American Indian civil rights

Significance: Indian activism, federal legislation, and tribal activities have all been important in the struggle of American Indians for equality.

Federal Indian policy in the United States has passed through three major historical phases. Before 1890, American Indians were either exterminated or forced onto reservations. Then, between 1890 and 1934, attempts were made to Christianize Indians and assimilate them into white culture. To this end, the policy during the 1940s and 1950s was to “terminate” federal relations with tribes. In the 1960s, federal policy began to change to direct assistance to the reservations to help them achieve self-determination. Many tribal governments have been reestablished and strengthened, and Native American cultures have been revived.

Activism

By 1961, termination had gone far enough to alarm many Indians, who believed that too much discretionary power over reservation Indians was being given to the states and that the answer to the problems of American Indians lay not in termination of federal services but in better legislation. Beginning in the late 1960s, American Indian activists began to call attention to the injustices still faced by Indians and to demand legislation to correct the situation. A group called Indians of All Tribes took over abandoned Alcatraz Island on November 9, 1969, and remained there for nearly nineteen months. Following a demonstration at Mount Rushmore in 1971, Indian interest groups organized the Trail of Broken Treaties march on Washington, D.C., to bring further attention to the American Indian situation. On October 2, 1971, march organizers stated their demands, which included fulfillment of treaty obligations, removal of Indian matters from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and placement directly under the president of the United States, and no termination of federal services without a referendum.

More than fifteen groups supported the August 1972 march, but the American Indian Movement (AIM), founded by Dennis Banks and George Mitchell in 1968, was the dominant participant. The march ended with the seven-day occupation in November 1972 of the BIA building in Washington. About six months later, on February 27, 1973, about two hundred armed AIM members seized the small town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The occupation ended by peaceful negotiation seventy-one days after it began.

The Longest Walk started on February 11, 1978, when about 180 people set out from San Francisco to walk across the continent to Washington, D.C., to commemorate all the forced walks the Indian people had made in the past, such as the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. The organizers of the Longest Walk included such leaders of AIM as Vernon Bellecourt and Dennis Banks but no tribal leaders. About 5,000 to 10,000 people were estimated to have reached Washington by July 15, 1978.

Legislation

In mid-1994 there were 543 tribes that were “federally recognized” and received the services of the BIA. The Indian Reorganization Act (1934) delineated steps by which any “Indian tribe . . . residing on the same reservation” might formally organize for recognition. In 1978, the Federal Acknowledgment Program was established, delineating seven mandatory criteria for federal recognition. In the mid-1980s, about 125 American Indian groups whose relationship with the federal government had been terminated were trying to meet these seven criteria.

Indians, along with Latinos, African Americans, and other minorities, took advantage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act banned many of the methods, such as literacy tests, that had been used since passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the federal constitution in 1870 to prevent Native Americans from voting. Later, the 1975 renewal of the Voting Rights Act required bilingual ballots and voting information in areas with significant populations of non-English-speaking people.

The American Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 extended many of the provisions of the Bill of Rights to members of Indian tribes in order to protect them from arbitrary actions of their own tribal councils. Although the government meant well, critics argued that the federal government unilaterally imposed the act despite its self-determination policy.

In July 1970, President Richard M. Nixon presented a message to Congress requesting repudiation of the termination policy; legislative authority to empower any tribe to accept responsibility for the operation of federally funded programs in the Department of the Interior and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; authority to channel federal education funds to Indians in public schools through tribal governments rather than through local public-school districts; and authority for Indians to enter into long-term leases of their lands. These policies strengthened the right of the recognized Indian tribes to determine their own futures within the context of United States citizenship as well as the right of tribes to exist as tribes.

Self-Determination

Nixon’s message produced the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, which provided statutory authority to permit tribes to assume responsibilities formerly reserved for officials of the BIA and other departments of the government. Although theoretically sound, the Self-Determination Act did not operate efficiently. Conflict developed between tribes seeking full implementation of self-determination and the BIA, which was reluctant to surrender its dominance in Native American affairs. The BIA retained its position through measures such as increased bureaucratization, requirements that the BIA approve tribal contracts with non-Indian parties, and the vagaries of congressional appropriations.

The Indian Education Act of 1972, intended to make financial grants more available to school districts with large numbers of Indian students, failed to define the beneficiaries sufficiently, and school districts that did not believe that they had a significant Indian student population soon found themselves besieged by students claiming Indian blood.

In 1978, Congress passed the Tribally Controlled Community College Act, which encouraged tribes to establish community colleges where native languages, culture, and history could be taught, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which allowed Indians to worship in accordance with their ancestral beliefs. The federal government committed itself to “protect and preserve for Native Americans their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions” and directed federal agencies to make certain that Native Americans were not deprived of access to their sacred sites on federal land. However, the act did not contain provisions for enforcement.

Decisions in several Supreme Court cases recognized that tribes were sovereign entities that should be largely free from restrictions by both federal and state governments. Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez (1978), upheld the right of a tribe to be governed by its own traditional laws and to determine its membership, even if such procedures conflicted with the civil rights of individual tribal members or other Americans under the U.S. Constitution. Other significant cases includeOliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe (1978); Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe (1982); Arizona v. California (1983); Nevada v. United States (1983); Montana v. Blackfeet Tribe of Indians (1985).

The Indian Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (1986) was passed to develop a comprehensive coordinated attack on the illegal narcotics traffic in Indian country and the deleterious impact of alcohol and substance abuse on Indian tribes. It was to provide guidance through schools, tribal offices, the BIA, and the Indian Health Service (IHS) and to establish Indian Youth Programs, emergency shelters, and rehabilitation services.

On April 28, 1988, Congress passed two important acts. The Tribally Controlled School Grants Act assured maximum Indian participation in the direction of education services in order to make them more responsive to the needs and desires of Indian communities. The Indian Education Act (1988) was intended to provide financial assistance to local educational agencies to develop and carry out elementary and secondary school programs specially designed to meet the special educational and cultural academic needs of Indians. An Office of Indian Education was established in the Department of Education to encourage fellowships for American Indians and adult education.

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of October 17, 1988, declared federal policy as promoting tribal economic development, tribal self-sufficiency, strong tribal government, and, if not specifically prohibited by federal law, as allowing gambling on Indian land under the supervision of a National Indian Gaming Commission. By the end of 1992, about 140 tribes maintained gaming operations.

Senate hearings in 1988 and 1989 on continuing Indian problems in the areas of health, education, religion, culture, employment, and tribal sovereignty led to considerable legislation. The Indian Child Protection and Family Violence Prevention Act (1990) sought to require reports of abused Indian children, establish reliable data on the topic for statistical purposes, authorize procedures to ensure effective child protection, establish an Indian Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Grant Program for technical assistance, and provide for treatment and prevention of incidents of family violence. In 1992, Congress passed the Indian Higher Education Programs Act, providing financial aid for higher education.

Social Conditions

Senator John McCain of Arizona reported in 1992 that from 40 percent to 45 percent of reservation Indians and 22 percent of off-reservation Indians in the United States live below the poverty line. The BIA reported that as of 1985, Indians had a 39-percent unemployment rate, three times the rate for individuals in the United States as a whole. Twenty-five percent of Indian reservation households were receiving food stamps. Of the working-age population on Indian reservations, only about 40 percent were employed more than forty weeks out of the year, and the majority of those who worked earned less than $7,000 per year. The rate of alcoholism on reservations was 438 percent greater than the national average, tuberculosis 400 percent higher, diabetes 155 percent higher. There were 131 percent more accidents on reservations, 57 percent more homicides, 27 percent more suicides, and 32 percent more cases of pneumonia and influenza.

Education, Employment, and Housing

The 1991 Digest of Education Statistics reported that during the 1988–89 school year, for every ten thousand bachelor’s degrees awarded, only forty went to American Indian students; in that year, only forty-seven Indians in ten thousand were undergraduate students. More than 44 percent of Indian adults age twenty-five and older had not graduated from high school.

The BIA in 1992 estimated that an average of 48 percent of the available workers on or near reservation areas had no jobs, while the conditions of Indians in many urban areas was little better. In 1992, Congress passed the Indian Employment, Training, and Related Services Demonstration Act to demonstrate how Indian tribal governments can integrate to improve the effectiveness of employment and training services and to reduce joblessness in Indian communities.

Representative Doug Bereuter of Nebraska, taking his information from the U.S. Census Bureau, stated in 1992 that almost 24 percent of all Indians living in Indian communities or on reservations lacked adequate shelter. While the national average of homelessness was estimated at 6.4 percent, Indians had nearly four times the amount of homelessness of the general population. In addition, many houses on Indian reservations lacked running water or indoor plumbing of any kind.

Bibliography

Bolt, Christine. American Indian Policy and American Reform. London: Allen, 1987. Print.

Deloria, Vine, Jr., ed. American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1985. Print.

Deloria, Vine, Jr., and Clifford M. Lytle. American Indians, American Justice. Austin: U of Texas P, 1983. Print.

Nabokov, Peter. Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492–1992. New York: Viking Penguin, 1991. Print.

Nichols, Roger L. The American Indian Past and Present. 4th ed. New York: McGraw, 1992. Print.

Pevar, Stephen L. The Rights of Indians and Tribes. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.

Taylor, Theodore W. American Indian Policy. Mt. Airy: Lomond, 1983. Print.