/processing, 303–4; rejection of casino gambling, 108; and uranium mining, 295–300 NCAA. See National Collegiate Athletic Association NEEPNAL. See National Executive Education Program for Native American Leadership New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air and Water, 299 The New Termination (BIA privatization plan), 61 Niethammer, Carolyn J., 265

Comprehensive Index No Child Left Behind law, 21 Nomenclature, freedom of, 173 Non-Intercourse Acts (1790), 79, 129–30 North America: native language diversity of, 3–4; Society for the Sociology of Sport, 144 North American Indian Brotherhood, 219 North American Indian Traveling College, 219, 222 North Carolina Commission on Indian Affairs, 156 Northern Arizona University, Multicultural Education Program, 14 Northwest Economic Development Corporation, 81 Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute, 261 Norton, Gale, 49, 67, 71 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 304 Nuclear Waste Management Task Force, 296 Nuuchahnulth language, 25–26 Obesity, of children, 247 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 301 Official Dakotah Scrabble Dictionary, 32 Offshore banking, by Native Americans, 112–14 Oglala Lakotas, and gambling, 102–3 Oglala Sioux Tribe, 33 Ojibwa Warrior (Banks), 203 Ojibway-Cree village, of Pikangikum, 86 Ojibwe language, 32 Ojibwe Language and Cultural Awareness Grounds, 31 Ojibwemowin language, 31–32 Okalik, Paul, 280 Omaha Nation casino, 108 One Hundred Committee, 82 Oneida Indians: dissent among, 104–5; of New York, and gambling, 103–4; of Wisconsin, 80, 105–6 Oneida language, 40–42 Onondagas, usage of banishment, 191–93 Oral language, v. written language, 17 Osage Grammar (Quintero), 14

389

OSHA. See Occupational Safety and Health Administration OxyContin. See Drug use Parker, Alan, 261 Parker, Arthur C., 31, 83, 211 Parkman, Francis, 312 Passamaquoddys, of Maine, 129, 130 Patriot Act, 68 Payne’s Landing Treaty, 134–35 PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) pollution, 252, 253; and Arctic food web, 271; and Canadian Polar Commission, 273; and Inuits, 269, 276–77; and salmon poisoning, 258–59; Stockholm Convention ban on, 273 Peltier, Leonard, 197–208; and American Indian Movement, 201–2; calls for new trial, 198; claims of being framed, 197; demands for new trial, 201; escape to/capture in Canada, 199; fabrications by prosecutors, 200; and forged documents, 199; murder conviction of, 197; shootout with FBI, 198; trial irregularities, 199; unsuccessful appeals, 201; weakness of evidence, 200 Pequots: adoption by Mohegans, 125; defining identity/ancestry, 135–38; and gambling, 100; historical ironies, 138–40; history of, 122–24; massacre at Mystic, 124–25; single-ethnicity question, 132–33; success of Foxwood casino, 106–7; as “the fox people,” 125. See also Revenge of the Pequots: How a Small Native American Tribe Created the World’s Most Profitable Casino; Without Reservation: The Making of America’s Most Powerful Indian Tribe and Foxwoods, The World’s Largest Casino The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of An American Indian Nation (Hauptman), 128 Pequot War (1636-1637), 123, 125 Pershing, John J., 83 Phair, Eugenia, 190 Piegen Institute, 6

390

Comprehensive Index

Pikangikum, Canada: failing infrastructure of, 89–90; increased desolation in, 86; and Michael Monture, 88–89; Ojibway-Cree village, 86 Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Reservation, 83; and alcoholism, 96; funding of health clinic, 116; and Leonard Peltier murder conviction, 197; political murders at, 205–6; visit by Clinton, 99–100 Polar bears, peril of, 281–82 Politically Correct Creek, and name calling controversy, 172–73 Pollution and Human Health study, 277 Pollution problems: of Inuits, 270, 271–73. See also PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) pollution Pommersheim, Frank, 57 Pomo language, 37–38 Potawatomi language, 17 Poverty: and alcoholism, 95; historical roots, 82–85; on reservations, 79 Prairie Band Potawatomi Indian Reservation, 39 Pratt, Richard Henry, 12, 15 Prize, Ken Hale, 34 Prohibited Drug Crimes Code, 189 Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL (Benedict), 122 Prosperity: of Wisconsin, 105–6 Pueblo communities, 7, 36–37, 312 Quintero, Carolyn, 14 Rabbi as Nazi sports mascot, 152–53 Racial/ethnic identity, 121 Radio: and language revival, 18–20 Radioactivity, and Navajo reservation, 297–98 RAFT. See Renewing America’s Food Traditions Rap music: and Dakota language, 32–33 Reagan administration, 234, 235 Red Earth Magazine Online (CERT), 116 Redhouse, John, 300 Red Lake Tribal Council/Prohibited Drug Crimes Code, 189 Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT), 265

Reno, Janet, 62 “Repatriated Bones, Unrepatriated Spirits” (Littlebear), 15 Republican Party: vote against appropriations bill, 68 Reservation poverty, 79 Reservations: building of infrastructure, 81–82; and declining unemployment, 80, 81; and gambling, 101; and murder, 80, 81; on-reservation banking, 79; and state tax exemptions, 79 Revenge of the Pequots: How a Small Native American Tribe Created the World’s Most Profitable Casino (Eisler), 122 Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages (Fishman), 14 Revitalizing Languages (Reyhner), 15 Reyhner, Jon, 15, 17, 18 Rio Puerco radioactive spill, 299, 300 Romero, Eunice, 13, 36 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 83, 100 Rosetta Stone Mohawk language program, 40 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 225 Rubin, Robert, 63 Saanich language, 26 Salisbury, Luke, 148 Salmon: and fishing rights, 203; and PCBs poisoning, 258–59 Santos, Bob, 229 Schmid, Ronald F., 250 Sealaska Corporation, logging practices, 112 Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI), 20 Seattle: Beacon Hill School, 230; community negotiations for Beacon Hill School, 232–33; origins of Latino Community, 229–30; sit-in in, 230–32. See also Chicano English and Adult Basic Education Program; Managua-Seattle Sister City Association Second Seminole War, 135 Seminole Wars, 135 Seven Cedars Casino, 108

Comprehensive Index Shakopee’s Little Six Casino, 101, 102 SHI. See Sealaska Heritage Institute Shirley, Joe, 303 Silatunirmut: The Path to Wisdom (Watt-Cloutier), 271 Simms, Christine, 37 Simon, Paul, 61 Single-ethnicity question, 132–33 Sioux Tools, 34 Sisseton-Wahpeton tribe, 31 Sit-in, in Seattle, 230–32 Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy, 192 Six Nations Cultural Historical Series, 212 Six Nations Indian Museum, 210, 212–15 Smith, Dean Howard, 108 Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology, 43 Smuggling activities: of Akwesasne Mohawks, 92–94; of cigarettes, 79; of drugs, 79, 189, 190; of Lummi Indians, 188–90; on U.S.-Canada border, 79 Society for the Sociology of Sport, 144 Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages, 5, 12, 34 Socioeconomics: mixed evidence for Native Americans, 85–86 Sockalexis, Louis, 147, 148 South Puget Sound Intertribal Planning Institute, 261 Spindel, Carol, 153 Squaw (word): meaning of, 175–76; movement for removal of, 171–72, 174–75 St. Goddard, Vera, 69 St. Regis Band Council, 219 State University of New York, Buffalo, 81–82 Stealing from Indians (Henry), 53 Steiner, Stan, 312 Still Smoking, Dorothy, 6 Stockholm Convention, 273 Sugt’stun language, 21 Suicide: and alcoholism, 95; among Inuits, 288–91; in Chisasi community, 247; by hanging (Pikangikum youth), 87; increasing rates, 87–88; of Native American youths, 86; in Ojibway Cree village, 86–88

391

Sun Casino (Mohegans), 127 Sycuan Gaming Center, 103 Talking dog jokes, 319 Taos Pueblo, banishment of non-Indians, 193–94 Tar Baby tales, 310 Technology: “Instant Hawaiian Immersion” CD series, 30; “Learning through Hopi Songs” CD, 35; Monigarr Legacy Corp. Mohawk program, 41–42; Rosetta Stone Mohawk language program, 40; and teaching of Pomo dialect, 37–38 Telephone: and language revival, 18–20 Tent city: established by El Centro de la Raza, 237–38; legal support for, 238–40 Thesaurus of American Slang (ed. Lewis/ Lewis), 173 “Things That Make Me Laugh” (Malotte), 310 Thompson, Elizabeth Eva, 214 Thousand Points of Light Award, to El Centro de la Raza, 243 Three Mile Island, nuclear accident, 298–99 Thunderheart movie, 201 Tlingit language, 20–21 Tobacco businesses, 80 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 122 Tohono O’odham language, 11 Toxics: contamination of Inuit foods, 277–79; environmental, tracking of, 274–76 Traditional Indian Recipes from Fort George (Cree women), 249 Trail of Broken Treaties caravans, 202–3 Trail of Tears, 74–75, 156–57 Treasury Department (U.S.), 67 Treaties: Canandaigua Treaty (1794), 192; Jay Treaty (1794), 93, 211; Moultrie Creed Treaty, 134; Payne’s Landing Treaty, 134–35; Treaty of Moultrie Creek, 134; Treaty of Payne’s Landing, 134–35 Tribal Institute for Sustainable Energy (CERT), 116

392

Comprehensive Index

Tribal Internship Program, of CERT, 116 Tribal Trust Funds Reconciliation Project, an “Agreed-upon Procedures and Findings Report,” 59 Trust accounts issue: and BIA, 50, 56; costs of due bill, 70–71. See also Cobell, Eloise; Cobell v. Norton class action case; Lamberth, Royce C.; Misplaced Trust: The Bureau of Indian Affairs Mismanagement of Indian Trust Funds report; Stealing from Indians; Individual Indian Monies accounts Tsimshian language, 20 The Tumbleweed Gourmet (Niethammer), 265 Turner, Tina, 121 Tuscarora Reservation, 211 Ullrich, Jan, 34 Ulukau: Hawaiian Electronic Library, 30 Unemployment rates, on reservations, 80, 81 United Farm Workers of America, 241 United States: Bill of Rights, 191; Civil Rights Commission, 154, 163, 207; Department of Energy, 296; House Natural Resources Committee, 301; Interior Department, 53, 56; Justice Department, 70; Nuclear Waste Management Task Force, 296; nuclear weapons stockpile, 295; Patriot Act, 68; Treasury Department, 67 United States Geological Survey, 300 University of Alaska-Fairbanks, 19, 23 University of California, Berkeley, 10, 16, 20, 43, 147 University of California, Davis, 42, 43 University of Hawaii, Hilo, 30, 31 University of Illinois-UrbanaChampaign, 153 University of Nebraska-Omaha, Native American Studies Program, 154 University of New Mexico, Dept. of Linguistics, 37 University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point Native American Center, 31 Uranium mining: decimation of Dene Indians, 304–6; effects of pervasive

radioactivity, 297–98; and Grants, New Mexico, 299–300; in Navajo Nation, 295–97; opposition to, 297 Urban Indian Development Association, 117 Vancouver Island: Nuuchahnulth reclamation, 25–26; saving of Saanich on, 26 Vassilaros, Dimitri, 165 Venables, Robert W., 223, 224 Violence, by Akwesasne Mohawks, 90, 91 Voorhees, Janet, 13–14 Wagoner, Joseph, 301 War Department (U.S.), abusive management of Indians, 56 Wardship, 56, 57, 82. See also Worcester v. Georgia decision Warms Springs Reservation, of Oregon, 82 Warrior Society, of Akwesasne Mohawks, 91, 92, 93 War Whoop newspaper, 221 Washington, George, 192 Washington Redskins, 145–47 Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation, 34 Watahomigie, Lucille (Hualapai), 12 WATER. See Watershed Alliance to End Environmental Racism Watershed Alliance to End Environmental Racism (WATER), 254–55 Watkins, Arthur, 221 Watt-Cloutier, Sheila: on economic influences of Inuit, 289, 290, 291; and global warming, 286; world of, 270–71 The Way: An Anthology of American Indian Literature (Witt and Steiner), 312 Weapons smuggling, 79 WELRP. See White Earth Land Recovery Project Western A. Price Foundation, 246 Western Ojibwa language, 3 Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community (King), 242 White, William Allen, 83

Comprehensive Index Whitebear, Bernie, 229, 240 White Clay Immersion School, 35 Whiteclay (Nebraska) Lakotas: beer business, 96–98; protest march, 98–99 White Corn Project, Iroquois, 262–63 White Earth Anishinabe Reservation, Minnesota, 260 White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP), 260 White Mountain Apaches, 81 Whulshootseed dialect, 28 “Wicozani Mitawa” rap song, 32 Wild rice protections, in Wisconsin, 253–55 Williams, Ellen, 28 Williams, Paul, 224 Williams, Ronald, 197, 198, 200 Wilson, Richard, 204 Wintun language, 10 Wisconsin Education Department, 145, 170–71 Wise, Tim, 156 Without Reservation: The Making of America’s Most Powerful Indian Tribe and Foxwoods, The World’s Largest

393

Casino (Benedict), 121, 122, 130–32, 132–33, 138 Witt, Shirley Hill, 312 Wolf House (of Kaagwaantaan clan), 7, 20 Wolf Guts, Clarence, 33 Wollock, Jeffrey, 85 Worcester v. Georgia decision, 56 Worl, Rosita, 20 World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations, 271 Wounded Knee Legal Defense-Offense Committee, 206 Wounded Knee occupation, 203, 204–5 Writers, in native languages, 12–13 Written language, v. oral language, 17 Yakama Nation, 14 You Are on Indian Land (National Film Board of Canada), 223 Yurok Elder Wisdom Preservation Project, 27–28 Yurok language, 27–28 Zepeda, Ofelia, 11

About the Author BRUCE E. JOHANSEN is Frederick W. Kayser Research Professor of Communication and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is the author of dozens of books; his publishing efforts are concentrated in Native American studies and in environmental issues.

The Praeger Handbook on Contemporary Issues in Native America 2 volumes (Native America: Yesterday and Today)

Biodiversity and Native America

Biodiversity and Native America

Church-State Issues in America Today Three Volumes (Praeger Perspectives)

Daughters of Mother Earth: The Wisdom of Native American Women (Native America: Yesterday and Today)

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Arctic Peoples (Native America)

Family life in Native America

Native American faith in America

Imagining Native America in Music

Iroquois on Fire: A Voice from the Mohawk Nation (Native America: Yesterday and Today)

Women and power in native North America

George Washington's War on Native America

Political Issues (Contemporary Native American Issues)

Indi'n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native America

The Mythology of Native North America

New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, and Representations

Social Life And Issues (Contemporary Native American Issues)

Economic Issues And Development (Contemporary Native American Issues)

Native American Education: A Reference Handbook (Contemporary Education Issues)

Native American issues: a reference handbook

Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America

Parenthood in America: An Encyclopedia (2 Volumes)

Real Indians, Identity and the Survival of Native America

Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America

The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment

Policing in America: A Reference Handbook (Contemporary World Issues)

Media Images And Representations (Contemporary Native American Issues)

The Languages of Native North America (Cambridge Language Surveys)

The Praeger Handbook on Contemporary Issues in Native America 2 volumes (Native America: Yesterday and Today)

Biodiversity and Native America

Biodiversity and Native America

Church-State Issues in America Today Three Volumes (Praeger Perspectives)

Daughters of Mother Earth: The Wisdom of Native American Women (Native America: Yesterday and Today)

Plateau Indians (Native America)

Arctic Peoples (Native America)

Family life in Native America

Native American faith in America

Imagining Native America in Music

Iroquois on Fire: A Voice from the Mohawk Nation (Native America: Yesterday and Today)

Women and power in native North America

George Washington's War on Native America

Political Issues (Contemporary Native American Issues)

Indi'n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native America

The Mythology of Native North America

New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, and Representations

Social Life And Issues (Contemporary Native American Issues)

Economic Issues And Development (Contemporary Native American Issues)

Native American Education: A Reference Handbook (Contemporary Education Issues)

Native American issues: a reference handbook

Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America

Parenthood in America: An Encyclopedia (2 Volumes)

Real Indians, Identity and the Survival of Native America

Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America

The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment

Policing in America: A Reference Handbook (Contemporary World Issues)

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