Introduction (Part 4)

Gerald One Feather

Particulary significant in the life of the Oglala Sioux has been the recent rise of young leadership of the tribe. Of all the plain tribes, the Oglala Sioux have been most highly influenced by their educated young people. In early 1967 the educated youth of the reservation formed the American Indian Leadership Conference, which continues to the present. In 1969 the Conference managed to elect its own candidates in three major tribal elections in South Dakota. The most spectacular climb to prominence was that Gerald One Feather, thirty-one years old: in the Oglala Sioux elections in January 1970 he became the youngest elected tribal leader in the history of the Sioux nation. One Feather promoted a progressive platform and swamped his older opponent by a wide margin, thus indicating that the young Sioux had finally completed the return to prominence forecast by Embree in his delineation of the return of Indian culture.

Wallace "Mad Bear" Anderson

The Iroquois also have experienced a great revival since the days of the Depression. Today they are one of the dominant forces in contemporary Indian affairs. Led by such men as Wallace "Mad Bear" Anderson, Oren Lyons, and Mike Mitchell, they have spearheaded the movement of Indian tribes back to traditional religion and ancient forms of government. In cooperation with the Hope prophet Tomas Banyaca, these men have traveled across the United States advocating Indian unity on a traditional treaty basis, which would supersede the formal tribal relationships that have grown up during the years the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act.

Today the Iroquois face great dangers. Now Canada rather than the United States poses the threat to their existence. The Canadian government is attempting to sever all of its treaty relationships with Canadian indian tribes. The Iroquois, of course, were allies of the British before the American Revolution; thus they hold the major treaties in Canada and face the most loss of lands and rights because of the new policy. Their lands now occupy the best industrial sites in southern Canada, and there is tremendous pressure on the Iroquois to sell or lease their reservations for industrial purposes.

Oren Lyons

Embree's understanding of the "Soul of a People" as outlined in his last chapter prefigures the meaning of the Indian revival of today. Spurred on by the sudden release from religious bondage, the native religions have shown amazing vitality. Nearly every tribe now celebrates its traditional festivals and ceremonies. The religious traditionalists have rapidly come to the fore as the strongest element in national Indian affairs and now dominate the activities of a number of tribes.  Under the leadership of such men as Oren Lyons of the Onondagas, Tom Porter and Mike Mitchell of the St. Regis Mohawks, Wallace "Mad Bear" Anderson of the Tuscaroras, Clifton Hill o the Creeks, Thomas Banyaca of the Hopis, and Alfred Gragne, the National Aboriginal Movement, which aims to reorganize Indian tribes along ancient and traditional forms of government, has made significant impact on the thinking of Indian people everywhere.

Introduction (Part 3)

A number of significant Indian organizations on the national level have been created by Indian people of all tribes in the years since Embree's book was written. In 1944 the National Congress of American Indians was established to consider legislation and legal matters affecting tribes in their relationships with the federal government. The N.C.A.I. has grown to be a large and capable organization. It has several thousand Indian and white members, and 132 Indian tribes hold membership. The National Congress of American Indians has been instrumental in protecting Indian rights over the last two decades and has been responsible for many constructive changes in federal policy.

In 1962 the National Indian Youth Council was formed. By 1970, with a membership of nearly a thousand, it had become the major voice for Indian college students. In 1964 the N.I.Y.C. sponsored the famous Indian "Fish-Ins" in the state of Washington  thus ushering in the era of Indian nationalism and "Red Power. Two members of the N.I.Y.C. have gone on to become Executive Directors of the National Congress of American Indians, indicating the natural process of development of Indian leadership from youth to full tribal responsibilities.

Navajo Tribe

Intertribal councils also have flourished in the time since Embree wrote his book. Today tribes have banded together in sixteen states to form these councils for cooperative work on the state level. In addition, there are nearly thirty regional organizations that provide services in every area of Indian life. All of these developments were beyond the vision of people writing books a generation ago; Embree could hardly have anticipated such development along political lines.

Oglala Sioux

The Indians of Oklahoma have not fared as well as Embree originally anticipated. Land has continued to slip out of Indian hands, and the peoples of the various tribes have largely moved away from their original reservation areas in search of employment. The Navajo tribe of Arizona has increased far beyond Embree's expectations. He listed Navajo population at 45'000 in 1939, and today, thirty-one years later, it is in excess of 132'000 and still rapidly expanding. In 1936 the official total Indian populations was listed as 344'000, and today the federal government claims a reservation population of 380'000, indicating that migration has not reduced reservation population in the interim. today a reasonable estimation of the Indian population would be in excess of one million people. Reservation Indians make up only 400'000 of that total, former reservation residents now dwelling in the urban areas and small towns of the nation something in excess of 500'000 and the surviving groups of Indians east of the Mississippi nearly 100'000. (This contrasts with Embree's original estimate that the eastern seaboard had been practically wiped clear of Indians.)

The chapters on the Oglala Sioux and Iroquois end on a sad note. Embree found that the original cultural basis of these tribes had vanished, traditions were waning, and the people longed for the lonesome life of the plains and woodlands hunting days. The situation is much brighter today. The Oglala Sioux have revived their customs, including the traditional Sun Dance. They have repurchased significant amounts of their original reservation land base and begun a number of progressive projects designed to increase the community life on the reservation. Today they are one of the most aggressive tribes in the nation.

Introduction (Part 2)

Commisioner of Indian Affairs John Collier
meets with South Dakota Blackfoot Indian chiefs in 1934

Edwin Embree was one of the few who discerned the basic validity of Collier's approach. His book Indians of the Americas, written in 1939, five years after the enactment of the Indian Reorganization Act, was one o the first attempts to place the new Indian policy in an intelligent light. Embree sought to span the myriad Indian tribes and cultures by discussing a few of the most spectacular and divergent tribes. In the United States proper he dwelt on the Iroquois, the Pueblos and the Oglala Sioux, while the big-three nations of the south, the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas, served to ilustrate the Indian nations of Central and South America.

In a real sense, Embree was guilty of romanticizing the tribes he covered. The days of buffalo-hunting, pyramid-building, and trade wars of the eastern wood-lands were only misty memories when Embree wrote; he might better have written of the contemporary cultures of those tribes during the Depression years. But his period was a time of startling revision of the meaning and importance of culture. In such a period of flux, perhaps no one could blame Embree for seeking to represent culture in its traditional state of purity. by adopting this approach he was able to show the life-styles of the respective tribes and how these had politely bowed to the modern world but yet remained fundamentally untouched.

The Indian Orgamization Act of 1934

The important contribution of Embree's book was to assist in the defense of Indian tribal cultures and governments at a time when they sorely needed defense. The ensuing three decades have shown beyond doubt that the policies advocated by John Collier have been beneficial to Indian people. Today Indian tribes largely pay for their own governments out of tribal income developed under enterprises originally chartered under the Indian Reorganization Act provisions. The shrinking land base has been fairly well stabilized. With the social programs of the last decade initiated by such agencies as the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Area Redevelopment Administration (later renamed Economic Development Administration), and the Housing and Urban Development Department, Indian tribes have accomplished a great deal in bringing a decent standard of living to the people on the reservations.

Engraving of the American Indian town of Pomeiooc.

Embree's concluding chapter is somewhat dated, yet it retains a basic understanding o the nature of the cultural clash between the immigrant whites and the original inhabitants of this continent -a conflict that is yet to be resolved. Indians are no longer a scattered and broken people. Migrations to the urban areas during the Second World War and the Korean conflict created an urban population that is now larger than the reservation population. The Indian birth-rate has remained consistently high, so that the reservation population is now, in spite of constant departures of families, higher than at any time since the reservations were established.

Introduction (Part 1)

North American Indian

So deeply had the philosophy of the melting pot been entrenched in the American psyche that by the early years of this century the field of Indian affairs was regarded as merely a matter of administration. In 1887 the massive tribal landholding were allotted in severalty to the members of the respective tribes under the theory that ownership of individual plots of land would serve to destroy the traditional Indian method of holding all lands in common. It was hoped that individual ownership would act as a device to server tribal relationships and render individual Indians free of tribal restraints and customs.

By 1929 the situation on the reservations was disastrous  Over ninety million acres of land had gone out of Indian ownership, and the once-prosperous tribesmen were reduced to desperate paupers holding a shrinking island of virtually worthless land. Studies by Congressional committees indicated that unless federal policy were radically reoriented, the reservations would become death-traps for those who remained  on them; at the same time, those who left, without training, totally incapable of supporting themselves, would form a tragic remnant huddled in the backwaters of urban areas.

John Collier (right), Elmer Thomas (left), and Claude M. Hirst (center)

In 1934 John Collier, Frankin Roosevelt's Commissioner of Indian Affairs, introduced the Indian Reorganization Act, which was quickly written into law. The basic aim of the legislation was to support native culture and reverse the policy of forced assimilation of individual Indians. Under the new I.R.A. provisions, native religions which had been banned for nearly half a century were recognized as valid and proper. Economic-development corporations and land-consolidation programs were begun by reservation peoples to stop the erosion of the land base, develop a source of tribal income and provide employment fo the reservation residents.

The innovations of the Collier years were startling. For nearly three centuries white Americans had blithely accepted the premise that the American Indian was a vanishing race. His culture, while colourful and unusual to western Europeans, was thought to be forever crushed by the inroad of civilization. Most of the people who had been working in the field of Indian affairs saw the Collier years as a return to the primitive and savage state. Missionaries viewed his tolerance of native religions as the work of the Antichrist. Conservatives looked askance as tribal governments were set up which held the land in common ownership. To some it was the beginning of Communist intrusion into American political affairs.

American Indian tents