Native American civil rights and citizenship

TRIBES AFFECTED: Pantribal

SIGNIFICANCE:American Indian activism, federal legislation, and tribal activities have all been important in the struggle of American Indians for equality under U.S. law and for true equality in education, employment, and health

The concept of civil rights may be construed in two ways: narrowly, as referring to guaranteed equal rights under the law (as guaranteed, for example, by laws against discrimination), and more broadly, as referring to whether a group has in fact achieved equality. Civil rights includes access to such things as education, employment opportunities, and adequate health care. American Indians, despite considerable federal legislation addressing such issues as discrimination, education, and health care, still experience poor health, poor education, and high unemployment, mortality rates, poverty rates, and rates of child abuse. These ongoing problems raise a twofold question: How can Native Americans solve these problems in the midst of a non-Indian industrial United States without surrendering their own cultural and religious traditions?

Three generalized historical phases of federal Indian policy can be identified. First, before 1890, American Indians were either exterminated or forced onto reservations. Second, between 1890 and 1934, attempts were made to Christianize Indians and assimilate them into white culture. To this end, “termination” of federal relations with tribes became the policy during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Finally, when this did not work, policy changed to direct assistance to the reservations to help them achieve self-determination. In accordance with a multicultural society, tribal governments have been reestablished and strengthened, and Native American cultures have been revived. Today, American Indian policy is complex, involving the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and a number of other federal agencies, hundreds of “federally recognized” tribes, more than half the states, various interest groups, and the court system.

Most of the people who identify themselves as American Indians do not live on reservations but are spread throughout the country. Whereas the average American has two citizenships, federal and state, the reservation Indian has three: federal, state, and tribal. By 1961, the termination policy had gone far enough to alarm many Indians, who believed that too much discretionary power in the states over reservation Indians would replace the federal government and that the answer to the problems of American Indians lay not in termination of federal services but in better legislation.

Activism

American Indian activists, beginning in the late 1960’s, 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 nineteen months. Following a demonstration at Mount Rushmore in 1971, Indian interest groups organized the Trail of Broken Treaties march on Washington to bring further attention to the American Indian situation. Its specific purposes were stated in Denver, Colorado, on October 2, 1971: fulfillment of treaty obligations; genuine fulfillment of trust responsibility for Indian lands, Indian resources, and the rights of individual Indians; removal of Indian matters from the BIA and placement directly under the president of the United States; no termination of federal services without a referendum; increase of congressional appropriations to the same level of others in American society; and passage of special laws guaranteeing education at the highest level for any Indian who wants it.

Supporting the march, which took place in August, 1972, were more than fifteen groups, but the American Indian Movement (AIM), founded by Dennis Banks and George Mitchell in 1968, was the dominant participant. The march ended with the November 2, 1972, seven-day occupation of the BIA building in Washington. About six months later, on February 27, 1973, about two hundred armed Indians of AIM 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, California, 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 1830’s. The organizers of the Longest Walk included such leaders of AIM as Vernon Bellecourt and Dennis Banks but no tribal leaders. About five to ten thousand people were estimated to have reached Washington by July 15, 1978.

Indian Reorganization Act and Federal Acknowledgment Program

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-1980’s, about 125 American Indian groups were trying to meet these seven criteria. One should emphasize that termination did not mean that a tribe no longer existed; it meant that the federal government had terminated its relationship with the tribe. If the tribe wished to end termination, it had to meet the criteria listed.

Legislation. During the 1960’s, federal programs designed to aid chronically depressed areas, such as the Area Redevelopment Act (1961) and the Economic Opportunity Act (1964), were made applicable to American Indians. Indians gradually took a larger role in planning and administering these programs, as, for example, when in 1970, BIA commissioner Louis R. Bruce signed contracts with the Zuni, Salt River Pima, and Maricopa permitting them to administer all programs previously operated by the BIA. Experimentation was also launched in New Mexico and Arizona in which all-Indian school boards were given full authority over curriculum, expenditure of school funds, and hiring and firing of teachers.

Indians, along with Latinos, African Americans, and other minorities, took advantage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the federal constitution in 1870, a variety of methods, such as literacy tests and gerrymandering, had been employed to prevent Native Americans from voting. A Navajo tribal chairman estimated that in the decade of the 1960’s, half the otherwise eligible Navajo voters were barred the franchise by the literacy requirement in Arizona. The Voting Rights Act outlawed literacy tests. Later, the 1975 renewal of the Voting Rights Act outlawed gerrymandering and required bilingual ballots and voting information. Racial discrimination, however, continued to inspire new ways of maintaining white political control over areas of heavy Indian population.

The American Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 unilaterally 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 lacked understanding of or sympathy with tribal traditions, which were not the traditions of white society: Unilateral imposition without tribal voting was the exact opposite of the 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.

The process of bringing the tribes into the American system has been labeled co-option by critics. Co-option may be defined as a situation in which a powerful government or system voluntarily brings a less powerful but threatening organization into its operation as a means of lessening the threat. In this case the threat was not only the rise of Indian protest groups but also the desires of other radical groups that wished to include Native Americans as another exploited minority.

Nixon left the presidency on August 9, 1974, but his message produced the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, which provided statutory authority to permit tribes to assume responsibilities formerly reserved to officials of the BIA and other departments of the government. Although theoretically sound, the Self-Determination Act did not operate as well as it might have. Conflict developed between tribes seeking full implementation of self-determination and the reluctance of the BIA to surrender its dominance in Native American affairs. The BIA retained its position through increased bureaucratization, requirements that the BIA approve tribal contracts with non-Indian parties, lack of tribal power over their own resources, the vagaries of congressional appropriations, and so on. This proved to be especially true of the criminal justice operation on reservations, where the Division of Law Enforcement Services of the BIA devised its own Reservation Law Enforcement Improvement Plan. Between Nixon’s message to Congress and the Self-Determination Act, an Office of Indian Rights was established within the civil rights division of the Justice Department to develop expertise in the area of Indian civil liberties, but the office was not funded until 1981.

The Indian Education Act of 1972 was really a failure. Although intended to make financial grants more available to school districts with large numbers of Indian students, the act failed to define the beneficiaries sufficiently, so that school districts which did not suspect themselves of having any significant numbers of Indian students soon found themselves besieged by students claiming Indian blood. The Education Act of 1988 proved more successful.

Congress passed the Tribally Controlled Community College Act in 1978, which encouraged tribes to establish com-munity colleges where native languages, culture, and history could be taught. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act, also of 1978, aimed at encouraging Indians to worship in accordance with their ancestral forms and 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. As there was no enforcement section to the act, however, it remained more a statement of policy than anything else.

In the meantime, a variety of United States Supreme Court cases returned to John Marshall’s view in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) that recognized tribes were sovereign entities that should be within themselves largely free from restrictions by both federal and state governments. Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49 (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 federal Constitution. Other significant cases include Oliphant v. Suquamish Tribes (1978); Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe (1982); Arizona v. California (1983); Nevada v. U.S. (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 and their members. It was to provide guidance in the way of 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. First was the Tribally Controlled School Grants Act, to respond to the obligation of the Indian people for self-determination by assuring maximum Indian participation in the direction of education services so as to render such services more responsive to the needs and desires of Indian communities. Second was the Indian Education Act, 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 Native Americans 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, the allowance of gambling on Indian land under the supervision of a National Indian Gaming Commission. This led to a lucrative source of funding for Indian projects. In 1989, only a few reservations offered a form of gambling, but by the end of 1992 about 140 tribes maintained gaming operations. Annual wagering on reservations, according to an article in The Christian Science Monitor (David Holmstrom, March 18, 1993), was estimated to be as high as five billion dollars.

Senate hearings in 1988-1989 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, the Indian Employment, Training, and Related Services Act demonstrated how Indian tribal governments can integrate the employment, training, and related services they provide in order to improve the effectiveness of those services and reduce joblessness in Indian communities.

On finding that the increasing numbers of Indian students who qualified for postsecondary education far outpaced the resources available, and that tribes showed an increasing interest in administering programs to serve these individuals, Congress passed the Indian Higher Education Programs Act (1992), providing financial assistance to individual Indians either wishing to attend or attending institutions of higher education. The Indian Resources Act (1992) enabled the secretary of energy, in consultation with the secretary of the interior, to cooperate with and provide assistance to Indian tribes for the purpose of assisting Indian tribes in the development, administration, and enforcement of tribal programs to promote energy self-sufficiency on reservations. An Indian Resource Commission was established; it included the secretary of the interior and the secretary of energy or their designates. Problems, nevertheless, continued to plague the Indian community.

Social Conditions

Senator John McCain of Arizona reported in 1992 that from 40 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 there was a 39 percent unemployment rate among Indians, three times the rate for 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.

Health

A number of governmental agencies provide health services for American Indians; the most important is the Indian Health Service (IHS), within the Public Health Service. It operates a program of comprehensive health services for eligible American Indians and Alaska Natives. It provides hospital and medical care, rehabilitative services, and disease control activities and assists in the development of water supply and waste disposal. It provides for the training of health personnel and promotes tribal self-determination in health care. The 1976 Indian Health Care Improvement Act “authorized resources to carry out the objectives of Indian Self-Determination” and established national goals for programs providing health care to Native Americans. Under this act, some tribes have chosen to operate their own health systems directly; some run their own hospitals, and various tribes and Indian organizations operate about 250 health clinics.

Yet statistically, the Indian population dies young. Most deaths of Indians under the age of forty-five have been attributed to six causes: unintentional injuries, cirrhosis, homicide, suicide, pneumonia, and complications of diabetes. According to the Indian Health Service in 1992, Indian people have the highest mortality rates in the United States.

Education, Employment, and Housing

The 1991 Digest of Education Statistics reported that during the 1988-1989 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 been 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.

Finances and Claims

Time magazine reported in 1992 that although Indian governments controlled about 40 percent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ $1.9 billion budget, self-government had merely given many Indians the responsibility to administer their own poverty, since they still had the shortest life spans, highest infant-mortality rate, highest high school dropout rate, and most extensive health problems of any United States ethnic group. The article saw the situation changing with the spin of roulette wheels, however: As of 1992, about 140 Indian tribes operated 150 gambling casinos, and revenue grew from $287 million in 1987 to more than $3.2 billion by 1993, making some tribes rich.

Indian claims after World War II were assisted by the establishment, after decades of Indian dissatisfaction, of an Indian Claims Commission. Although intended to operate for five years, the commission was inundated with so many claims against the government that its life was extended four times, to 1978; thereafter, major cases were referred to the U.S. Court of Claims. By that time approximately 40 percent of the claims filed had been adjudicated.

Bibliography

Bolt, Christine. American Indian Policy and American Reform. London: Allen & Unwin, 1987. Deals in part 1 with the history of Native Americans along the road to self-determination in the 1960’s. Part 2 is devoted to case studies of specific topics, such as Indian education in the twentieth century, Indian women, urban Indians since World War II, and Indian protest groups. There are a few charts and maps.

Deloria, Vine, Jr., ed. American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. An anthology of eleven essays on various topics of Native American life, such as Indian voting, the evolution of federal Indian policy making, the crisis in tribal government, and an overview of American Indian policy. Particularly valuable is the essay on federal Indian policies in the setting of international protection of human rights.

Deloria, Vine, Jr., and Clifford M. Lytle. American Indians, American Justice. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. Particularly valuable for the white justice system and relationship with the Native American both as an individual and as a member of a tribe.

A Matter of Fact 17 (1992). This semiannual periodical has been published since 1984. Valuable because it brings in brief form up-to-date comments of public figures such as congressmen and senators on various aspects of American life, including the social conditions of Native Americans.

Nabokov, Peter, ed. Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-1992. New York: Viking Penguin, 1991. An anthology of Indian-white relations as seen by Native Americans from 1492 to 1992. Chapter 19, “Facing the Indian Future,” is especially valuable for the period of the 1960’s on.

Nichols, Roger L. The American Indian Past and Present. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992. An anthology of essays dealing with the history of Native Americans, such as urban Native Americans, 1920-1950; building toward self-determination; Jim Crow, Indian style; and Nichols’ own article dealing with Indians in the post-termination era. The book does not sufficiently discuss the policy of termination, however, leaving a gap that should be filled. No maps, tables, or charts.

Taylor, Theodore W. American Indian Policy. Mt. Airy, Md.: Lomond, 1983. Excellent for a quick insight into the legislation of the federal government regarding its Indian policy, as well as policies of the states, since the 1960’s. The footnoting is particularly good. Very good on Indian health. Many charts and tables.

Thornton, Russell. American Indian: Holocaust and Survival. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. This book deals with a population history of Native Americans since 1492 and is filled with statistics in a demographic overview of Native American history. It describes the holocaust that white society brought to the American Indian. Valuable reading.