|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:12:12 GMT -5
-335- they reflect all too accurately the bleakness of the lives of those who live there. Not only are their individual lives blighted by the apathy that is normally found among the poverty-stricken, but the collective life of the community suffers from the general atmosphere of futility. Despite their rejection of the IRA, both reservations later organized under constitutions granting limited advisory powers to tribal councils. Neither council seems very effective. Though capable individuals serve on both, the offices are not actively sought, chiefly because council members tend to become whipping boys for the tribe. The council at Devils Lake is described by agency personnel as "native-oriented" and still composed mainly of older men. Poor communication on the reservation also contributes to the ineffectiveness of tribal organization. 51 Sisseton and Devils Lake illustrate even more forcibly than Santee the ongoing nature of the Indian problem--the failure of nearly a century of work by the Indian Bureau on the present reservations to accomplish the purposes that seemed so easy of realization in the 1870's and 1880's. The solution, if there is to be one, will require even more ingenuity than will be called for at Santee. ____________________ 51 Interview with Mr. Richard Drapeaux, Employment Service Officer, and Mr. James S. Yankton, Realty Officer, Fort Totten Subagency, July 28, 1965; T. N. Engdahl to Commissioner, April 3 and September 25, 1946, Sisseton Agency; Homer B. Jenkins, Acting Assistant Commissioner, to Alfred McKay, July 22, 1957, Turtle Mountain Agency. This correspondence is on file at the Bureau of Indian Affairs Central Office, Washington, D.C. -336- CHAPTER 17 The Twentieth Century: Flandreau and the Minnesota Sioux THE DEPLETION of the Indians' land base, with its attendant evils, which characterized the Sisseton and Devils Lake reservations from 1900 to 1930, occurred also at Flandreau and among the Minnesota Sioux colonies; but the consequences were less devastating, and in the 1930's the process was reversed by means of substantial land purchases. Together with greater opportunities for off-reservation employment, the improved land situation enabled these smaller groups at least to hold their own and present a more cheerful exterior to the world. Their land resources are still inadequate to their needs, and they have experienced a steady draining off of young men and women, but the population loss has been largely compensated for by a high birth rate among those who have remained. Before the end of the nineteenth century the Flandreau people had lost the greater part of their homesteads and were living on small remnants insufficient to give them more than a bare living. Most of the farms were mortgaged, and in many cases the taxes were allowed to go unpaid until the lands were sold at tax sales. As early as 1895, the Santee agent complained that the Flandreau people were selling the barns and houses built by the government and permitting them to be moved
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:13:35 GMT -5
-337- away by the white purchasers. 1 This is the condition in which the settlement was found by Superintendent Charles F. Peirce when he took charge in 1901. Since his primary responsibility was the Flandreau Indian Industrial School, and since the local Indians seemed to require little attention, Peirce allowed them to do pretty much as they wished about disposing of their land and spending the proceeds. He thought that many could be given their pro rata share of the tribal funds and separated from government supervision. 2 This is essentially what was done in 1905. Two years earlier the Flandreau Indians had petitioned for their share of the permanent Sioux fund, and now it was distributed, each person receiving $159.42. Except for some thirty or forty elderly people who had to be cared for, this payment in Peirce's opinion terminated all government aid to the Flandreau Sioux. As a matter of fact, however, it turned out not to be the final payment, for there still remained $8,063.01 to their credit in the Treasury, which was not paid until 1909. Many expected momentarily to become the beneficiaries of sizable payments from the Santee claims, and for a few years around 1905 they went deeply into debt and neglected their farming. As we have seen, the claims case was not finally settled until the 1920's, and then the amount received by each member of the tribe was small. 3 The Flandreau Indians did little but survive during the first thirty years of the twentieth century. Numbering 288 in 1900, they lost numbers in the next decade, chiefly through departures for the Minnesota colonies, and were down to 275 in 1910. Then their population began to climb again, to 286 in 1920 and 328 in 1930. After most of their land was gone, they made a living as farm laborers until the farm depression of the twenties, when they took up skilled and semiskilled vocations such as carpentry, masonry, and auto mechanics. Still showing the resiliency that had carried them through the difficult early years of their experiment, they managed somehow to keep going without much official aid. Those who owned houses on their small tracts tried to pay their taxes; the rest rented when they could and moved on when unable to pay the rent. The old and helpless (numbering forty-six in 1910) continued to receive a semimonthly issue of beef, flour, coffee, and sugar; and the children were educated at government expense. Except for those ser- ______ 1 Joseph Clements to Daniel M. Browning, March 10, 1895, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. 2 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1902, pp. 266-267, 283. 3 Ibid., 1905, pp. 336-337; Charles F. Peirce to Francis E. Leupp, April 29, 1901, NARS, RG 75, LR, Flandreau School Agency. -338- vices, the Flandreau Sioux were as much on their own as the white people surrounding them. 4 The depression of the 1930's revealed how slender the economic margin of safety the Flandreau people had enjoyed was. The effects were severe enough to induce them to appoint a council, which in May, 1933, reluctantly petitioned the new Indian Commissioner for assistance. "Due to unemployment, and with most of the Indians having homes and land here sixty years and beyond in age," they wrote, "it has been rather hard for the Indians to pay any taxes on their land for the last few years. Nearly all the homes consist of from three to five acres of land, with buildings." 5 In response to a circular sent out by the Bureau to various Indian groups early in 1934, the Flandreau council met and worked out recommendations for land purchases. Superintendent Byron J. Brophy also suggested legislation to permit the paying off of mortgages and delinquent taxes owed by those twelve families who still had land. He also thought the purchase of small homesteads of twenty acres or so for the landless would be desirable. He urged the development of self-supporting projects and recommended that everything should be on the reimbursable plan. 6 During the course of the year two plans emerged: a subsistence homestead project for Indians who wished to earn most of their income by working in the town of Flandreau, and land purchases under the IRA ______ 4 Henry C. Baird to William A. Jones, May 2, 1901; Charles H. Dickson to Robert G. Valentine, April 7, 1910; Jess M. Wakeman to John Collier, February 14, 1934; Henry J. Flood, "Flandreau Homestead Subsistence Project" (enclosed in Byron J. Brophy to Harold L. Ickes, November 22, 1934, NARS, RG 75, Flandreau School Agency. The government did continue for a number of years to use a couple of buildings erected earlier. The tract of land on which the former day school was located came to be partially surrounded by the town of Flandreau, and in about 1890 a street was run through it. Fifteen years later the warehouse and granary were moved to the boarding school premises, and the day school building was converted into a warehouse. Part of this tract was transferred to the city in 1916, but the remaining building was moved to the part still in government possession. Peirce said that it provided a good place for rations to be issued and also for the Indians to leave their teams when they came to town, "feeling they are not encroaching upon other peoples property. Something of the old independence still persisted in spite of poverty and humiliation. See Peirce to Cato Sells, May 19, 1915, ibid.; U.S. Statutes at Large, XXXIX, 524. 5 George Eastman et al., to Collier, May 31, 1933, NARS, RG 75, Flandreau School Agency. 6 Wakeman to Collier, February 14, 1934; Brophy to Collier, February 19, 1934, ibid.. -339- for those who wanted to resume farming. The subsistence homestead project received the most attention at first. Several women were employed in a small garment factory, started in December, 1933, which made clothing, mainly for children, used in the Indian Service. For a number of years some of the local Indians had been employed in the boarding school. It was now believed that those people could be successfully established on subsistence tracts of from ten to forty acres. They could not be absorbed by agriculture even if they wished to farm; but if provided with houses, outbuildings, and a few cows and chickens, they could supplement the income they received from wage labor. When Mrs. Elna N. Smith, Assistant Supervisor of Indian Subsistence Homesteads, visited Flandreau in October, 1934, she noted that the Indians there were used to working and had not been pauperized; hence they were better material for such a project than some groups. 7 Legal obstacles, centering about the fact that the subsistence homestead statute had been intended for already existing reservations, delayed action at Flandreau and created some unrest. Although the plan was not linked to acceptance of the IRA, anti-New Deal elements tried to persuade the Indians that it was all a trick to get them to accept the act, as they in fact did. During the delay, options taken on land for the project expired, and prices began rising. 8 When $25,000 was finally made available for land acquisition at Flandreau in May, 1935, the project had changed its complexion somewhat. Instead of small subsistence homesteads, the plan was now to assign forty-acre tracts to families, in the expectation that they would make farming their principal occupation. Work got under way after the formal proclamation of the Flandreau Indian Reservation on August 17, 1936. During the next three years some 2,100 acres were purchased and divided into forty-acre tracts. Eventually it was realized that forty acres was too small a unit for successful farming, and the amount of land assigned to each family was increased to eighty acres. 9 _____ 7 "Capital Needs for Indian Land Use, Flandreau Sioux Jurisdiction, S. D.," n.d. (received September 20, 1934); Elna N. Smith to A. C. Cooley, Director of Extension, October 23, 1934; William Zimmerman, Jr. to Ickes, December 11, 1934, ibid. 8 Nathan R. Maragold, Assistant Solicitor, Interior Department, to Assistant Secretary of Interior Oscar Chapman, January 17, 1935; Brophy to Gollier, March 12 and April 19, 1935; Collier to Brophy, April 25, 1935; E. N. Smith to Cooley, April 27, 1935, ibid. 9 Zimmerman to Brophy, August 16, 1935; J. N. Stewart to Brophy, n.d.; Brophy to Stewart, November 11, 1936, ibid.; 82nd Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 2503, p. 65. In some cases a person received two noncontiguous forties, but usually it was possible to assign the tracts so as to provide a workable unit. -340- The land-acquisition program, by far the most important Bureau activity at Flandreau in the 1930's, represented a sharp departure from the previous history of the community in that it created an Indian reservation composed of tribally owned land held in trust by the United States government. Apparently the experience of the previous sixty years had led the Indians to question the advisability of individually owned farms. By this time only two of the original homesteads remained intact, and one of them was in a complex heirship tangle and leased to white farmers; three or four small tracts scattered around and unused by the owners remained in Indian hands. Despite their history of factionalism, the Flandreau people seem to have co-operated to the extent of successfully managing the newly purchased lands and assigning them without stirring up charges of favoritism. 10 The old individualism persisted, however. Though opposed to bills introduced in Congress to repeal the IRA, the Flandreau people were divided on termination. When interviewed on the question in 1953, some wanted to buy the farms they were occupying; others wanted the land given to them; still others wanted it sold and the proceeds divided among them. Although most were spending their money as fast as they made it, they were apparently doing all right financially. Most of their cash income was then being earned by the women working in the garment factory. 11 The closing of the factory in 1956 was a blow to the Indians' economy. About the same time, the large farming enterprise of the Flandreau Indian school was discontinued, and the local Indians were deprived of the services of the agriculture teachers, who had functioned as extension agents. Most of the people formerly employed at the factory found jobs at the school, which experienced a large increase in enrollment at that time, and some moved away from the area. The resident population in 1965 was about 210. Few were actively farming by the mid-1960's. The assignments were leased to white farmers, and most of the Indians were living in town. With employment available at the school and some other jobs to be had locally (the tribal chairman in 1965 was a mail carrier for the Flandreau post office), it was the opinion of knowledgeable _____ 10 Brophy to Division of Extension and Industry, BIA, February 6, 1936; Kenneth W. Green, Assistant Land Field Agent, to Stewart, January 26, 1936, NARS, RG 75, Flandreau School Agency. Green proposed that the Flandreau community be made a pilot project because of unusually favorable conditions and a relatively small area and population. See Green to Fred A. Baker, Land Field Agent, April 30, 1936, ibid. 11 Joe Jennings and Benjamin Reifel to Collier, September 25, 1939, NARS, RG 75, Flandreau School Agency; 83rd Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 2680, pp. 320-321. -341- people that the average income of the Indians was about the same as that of the general population, and in some cases higher. 12 Despite their determination in 1869 to become like white men, the Flandreau Sioux have come to take pride in their Indian heritage. In 1962 and again in 1965 they presented a "Siouxtennial" in co-operation with local civic and business groups. The flats across the Big Sioux River from the community building (a Bureau project of the 1930's) were covered with the tents and trailers of visiting Indians, many of whom participated in a parade through the streets of Flandreau. 13 As one watched cars and trucks pass by, filled with Wisconsin Winnebagos and Fort Thompson Sioux in full regalia, drums beating, old-time chants blaring from loudspeakers, one could not help wondering what had become of the determination of the original Flandreau homesteaders to give up everything that smacked of their Indian past. A further question inevitably suggested itself: Could it be that the more prosperous an Indian group becomes, through acceptance of the white man's way of life, the more vigorous their sense of Indian identity becomes? The same question might occur to one following the history of the Minnesota Sioux groups in the twentieth century. Nearly as acculturated as the Flandreau people, they accepted the Indian Reorganization Act even more decisively, and one group has in recent years held an annual pow-wow drawing Indians and whites from a wide area. Their history since 1900 is much more complex and full of incident than Flandreau's, but it has followed generally the same lines. After the last congressional appropriation in 1899, the Minnesota Mdewakantons were under no agent, received no rations, and were the beneficiaries of no government services in their communities except for a day school at the Birch Coulee settlement. Almost the only business relations they had with the government concerned the disposition of the Sioux fund and the Santee claims case, and those matters were handled through the Santee Agency. Many of them lived on fee patent lands; others occupied portions of the tracts bought about 1890 and retained ____ 12 Carl W. Beck, Assistant to the Commissioner, to Mrs. Mary W. Hemingway, May 7, 1956, Flandreau School Agency (correspondence in possession of Bureau of Indian Affairs Central Office, Washington, D.C.); interviews with Superintendent B. B. Warner and Tribal Chairman Richard K. Wakeman, July 22, 1965. The tribal executive committee continues to hold monthly meetings, but it is difficult to obtain a quorum (20 per cent of the resident population), for the semiannual general council meeting called for by the constitution. 13 Moody County Enterprise (Flandreau), July 22, 1965. -342- in government ownership. The picture one gets of them very early in the century varies from one colony to another. The Indians near the old agency site were described in 1901 as "practically self-supporting, honest, moral, and good citizens." Those living at the other settlements, however, were said to be living a gypsy life in tents or shacks, fishing and catching driftwood, picking berries, and occasionally working for white men. They were largely untouched by church influences, and their children were not being sent to any school. 14 As the years passed, the Scattered Sioux tended to gather mainly at Birch Coulee and Prairie Island. The forty-acre tract at Hastings was sold to the State of Minnesota in 1906 for inclusion in the state hospital property, and the Wabasha land, never permanently occupied, was finally transferred to the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1944. There was a gradual movement away from the Prior Lake lands, until by the 1930's only six families still lived there. Many of the people who owned or inherited assignments there actually lived in cities and towns throughout southern Minnesota and only occasionally tried to obtain a little income by leasing their lands. A few elderly people at Mendota continued to be cared for by the rector of Gethsemane church. Every month a ladies' committee would visit them and supply the really destitute ones with food and clothing to the amount of $1.25 or $1.50 per week. Elsewhere the old and indigent were cared for by relatives or by public and private charities in the communities where they lived. Some lived by begging. 15 The Minnesota Mdewakantons were paid their share of the Sioux _____ 14 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1901, p. 541; A. O. Wright to W.A. Jones, October 15, 1902, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sioux in Minnesota file. 15 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXXIV, 78; LVIII, 274; Henton to Morgan, July 24, 1889; Plat of Indian Lots, Scott County, dated October 8, 1904; Henry W. St. Clair to Andrew J. Volstead, October 24, 1904; John J. Faude to Acting Commissioner A. C. Tanner, June 1 and 8, 1900, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sioux in Minnesota file; Brief Memorandum Relating to Outlying Districts of the Pipestone Jurisdiction, May 1, 1937, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency. As early as 1898 only five out of the original sixteen assignments made at Prior Lake remained in Indian hands, and by 1904 only one Indian still held onto his land. Some died and some moved away; in either case the lands were usually sold. See Plat Book of Scott County, Minnesota ( [Philadelphia]: North West Publishing Co., 1898), p. 8. When an elderly Prairie Island woman died in 1914, a Red Wing newspaper commented that she had been a familiar figure on the city's streets: "Scarcely a week passed for years that she did not call on her friends in the business district for aid, which was always forthcoming." See Red Wing Daily Republican, February 16, 1914. Such items continued to appear in the newspapers until well into the 1930's. -343- fund in 1907, and most of them shared in the proceeds of either the Sisseton-Wahpeton claims case in 1909 or the Santee claims case in 1924. Aside from those benefits, they were largely ignored by the government during the first three decades of the century. In 1915 the Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, Samuel Cook Edsall, wrote Superintendent Frank T. Mann of the Pipestone Indian School, who had nominal supervision over the Minnesota Sioux, suggesting that those at Birch Coulee be issued some farm implements, which they might use collectively. Their land tracts were too small to be farmed profitably and were mostly leased to whites. Although Mann endorsed the proposal, it seems to have received no consideration at the Indian Office. 16 These people had been "turned loose," and, aside from operating a day school for their benefit, the government had no wish to involve itself with them again. The day school lasted only until 1920. Taught until 1918 by Robert H. C. Hinman, son of the missionary buried at Birch Coulee, it followed the state course of study, slightly modified, and normally enrolled about twenty children. A school garden was raised on a nine-acre tract adjoining the building, and Hinman provided milk and butter for the children from his own dairy herd of four cows. Less than a year after Hinman retired to edit the Morton Enterprise, the school was ordered closed but was kept open until the summer of 1920 at the request of Superintendent Mann. It subsequently was taken over by Redwood County and has since been operated as part of the rural school system of the county. Elsewhere the Indian children attended either local district schools or boarding schools such as Pipestone or White Earth. The only other Mdewakanton colony large enough to have a predominantly Indian school was Prairie Island, where the Indian Bureau provided financial assistance to the district for Indian pupils. 17 For many years the Pipestone superintendent's dealings with the Indians were limited to matters relating to education, but gradually he was drawn into a closer relationship that more nearly resembled that of the ordinary agency superintendent toward the Indians under his jurisdiction. By 1927, Superintendent James W. Balmer was visiting the _____ 16 Samuel Cook Edsall to Superintendent Frank T. Mann, June 21, 1915; Mann to Sells, June 17, 1915, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency. 17 Report of L. F. Michael, Supervisor of Schools, December 18, 1913; Sells to Mann, November 24, 1919; Mann to Sells, November 28, 1919, and June 2, 1920; Peyton Carter, Supervisor of Schools, to Charles H. Burke, December 22, 1921; Ora Padgett to Burke, July 17, 1922; Tony Kuhn to Senator Henrik Shipstead, November 1, 1924, ibid.; Redwood Falls Sun, March 21, 1919. -344- various settlements two or three times a year. At that time two years of drought had rendered most of the Indians destitute and in need of assistance from some agency--local, state, or federal. Balmer found that county officials, especially those in Goodhue County, were willing to co-operate in providing relief supplies and medicine. On his visit to Prairie Island he was accompanied by the county agent and other local authorities, who went with him from house to house issuing free seed for the coming planting season. 18 Despite the tendency to settle at the two main colonies, the Scattered Sioux were still widely scattered at this time. Besides mixed-bloods living like whites in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Wabasha, there were colonies of Indians at Granite Falls, Shakopee, Savage, and Red Wing, as well as at Birch Coulee and Prairie Island. In 1929, Balmer counted 554 in all. This was the first accurate estimate of their numbers in many years. 19 Many of the Sioux residing in Minnesota continued to be carried on the rolls of the Santee, Flandreau, Sisseton, and Yankton jurisdictions. Not until the 1930's, when the larger communities organized under the IRA and drew up tribal rolls, were any really accurate population figures available, and they were not particularly helpful in determining the numbers of the Minnesota Sioux who had become virtually assimilated to the general population. The Depression struck the Minnesota Sioux much as it did the Flandreau colony, and early efforts to meet it followed the same pattern. Continued drought greatly reduced the amount of crops the Indians could grow on their small tracts, especially on the light, sandy soil of Prairie Island. The widespread unemployment of the early thirties eliminated off-reservation jobs as a source of income. Thus the economic situation of these Indians, poor enough in normal times, became ____ 18 James W. Balmer to Burke, April 14 and May 17, 1927, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency. 19 Balmer to Burke, April 14, 1927, and January 7, 1929, ibid. The figures of 150 at Birch Coulee and 779 elsewhere, first published in the Commissioner's Annual Report for 1899 and 1901, respectively, were repeated year after year. When new figures were adopted, they fluctuated so much from year to year as to be quite unreliable. In 1911 the figure of 350 is given for all Mdewakantons in Minnesota (p. 60 ). In 1913 the number is given as 300, including "Mdewakanton, Wapaquta, Sisseton, and Wahpeton at Birch Cooley" (p. 53 ). In 1914 there were supposed to be only 303, a figure which had fallen to 160 in 1916 and 164 in 1918 (pp. 80, 77, and 87, respectively). A more detailed breakdown in 1920 listed 303 Mdewakanton Sioux and 105 at Birch Coulee (p. 67 ). Another source gives 271 in 1920, 371 in 1930, and 548 in 1940 ( Governor's Interracial Commission, The Indian in Minnesota [ St. Paul?], 1947, p. 37). The federal census reports tell a still different story. -345-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:14:33 GMT -5
fully as serious as that of the Santees, Sissetons, and Devils Lake Indians, though involving fewer people. To meet the immediate crisis, Balmer distributed aid to the needy during the winter of 1929-1930 but found the available funds too small to take care of everyone. The next winter the home of one of the oldest Prairie Island women was repaired and painted, and fifty blankets were issued by the county nurse. Purchase orders were issued to twenty people there. Essentially the same kind of aid went to the other settlements. 20 Work relief was slower in being initiated here than on reservations, where the superintendent was in daily association with the Indians and had them as his primary responsibility. On the other hand, the relatively small number of Indians concerned and the comparative wealth of the counties where they lived made it possible for their most pressing welfare needs to be met, for a time at least, by local agencies. The first significant assistance from the Indian Bureau came through the Indian Emergency Conservation Work program in 1934, when $5,347.63 was paid to men at Birch Coulee and Prairie Island for road construction and the development of springs and wells. The Indians received 90 per cent of that money in the form of pay checks issued at the end of each month; the remainder was withheld and paid in two installments the following winter, when there was no work to be had. Although the amount of IECW funds used in the next few years dropped sharply, the loss was more than compensated for by employment provided by the WPA. By 1937, WPA checks accounted for nearly 60 per cent of all income received by the Birch Coulee group. Because there was no WPA unit in Goodhue County, work of this kind did not begin at Prairie Island until that year. 21 The rehabilitation projects were woefully underfinanced at first. In 1936, Superintendent Balmer requested an appropriation of $16,425 but received only $6,400 for all the Minnesota groups. The money was ____________________ 20 Balmer to Charles J. Rhoads, July 18, 1930, and January 14, 1931, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency. 21 Peter J. Lightfoot to Collier, February 1, 1935; Lightfoot, "The Rehabilitation Program Pipestone Jurisdiction, Minnesota," [ 1937]; Shirley N. McKinsey, "An Economic Survey of the Lower Sioux Indian Community, Morton, Minnesota," 1937, ibid. The McKinsey survey and a similar one done on Prairie Island by Clyde G. Sherman ( "An Economic Survey of the Prairie Island Indian Community in Minnesota," 1937) are extremely useful studies. They include inventories of the economic potential of each community and list all livestock, farm machinery, etc., available to the Indians. They were intended as the starting point for a thoroughgoing rehabilitation of the communities.
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:14:59 GMT -5
-346- to be disbursed in the form of loans to those who might be expected to repay them, or as outright grants to the elderly and infirm. About twothirds of it was used for loans at Birch Coulee, about one-third at Prairie Island and Prior Lake. With this money a start was made toward repairing existing houses and building small one-room dwellings to relieve overcrowding and provide living space for the homeless. 22 In 1937 another $6,500 was made available, and the program moved into high gear. Larger sums were allotted in 1938 and 1939, with the result that living conditions among the Minnesota Sioux were greatly improved. Many houses had basements for the first time, and the additional storage space thus provided served as an incentive to the Indians to increase their gardening. Many were also inspired to buy furniture or paint what they had and make other improvements on their own initiative. 23 Besides the benefits to individual families, an important item in the program for each of the two principal communities was to provide the people with a community building. At Birch Coulee county officials were so impressed with the rehabilitation program that they offered to furnish the materials for such a building. Half the crew of WPA laborers who had been working on houses were transferred to the project, which got under way in the summer of 1937 and was virtually completed by the end of that year, although the formal dedication did not take place until the next spring. More than a thousand people attended the ceremony, at which talks were made by Episcopal Bishop Stephen E. Keeler of Minnesota, Superintendent Balmer, state WPA director Victor Christgau, and Xavier Vigeant, representing the Washington office of the Bureau. The building, constructed of red tile blocks, contained a main hall seating 125, a stage, a basement with kitchen, a dining room, a cloak room, and a furnace room. A somewhat similar but less pretentious community building was erected at Prairie Island in 1939. 24 All the improvements had a stimulating effect on the Indians at the two communities. Early in 1938, Thomas Columbus, secretary of the ____________________ 22 Lightfoot, "Rehabilitation Program"; McKinsey, "Economic Survey"; Balmer to Collier, February 21 and March 9, 1936, ibid.; Morton Enterprise, April 2, 1936. 23 D. E. Murphy to Balmer, March 3 and 15 and April 7, 1937; Balmer to Collier, August 28, 1937, and August 1, 1938, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency; Morton Enterprise, June 25, 1936, and December 16, 1937. 24 Balmer to Collier, February 3, 1938; Thomas Columbus to Collier, January 25, 1938; Clara Madsen to Collier, August 2, 1939, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency; Morton Enterprise, June 3 and December 16, 1937, and June 2, 1938.
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:15:22 GMT -5
-347- Birch Coulee council, wrote Commissioner Collier that as a result of the program nearly all the houses were in good repair, health conditions had improved, and the people were looking forward to their farming program. "Words could not convey to you," he concluded, "the thanks and gratitude from our people for the many wonderful things done for our community in the past year." 25 Balmer had earlier written that the Indians took great pride in their rehabilitated homes and were expressing their appreciation in many ways. Since the program had begun, "an entirely different atmosphere" had prevailed among the Indians, who were "more contented and happy" and doing what they could to better their economic condition. 26 Unfortunately, IECW and WPA work provided only temporary employment, and the appearance of prosperity created by the rehabilitation program would be only a mockery unless a stable economic foundation could be provided for these people. As elsewhere, the Bureau saw the long-range solution in terms of increasing the Indians' land base, which was then obviously inadequate. Their holdings at the beginning of the Depression consisted of 470 acres at Birch Coulee, 120 acres at Prairie Island, and 258 acres at Prior Lake, all in government possession, and small tracts of fee patent land at each of those places. Some of the latter were in immediate danger of being lost because of long unpaid taxes. The small assignments of government land--thirteen to twenty-two acres to a family--were insufficient for anything but subsistence gardens. Balmer now outlined purchases that would not only provide enough land for those living in the existing Indian communities but increase the holdings sufficiently to permit those living in towns and cities to settle on farms if they wished. 27 Before land purchases could be made under the IRA, the communities concerned had to accept that important piece of legislation. They did so by the decisive margin of 94-2, in an election held October 27, 1934; at Birch Coulee the vote was unanimous. The next step was to form councils and draft constitutions and bylaws. A problem arose in this connection, in that the Minnesota Mdewakantons, having ex- ____________________ 25 Columbus to Collier, January 25, 1938, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency. 26 Balmer to Collier, August 28, 1937, ibid. 27 Balmer to Cooley, December 26, 1935; "Brief Memorandum Relating to Outlying Districts," May 1, 1937; Balmer to Collier, July 18 and August 14, 1935, ibid. At Prairie Island 38.07 acres remained in Indian possession, 38.92 had been sold or otherwise disposed of to white owners, and the rest of the original 80 acres had been taken over for a railroad right-of-way, except for a tract of less than an acre which belonged to the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota.
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:16:21 GMT -5
-348- pressly abandoned their tribal relations as a condition of receiving the benefits provided in the 1880's, were ineligible to organize as a tribe. Inasmuch as each community had been more or less on its own for many years, the first intention was for each to organize independently, as an Indian community. By mid-summer of 1935, Birch Coulee had drafted a tentative constitution and bylaws, and Prairie Island had begun work on one. Although a speech by Henry Roe Cloud at a mass meeting later that year led the Minnesota Sioux temporarily to discard this plan in favor of organizing as a single group, they finally decided, after further discussion with Bureau representatives, to return to their original plan for separate organizations. Both groups voted on their constitutions in 1936 and on corporate charters the next year and approved them by decisive margins. 28 The land purchases made for the Minnesota Mdewakantons were much more modest than Balmer had envisioned. Although something over 1,200 acres were added at Birch Coulee (now officially renamed Lower Sioux), Prairie Island was increased by only 414 acres, and no land was bought at Prior Lake. The people at Lower Sioux thus enjoyed a substantially improved land situation, but the amount available at Prairie Island was altogether inadequate, especially in view of the limited agricultural possibilities of the land there. The insufficiency of the purchase at Prairie Island was partially disguised by the fact that the Indians were permitted to use a larger tract of flowage land behind Lock and Dam No. 3 on the Mississippi. Although this land was periodically subject to inundation and thus unusable as farm land, it was thought that the Indians could trap, hunt, fish, obtain firewood, make maple sugar, harvest wild rice, and dig swamp potatoes and swamp bananas there. 29 It might have been of real benefit to an earlier generation, but by the 1930's the Minnesota Sioux were no longer making much use of the native resources of the soil that their ancestors had exploited with considerable success. Although the Minnesota Sioux were all served by district schools by _______ 28 Lightfoot to Indian Office (telegram), October 28, 1934; McKinsey, "Economic Survey"; Balmer to Collier, July 18 and December 19, 1935; Charlotte T. Westwood and J. R. Venning to Collier, December 21, 1935, ibid. The Prior Lake community was deemed too small for separate organization and was placed under the jurisdiction of Lower Sioux. 29 "Brief Memorandum Relating to Outlying Districts," May 1, 1937; Madsen to Collier, August 2, 1939, ibid.; 82nd Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 2503, p. 62; United States Department of Interior, Reports, September 1960, United States Indian Population and Land: 1960, p. 14. -349- the 1930's, the Bureau played some part in improving educational facilities for them and inducing more of the children to attend. At Lower Sioux the former day school was still in use and enrolled about thirty pupils. With the aid of their WPA earnings, the local people cleaned up and beautified the school grounds. 30 At Prairie Island the situation was somewhat different. With the removal of the recently purchased lands from the tax rolls, District 132 no longer had a tax base sufficient to maintain the school, and in 1939 the district was dissolved and the school placed directly under county administration. When the community hall was built, the small school building was moved to a site near it so that the hall could be used for shop work and noon lunches. In return, the school authorities agreed to furnish heat for both buildings. A well-qualified male teacher was hired in the fall of 1939, after several years when inadequately trained young women had held the job. Among the innovations adopted here was inviting the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders to attend council meetings, so that they could become familiar with the work of the council, on which they might eventually serve. 31 The discussion so far has concerned exclusively the old Mdewakanton colonies at which land purchases had been made between 1887 and 1891. There was another settlement of Sioux in Minnesota, however, which had never been recognized by the Indian Bureau, despite the fact that it came into being about the same time as the other communities. About 1887 some of the Sissetons who had established the Brown Earth colony drifted back to the old reservation area in Minnesota, just below the town of Granite Falls. Although county officials tried as early as 1891 to persuade the federal government to take responsibility for those people, who were then destitute, nothing was done toward obtaining land for them. Most of them owned small tracts purchased with their own funds. A few had bought land with trust funds derived from the sale of restricted allotments, and their tracts carried restrictive clauses. Except for these few, the lands came to be so encumbered with delinquent taxes that by the 1930's the Indians occupying them had only squatters' rights. 32 _____ 30 Morton Enterprise, September 24, 1936; Columbus to Collier, January 25, 1938, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency. In 1937 the Morton newspaper reported that the children were studying Indians; the first grade had learned such words as "travois," "moccasin," and "tipi." See the Morton Enterprise, April 29, 1937. 31 Madsen to Collier, August 2, 1939; Balmer to Collier, December 21, 1939, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency. 32 "Historical Data of Early Settlement of Upper Sioux Indian Community," accompanying Balmer to Collier, November 7, 1938; Balmer to Collier, June 14, -350- Although the original members of the Granite Falls group were Sissetons or Wahpetons, in about 1910 a number of Santees arrived, both from the Santee Reservation and from Flandreau. They were later joined by a scattering of Minnesota Mdewakantons and Yanktons, so that in time the settlement came to consist of a not-altogether-harmonious collection of people of different origins, enrolled under several jurisdictions. Because most of them were reluctant to send their children to school in Granite Falls, a district school was built for them in 1920. Called upon by the clerk of the Granite Falls school to explain their status, the Pipestone superintendent investigated the Indian settlement but did not actively take charge of it at that time. After the Collier administration took office and the IRA was passed, their status became a matter of greater moment, and they were placed under Balmer's supervision on March 1, 1936. 33 The immediate reason for this action was that the Granite Falls group wished to organize under the IRA but found itself unable to do so because the Sisseton Reservation, where most of its members were enrolled, had rejected the act. The Granite Falls people had voted 42-35 in favor of the IRA at an election held April 6, 1935, but their votes were counted at the various jurisdictions under which they were enrolled. The principal demand for organization came, not from the Sisseton majority, but from a few families of mixed origins calling themselves Santees or Mdewakantons. Their spokesman was Mrs. Sophie Wilson, a woman of one-fourth Indian blood whose four marriages had given her a large number of relatives and in-laws. Throughout the 1930's she bombarded Superintendent Balmer, Commissioner Collier, Secretary of the Interior Ickes, President Roosevelt, and several congressmen with letters concerning the Granite Falls group. 34 When Balmer took over supervision of the group, he found them on ______ 1935, ibid.; Mair Pointon, Yellow Medicine County Auditor, to Thomas J. Morgan, January 7, 1891, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency. The Indians in their correspondence commonly refer to themselves as Wahpetons; they are referred to here as Sissetons because they were enrolled at the Sisseton Reservation. 33 "Historical Data"; Clerk of Granite Falls schools to Padgett, December 20, 1920; Padgett to Sells, December 22, 1920; Balmer to Collier, April 13, 1936, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency. 34 Lightfoot to Baker, January 16, 1935; Baker to Indian Office, April 12, 1935, Sophie Wilson to Collier, October 1, 1935; Archie Phinney to M. L. Burns, March 29; 1938; Phinney to Collier, March 19, 1939, NARS, RG 75, Pipestone School Agency. The correspondence concerning the Granite Falls group is voluminous and the information contained in it sometimes conflicting. -351- the horns of a legal dilemma. They could not organize under the IRA because they were not on a separate reservation, and land could not be purchased for a reservation until they had organized under the IRA. A legal way out was eventually found, but organization was temporarily stalled when it was discovered that each member of the group would have to renounce his rights at the jurisdiction where he was enrolled. When the Sissetons agreed to do that, plans went ahead once more. 35 Land purchases amounting to 745.66 acres were made in 1938, but the New Upper Sioux Indian Community, as it called itself, did not organize under the IRA. The legal obstacles having been removed or bypassed, only internal dissension could prevent consummation of the plan, and that is precisely what happened. A semblance of harmony was maintained while the constitution was being drawn up in 1936 (somewhat prematurely), but by late 1937 friction between the Sissetons and the Santee faction was so great that the suggestion was made that the latter join the Lower Sioux for organizational purposes. At one point a plan was approved by which only the non-Sissetons would be permitted to organize; it of course drew a protest from the Sissetons. 36 Curiously, although the majority had agreed to give up their rights on the Sisseton Reservation, their opponents were not willing to relinquish their reservation rights. Mrs. Wilson refused to give up her membership at Santee or forty acres of land she had acquired on the Sisseton Reservation through one of her husbands. She carried sufficient weight to guarantee that the first assignments made after the Upper Sioux reservation was proclaimed, on October 6, 1938, were given to members of her group. In 1939 she and some of her relatives visited Wash- ______ 35 Balmer to Collier, June 14, 1935, April 13, 1936, and September 22 and November 9, 1937; John Herrick to Balmer, August 11, 1936; Zimmerman to Balmer, April 19, 1937, ibid. The Yanktons were under the Rosebud jurisdiction after the Yankton Agency was closed in 1933. Balmer wrote Augustine L. Hook, Land Field Agent for the Bureau, on April 13, 1936, that there were seventeen Sisseton families, three Flandreau, one Mdewakanton, and six Santee and Yankton (no distinction made) at Granite Falls. At Birch Coulee there were twenty Mdewakanton families, eighteen Flandreau, and one Sisseton; and at Prairie Island there were twenty Mdewakanton families, three Flandreau, two Santee, and one Sisseton. The composition of those groups was actually more varied even than these figures show, for the McKinsey survey also showed seven whites, two Mexicans, and one Negro at Birch Coulee. Prairie Island has at various times included whites, Winnebagos, Chippewas, and even a Cherokee. 36 Wilson, William R. Cavender, and Fred Pearsall to Balmer, May 14, 1936; Joe Jennings to Indian Organization, December 10, 1937; Phinney to Burns, March 29, 1938; Balmer to Collier, August 29, 1938, ibid. -352- ington and talked with Bureau officials and with Senator Henrik Shipstead. Members of the Sisseton faction promptly wrote to Shipstead that the group he had met with were only a small minority in the community. Although this was true, upon her return Mrs. Wilson carried a roll of paper bearing the words "Ind Off Wash D.C.," with which she impressed people. Later she endeavored to gain support at Prairie Island, tried to prevent the Sissetons from using the community building erected in 1941, and kept up her agitation for years, always arguing that the Sissetons were intruders and should be excluded from any organization that might be set up. 37 In view of the factionalism prevailing and the reluctance of the majority to start a community organization under such circumstances, a Bureau field representative advised that the matter be dropped for the time. A board of trustees was set up, however, chiefly to advise the superintendent on the use of rehabilitation funds. The officers elected in 1942 were entirely from the Sisseton group. Torn by factionalism and lacking an effective community organization, the Upper Sioux colony has remained something of a thorn in the side of Bureau officials and the subject of controversy among the local white population. More than half the families live on fee patent lands along the highway between the IRA purchase and the city of Granite Falls. The center of their community is the Presbyterian church, which bears the name "Pejuhutazizi," a variation of the name of the Williamson mission. Upper Sioux thus lacks the unity of the other groups, though it is economically better off than Prairie Island, and in recent years the internal dissension may have diminished somewhat. 38 The Minnesota Sioux groups were caught up in the termination controversy during the 1950's. An effort was made to show that they were as nearly ready as any other Indians in the country to get along without Bureau supervision. It was pointed out that their educational, health, and welfare needs were handled largely by local agencies and _____ 37 Jennings and Phinney to Collier, October 17, 1938; John Roberts, Walter A. LaBatte, and Herbert Ironheart to Shipstead, February 17, 1939; Wilson, et al., to Collier, February 14, 1939; Balmer to Collier, March 22, 1939; affidavits from Wilson et al., to Shipstead, February 13, 1941; Phinney to Collier, August 9 and September 9 and 10, 1941, ibid. 38 Phinney to Collier, September 9, 1941; John McGue to Christian H. Beitzel, August 27, 1947; Zimmerman to D. E. Murphy, April 7, 1947; Balmer to Collier, September 25, 1943, ibid.; interview with Mr. Casimir L. LeBeau, Acting Superintendent, Minnesota Agency, Bemidji, Minnesota, July 30, 1965; Granite Falls Tribune, April 6, 1957. -353- that most of the Indians were employed in nearby towns or in the Minneapolis--St. Paul area. The land-assignment system had not worked because of the uncertainty of the individual's tenure and the restrictions imposed on the use of the land. The best solution, it was asserted, was to prepare an up-to-date census roll and divide up the lands and land proceeds as equitably as possible. 39 Discussions between Bureau representatives and the Indians went on in 1953 and 1954, and the councils at Prairie Island and Lower Sioux drew up resolutions calling for legislation to grant individuals fee simple title to the tribal lands. At Upper Sioux there was opposition to the plan, though the majority were represented as favoring it. On January 26, 1955, Senator Edward Thye introduced a bill (S. 704) in Congress to provide for termination of federal supervision over those lands. While the bill was in committee, opposition developed, not only from the Indians (who probably had not understood all the implications of termination when they went on record as favoring it), but also from some local white people, who realized that their welfare burden would be increased, and from the Governor's Commission on Human Rights, which said the bill "would not adequately protect the interests of the Indians in the interim period." 40 The bill never reached the Senate floor, and termination talk died down in the later 1950's. The three little Sioux communities in Minnesota are scarcely visible in the midst of the general white society. Because they are Indian colonies in an overwhelmingly white area, however, they receive more attention than their size would warrant. Prairie Island especially has been given considerable publicity in recent years, perhaps because of _____ 39 83rd Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 2680, pp. 73, 402-403. 40 Resolution adopted February 7, 1953, by Prairie Island Community Council; Area Director Don C. Foster to Commissioner Glenn Emmons, August 27, 1953; Mrs. William Lee to Senator Edward Thye, March 2, 1954; Acting Area Director K. W. Dixon to Emmons, March 25 and May 12, 1954; Emmons to Lee, April 7, 1954; Acting Area Director R. G. Fister to Emmons, October 28, 1954; Mrs. Joseph Campbell to Representative August H. Andresen, March 28, 1955; Emmons to Andresen, April 8, 1955; Area Director R. D. Holtz to Emmons, February 14, 1956; Congressional Record, 84th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 11954-11955. The above correspondence is on file at the Bureau of Indian Affairs Central Office, Washington, D.C. Portions of it were consulted at the Minneapolis Area Office. When the Pipestone jurisdiction was discontinued in 1951, these groups were placed temporarily under the Minneapolis Area Office and then, in 1954, turned over to the new Minnesota Agency. See "Background data relating to the Sioux Indians in the Southern part of Minnesota," August 1958 ( BIA release in possession of Prairie Island Community Council officers). -354-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:17:11 GMT -5
the apparent survival there of more of the old culture than at the other settlements. 41 The interest being shown in these communities suggests two things: that they have not been assimilated and that at least some white people familiar with them are concerned about the fact. To those who still see the solution to the Indian problem exclusively in terms of total assimilation, the survival of these colonies as identifiable social units reflects the failure of whites and Indians alike to achieve the desired goal. To others, who see nothing inherently bad in the retention of racial and community identity in the face of external pressures for conformity, the failure, to the extent that there is one, seems to be not the existence of these communities, but the persistence of poverty and its attendant evils in them. There is no doubt that people living at Prairie Island and Upper Sioux are poor. Nor is there much doubt that their poverty is due largely to the limited economic opportunities available to them. But one should not therefore conclude that more extensive land purchases in the 1930's would have solved the economic problem. No doubt the Indians would be better off if they had more land; but, given the recent trends in agriculture, it is unrealistic to suppose that many would succeed in the present highly competitive world of farming. Besides, most of them, like most white Americans, prefer jobs that take them off the land, either temporarily or permanently. Since all the Minnesota Sioux groups arc fairly close to towns large enough to afford some employment, many of their people commute to work; others have moved away to cities where jobs exist. Although the Minnesota Sioux are more fortunately located than their tribesmen in Nebraska or the Dakotas--a fact reflected in their relatively superior economic state--they live in the midst of a rural ____________________ 41 Among the more important articles about Prairie Island are Cynthia Kelsey, "Changing Social Relationships in an Eastern Dakota Community," Minnesota Academy of Science Proceedings, XXIV ( 1956), 12-19; Bud Ehlers, "Brotherhood Starts at Home," Red Wing Daily Republican Eagle, February 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 1961; Jay Edgerton, "Sioux Once Driven from Prairie Island," Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, October 30, 1949; and United States Public Health Service, "Basic Data: Prairie Island Sioux Community," December 7, 1959, ms. My own article, "The Prairie Island Community: A Remnant of Minnesota Sioux," Minnesota History, XXXVII ( September 1961), 271-282, is based principally on these and other published sources, the Sherman "Economic Survey," and personal interviews and correspondence with local people. An interesting, though not wholly reliable, article is Gareth Hiebert, "Sioux Village Offers Color of the Past," St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press, August 7, 1960.
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:17:45 GMT -5
-355- population that is also more prosperous than that of the more westerly states, and the contrast is apparent to all concerned. Furthermore, they account for a disproportionate share of welfare cases and arrests for misdemeanors and petty crimes; the illegitimacy rate is much higher than among their white neighbors, and the number of behavior problems among school children is greater. And no one should be surprised to learn that discrimination against them as Indians exists, however muted and disguised it may be. Yet it is possible to dwell too exclusively on the poverty and crime among the Indians and the prejudice against them among whites. Beyond question, these people are better off economically and socially than most of the other fragments of the Santee Sioux. To a visitor who has traveled widely on Indian reservations or even in poverty-stricken white rural areas, their communities, especially Lower Sioux, present a relatively prosperous appearance. 42 The shabbiness in evidence at Prairie Island and Upper Sioux may not be due entirely to poverty but may in part reflect a value system that places less emphasis on externals. Some Indians whose front yards are strewn with discarded beer cans and old tires may be earning as much money as the white owner of a house that is the epitome of neatness and order. Part of the effort that a white man might put into maintaining a house and yard that his neighbors are expected to envy may, among Indians, go to satisfy less tangible (but no less worth-while) desires. The celebrating and visiting other reservations that so many of the agents inveighed against in the nineteenth century still play an important role in the lives of the modern Sioux. Although the old ceremonies had largely died out among the Minnesota people before the ban was lifted in the 1930's, they continued to visit other reservations and take a more or less passive part in the celebrations there. In 1958, many years after the last drummer had died, the Prairie Island group inaugurated an annual pow-wow at which Indians from other places put on most of the show. Though never much of a financial success, the affair has continued ever since, chiefly as a means of bringing together Indians of various tribes and reaffirming their common identity as ____________________ 42 The appearance of prosperity may, of course, be deceptive. The neatness of houses and yards at Lower Sioux is probably due more to community spirit than to a superior economic position. No one there attempts to farm any more, and off-reservation employment is not always readily available. As a result, many younger people moved away in the middle 1960's. By 1967, the community numbered only nineteen families, and there were time empty houses. Interview with Mrs. Pearl Blue, Secretary, Lower Sioux Community Council, April 8, 1967.) -356- Indians. White visitors are welcome--sometimes they even take part in the dances--and account for a sizable share of the gate receipts, but the pow-wow is not primarily for their benefit. One may quibble about the authenticity of the dances and the costumes, but there is no denying that here is a small group of Indians, surrounded for the better part of a century by a wall of white people, who are asserting their racial identity and their determination to retain it. Nor is this pow-wow the only way the Minnesota Sioux demonstrate that they are Indians, sharers in the culture, history, and destiny of their race. In 1961 five delegates--two from Prairie Island, two from Lower Sioux, and one from Upper Sioux--attended the American Indian Chicago Conference, at which a "Declaration of Indian Purpose" was drawn up. It was a valuable experience for them, one which gave them perspective on the Indian problem as it concerns Indians of diverse backgrounds and degrees of acculturation. 43 If there is more hope for the Minnesota Sioux and the Flandreau group than for the Santees elsewhere, it is partly because they seem to be seeking a way to reconcile the need for improved material circumstances with the need to retain their Indianness. They may not have found the solution, but they are aware of the problem and are not lost in apathy and defeatism. Together with the geographical advantages they enjoy, this willingness to face their problems and to specify conditions for its solution makes the outlook for them brighter than for any of the other Santee groups. ____________________ 43 American Indian Chicago Conference, Declaration of Indian Purpose ( Chicago: American Indian Chicago Conference, 1961), pp. 41, 45. Two delegates from Devils Lake and one from Flandreau also attended; Santee and Sisseton were apparently unrepresented. -357- CHAPTER 18 The Santee Sioux and the Indian Problem THE SANTEE SIOUX have come a long way since their first encounter with the white man in the winter of 1660. The course they have followed in the past three centuries has, unfortunately, been mostly downward. This is not to deny that the European invader brought material advantages which the Indians might have been centuries in attaining unaided. The life of the Santee Sioux in his aboriginal state was no doubt nasty, brutish, and short. His descendants today live longer, eat more regularly, and enjoy greater control over the natural environment than he ever imagined possible. Yet the world of the Indian before the European intrusion was one of immense potentialities, comparable to the Mediterranean world a few centuries before Christ. In Middle America a relatively advanced civilization had been developed, and its influence had spread into the southern and southwestern portions of the present United States. Although the Sioux, like the Germans and Scandinavians at an earlier time, were still stone-age savages when white men first broke in on them, who can say that they would not, like the northern Europeans, have received the torch of civilization from the south in time? Except for the absence of large animals susceptible of domestication, there is nothing about the American environment to indicate -358- that the Indian would not have paralleled the white and yellow races in his progress toward civilization. Unfortunately his progress--if it was that--was interrupted, his world shattered, and his culture largely supplanted by that of his conqueror. Unlike the peoples of Asia and Africa, he was displaced by the white invader and left with pitiful parcels of land, where he was constantly under pressure to abandon even his identity and become a white man. It must be admitted, however, that nineteenth century Americans, like their colonial predecessors, had tenderer consciences than most conquerors. Early in the process of conquest, a few of them sensed at least dimly that the Indian was being deprived of his traditional way of life and that it was morally incumbent upon the white man to offer him a substitute. Because of the ethnocentrism of European man and especially Anglo-Saxon man, the only substitute even considered was European civilization in what was assumed to be its highest form--that embraced by the men whose uneasy consciences were prodding them to think about the fate of the Indian. This meant that the Indian had to become an independent farmer and a Christian--there was some disagreement as to the order in which these transformations were to take place--after which the rest would follow in due course. Tribal customs and language would disappear, the white man's way of life and the English language would be universally adopted, and eventually the Indian, if he did not literally die out, would be absorbed into the general population. This neat theory contained several fallacies. For one thing, almost all of those who sincerely wanted to find a way for the Indian to survive on a continent being overrun by white people failed to discriminate between the essential and the nonessential--between aspects of the white man's culture that the Indian would have to adopt in order to accommodate himself to the dominant civilization and aspects which he could very well ignore if only the white man would let him do so. Granted the inevitability of the occupation by Europeans of most of the American continent, there were two respects in which the Indian had to modify his culture if the two races were to share the continent in peace and harmony: Agriculture had to take the place of an economy based on hunting, fishing, and food-gathering; and intertribal warfare had to lose its centrality in the Indian system. Inasmuch as most tribes who originally occupied the present United States had some agriculture and some were almost totally dependent on it, the first of these necessary modifications would not have required so radical a transformation
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:18:36 GMT -5
-359- as many white men once believed. Because of the intimate connection of war with virtually every other aspect of life among most Indians, the second change would have been more difficult to effect, though an increased emphasis on agriculture would presumably have removed much of the motivation for warfare. These changes were necessary. But there was no necessity for the Indian to give up his language, his religion (except as it was connected with war), his dress, his family relationship system, or his preference for collectivism over individualism. Yet the agents and missionaries insisted that the whole cultural apparatus had to be jettisoned--quickly. They did not understand that culture change is selective; some features of the new culture are adopted and others rejected, and old traits are not abandoned until they have lost their usefulness and their hold on the imaginations of the people possessing them. There was no necessity for the native languages to be expunged; the advantages of knowing English would ultimately have become evident to those Indians most able to profit from a knowledge of the invader's language. Nor was there any good reason why a loincloth was less suitable attire for a farmer than pantaloons, why collective use of land was less satisfactory for people accustomed to such a system than ownership in fee simple, or why polygamy could not be tolerated until altered economic and social conditions made it no longer practicable. As for religion, there was no reason why an Indian farmer who danced to produce rain should be less successful than the white farmers who observed a day of prayer in hopes of bringing an end to the grasshopper plague of the 1870's. The people who wanted to save the Indian might have accomplished more if they had tried to do less. But two conditions were required for the necessary culture change to take place: time for the Indian to see the necessity for the change and to make it himself, and a place for him to work out his destiny in comparative freedom from overt external pressure. Neither of these was granted him. The whites wanted the land, and if the Indian were to survive, he would have to change his way of life in a hurry. There was always--and still is--a certain irritation with the slowness of the Indian to come around to the position designated for him by his conquerors. As Roy Harvey Pearce has said: Americans had always felt that the process of acculturation, of throwing off one way of life for another, would be relatively simple. To be civilized the Indian would have merely to be made into a farmer; this was a matter of an education for a generation or two. . . . But acculturation was not a simple process, as we know now, at least. For a culture is a delicately balanced -360- system of attitudes, beliefs, valuations, conditions, and modes of behavior; the system does not change and reintegrate itself overnight, or in a generation or two. 1 Even if the white man had been more modest in his demands for culture change by the Indian, he did not permit the Indian time enough to accomplish even the necessary changes. Nor was the Indian allowed to stay in one place long enough for the experiment to be tried. Two possibilities for acculturation existed: Indian tribes might either be permitted to remain as enclaves within predominantly white communities, learning from their neighbors much as European immigrants did, or they might be placed beyond the white settlements and there guided toward civilization by agents and missionaries, protected meanwhile from undesirable influences. Both techniques were tried, sometimes successively with a single tribe; all too often when the second expedient was adopted, white settlement caught up with the Indians, and they had to be moved repeatedly. There was much to be said for keeping the Indians in substantial isolation from the whites and letting this highly adaptable race pick and choose what it wished from the cultural inventory of the European within the framework of the existing system. That approach was tried repeatedly, by the British government late in the colonial period and by the United States government with its successive "Indian frontiers," and was finally abandoned only in 1907, when Indian Territory and Oklahoma became a single state. When Columbus landed in the Bahamas, the chance for the American Indian to develop a civilization independently of the Old World was doomed. But at any time between then and the end of the nineteenth century it would still have been possible to permit him to accept what he wanted of European civilization at his own speed and in his own way, if only the white man had exercised restraint and understanding. The various attempts to secure for the Indian an opportunity to adjust gradually to the encroaching civilization show that there were men of good will, often in positions of authority and influence, who possessed some measure of those qualities. But the mass of the American people did not. It is well to remember that the Indian's worst enemy was not the whiskey dealer, the rapacious fur trader, or the corrupt Indian agent, but the American frontiersman, whom every school child has been taught to revere as the embodiment of all that is ____ 1 Roy Harvey Pearce, The Savages of America: A Study of the Indian and the Idea of Civilization ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1953), p. 66. -361- admirable in the national character. We should not forget that the pioneer pictured by Walt Whitman as proudly bearing the torch of civilization into the wilderness was also the man who saw the Indian mainly as an obstacle to be removed, preferably with a bullet. That is why the idea of Indian enclaves in settled country never really worked so long as the land they occupied was good enough to attract white men. The Cherokees did the impossible and accepted the white man's civilization in the hope of being allowed to stay in their homeland of northwestern Georgia. But even this remarkable achievement did not save them from expulsion when popular sentiment became strong enough and when the President of the United States refused to back up the decision of the Supreme Court in their favor. In Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and finally Indian Territory itself the process was repeated. Grant Foreman tells, in The Last Trek of the Indians, how the civilized Wyandottes and the partially civilized Shawnees and Delawares were persecuted and harried out of Kansas by white men who wanted the farms they were successfully cultivating. If Doty's treaty had been passed by the Senate, the same thing would undoubtedly have happened in Minnesota sooner or later, as indeed it did when the Winnebagos were hustled off their reservation in 1863 on the pretext that they had at least sympathized with the Sioux during the uprising. Corrupt as the old Indian Bureau often was, its leaders were nearly always more sympathetic toward the Indian than the typical white frontiersman. So were many of the men in Congress, though they usually bowed to political expediency when their constituents brought pressure on them to get a particular band of Indians off some land that was wanted for settlement. Such responsiveness to public opinion, coupled with the fact that the men who formulated Indian policy, sympathetic though they might be, knew nothing about the processes of culture change and would have rejected with horror the notion of cultural relativity if it had been presented to them, largely explains the course taken by the United States government in its relations with the Indians in the nineteenth century. The amazing thing is that the Indians survived at all, with anything of their old culture clinging to them. Not all of the harm done to the Indians was the work of their enemies. So far as the assault on their culture is concerned, perhaps the greatest damage was done by those who regarded themselves as their best friends--the missionaries. Neither the loftiness of their motives nor -362- the selflessness of their devotion to the Indians they sought to convert is questioned here, nor does there seem to be any doubt that many of them knew the Indians better than any other white men did. But their singleminded determination to Christianize the Indians, born of their unshakable conviction that Christianity--their own particular brand of Christianity--was the true religion, blinded them to everything good in the Indian character that grew out of or could be identified with the native religions. In their reduction of the Dakota language to writing they performed a valuable service, just as some of the Ponds' writings provide much of the evidence on which modern ethnologists base their reconstructions of the aboriginal culture. A Mennonite missionary named H. R. Voth studied the Hopis intensively and made important contributions to the science of ethnology, but by his frontal assault on the value system of those people he also contributed to the factionalism and individual psychological instability that exist today among them. 2 Likewise the missionaries to the Sioux, with their stress on man's innate sinfulness and the need to accept Christianity, not only undermined the sanctions and controls of the old faith but probably damaged the emotional and psychological balance of those who came under their influence. Under the combined assault of the missionaries and the government officials, the culture of the Santee Sioux was shattered--not only those portions of it that were irreconcilable with the altered conditions imposed upon the Indians by European conquest, but also those features which in no way prevented the Indian from becoming a farmer and which might have had great utility as something to hold to during the transitional period. One can go further: much was lost that might have enabled the Indian to live in the modern world more successfully than the white American, whose extreme individualism often creates psychological tensions and sometimes renders him a menace to his fellows. If this thesis is accepted, then it becomes possible to argue that the greatest crime committed by the white man against the Indian was not in stealing from him a continent, but in denying to him the right to be an Indian--trying to deprive him of his racial and cultural identity. At the same time that the effort was being made to transform the Indian into a white man, he was losing the land base that afforded him ____ 2 Harry C. James, The Hopi Indians ( Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1956), p. 30. James describes the church erected by Voth as "an offensive eyesore on the landscape and a monument to religious persecution and intolerance." See also Laura Thompson, Culture in Crisis ( New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), pp. 35-36, 136-141. -363- the only means of competing economically with other Americans. In these two deprivations--loss of culture and loss of land--may be found the roots of the "Indian problem" as it exists today. Even if the cultural transformation had been as rapid and as complete as its proponents expected, most Indians could not have made a satisfactory living on the land left to them after allotment. Excoriation of nineteenth-century Indian policy and those who made and administered it will not seem like beating a dead horse if we recognize that the problem this policy was supposed to solve still exists, in different form. Most Indians, including the Santee Sioux, continue to be poorer than other Americans and to constitute a financial burden on the more prosperous segments of ours society. For the federal government to renege on its promises and abandon its services to the Indians would only transfer the problem to agencies less capable of handling it. Hence the termination talk of the 1950's was at best premature and at worst merely the latest disguise for a design to get at the Indians' remaining resources. If the Indian problem is to be solved within any finite period of time, the solution will have to proceed along the lines suggested by Gordon Macgregor in Warriors Without Weapons. Speaking of the Pine Ridge Sioux, he says: "They need a way of working themselves out of the present poverty through a permanent economy based on available resources. They need also greater self-direction to permit the regeneration of society." 3 The implication here and elsewhere in Macgregor book is that, although outside guidance and help will be needed, the solution will ultimately have to come from the Indians themselves. If external influences can work to relieve the anxiety and insecurity that beset them, he suggests, perhaps something will happen within the group that will enable them to improve their condition. Since the psychological problem of the Santee Sioux much resembles that of the Pine Ridge people, though in less acute form, the same principles ought to apply in any discussion of remedies for their plight. What can non-Indians do to bring about an improvement in the condition of the Indian? Even though the role white people can play in the regeneration of Indian society must and should be only a minor one, there are some things they can do. In the first place, they need to rid themselves of some stereotyped notions and hackneyed opinions. In the nineteenth century the standard argument was that the Indians' culture needed to be destroyed because it constituted an obstacle to their ____ 3 Gordon Macgregor, Warriors Without Weapons ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), p. 212. -364- success in a white-dominated world. In the twentieth century the line more commonly heard runs something like this: It's a pity that our grandparents insisted on stamping out the Indian culture, but they did a good job, and now there isn't enough left to bother trying to preserve; so the Indians had better hurry up and go the rest of the way to total acculturation. The fact is, however, that the Indian culture is not dead. Among some tribes it retains remarkable vitality, and enough survives even among the Santee Sioux to be taken into account whenever policy decisions are made with regard to them. Though some of the survivals of the aboriginal culture constitute a handicap to the Indians possessing them, non-Indians should not arrogate to themselves the right to decide which traits are serviceable and which are not and to deliberately try to wipe out the latter. There are enough pressures for conformity, both within the law and outside it, to accomplish this end indirectly. Throughout the long period that the United States government has been trying to solve the Indian problem, it has been faced with a series of dilemmas which really boil down to one. In the late nineteenth century the agent worried about how to get his Indians to support themselves by farming, when every step in that direction brought a loss in government assistance but Indians who made no effort to help themselves received rations and supplies gratis. The modern form of this dilemma amounts to this: How can the freedom necessary to develop responsibility be reconciled with the protection and guidance needed to prevent disaster? The Indian Bureau has again and again been accused of paternalism, and no doubt there was at one time ample justification for the charge. On some reservations the average Indian lacks initiative and tends to go to the superintendent about all sorts of trivial matters. This is the result of decades of paternalism and decisionmaking by white men for Indians. Beginning with the Meriam Report and more noticeably in the Collier administration, there was a concerted effort to turn more and more of the decision-making over to the Indians. If they make mistakes, those mistakes have a certain educational value, provided they are not too serious. The Santee Sioux have not, in the present century, been faced with decisions of such magnitude as the one the Indians of the Fort Berthold Reservation had to contend with when they received a settlement for land lost through the construction of the Garrison Dam and had to decide whether to use it for a tribal program or expend it in per capita payments. Furthermore, many of them have been making most of their own decisions for a long time; the Flandreau people and the Minnesota -365- colonies have experienced little of the paternalism that was characteristic at Fort Berthold and Pine Ridge in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Because of their comparative freedom, they tend to resent evidences of paternalism. When a Red Wing newspaper published a series on "Brotherhood Begins at Home," the president of the Prairie Island community council replied with a courteous but critical letter, in which he objected to the assumption that non-Indians know better than the Indian what is good for him and that they are therefore justified in determining the course of Indian policy, regardless of the wishes of the beneficiaries. Whether these implications were really present in the series is less important than the Indian reaction. The Prairie Island leader also stressed the right of a group of people to retain its own identity--a "peculiarity in the Indian character elsewhere called patriotism by other Americans." 4 His comment may have been an oblique reference to the view, explicitly stated in the series, that the ultimate destiny of the Indian is to be biologically as well as culturally assimilated to the dominant white race. This notion, expressed by William Byrd in the early eighteenth century, seems to have more staying power than almost any other myth about the Indian, despite the fact that, while full-blood Indians are a dwindling minority, the proportion of Indian blood in people who identify as Indians may well be increasing. Not only are Indians growing in numbers; they are remaining Indians. Despite a constant draining off to urban centers, most reservations continue to be overpopulated; and those individuals and families who move away tend to gather in Indian communities and to associate chiefly with Indians in their new homes. In 1954 participants in the Wenner-Gren Conference at the University of Chicago discussed the question of assimilation and concluded that, although individual Indians are disappearing into the general population, most Indian tribes are holding onto their identity. Speaking of the possibility that the present Indian communities might vanish within the foreseeable future, they expressed the view that no one could expect "such group assimilation within any short, predictable time period, say, one to four generations. The urge to retain tribal identity is strong, and operates powerfully for many Indian groups." 5 _____ 4 Letter from Norman Campbell, in Red Wing Daily Republican Eagle, March 6, 1961. Campbell wondered, in view of our record in Indian affairs, "How can a nation like ours venture forth to solve human relations problems on a world wide scale?" 5 John Provinseet al., "The American Indian in Transition," American Anthropologist, LVI ( June 1954), 388. Another symposium on Indian affairs concluded that -366-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:19:19 GMT -5
Although the people at the Wenner-Gren Conference were probably thinking mainly of the large western reservations, their conclusion applies with almost equal validity to the small groups of Santee Sioux scattered through the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Minnesota. Everywhere except at Santee and Lower Sioux their numbers are increasing or at least holding their own. The number of colonies in Minnesota has dwindled since the first census was taken in 1883, but those that have disappeared--Faribault, Hastings, Wabasha--were gone by the first decade of the twentieth century. Except for Prior Lake, where the land holdings are scattered, the others at which land was purchased have survived and give no indications of disappearing. If anything, the Indians'group consciousness and sense of identity seem to be increasing. Another phenomenon observed among Indians today is pan-Indianism--the tendency for people to think of themselves as Indians rather than as Sioux or Chippewas or Winnebagos and to exchange surviving elements of their once diverse cultures. Besides such surface manifestations as the almost universal adoption of the Plains Indian headdress, pan-Indianism is evident in the growing awareness by Indians of their common problems and a growing consciousness that the old tribal differences are insignificant in comparison to what they all have in common. At times, when old grudges against the white man are aired, it can take a somewhat belligerent form. A newspaper report of the 1963 meeting of the National Congress of American Indians was headlined "Indian Battles for Rights -- in Reverse" and went on to say that Indians want, not integration, but recognition of their identity as a separate race. Robert Burnette, retiring president of the NCAI, was reported as saying, "We are first-class citizens and more." 6 Although this attitude has not manifested itself openly among the Santee Sioux, it promises to become a force to be reckoned with there as elsewhere. Perhaps such an attitude, though to a white person it may sound chilling or ludicrous, depending on how seriously he takes it, carries ____________________ "Indian groups residing on reservations (homelands) will continue indefinitely as distinct social units" and that "even though many Indians continue to live in separate communities with some distinctive cultural patterns, integration into the life of the larger society can still take place." See Edward P. Dozier, George E. Simpson, and J. Milton Yinger, "The Integration of Americans of Indian Descent," American Academy of Political and Social Science Annals, CCCXI ( 1957), 165. These authors distinguish sharply between "integration" and "assimilation." 6 Indian Battles for Rights--in Reverse, Minneapolis Star, September 13, 1963. A useful discussion of pan-Indianism is James H. Howard, "Pan-Indian Culture of Oklahoma," Scientific Monthly, LXXXI ( November 1955), 215-220.
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:19:43 GMT -5
-367- with it the real hope for the Indian. The nonwhite peoples of the world have been asserting themselves in recent years, and the long domination by Europeans of Asia and Africa has been broken. Why should not the American Indian demand more for himself, now that the emperor has been discovered to have no clothes on, the growling dog to have no teeth? The growing strength of such organizations as the NCAI, with their potential for influencing the course of legislation, suggests that Indians are becoming more articulate. In the nineteenth century too few Indians had acquired enough education to be really articulate, and those who had were inclined to identify with the whites and to share the prevailing views on civilizing the Indian. But now that educational opportunities are reaching the reservation Indian, there is hope that a considerable body of educated Indians will emerge who are not alienated from their people and who will insist on a better life for those who choose not to migrate to the cities where young people of all races have traditionally sought jobs. Indians would, of course, be less reluctant to leave the reservation if they could be reasonably sure of a friendly reception elsewhere. This does not mean simply a job for which they are qualified; so long as an Indian is second choice for a job, he has little opportunity to demonstrate his qualifications. And so long as the stereotype of the lazy, unreliable Indian persists, he will be second choice at best. Since it is currently unfashionable to express such racial stereotypes publicly, one seldom encounters this view in books, magazines, or newspapers, but anyone who lives near an Indian reservation or even talks casually with non-Indians in such a community soon hears it expressed. And occasionally it finds its way into print. In 1960, Desert magazine received a letter from a reader protesting against the amount of "Indian rot" published in the magazine. "If you would like to see Indians as they really are," the writer advised, "go up to Parker, Arizona any weekend and hang around the beer joints. Parker is a real Indian town." 7 Discrimination against Indians is an established fact in both Dakotas and exists in less obvious form in Nebraska and Minnesota. Racial prejudice among school children is one of the reasons for the high drop-out rate among Prairie Island Indians attending the Red Wing school, according to a study prepared in 1964. 8 Although the burden of conquering prejudice ____________________ 7 Letter from Will T. Scott, in Desert, XXIII ( October 1960), 4. Scott claimed to know Indians, having lived most of his life in Indian country and shared his blankets with the Apache scouts who were tracking Pancho Villa in 1916. 8 Red Wing Daily Republican Eagle, September 11, 1964. This study was conducted
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:20:32 GMT -5
-368- falls mainly on the non-Indian, there is much that the Indian can do to prove the inaccuracy of sweeping generalizations about his race. Not all of the Indians' unwillingness to leave their reservations is due to fear of discrimination against them elsewhere. Many Indians, like people of other races, feel a deep attachment to their home territory, however limited its resources may be and however dreary it may look to the casual visitor. Whatever its limitations, the reservation is a place where an Indian can be an Indian, where he does not have to adapt himself to alien manners and alien values. This desire to remain an Indian is something else that white Americans find difficult to understand, perhaps because most of them are descended from people who gave up their traditional ways to become Americans. Yet until it is understood, non-Indians cannot fulfill their rightful role in helping the Indian to achieve his destiny. So long as this determination to remain an Indian is thought of in purely negative terms--as sheer stubbornness or as a defense mechanism to cover a sense of inadequacy--the general public will continue to propose solutions that demand a reorientation of the Indian personality along white American lines. The Meriam Report stressed the need to consider the desires of the individual Indian in any policy planning. Specifically, it said, "He who wishes to merge into the social and economic life of the prevailing civilization of this country should be given all practicable aid and advice in making the necessary adjustments. He who wants to remain an Indian and live according to his old culture should be aided in doing so." 9 Under the Collier administration this philosophy was adopted and practiced, but during the 1950's attention was concentrated on helping the Indian to leave the reservation and "join the mainstream of American life," to quote the cliché so overused by the advocates of termination and relocation. As long as there are plenty of white Americans who have no desire to "join the mainstream of American life," what wonder is it that an even higher proportion of Indians do not? In a pluralistic society that professes to prize diversity (even while it embraces a surface uniformity), surely there is room for groups as well as individuals who depart noticeably from the norm. Every society ____ by a "committee of welfare, juvenile and school officials." Children questioned said that about 25 per cent of the white children were unfriendly toward Indians; teachers were said to give fair treatment to all. 9 Lewis Meriam et al., The Problem of Indian Administration ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928), p. 88. The Meriam commission pointed out that unless the Indians who wished to stay Indians were aided, they might become a menace. -369- needs its marginal men--its Thoreaus and its Veblens--who are in it but not of it and hence are in a position to criticize it more perceptively than those who participate fully in it. Can American society not profit from marginal groups as well as marginal men--provided, of course, that they are not marginal simply in the sense of being economically deprived? Indians have often proved shrewd critics of the white world. A body of educated, articulate Indians who remained outside the mainstream of American life could be of incalculable benefit to the society surrounding them. Perhaps Americans would get along better with the rest of the world if they were more frequently reminded that they have in their midst people who do not wholly share the prevailing value system. They need to know that their value system is not the only one that men have found worth embracing. The Sentinel, the organ of the National Congress of American Indians, stated the case well for the preservation of Indian value systems: We must have a variety of real values and differences so that any person has many real options for living in our society. We believe that allowing total development of Indian communities on their own basis will be a major step in providing that variety in American life which is so necessary to a healthy society. 10 Understanding the Indian's point of view and his desire to remain an Indian requires knowledge. Hence perhaps the most important way the white man can help solve the Indian problem is to inform himself on the history and present condition of these people about whom he really knows very little. Indifference and apathy are more serious obstacles to true understanding than outright prejudice, if only because they are vastly more widespread. For every white man who nourishes active hostility toward Indians, there are hundreds who neither know anything about them nor care to know anything. Those who think they know something may only be the victims of myths and stereotypes. To stir people out of their ignorance and complacency is one of the tasks of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 1948, Gordon Macgregor wrote that an agency superintendent "must always continue to enlighten the general public on Indian affairs for better Indian-white relations, and to overcome the unbelievable amount of mis[in]formation and prejudice about Indians." 11 But superintendents are usually too busy with ______ 10 NCAI Sentinel, XI (Winter 1966), 2. 11 Gordon Macgregor. "The Resources, People and Administration of Fort Berthold Reservation North Dakota," Missouri River Basin Investigations Reports, No. 60, p. 15. Mimeographed ms loaned by the Aberdeen Area Office, Bureau of Indian Affairs. -370- their main job to be able to devote much time to public relations work. The ball must be carried a good share of the time by people outside the Indian Service, people whose access to information may be more limited than that of the Bureau official. In enlightening the general public, as in dispelling prejudice, considerable responsibility rests on the Indian himself. Some forwardlooking tribes are undertaking their own public relations programs. Museums, usually run jointly by the tribe and the Bureau, can be found here and there; newsletters are published by several groups; and of course many Indians contribute letters to newspapers and thus reach a wider audience than they could perhaps reach in any other way. 12 Indians can also help improve their collective image by cooperating, as most do, with serious investigators belonging to other races. Like other people, especially those in lower economic groups, Indians resent anything that looks like snooping into their private affairs, and the line separating a mere frivolous curiosity from a scientific or scholarly interest is sometimes pretty thin. The more thoroughly and objectively their history and contemporary culture are studied, however, the better chance there is that the American public, which finally determines the general course of Indian policy, will awaken from its complacency and lend its support to a sound program. The history of the Santee Sioux is the history of the American Indian. Mutually profitable early contacts with Europeans were followed by a massive onslaught on the native culture, partly deliberate, partly fortuitous. Then came forced land cessions, removal to a reservation, smoldering resentment that erupted in a bloody but abortive protest, vindictive punishment, and a long, dismal period of attempted acculturation, ending in poverty and demoralization. If the outlook has been brighter since 1933, the flicker of hope has by no means yet been fanned into a real flame. Like their past, the future of the Santee Sioux will probably parallel that of the rest of the Indians in this country. A gifted, resilient, durable people, they may yet realize something of their potential if the white man will give them a chance. ____ 12 The anti-Indian tirade that appeared in the letter in Desert magazine elicited a response (among many others) from an Indian who remarked: "The white man looks down on the Indian for some unexplained reason. Those who claim to 'know' Indians take it for granted that some mysterious law of life made them superior to the Indian people--or any other dark skinned race, for that matter." See letter from Jimmie. James , in Desert, XXIII ( December 1960), 6. An agency superintendent, who prefers not to be identified, told the author: "This town is full of 'Indian experts,' who know less about Indians than people a thousand miles away." -371- Epilogue In one respect, Nebraska's Santee Sioux Reservation reached its low point in the early and middle 1960s, when the population dipped below three-hundred. The Santee post office had been discontinued in 1957, there were several vacant buildings in the village, and most of the Indian-owned land (both tribal and allotted) was leased to white farmers. One might have felt safe in predicting that the reservation would soon be abandoned except for a few elderly people who had nowhere else to go. Yet precisely the opposite occurred, with the result that Santee has become a busy, vibrant community, its population and employment opportunities growing, its identity and sense of Indianness revived. Just when and why the turnaround occurred is not entirely clear. It had begun before the end of the 1960s, and it was partly the result of an infusion of federal funds during that decade. A housing project created jobs, which in turn attracted people back to the reservation who had moved to Sioux City, Norfolk, or elsewhere in search of employment. The change was perceptible by 1972, in the form of a flock of new houses on the site of the former agency and the bituminous surfacing of the road from Nebraska State Highway 12 to Santee. These and other changes made it possible to venture the guess that "there [might] be occurring a movement back to the reservation and a revival of a sense of group identity." 1 The revival at Santee has manifested itself in many ways and may be considered under the headings of economic, educational, and cultural (or spiritual) renewal. Although many members of the tribe continue to leave the reservation, temporarily or permanently, to find jobs elsewhere, there are more jobs at home than there were in the early 1960s. Some of these are provided by the educational system: a Head Start program, a kindergarten through twelfth-grade school, and the Santee Campus of the Nebraska Indian Community College. Many people work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Public Health Service, the tribal government, and the state of Nebraska, which contracts with the tribe. Bector Dickinson, a phar- -373- maceutical manufacturer, has a plant on the reservation that employs sixteen people and may increase the number. 2 The tourist industry, centered on Lewis and Clark Lake, has not benefited the tribe greatly thus far, but it holds out promise for the future. Skiing, water sliding, and other sports have been developed commercially by private concerns in the Devil's Nest area, and the tribe, which owns 1,500 acres of land there, has been doing some preliminary negotiating for a share in this enterprise. Unlike the other Santee groups in neighboring states, the Nebraska branch of the tribe has not yet entered the field of commercial gaming, chiefly owing to restrictions placed on gambling by the state. Negotiations were underway in the summer of 1993, however, and it seemed only a matter of time before the tribe would be able to enter this lucrative endeavor that has radically changed the economic condition of so many Indian groups. 3 Construction on a succession of housing projects, most of them carried out in cooperation with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has been another source of employment. These projects have come in a series of spurts, in 1969-70, 1974-75, and 1980, and have markedly altered the appearance of the Santee community. 4 The largest cluster of houses is located west of the site of the now-vanished Santee Normal Training School, along blacktop streets that wind over the gently rolling landscape. The care with which the houses and lawns are maintained gives the lie to the old stereotyped view, once held by many whites, that Indian dwellings are invariably neglected and acquire a clutter of dead car bodies and other junk. The Nebraska reservation differs from the other Santee reservations in that more use is being made of tribal lands. In 1974 about 2,400 acres were acquired for a tribally owned ranch, which now supports about 600 cattle, mostly cows. Moreover, there has been a sizable increase in the amount of tribal land--from 2,563 acres in 1960 to about 20,000. As tribal officials point out, this is only a fraction of the original 115,000 acres, but at least it represents an improvement in recent decades. 5 All in all, it is estimated that between 200 and 250 people (out of a 1990 reservation population of 740) are employed on or adjacent to the reservation. 6 Although this figure leaves much room for improvement, it does suggest a better state of affairs than prevails on many Indian reservations. Economic development is on the upswing, and if casino gambling comes to Santee, together with a -374- planned expansion of the tribal ranch and a greater share in the tourist potential, the reservation community will be in far better shape than anyone would have expected in the bleak years that preceded the exciting events of the past quarter-century. Except for the Santee Normal Training School, the reservation was without its own educational facilities after the closing of the boarding school in 1909. Although it was served by district schools for many years, the Indian people yearned for their own school, which could follow a curriculum more suited to their children's needs. Their wishes were finally realized in 1974-75, when a school was built at Santee. At first limited to kindergarten through eighth grade, it subsequently added a four-year high school. The needs of at least some of the young people for post-secondary education are met by the fully accredited two-year community college, one of three branches of the Nebraska Indian Community College. Tribal officials, presumably reflecting the wishes of their constituents, would like to see an increase in the amount of specifically Indian cultural materials in the curriculum, especially at the secondary level, taught by native people. 7 As on other Indian reservations, there has been at Santee a rejection of the assimilationist philosophy that dominated Indian policy until the 1930s, if not longer, and a heightened interest in the traditional culture, which, contrary to the beliefs of many whites early in this century, was not dying but only suppressed. An annual powwow is held the third week of June, when many of the 2,260-plus enrolled members who live away from the reservation come "home" and join in the festivities, along with Indians from other reservations. And of course Santees attend and often participate in similar celebrations around the country and in Canada. On a deeper level there is increased interest, especially on the part of young people, in the aboriginal culture that government agents and missionaries tried so hard to stamp out in the late nineteenth century. Tribal leaders have expressed the belief that three or four generations will be needed for the recovery of the old culture and for acceptance by the non-Indian population of their neighbors' right to preserve this culture. 8 Meanwhile, the Indian people are becoming increasingly comfortable in and accepted by the white world around them. In addition, most of them consider as part of their history the missionary culture represented by the Santee Normal Training School, the site of which is regarded as a sort of shrine. The Santee Sioux, if they have not solved all their problems yet--who in -375- our society has?--seem well on their way toward doing so. The recovery evident at Santee is even more strikingly noticeable at the Sisseton, or Lake Traverse, Reservation, where conditions in the 1960s were as dismal as anywhere on the northern Great Plains. A much larger--and growing--population both heightened the seriousness of the problems and enhanced the possibilities for their solution. With help from outside the reservation, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux have improved their lot to a degree that could scarcely have been imagined in the mid-1960s. And in the process the tribe, seemingly acculturated beyond any hope of reversal in the 1930s, has recovered much of its traditional culture and seems determined to retain it and pass it on to the next generation. From a reservation population of 2,315 in 1960, the tribe has grown to about 5,500, with roughly an equal number of enrolled members living off the reservation. For election purposes, the reservation is divided into seven districts, each containing at least one population center: Old Agency, Big Coulee, Enemy Swim, Long Hollow, Buffalo Lake, Heipa-Veblen, and Lake Traverse. As has been the case ever since the opening of the reservation in 1891, following allotment, the Indian communities are interspersed with white-owned farms and villages predominantly white in population. 9 (The official South Dakota state highway map does not recognize the Sisseton reservation, though it shows all the others in the state except the Yankton Reservation.) A major concern in the 1960s was the land situation. As a legacy of allotment, not much more than 10 percent of the original reservation of nearly a million acres remained in Indian hands. Only 650 acres of this was tribally owned; except for 122 acres of governmentowned land, the rest--109,378 acres--was allotted land, much of it in a tangled heirship status and thus to all practical purposes unusable. After several failed attempts over a period of nearly fifty years, Congress finally passed an heirship bill in 1984. The provisions of the act (Public Law 98-513) limited the inheritance of allotted lands to close relatives and to interests of at least two and half acres (outside municipalities). If there were no close relatives or if the person's interest was less than two and a half acres, the land would go to the tribe. Heirs must also be members of the tribe. Nonmembers would receive only a life estate; upon their decease the land would pass to the tribe. The act also granted the right of eminent domain to the tribe for such purposes as "to eliminate fractional heirship interests. . . . , to consolidate tribal interests in land, to develop agricul- -376- ture and . . . for other public purposes. . . ." As a result of this legislation, there has been a substantial shift of land from individual ownership to tribal ownership. By 1993 the allotted lands were down to about 81,000 acres, the tribal lands up to about 27,000 acres. 10 The land problem at Sisseton has not, of course, been solved. The individual tracts are too small for efficient operation under modern conditions, and so not many Indians even try to farm. But as elsewhere, the land is perceived as the most valuable resource the Indians have left, and they are determined to hang on to it. There are plans for using it more productively, too. In the summer of 1993 a proposal for setting up a tribally owned cattle operation was being considered. At the same time it was planned to bring 65 buffalo to the reservation in the fall. 11 Fortunately, the land is not the only potential source of income available to the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux, many of whom find employment in industry, both on and off the reservation. Besides the various types of government jobs mentioned in connection with Santee, there are two small industrial enterprises on the reservation: Power Sentry, an electronics plant, and Dakota Western, a plastic bag factory that employs about 23 people. Watertown, a city of 15,649 inhabitants about sixty miles from the center of the reservation, has a quilting factory and a chicken processing plant; the latter has proposed operating a bus for the convenience of Indian employees living at home. 12 The Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux have also joined the great number of Indian groups that have taken up commercial gaming as a source of income. Agency Bingo, on the reservation, and the Dakota Sioux Casino in Watertown are owned and operated by the tribe. The former employs 45 Indians, the latter 153. Besides the employment opportunities offered by these facilities, receipts are used to underwrite tribal programs. 13 The Lake Traverse Reservation has undergone changes of a highly visible nature since the 1960s. In 1974 the agency, which had been in the town of Sisseton ever since 1923, was moved to a site near the old Good Will Mission, where there was still a Presbyterian church. This site, renamed Agency Village, became the principal center of activity on the reservation, with a large housing project, the tribal offices, Agency Bingo, a store called the Trading Post containing a postal station, a coin laundry, a credit union, the educational complex, and other conveniences. Although some tribal facilities are in Sisseton, the creation of Agency Village has given the Indian peo- -377-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:20:56 GMT -5
ple a political, economic, and cultural center that they can regard as their own and not part of the predominantly non-Indian town. The educational complex referred to alone consists of the Tiospa Zina Tribal School, offering a course of study from kindergarten through twelfth grade, and the Sisseton Wahpeton Community College, an accredited two-year institution. The school was started in 1981 (though the present physical plant came along later) and from the beginning included both elementary and secondary work. The school has designed its curriculum to suit the needs of its students, including an emphasis on native culture. One issue of the newspaper project a list of thirteen Dakota words, with pronunciations, that the TZTS students were learning. Unlike its counterpart at Santee, the community college is an independent institution, not a branch of a larger system. 14 Inasmuch as a lack of decent living quarters was a long-standing deficiency on the Lake Traverse Reservation, much effort in recent years has gone into housing projects. Besides the new houses at Agency Village, there are similar, if smaller, clusters at eight other locations, including the towns of Sisseton and Peever. The SissetonWahpeton Housing Authority, working in cooperation with HUD, has been responsible for these projects. As at Santee, the houses and yards appear to be well maintained. While thanking the low-rent housing tenants for keeping up their lawns, the Housing Authority has had to remind them that they are responsible for the lawnmowers they sign out. 15 The native culture, under assault from the beginning of EuroAmerican contanct until the 1930s, has shown the same resilience and survival power on the Lake Traverse Reservation that it has elsewhere. It persists not only in the schools but also in such forms as the annual tribal celebration. In early July 1993 the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux held the 126th annual wacipi, or powwow. The Fourth of July event had an international as well as an intertribal flavor; one of the announcers was from the Sioux Valley (Oak River) reserve near Griswold, Manitoba. 16 Another vehicle for the expression and transmission of community spirit is the official tribal newspaper, Sota Iya Ye Yapi, founded in 1968. A professionally edited weekly, it concentrates on news of interest to the people of the reservation. The issue for June 17, 1993, for example, contained articles on the dedication of the monument commemorating the repatriation from the Smithsonian Institution of the remains of 34 tribesmen, an announcement of a special elec- -378- tion to determine the wishes of tribal members concerning a selfgovernance initiative, the approval of a grant from the National Archives to enable the community college to establish a tribal archive, the eighth-grade graduation at the tribal school, and a report on the stocking of reservation lakes with walleye fry, to mention only the most conspicuous. There were also shorter items on topics of more widespread concern, such as ways of recycling oil, examples of sexual harassment, HIV testing and counseling, and an aerobics class. As this sampling of newspaper items suggests, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux resemble other people in that they are interested chiefly in matters that affect them immediately and personally. Some of these matters are the same as those that concern the general population, a few are of special interest to Indians in general, and many have to do with events on the Lake Traverse Reservation. Although the people living on the reservation have much more contact with the outside world than their forebears did a century ago, there is a very definite consciousness of themselves as a people, with interests and concerns different from those of the surrounding white population--this despite the deliberate attempt by the agents of the Indian Bureau to scatter the Indians over the reservation so that they and the whites would mingle and eventually form one people. The Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe and its reservation are much larger than the other fragments into which the Eastern Sioux were split following the events of 1862. Despite the dispersed nature of Indian settlement on the reservation, therefore, the tribe is better situated to preserve its identity and perhaps even to constitute an economically viable unit than the other groups who claim descent from the four subtribes that lived in what is now Minnesota at the time of the earliest major contacts with Europeans. If what the tribe has accomplished in the quarter-century since 1968--reflected in the distinctly upbeat tone of the tribal newspaper--can be taken as an augury of the future, it stands an excellent chance of achieving its goals. The history of the Devils Lake Reservation since the late 1960s parallels that of Sisseton, even to the passage of an act by Congress to facilitate land consolidation. As on the Lake Traverse Reservation, there have been changes, mostly for the better, both visible and invisible to the eye of the visitor. Here too there have been economic developments of considerable importance, improvements in housing, and expansion of the educational system. Although the heirship problem at Devils Lake had not reached -379- the proportions noted at Sisseton, by the 1960s it was serious enough. In an attempt to alleviate the problem before it worsened, Congress in January 1983 passed Public Law 459, Title II of which was called "The Indian Land Consolidation Act." Title I, which applied specifically to the Devils Lake Sioux Tribe, authorized the Secretary of the Interior to acquire by purchase or other means, including exchange, additional lands within the boundaries of the reservation, such lands to be held in trust for the tribe or individual members thereof. Another provision authorized the tribe to purchase inherited lands from nonmembers. 17 Title II (which applied to Indian tribes generally) provided for the purchase by the tribe of inherited fractional interests with the consent of over 50 percent of the owners, subject to certain restrictions, and for conveyance to the tribe of inherited interests amounting to less than 2 percent of the total acreage of the tracts involved. It will be seen that, although specific provisions of this act differ from provisions of the Sisseton bill, the intent is much the same: to put a stop to the further division of inherited lands and to make it easier for the tribe to build up its land base. The law contained one interesting provision not found in its Sisseton counterpart. Section 109 states that the "Devils Lake Sioux Reservation, North Dakota, is hereby declared the permanent homeland of the Devils Lake Sioux Tribe." 18 In 1960 the Devils Lake Reservation embraced 49,193 acres of allotted land, 2,080 acres of government-owned land, and only 120 acres of tribal land. A decade after passage of the land consolidation act the figures were 39,950.4 acres of allotted land, 268 acres of government-owned land, and, 11,329.6 acres of tribal land. 19 Although the total acreage reveals a net gain of only 155 acres, there was probably a net loss in the two decades before passage of the act, more than offset by acreage acquired after 1983. In any event, an increase in the tribe's land base is no longer the most reliable measure of its economic well-being, for the Devils Lake Sioux no longer rely on farming as their principal source of income, as their ancestors were expected to do in the late nineteenth century and even, to some degree, as recently as the 1930s. Industry has come to the Devils Lake Sioux in the form of two tribally owned plants: the Sioux Manufacturing Corporation, which employs about 110, and Dakota Tribal Industries, employing about 200. The former began in partnership with Brunswick Corporation, which originally owned 60 percent of the business to the tribe's 40 percent. Eventually the tribe bought out Brunswick and now owns 100 per- -380- cent of the firm, which manufactures camouflage netting, helmets, side panels for Bradley personnel carriers, and other military equipment. 20 Dakota Tribal Industries, which was incorporated in 1985 and began operation in December 1986, also manufactures military items and, like Sioux Manufacturing, has a contract with the Department of Defense. Both produced articles used in Operation Desert Storm. In 1990 Dakota Tribal Industries was declared Minority Business of the Year nationally. 21 Devils Lake has got into the commercial gaming business to an extent comparable to the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe. At St. Michael, adjacent to the former Catholic school, the Dakotah Bingo Parlor and the Dakota Casino cater to the gambling instincts of visitors and incidentally employ about 175 people. Most of the receipts are used for economic and social development on the reservation. In July 1993 a third gaming emporium opened at Tokio, another small reservation town, where a member of the tribe also operates a grocery store-gasoline station. 22 Other individually owned businesses include a grocery store, a coin laundry, a restaurant, an electronics store, and a video rental ("Sioux-Per Video Vending and Sound"), all at Fort Totten, and the Mission Market at St. Michael. There are plans to promote tourism, especially at Tokio, and there is talk of starting a tribal bakery. 23 Despite all the economic activity reflected by these industries and businesses, and despite the jobs provided by the BIA, the tribal government, and the educational complex of the reservation, Devils Lake has a long way to go before it reaches anything like full employment. According to the tribal planner, unemployment, which once ran to over 80 percent, had dropped to 68 percent by the summer of 1993--a far cry from the small Sioux communities in Minnesota, where the claim is made that everyone who wants a ob now has one. 24 Devils Lake has shared with other reservations a great improvement in housing since the 1960s. Beginning in the next decade, several housing projects have changed living conditions for the better. As at Sisseton and Santee, relatively new houses, set along newly laid-out streets, cover substantial areas at Fort Totten, St. Michael, and elsewhere. The housing projects also involve refurbishing older houses, including those built during the 1970s. For the lowest-income people the turnkey, or mutual self-help, project has provided inexpensive housing. Much of the construction has been done by contractors who are tribal members. Water and sewer service is pro- -381- vided by the tribally owned Sioux Utilities Commission; electricity is furnished by private utility companies. 25 Like Agency Village on the Lake Traverse Reservation, For Totten is served by two educational complexes: the Four Winds Tribal School and the Little Hoop Community College. Four Winds, opened in 1983, occupies a stunning building located on the crest of a hill. Grades from kindergarten to eighth grade are tribally operated, and grades nine through twelve constitute District 30, Benson County. In 1903 the elementary school enrolled 505 pupils, the high school 125. As at the other tribal schools, there is an emphasis on Dakota woonspe--learning Dakota culture--along with the standard curriculum of North Dakota schools. 26 Little Hoop Community College was chartered in 1974, when the tribe entered into a bilateral agreement with Lake Region Junior College, in the city of Devils Lake. The following year it began operation with offices in the tribal building and a staff of four. In 1980 the BIA conducted a feasibility study, as a result of which the college became an independent, tribally, controlled community college. In 1982 the bilateral agreement with Lake Region was terminated, and two years later Little Hoop moved into buildings formerly occupied by the Bureau-operated elementary and secondary schools. 27 Granted accreditation in 1990 by the North Central Association, Little Hoop offers both vocational and academic programs leading to the one-year vocational certificate and the two-year associate degree. It employs 13 full-time instructors and about 90 part-time instructors and has an enrollment of some 275 students. The enrollment is expected to increase when the college begins offering a program in casino training. The college operates on the semester system and schedules its classes with an eye to the available time of people with jobs and those in need of remedial work. It also administers the Comprehensive Child Development Program, the Office of Substance Abuse Program, the community library, and the Head Start program. Its 1993 budget was a little over $4 million. 28 In the 1960s the Devils Lake reservation was in the poorest shape economically of any of the Santee Sioux communities. So it is not surprising that in the 1990s its condition was less impressive than that of some of the other reservations. Despite the 68 percent unemployment figure, however, there was an air of optimism about Fort Totten, a sense of accomplishment and an expectation of better things to come. Like their fellows at Sisseton, the Devils Lake Sioux have regained a stronger pride in their culture and a conviction of their abil- -382- ity to solve their lingering problems. Perhaps it is symbolic of this new attitude that membership on the tribal council is now a fulltime, salaried job. The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe gives the impression not so much of having changed direction sharply since the 1960s, as Santee and Sisseton do, as of having continued moving more rapidly in the direction already evident at that time. Finding employment locally and within commuting distance, the Flandreau people were relatively well off economically then and displaying a revived interest in their traditional culture. Much the same might be said of them today, except that they now enjoy more sources of income and seem to evince a stronger sense of community spirit and Indian identity. There have been modest increases in both population--from 210 in 1965 to 250 in 1993 (but a total of 603 enrolled members)--and tribal lands--from 2,100 acres in 1960 to about 2,400 acres in 1993. There is no allotted land. Perhaps the most visible change is in the location of the community center. Most of the land acquired in the 1930s lay north of the town of Flandreau, along the Big Sioux River, and that is where the community building and powwow grounds were located. More recently a tract of federal land on the southwestern edge of the town was transferred to the tribe, and it is there that the bulk of commercial and residental development has occurred. In the early 1970s a tribally owned and operated motel, the First American Inn, was started, and in 1978 an extensive housing project was inaugurated, with assistance from HUD. A gaming facility, the Royal River Casino, was opened in October, 1990, and in the spring of 1993 a convenience store called The Mart began operation. 29 An unusually large tribal building for so small a group is located within sight of these various enterprises. As they did in the 1960s, many members of the tribe find employment in the town or at the Flandreau Indian Industrial School, but the new tribal enterprises provide jobs for others. Receipts from the casino constitute a significant source of income. According to the policy adopted by the tribe, 35 percent of the receipts go to individuals (three-fourths to residents, one-fourth to nonresidents), 43 percent to economic development, 12 percent to general operations, 5 percent to a minors' trust, and 5 percent to a community fund. Nonresident enrollees have challenged what they regard as discrimination against them in the distribution to individuals. While the case is in litigation, a federal judge has frozen the casino profits, thereby depriving the tribe of access to funds for tribal projects. 30 -383- The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe shared in the nearly $5 million claims award, for which Congress in 1985 (P. L. 99-130) provided distribution guidelines. Their share was 15.84%, or a little more than $770,900. According to the guidelines, 75 percent of the funds would be used by the tribal governing body "for programs to enhance the social and economic development of the tribe." The remaining 25 percent would be used for per capita payments, with members sixty years of age and older receiving twice as much as other recipients. 31 These various sources of income have enabled the tribe and its individual members to accomplish many things that would have been impossible at an earlier time. Among the benefits to individuals are greater educational opportunities than were enjoyed in the 1960s. According to tribal officials, the average number of years of school is now 13.5--which must surely be one of the highest among Indian groups in the country. Few young people attend the Flandreau Indian School; upon completion of the local high school, collegebound young people go to a wide variety of colleges, not all in the Midwest. 32 Although the effort to preserve the native culture is not so conspicuous as on the Lake Traverse Reservation, it is very much a part of contemporary life among the Flandreau people. The "Siouxtennial" presented in 1962 and again in 1965 has been continued ever since and still takes place at the old site along the Big Sioux River, though the old community building no longer stands. At least symbolically, it reflects the desire of the Flandreau Santees to retain their traditions even as they participate ever more fully in the larger community. The changes evident at Santee, Lake Traverse, and Devils Lake, and even more noticeable at Flandreau, are most striking of all on the Sioux reservations in Minnesota, especially at Prior Lake, now called the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. The radical transformation of these settlements from pockets of poverty to enclaves of affluence has occurred largely since 1982, when the first Indian gaming enterprise in the state began at Shakopee, but intimations of coming change could be discerned earlier. In 1967 the Prior take community consisted of four or five scattered families, administered as part of the Lower Sioux community, which had itself dwindled to only nineteen families, with nine vacant houses on the reservation. But that year saw the beginnings of a housing project on Prairie Island that not only provided better -384- homes for current residents but attracted other members of the tribe then living in the Twin Cities or elsewhere. With the start of construction on a nuclear-powered electric generating plant by Northern States Power Company (NSP) on the island, it looked as though there might be increased employment close to the reservation. Two years later the Prior Lake community separated from Lower Sioux and formed its own tribal organization. Although membership consisted of all those on the tribal rolls and their descendants, actual control of the reservation was vested in the "general council," made up of all voters who were residents of the community--only a few families to begin with--which in turn delegated its authority to a business council consisting of a chairman, vicechairman, and secretary-treasurer. 33 No major changes took place during the 1970s, though a number of events occurred then that were to acquire significance later. The Shakopee Mdewakanton and Prairie Island communities became part of the cities of Prior Lake and Red Wing, respectively, when those cities annexed the formerly rural townships in which the reservations were located. At Prior Lake the annexation was part of the urban growth that saw the city increase from 848 inhabitants in 1960 to, 11,482 in 1990. Red Wing annexed Burnside Township in order to increase municipal revenues by taxing NSP's generating plant. In 1971 the Minnesota Sioux communities formed an umbrella organization that underwent various changes of name and membership before it was dissolved in 1984, the members having concluded by then that their interests would be better served by resuming their separate status. 34 The communities continued, however, to participate in the Minnesota Dakota Housing Authority, which administered state and federal housing programs. In 1976 the state legislature established the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, thereby making Minnesota "the first state in the nation to recognize and assist with the housing needs of Indians through a program operated by Indians," as Indians in Minnesota expressed it. Over the next decade the Sioux communities received forty-one loans for home ownership and home improvement through this program. 35 Perhaps the most important development of the 1970s was that the four Sioux communities all grew in population. Determining the populations is difficult because different agencies provide different figures. The Census Bureau, which counted only Indians on census tracts with land held in trust, credited Prairie Island with 80 inhabi- -385-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:21:23 GMT -5
tants in 1980. On the other hand, the BIA, which counted those living near reservations as well as those living on trust lands, found 118 at Prairie Island. But the Indian Health Service, which counted Indians in reservation counties and abutting counties, came up with a figure of 222! 36 Since the BIA figures for 1960 were used elsewhere in this book, they will be used here for comparative purposes. In 1960 the BIA found 160 Indians at Lower Sioux, 95 at Prairie Island, 10 at Prior Lake, and 120 at Upper Sioux. Comparable figures for 1980 gave Lower Sioux 202 inhabitants, Prairie Island 118, Shakopee Mdewakanton 116, and Upper Sioux 122. 37 Except at Upper Sioux, which had benefited very little from government programs in the 1960s and 1970s, the increase was considerable--indeed, at Shakopee Mdewakanton, spectacular. This growth was to continue, and even accelerate, in the 1980s, when the bonanza of bingo parlors attracted to the reservations tribal members who had lived elsewhere, perhaps for most of their lives. A few signs of improvement became evident before the bingo bonanza got under way in the 1980s. At Prairie Island, for example, relations with the city of Red Wing improved when the city contributed to replacing the community hall, burned one New Year's Eve. Originally the city budgeted $40,000 toward the project, but when a HUD grant of $114,000 became available, the city's share was reduced to $24,760, plus $10,000 for furnishings. Construction began in June 1978 and was completed eleven months later; the building was dedicated the following October 20. 38 Two claims cases that were settled during this period brought some improvement in the finances of individual tribal members. In June 1981 payment was received, amounting in some cases to as much as $2,500 each (referred to in the headline to a newspaper article as "a paltry windfall for some Indians"), which went mostly for furniture, appliances, and car replacement or repair; some recipients paid off debts, while others deposited their checks in savings accounts. Norman Campbell, then president of the tribal council, urged his tribesmen to use the "windfall" wisely. 39 The other claims case was that previously referred to, in connection with the Flandreau community, for which funds were appropriated by Congress in October 1985. The Prairie Island, Shakopee Mdewakanton, and Lower Sioux communities were collectively to receive 25.47 percent of the award. At the time these groups voted to accept the settlement, in May 1983, it was said that the amount to be -386- received would come to less than $566 per person. It was distributed along the lines specified in the legislation: 20 percent for tribal programs, 80 percent in per capita payments, handled variously by the three communities. 40 As indicated by the population figures given earlier, the Shakopee Mdewakanton community was experiencing a period of rapid growth, as enrolled members moved to the reservation. In order to provide housing for these people, about half of the largest tract of tribal land, 159 acres, was withdrawn from the family to whom it had been assigned, and divided into smaller parcels. Before long, attractive houses were built on these lots, which now constitute the principal population center of the reservation. 41 But the big news from the early 1980s was the arrival of commercial gaming on Indian reservations. Preceded by "smoke shops" at which untaxed cigarettes were sold to tribal members, this innovation was made possible by Supreme Court decisions denying to state and local governments civil jurisdiction, including taxing authority, over reservation lands. A 1976 agreement with the state had required that Indian tobacco merchants collect sales tax, part of which would be returned by the state. But in the light of federal court rulings that people living on reservations need not pay state sales or income taxes (later extended to cigarette and liquor taxes), the Shakopee Mdewakanton community opened a smoke shop, from which they hoped to earn $50,000 a year for badly needed tribal programs. Although state officials feared that the practice would spread to other Indian reservations, depriving the state of considerable revenue, tribal chairman Norman M. Crooks proved correct in his prediction that its nearness to the Twin Cities gave Shakopee Mdewakanton a unique status and that other reservations would realize more income from state reimbursement than from the sale of taxfree cigarettes. 42 But the smoke shop was only small potatoes compared to the bingo hall that came under serious discussion early in 1982. A precedent had been set in Florida, where the Seminole Indians were operating three bingo parlors, the first opened in 1979. When county and state officials tried to bring these enterprises under their control, the Seminoles took the matter to court and eventually won from the United States Supreme Court a ruling that such governments had no authority to regulate gaming on Indian reservations. Chairman Crooks had been to Florida, as had BIA Area Director Earl J. Barlow, and had been impressed by the way money was flowing into -387- the tribe's coffers. Crooks approached Barlow with a proposal to borrow money for a 1,200-seat bingo palace on the Shakopee Mdewakanton Reservation. As Barlow tells it, he at first tried to bring Crooks' schemes down to earth. "Be realistic!" he says he told Crooks; "300 or 400 maybe, but not 1,200." The chairman, however, stuck with his plan for a 1,200-seat hall, and eventually Barlow had to acknowledge that it might be feasible. 43 The tribe borrowed about $1 million and in the summer of 1982 began construction of a prefabricated structure to house the first of what were to be many gaming establishments on Minnesota Indian reservations. Almost at once opposition surfaced in the form of objections from the city of Prior Lake, whose officials were concerned about the amount of sewage the facility would produce, the increase in traffic on the local gravel roads, and the need for police protection in view of the anticipated influx of potential gamblers. The dispute, which at one stage involved the Metropolitan Council, was temporarily settled by an agreement under which the tribe would contract with the Scott County sheriff for police protection and with Prior Lake for fire protection and rescue service; the Indians would provide a field septic system and work with the county to control dust on the road. 44 In its original form, what became the Little Six Bingo Palace was built and operated by a consortium of two firms, the New England Entertainment Company, based in Boston, which was running one of the parlors in Florida, and the Pan American International Management Company. Under the contract negotiated by Crooks, the company was to receive 45 percent of the profits, the tribe 55 percent. When the facility opened for business on October 16, Crooks was quoted as saying, "I'm excited for my people because it's going to do what they want it to do. It's a big shot in the arm for us." Unemployment, which had been running about 60 percent (some sources later said 90 percent), was wiped out. Although most of the 150 employees of the palace were non-Indians, everyone on the reservation who wanted to work could be accommodated. 45 As a later tribal chairman was to say, proximity to the Twin Cities was the reservation's only resource, and it was this proximity that made Little Six "wildly successful," as a newspaper article phrased it a few months later, from the start. Buses took people from various shopping centers in the metropolitan area to the "palace." For $12 a ticket, the customer received a bus ride and a packet of sixteen bingo cards. On a slow night, perhaps only 500 players appeared; but on -388- jackpot nights people had to be turned away when all 1,300 seats were occupied. Big winners were escorted to the bus or to their cars, just to be on the safe side. 46 After Little Six had been in operation for a few months, it became evident that it was indeed "wildly successful," or, as Crooks described it, "darn near a Utopia." Within six months the tribe had paid off its $1 million debt, built a medical/dental clinic, paved the reservation roads and driveways, and paid each family $700. It grossed over $9 million in its first year; after prizes, salaries, and other expenses had been deducted, the tribe still netted over $1 million. 47 By the end of February 1984, when it was possible to evaluate the whole experience, a pair of investigative articles appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. At that time the tribe's share of the profits was being divided three ways. The largest share, 54.5 percent, was going for individual payments to 72 adults and 24 children who lived on the reservation; monthly payments varied from $600 to $1,500. Eighty percent of the children's shares went into an educational trust fund, the rest to the parents for essential goods and services. With .5 percent going for legal expenses, the remaining 45 percent went into tribal programs. Crooks said that the tribe had given about $108,000 to various charities. The bingo parlor was then employing about 230 part-time workers, who received from $3.35 to $5.50 per hour. The tribe had spent $150,000 on the medical/dental building, which was later expanded to include a $90,000 tribal office and a day care center. By that time they were finishing a half-million dollar cultural center. 48 If the bingo business gave Shakopee Mdewakantons "darn near a Utopia," there was also a downside. In the interview in which Crooks used that phrase, he also admitted that the tribe's sudden wealth had also generated "prejudice and resentment" and a conflict with the city of Prior Lake. The clash with the city is the most readily documented of these undesired consequences. In July 1983, the city council, arguing that the 1972 annexation was illegal and that it had no "governing authority" over the reservation's residents, redrew precinct boundaries so as to leave the reservation outside. Of this action city manager Mike McGuire said, with unusual frankness, that the "intent was to keep the Indians from voting in city elections." City officials feared that if the Indians did vote, they would demand police, fire, and other services on the same basis as other citizens. They were at the time paying $12,000 a year for police and fire protection under the contract negotiated the previous year. 49 -389- Since among other handicaps this move left the Indians without a place in which to vote in county, state, or federal elections, they took the city to court and won two decisions, first from U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson and then from a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, affirming the Indian's right to vote in Prior Lake, which, said the courts, had legally annexed the reservation and was obligated to provide voting rights and municipal services on an equal basis with other citizens, even though it lacked civil jurisdiction over them. 50 During the two years that the case against the city was being litigated, a dispute arose within the tribe over Crooks' management of the gaming enterprise. Some members blamed him for a decrease in per capita payments late in 1984, which he attributed to the novelty having worn off and to competition from a similar business started the previous winter at Prairie Island. After a petition had been circulated calling for his ouster, the general council voted to remove him from office and replace him with Leonard Prescott, leader of the dissident faction. Not long after this controversy had been settled, another arose from within the ranks of the new tribal leaders. For the next couple of years charges and counter-charges were hurled back and forth, lawsuits were undertaken, the BIA reluctantly entered the fray, and metropolitan newspapers gave considerable attention to the issue. 51 The Reverend Gary Cavender, who served the Ho Waste Episcopal Indian Mission near the Shakopee Mdewakanton Reservation, deplored the media's emphasis on the sensational aspects of these quarrels. The Indians weren't fighting all the time, he pointed out; they also were carrying out positive programs, such as building a church designed by an Indian architect. The matter warrants attention here only because it suggests how minor disagreements and factional infighting could be exacerbated by the high stakes of an enterprise described in February 1985 as a $12 million business and in April 1986 as an $18 million operation. 52 As soon as Little Six had proved a success, people at the other communities began discussing how they could get into the act. According to a chronology published in the Red Wing newspaper, the first official discussion in the Prairie Island tribal council occurred in January 1983. After some inconclusive negotiations with a questionable organization called the Basic Bible Church of Amerika, the council hired a St. Paul firm called the Red Wing Amusement Company to build a 24,000-square-foot palace at a cost of some $1.2 million, -390- which opened on February 29, 1984. Under the agreement, the company would get 90 percent of the profits until the building was paid for, after which the profits would be split, as at Little Six, 55 percent to the tribe, 45 percent to the company. The company would manage the operation for ten years. At the beginning, 70 of the 150 employees hired were enrolled tribal members. 53 Because Prairie Island was farther from the Twin Cities than Little Six and more isolated, many expected that it would be less profitable than its predecessor. In order to compensate for this handicap, Island Bingo, as it was called, offered larger prizes than Little Six--a decision that led to objections from the latter. But when, on opening night, nearly all the seats were filled, many with people who had arrived on buses from the Twin Cities, Rochester, Winona, and elsewhere, it was found that at least some of the players had been at Little Six earlier in the day. 54 So it appeared that not only would Island Bingo be a success, but it would achieve that success without drawing business away from Little Six. Tribal leaders at Prairie Island had plans for the expected profits. At the time the facility opened, Vine Wells, council president, said that some of their earnings would pay for housing for the elderly and college education for the young people. At that time there were 280 enrolled members, 150 of whom were living on the reservation. At the beginning of 1985 construction began on a housing project planned for five years and aided by $1.4 million from HUD. It consisted of twenty-four units, nineteen two-story single-family units, a duplex, and a triplex. 55 The effects of high-stakes bingo on Prairie Island were, as at Prior Lake, both good and bad. It took two and half years to pay for the $1.2 million building, but in its first year the enterprise paid out more than $9 million in prizes. When the facility had been paid for and the tribe was about to begin receiving 55 percent of the profits, its leaders decided to buy out Red Wing Amusement's contract for $407,000. They claimed that they had received only 4 percent of the $44 million in profits that the facility had earned in its first four years of operation. When a dissident faction, thinking the price too steep, sought to block the tribe's effort, factionalism once more reared its ugly head, as it had done at Shakopee Mdewakanton, and the controversy found its way into the courts. 56 The dissident faction's suit was dismissed, and the tribe took over management of the bingo hall in December 1988, reportedly at a price of $250,000. The early prosperity had waned somewhat by this -391- time, and it did not improve under tribal management. In the following years the tribe contracted, successively, with two outside companies, one of which changed the facility's name to Treasure Island Casino, and greatly expanded the building in May 1991. Subsequently the tribe resumed control of the casino but hired a general manager, under whose direction the enterprise again became profitable. The return of prosperity did not lessen factional quarreling; as at Little Six, the more there was to fight over, the more fighting took place. 57 A little more than six months after the opening of Island Bingo, the Lower Sioux community joined the other two reservations with Jackpot Junction, a $600,000 facility financed in large part by GMT Management Company, a Glenwood ( Minnesota)--based partnership that operated three casinos in Deadwood, South Dakota. In the early years of the Reagan administration, the community had suffered from cutbacks in the federal jobs program, BIA housing subsidies and social services, and elimination of health programs for the handicapped and elderly. With the nationwide recession reducing the number of off-reservation jobs, it was claimed that unemployment had risen from about 50 percent to nearly go percent by April 1982, when tribal members Tom Goldtooth and Morris Pendleton met with representatives of 36 foundations, corporations, and giving programs in St. Paul. The two men were seeking $150,000 in grant money, which would not only aid the Indians economically but also help them gain a sense of self-reliance. As Goldtooth said, There's been a whole century of dependency that's been building-dependency on the federal government, the state, the tribe. It has put us in the position where we don't feel we can make our own decisions." 58 When Jackpot Junction opened in September 1984, it was expected to do great things for the community. After a promising start, however, the bingo parlor for a time failed to measure up to expectations. Much farther from the Twin Cities than Little Six or even Island Bingo, it had not drawn the attendance its promoters had hoped for. At the end of 1985 its balance sheet for the year showed a loss of $92,000 on an income of $2.2 million. There were rumors that it might cut back from three nights a week to one, or even close. It did, however, employ forty-two Indians and eight others married to Indians and had a payroll of $275,000 in 1985. 59 The day-to-day management was not all it could have been. Taxes on cigarettes sold at the facility weren't being forwarded to the state, -392-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:22:14 GMT -5
and it fell $31,000 in debt to the Internal Revenue Service because of the management's failure to deduct withholding taxes. A petition signed by over half the voting membership called for changes in the management of the hall, and in October, 1986, seven members of the community broke into the building and staged a two-hour takeover that ended only when the county sheriff and other law enforcement officers moved in. The seven men received light sentences when the case was finally disposed of, more than a year later. 60 Whether this bold action had anything to do with it or not, business picked up in the years that followed, especially after Jackpot Junction became the first of Minnesota's reservation casinos to venture beyond church-basement bingo into a new, high-stakes variant that was reminiscent of Las Vegas. Up to four thousand customers a week came from as far as Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Winnipeg on bargain bus tours. Gaming went on all night, and at 5:30 a.m. a "bingo bus" would pick up a load of gamblers and haul them the 125 miles to the Twin Cities, where they were dropped off at various shopping centers. In the space of a year, receipts rose from $4 million to $30 million, and unemployment had ceased to exist on the reservation. Tribal attorney John Jacobson remarked that gaming was changing reservation life in a way that government programs had never done. 61 In 1985 the Sioux communities began taking over management of their bingo parlors. Shakopee Mdewakanton, first to enter the business, was also the first to assume complete control of its casino. Early in 1985 the newly elected tribal leaders took legal steps to invalidate the 1982 contract that Norman Crooks had negotiated. Both U.S. District Judge Diana Murphy and the BIA ruled that the contract was invalid, and management of the bingo parlor was transferred to the tribe. 62 Although Crooks predicted that this move would ruin business, he proved wrong this time, and the continued success of Little Six may have emboldened the Prairie Island tribal leaders, as noted earlier, to follow the example of those at Shakopee Mdewakanton about three years later. In 1992 the Lower Sioux community bought out the management of Jackpot Junction, which had been taking 30 percent of the receipts. "We just felt it was time for us to go on our own," said tribal chairman Jody Goodthunder. 63 By the early 1990s all three of the bingo parlors were huge successes, and in January 1991 the Upper Sioux community joined the other reservations by opening the Firefly Creek Casino. At the outset -393- it operated for sixteen hours on weekdays, around the clock on weekends, and had 120 full- and part-time employees and an anticipated payroll of $750,000 a year. It offered 114 slot machines and "something that looks a lot like blackjack" but was called Bingo 21. Like the others, it enjoyed a period of prosperity before falling on hard times. By August 1992, when the tribal chairman was ousted and several employees were fired, it was rumored to have lost $26,000 a day in June and $31,000 a day in July, and to be on the verge of closing. A more optimistic view held that it was thriving and that it had brought thousands of visitors to Granite Falls, with substantial benefit to business there. 64 The casino survived and apparently gained back some of its original momentum in subsequent months, but it remained a small operation competing with larger ones. In May 1992 the Shakopee Mdewakanton tribe opened a second facility, the $15 million Mystic Lake Casino, with 1,100 slot machines, 76 blackjack tables, and a 1,100-seat, terraced bingo parlor. It also contained a delicatessen, a buffet restaurant, and a private dining and meeting room. Spotlights in the shape of a Dakota tipi were visible for a distance of thirty miles at night. By this time, according to Chairman Prescott, some per capita payments had reached $4,000 a month. 65 In the summer of 1993 the Prairie Island people unveiled a 78,000-square-foot addition containing a restaurant, sports lounge, banquet facilities, and another 200 slot machines; a 135-berth marina on Sturgeon Lake was to follow. The Treasure Island Casino had by this time come to be the largest employer in Red Wing and the thirty-fourth largest privately held corporation in Minnesota, and claimed to have a half-billion dollar impact on the surrounding area. The vast new Tribal Community Center, with its swimming pool, gymnasium, and day-care center, quite cast into the shade the one built in 1979 and symbolized the changes that had occurred in only a few years. 66 Just before the Mystic Lake Casino opened, the tribal leadership ran into difficulties, not with their white neighbors (though the controversy with Prior Lake was still simmering) but with Indian activists who objected to the use of the sacred white buffalo in their advertising. Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt, AIM leaders, said that its use as a symbol was disrespectful. Prescott disagreed, saying that the buffalo economy was part of the Indians' past and that gambling was their "new buffalo." But as chairman of the board of Little Six, Inc.,
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:22:51 GMT -5
-394- he agreed to stop using the symbol and to review their use of the eagle in similar advertising. Clyde Bellecourt reported that the casino owners would let a task force of concerned Indians review all future advertising before it was used. 67 With the opening of Mystic Lake and the expansion of Treasure Island, commercial gaming on the Sioux Indian reservations in Minnesota may be said to have come of age. By that time the state was easily leading the nation in reservation gambling and was reported to be fourth in per capita betting. Was all this good or bad? For the Indians it appeared to be a bonanza. In a newspaper article titled "New Casino Gives Dakota Pride," St. Paul columnist Nick Coleman said that the message the new enterprise carried was "Dama Kota"-"I am a Dakota." And the Reverend Gary Cavender exclaimed, "We're not sucking off welfare--we're employers. That's the thing that blows me away: we can make an economic impact." 68 Some non-Indians agreed. When Myron Ellis, chairman of the Minnesota Indian Gaming Commission, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs in February 1992, he cited a study done by the accounting firm of Peat, Marwick & Main of five Indian casinos, including three operated by the Sioux. In four rural counties, including Goodhue and Redwood, the number of people receiving benefits under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) had declined 16 percent since 1987, while the statewide total had increased 15 percent. He used these figures to deflect criticism that the profits from casinos were being siphoned off from the Indians who nominally ran them. His testimony was reported in an article headlined "4,500 New Jobs Top Success Story of Indian Casinos." Claims were also made, based on the testimony of businessmen in Prior Lake and elsewhere, that business in adjacent towns was also increased by the influx of people wishing to patronize the casinos. 69 But there were nagging questions about the legality of some of these gaming operations, not to mention their effect on other types of gambling. As early as 1983 some state legislators were concerned about the potential threat to parimutuel betting on horse races at the new racetrack at Canterbury Downs, near Shakopee. By 1986 the state attorney general's office was wondering aloud whether some of the forms of gambling newly adopted on the reservations were legal. Bingo was legal, but poker, video machines, and electronic slot machines might not be. By that time Little Six was offering video poker, electronic slot machines, pull-tabs, and "bingoized" versions of -395- craps, blackjack, and roulette. Neither the charitable gambling board nor the BIA appeared to have any police control over the games. 70 In 1982 the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to consider the issue of state control over gambling on Indian reservations and let a lower court ruling favorable to the Indians stand. In 1986 a similar California case came before the court. Two federal appellate courts there had ruled against the state, but in Maine and Oklahoma state supreme courts had decided in favor of state regulation. Early in 1987 the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that state and local authorities may not prohibit Indians from operating gambling casinos on reservations. In the light of these confusing and contradictory rulings, in October 1988 Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which brought some order out of a complex issue, but it left some grey areas. It also established an Indian Gaming Commission, one of whose tasks was to rule on problems that might arise. In May 1992 a ruling by the Commission took effect, barring Indian casinos from running electronic slot machines or keno games without state approval. U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger reportedly told casino operators they must negotiate agreements with the state if they wanted to play lotto-type games. "We will . . . enforce the Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act," he said. The management of Little Six brought suit against the Indian Gaming Commission, while the Lower Sioux community leaders said they would change the game at Jackpot Junction to make it more like bingo. 71 Another issue that eventually wound up in the courts was the selectivity exercised by some tribes with regard to the distribution of per capita payments. Like Flandreau, Lower Sioux distinguished between residents and non-residents. And when people who had not lived on the reservation for years, if ever, began settling there, the council decreed that they must have lived within ten miles of the community in August 1990 in order to qualify for payments. Some of those excluded brought suit against the tribe, and on March 11, 1993, in U.S. District Court, Judge Paul Magnuson ruled against the tribe and ordered it to set aside 30 percent of casino receipts while the Department of the Interior reviewed its payment policy. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was silent as to whether tribes could discriminate on the basis of residence in the distribution of per capita payments, but it had specified that all plans must be approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Shakopee Mdewakanton also discrimi- -396- nated in this fashion, whereas Prairie Island paid all 410 enrolled members on the same basis. 72 Despite its acknowledged benefits to the tribes, the future of Indian gaming is still in doubt. Gary Dawson, writing for the St. Paul Pioneer Press on the opening of the Mystic Lake Casino, remarked, "Market saturation, in fact, appears to be the thing that would dictate an end to tribal gaming expansion. How far away that is remains to be seen." Others who have doubts about the continued expansion of the "new buffalo" believe that by providing needed capital and experience in managing business, the casinos have benefited the Indians in ways that will persist far beyond the time when profits begin to diminish and perhaps disappear. 73 While all four Sioux communities were reaping benefits from commercial gaming, the Prairie Island people were wrestling with a problem all their own. When Northern States Power built its nuclear generating plant in the late 1960s, the benefits were expected to outweigh whatever disadvantages it might bring. For the next two decades it seemed as though this would be the case. As late as 1985 the author of Indians in Minnesota observed that, though questions had been raised about nuclear power plant safety and though questions of possible contamination had been brought up at tribal council meetings, "the Indian community has had no discernible health problems from the power plant and is not concerned about its presence." 74 This optimistic view was probably not held by all members of the community even then. In August 1986, when Prairie Island celebrated its centennial, a staff writer from the Pioneer Press interviewed Hazel Wells, who had watched eighty-four years of change on the island. Commenting on the juxtaposition of the nuclear plant and the eighty-one-year-old Church of the Messiah, founded by her grandfather, Mrs. Wells remarked, "We're still waiting for the Messiah. Instead, we got the nuclear plant." 75 One problem worrying the Prairie Island people in their relations with NSP was the ongoing danger of radioactive contamination should some accident occur at the plant. When an "unusual event"-the lowest of four alert levels--occurred in February 1992, federal inspectors appeared on the scene and assured everyone concerned that the accident posed no threat to the health and safety of people inside the plant or near it. Nevertheless, William Hardacker, lawyer for the tribe, insisted that, no matter what NSP or the Nuclear Regu-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:23:43 GMT -5
-397- latory Commission said, the " Prairie Island community will always have serious questions about the operation of this plant" and the accumulation of waste there. A few months later NSP reported that an eight-inch water line had leaked radioactive tritium into private wells on the reservation. 76 What made relations between the Indians and the company turn ugly was a proposal by NSP to store radioactive wastes in casks outside the plant, adjacent to the reservation. The utility's problem was that it would run out of storage space in its spent-fuel pool in 1994 or 1995, and a proposed national storage site in Nevada would not be available until 2010--if ever. The plan for temporary storage was approved by the Environmental Quality Board, but it was opposed by members of the Indian community, who said, in effect, "Not in my back yard!", and by various environmental groups, whose argument was supported by a Minnesota Department of Health study that asserted that radioactive gases were increasing the cancer risk for island residents to six times the state standard and that the storage of wastes in casks would increase the hazard. 77 The controversy heated up in November 1991, when hearings were conducted before Administrative Law Judge Allen Klein, and tribal officials joined environmentalists in a demonstration in St. Paul. A short time later the tribe hired an advertising agency to prepare a television spot expressing their views and attempting to sway public opinion against NSP. All four major Twin Cities TV stations refused to run the ad, which opened with the line "NSP doesn't want you to hear this." Eventually another station did run a revised ad, but columnist Nick Coleman commented that NSP spent $5 million a year on advertising in Minnesota, nearly half of which was ultimately paid for by consumers in the form of higher rates. 78 The Indians won only a doubtful victory in this episode, and they lost in court--twice--in an attempt to enforce an ordinance intended to prevent NSP from hauling radioactive material over reservation roads. NSP also denied charges, brought by tribal secretary Edith Pacini, that it had offered the tribe $500,000 to go along with the utility's proposal for waste storage. J oseph Wolf, vice-president for public and environmental affairs, charged that the accusations were part of a tribal campaign "of doing everything in their power to make us miserable." 79 When Judge Klein announced his decision, in April 1992, recommending that NSP be prohibited from storing nuclear wastes out-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:24:10 GMT -5
-398- side the plant, it was hailed by one newspaper writer as a "stunning victory for the Prairie Island Indian community." Unfortunately, the judge rejected the argument that storage would pose a health hazard and based his ruling on other grounds, such as that the state legislature should make the final judgment and that attention should be focused on alternative sources of energy. Even more unfortunately, from the Indians' point of view, his conclusions were only a recommendation; the final decision would have to be made by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC). The PUC held hearings in June and, after a five-hour debate, rejected Judge Klein's recommendations and ruled in favor of NSP. Coleman commented that it was "the best PUC a power company ever had," and George Crocker, of the North American Water Office, an environmental group, called the decision "a hate crime more vicious than crossburning." 80 The PUC ruling was not, however, the last word on the subject. The case was carried to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which ruled on June 8, 1993, that NSP must go to the legislature for approval of the waste storage plan. Its argument was that the Radioactive Waste Management Act ( 1977) required the company to get "express legislative authorization" before proceeding with its plan. NSP spokesmen denied that the RWMA applied to a "temporary" storage site and continued building the facilities, while taking their case to the Minnesota Supreme Court. About six weeks later the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, thus leaving the final decision up to the 1994 legislature. 81 Not all the recent history of the Minnesota Sioux has occurred on reservations. As Indians have become more visible in the larger community, their interaction with non-Indians has increased, and they have come to share their culture and traditions with interested members of the general population. In September 1972, what was called "the first authentic powwow in recent years" took place in Mankato. After a slow beginning, this event, now called the Mah-Kato Mdewakanton Powwow, has become an annual affair, drawing both Indians and non-Indians from a wide area, gradually increasing its attendance from two thousand to over five thousand by 1989. First held in the Key City Ball Park, it later found a permanent home in the campground part of Sibley Park, now called Land of Memories--"sacred, blessed ground" to the Indians, who had used it in tribal days as a camping place. Besides the customary dancing by -399- members of many tribes, the powwow includes a sweat lodge ceremony, meals, give-aways, honoring of the dead, and name-giving ceremonies. 82 One of the instigators of the first Mah-Kato Powwow was Amos Owen, tribal chairman of Prairie Island for a time in the 1960s. Owen, a towering figure in the recent history of the Minnesota Sioux, was born on the Lake Traverse reservation in 1917 and came to Prairie Island with his mother in 1934. He was deeply interested in the traditions of his people and in his later years became known as a tribal elder and spiritual leader. Besides conducting weekly sweat lodge ceremonies at Prairie Island, each December 26 (the anniversary of the mass execution in Mankato) he held a pipe ceremony, burning sweet sage, praying to the four directions, and reciting the names of the thirty-eight who had been hanged there in 1862. 83 If Mankato was, in a sense, doing penance in hosting the powwow, it went even further in that direction in 1975, when the Native People's Bicentennial Commission and AIM sponsored a Day of Reconciliation. The principal ceremony took place on the site of the 1862 execution, where Norman Blue, then chairman at Lower Sioux, read, in Dakota, the names of the thirty-eight, whom Vernon Bellecourt compared to the Revolutionary patriots to be honored the following year. Singers and drummers from the Santee Reservation sang traditional memorial songs. Later some two hundred people, mostly Indians, marched to Mankato State University's Highland Arena for a traditional meal and dancing. 84 By proclamation of Governor Rudy Perpich, 1987 was declared a Year of Reconciliation, beginning with a run from Fort Snelling to Mankato on December 26, 1986. At Land of Memories Park Chris Cavender spoke to about twenty runners and thirty others, and Amos Owen conducted a ceremony. Cavender said that both Indians and whites still harbored feelings about 1862 that needed to be resolved. More than fifteen events were planned for the next year, at Mankato, New Ulm, Fort Ridgely, Fort Snelling, and other locations identified with the Sioux Uprising, now called the U.S.-Dakota Conflict. 85 As part of the Year of Reconciliation, the remains of twenty-one men and ten women who had died at the prison near Davenport, Iowa, during their years of incarceration there, were recovered from the Iowa museum where they had been stored, and were reburied at the Lower Sioux community cemetery. The reburial was
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:24:38 GMT -5
-400- done in the native manner, with burning sage and a traditional prayer by Amos Owen. 86 Owen's life of service to his people ended less than three years later, when on June 4, 1990, he died of cancer. A horse-drawn hearse carried his coffin, made by his sons, to the Prairie Island cemetery, where he was buried in a star quilt, with bracelets of sage around his ankles and wrists. Both Christian and Dakota prayers were said. In his later years he had given up fishing because he had made a pledge not to kill anything. Even when he cut willows for ceremonial use, he made an offering to the trees. Nick Coleman, who said Owen had done more than anyone else to heal the scars of the 1862 war through his lectures to high school and college audiences, saw an eagle soaring over the Mississippi River bluffs and recalled that he had seen an eagle the day he met Amos, trying to start a pipe on a cold and windy day. 87 Amos Owen is remembered in Mankato, where his portrait hangs in the Minnesota Valley Regional Library, located on the site of the execution, and where a cottonwood tree was planted in his honor on the Mankato State University campus. Each year MSU anthropology professor Michael Scullin's students and members of the Mah-Kato Mdewakanton Club, composed of Indian students and interested non-Indians, plant corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers in the Amos Owen Garden of American Indian Horticulture. The history of the Santee Sioux is not over. At the rate events are occurring, one is hesitant to venture any generalizations, for they may be out-dated by the time they are made. Individuals may pass from the scene, but the people live on, not as a single entity but as a group of related communities. The Santee Sioux have not been swallowed up by the surrounding white society, nor have they been swept into the sea of Pan-Indianism. They participate more fully then they did a quarter-century ago in the larger society, however, and they are more aware of themselves as Indians and as members of the minority population. The term "environmental racism" was new to the Prairie Island people when they began their struggle against NSP, but they soon embraced it as descriptive of the power company's behavior, as they perceived it. 88 Given the rapidity of change in the contemporary Santee Sioux communities, it would be hazardous to predict, in any detail, future trends. But some educated guesses may be projected from the past record and recent developments. In a book about the prehistoric -401- Chaco Culture of New Mexico, Kendrick Frazier remarks, "Part of the resiliency of Indian cultures is an ability to maintain tradition while adapting to changing conditions." 89 This resiliency is not, of course, unique to Indians, but the history of the Americas has subjected them to the pressure of "changing conditions" perhaps to a greater degree than any other race. And Peter D. Elias, after studying the Canadian descendants of the Eastern Sioux who fled Minnesota in 1862-63--now over three thousand strong--concluded that when they were treated with benign neglect and permitted to work out their own adjustments to the changing world around them, they managed pretty well, but when forced to submit to government interference, they retrogressed into poverty and apathy. 90 With the economic prosperity brought by commercial gaming and the growing emphasis on self-determination in the policies currently being pursued by the BIA, the Santee Sioux probably have a better chance of realizing their potential than they have enjoyed at any time since they were first impacted by Euro-American civilization. Those familiar with the often tragic history of this gifted people can only wish them success in a future that looks brighter just now than ever before. NOTES 1. Jane F. Smith and Robert M. Kvasnicka, eds., Indian-White Relations: A Persistent Paradox ( Washington: Howard University Press, 1976), p. 211. This book is a collection of papers and commentaries presented at the National Archives Conference on Research in the History of Indian-White Relations, held in J une 1972. The quotation is from a note to my comment on William T. Hagan paper, "The Reservation Policy: Too Little and Too Late." The note containing this observation was added later, after a visit to the Santee reservation about three weeks after the conference.
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:25:07 GMT -5
2. Interview with Richard Kitto, Tribal Chairman, June 15, 1993. 3. Interview with Mr. Kitto, June 15, 1993. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Interview with Lorraine Rousseau, Tribal Chairwoman, June 16, 1993; Sota Iya Ye Yapi ( Agency Village, S. Dak.), June 17, 1993.
|
|