Donna Martinez
Early Native America
American Indians have been in the Americas for at least 40,000 years. American history after European contact is a comparatively short period of only a few hundred years. Far from an unsettled wilderness, the total population of North and South America was one-fifth of the world’s population before European contact. European colonists referred to all Indian settlements, regardless of their size, as “villages.” However, North America was a continent of urban centers. Our urban ancestors resided in multi-ethnic, multilingual, intertribal cites. The earliest history of urban America can be found in our ancient Indian civilizations. The oldest continually occupied cities in North America include Acoma, Oraibi, and Taos.
While medieval Christians were erecting Gothic cathedrals in Europe, American Indians in the Mississippi basin were constructing large urban centers composed of pyramid mounds, open plazas, astronomical observatories, and temples. Mound Builders established “major religious and cultural centers marked by monuments such as those at Cahokia, Etowah, Moundville, and Spiro, inhabited by urban elites and surrounded by villages scattered throughout the nearby farmlands and forests, served as sites of cultural diffusion and reinforcement. Pyramidal, flat-topped mounds upon which temples or mortuaries stood were the most recognizable and obvious physical indicators of Mississippian culture” (K. D. Motes). One of the largest populations of Mound Builders was at Cahokia, which had a population of 30,000, the same size as medieval London. “The Cahokia community itself occupied over five square miles, and it was surrounded by numerous ‘suburbs’ or satellite communities that stretched as far away as fifty miles” (Alan G. Shackelford). The great pyramid of Cahokia was the third largest pyramid in the Americas. Cahokia remained the largest settlement in North America until the end of eighteenth century, when it was surpassed by New York and Philadelphia.
Ancestral Puebloan people in the Southwest also built urban centers with canals, ball courts, and multi-story buildings. Mesa Verde in southern Colorado had 1,200 rooms, 20 towers, and 200 kivas. One of the largest dwellings was Cliff Palace. “Cliff Palace may have denoted this specific unit as a social or administrative site with high ceremonial usage” (Katherine Brooks). Another significant urban center, Chaco Canyon, comprised a dozen towns and 200 villages with a population exceeding 5,000 (Katherine Brooks). Pueblo Bonito at Chaco was the largest apartment house in the world until the Spanish Flats were erected in 1882 at 59th Street and 7th Avenue in New York City.
Invasions of America, 1492–1789
European diseases had a significant impact on Indian communities and the history of the continent. Until contact with Europeans, Indians were isolated from the massive, deadly epidemics that ravaged Europe and Asia in medieval times—smallpox, measles, the bubonic plague, influenza, and cholera. Without immunity to European diseases, tribes experienced up to 90 percent mortality rates. Indian populations further declined due to warfare, slave raiding, famine, and other traumas of colonization. “Scholars believe that Native populations may have declined by as much as 95 percent by 1900. The diseases not only devastated tribes demographically, but also weakened them politically, socially, psychologically, and militarily” (Mark van de Logt). Many waves of immigrants brought contagious European diseases with them. The first Europeans to arrive in the Americas were the Vikings in Greenland and Newfoundland around 1,000 CE. In the seventeenth century, the Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish, and English arrived. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Finns, Germans, Scots, Irish, and Russians arrived. Even if American Indians survived the epidemics brought by Europeans, they could still die of starvation, as most of the farmers would have been sick or dying and unable to plant crops.
Europeans fought religious wars for over seven centuries prior to the invasion of the Americas. Long-standing rivalries among European powers affected tribes who formed alliances with different European colonizers. Europeans had fought holy wars focused on driving “infidels” (Muslims and Jews) out of Europe. These militant Christian warriors came to the Americas and perceived American Indian tribes as the new “infidels.”
The Spanish in the South and Southwest preceded the English by almost a century. The Spanish encountered permanent, sedentary horticultural societies throughout Mississippian basin in 1540. Mississippian chiefdoms faced colonization, slave raiding, and epidemics. “As a result, aspiring conquistadors, best translated as ‘conquerors,’ started looking for the next wealthy Indian empire to conquer, and not surprisingly, many looked northward to the Mississippian Indian communities of the Southeast with their large populations, monumental architecture, and complex political institutions” (Alan G. Shackelford).
Spanish colonizers used an encomienda system to force Indians to work in their mines and plantations. “Second, many encomenderos acquired land next to subject Pueblos presumably for the purpose of making tribute payments easier but actually with the desire to steal Indian land and to use Indians as an illegal source of labor” (Terry Ahlstedt). By 1550, a policy of repartimiento required Indian towns to supply a pool of labor. The Spanish established a settlement in Santa Fe in 1610, built by Indian labor.
Catholic priests forbade religious dances and ceremonies, raided kivas, and confiscated religious objects. Female influence in matrilineal Pueblo communities was undermined. Pueblos adopted outward forms of Catholicism and kept their traditional religions underground. Christianity served as a subterfuge and supplement to traditional Indian religions for most, rather than an alternative religion.
Spanish religious persecution and abuses of women led to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. In 1675, the Spanish hung three Pueblo religious leaders and whipped others. Pope, a medicine man from the San Juan Pueblo, organized an estimated 17,000 Puebloans, speaking six different languages, in a planned revolt. Runners carried knotted strings to indicate the day of the planned revolt, which successfully kept the Spanish out of the Southwest for 12 years.
English colonizers arrived later than the Spanish. The Plymouth Colony, established in 1620, is one of the best-known groups. The coast of Massachusetts was depopulated by epidemics, and pilgrims believed that God sent a plague among the Indians to allow for the possession of their land. Some tribes allied with the Europeans, who offered new trade opportunities and political alliances. The English were able to take advantage of divide-and-conquer strategies based on a history of conflict among some tribes. The Mohegans and Narragansetts assisted the English in the Pequot War in 1637. “The conflict between the indigenous Pequot and the Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut colonies resulted in the near destruction of the Pequots as a people while establishing the English as the dominant powerbrokers in the Northeast” (Drew Lopenzina). Surviving women and children were sold into slavery in the West Indies and among allied tribes. The English outlawed the use of the Pequot tribal name, in an attempt to erase them from history. The Pequots were not a federally recognized tribe until 1983. “Metacom’s Rebellion was a major indigenous uprising of the late seventeenth century that dramatically transformed communities across the Northeast. Beginning with small-scale violence near Pokanoket-Wampanoag homelands and the struggling English colony at Plymouth, it rapidly escalated into a region-wide crisis enveloping a diversity of Algonquian and New England colonial communities” (Christine DeLucia).
American Indian tribes were the original source of slaves for European colonists, but their high death rate from disease, and high rate of runaways, meant they were an inconsistent pool of labor. Colonists, therefore, increased the population of enslaved Africans. On the East Coast, American Indians were enslaved on plantations, worked for meager wages on whaling ships, and served in English armies. Europeans drove slave raiding among tribes, who traded captives for guns. The slave trade also helped spread deadly European diseases. Enslaved Indians in the South were listed as slaves, but in the Southwest, the Spanish listed them as “servants.” Enslaved women were vulnerable to sexual assault.
An increasing dependence on European goods, especially guns and alcohol, allowed European traders to amass significant debts, which they used to demand tribal lands for payment. Debt due to alcohol consumption led to a loss of tribal lands. Alcoholism led to death, violence, and divisions within families and tribes, between those who abstained and “the drinking tribe” of alcoholics.
War played a limited role in Indian societies before European colonization, but the arrival of guns made warfare more common. In most tribes, there were two classes of chiefs, the older civil or village chiefs and the younger military war chiefs. As war became more prevalent, younger warrior chiefs held more power, and the influence of older, peaceful chiefs declined. Europeans would often deal with their preferred chiefs and offer them bribes at treaty signings.
In 1763, anti-British tribes in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley captured British forts west of the Appalachians in Pontiac’s Rebellion (Roger Carpenter). The 1763 British Royal Proclamation had prohibited European settlement west of the Appalachians. Many colonial elites, such as Washington and Jefferson, had investments in western lands. Many scholars believe that one motivating factor for the founding fathers in the American Revolution was anger that British tyrants would prevent them from making a fortune out of Indian lands.
Both the British and American rebels sought Indian allies during the American Revolution, which divided tribes. The Chickamauga Cherokees continued to fight post-revolution against the Americans until 1795, when they voluntarily moved west of the Mississippi to Arkansas and received a treaty in 1817, decades before the Trail of Tears. The Iroquois Confederacy was divided with the Oneidas and Tuscaroras supporting the Americans, though their lands were still taken after the war. In October 1988, the 100th U.S. Congress passed a resolution to acknowledge the influence of the Iroquois Confederacy on the U.S. Constitution. “The Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy represents the oldest living participatory constitution in the world. It was used to frame the U.S. Constitution” (Rhianna C. Rogers and Menoukha R. Case).
After the war with Britain, the American government had little money, except from sale of Indian lands. Displacing Indians from land that could be sold to investors and railroad companies, or to private white landowners, helped to fund the American treasury wars against Indians often started on flimsy pretenses and led to treaties that ceded large tracts of territory to the United States. The U.S. government policy of Manifest Destiny (which held that the United States had the right to expand west across the continent to the Pacific Ocean) led to dire consequences for many Indian nations.
Western Removals, 1800–1840
Indian removals to lands west of the Mississippi sparked revolts. Various strategies were implemented—the formation of Indian Confederacies, lobbying Congress, legal cases presented to the Supreme Court, and military resistance. Removals caused diasporas and divisions within tribes. As tribes moved west, deadly European diseases impacted more Indian people. American Indian Health Services were established in part to reduce the spread of epidemic diseases, which also affected whites in forts and settlements inhabited by Indians (Alexis Kopowski).
The Seminole Wars were fought from 1816–1858. Part of the Seminole tribe resisted forced relocation to lands in the west by using guerilla tactics and acculturated political and military strategies (Rhianna C. Rogers). “The Black Hawk War was the last Indian War fought in what had been the Northwest Territory (Old Northwest), and the last fought east of the Mississippi River. Named for the Sauk leader Black Hawk, the conflict lasted only a few months, beginning in May and ending in August 1832” (Roger Carpenter).
President Thomas Jefferson believed that American Indians were culturally inferior to Europeans but that they were capable of “improvement.” In contrast, President Andrew Jackson believed that Indians were both racially inferior and incapable of change. As such, Jackson wanted such “savages” removed west to a segregated Indian Territory, to live apart from whites. Tribes in the Southeast exhibited an outward lifestyle that was similar to Europeans but retained their own language, traditional values, and religious practices. By 1825, the Cherokees had developed a written language and begun publishing the first American Indian newspaper in 1827, the bilingual Cherokee Phoenix. They had higher literacy rates than their white neighbors. The Cherokees adopted a written constitution in 1828 based on the Iroquois/U.S. model.
In 1827, gold was discovered on Cherokee lands in Georgia. The state of Georgia immediately passed state laws that made it illegal for Cherokees to dig for gold on their lands or to testify in court. Both cotton and gold made Cherokee lands valuable. Weary of attacks by whites, some Cherokees joined the tribe in Arkansas. The 1830 Indian Removal Act, passed by Congress and championed by President Andrew Jackson, followed state suppression of tribes. After his election, “In his first annual message to Congress in 1829, Jackson called on Congress to grant him the power to assign lands west of the Mississippi to be traded to tribes for their lands in the East, and thus to negotiate final removal treaties with the indigenous nations of the South. Doing so would allow him to open their lands to speculation investments and Euro-American settlement, both of which benefitted him as well as his most powerful supporters” (K. D. Motes).
Two Cherokee Nation Cases were brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1831 and 1832 with the aim of preventing further removals. “Not only did these cases provide the foundation for federal Indian law, but they also were pivotal for establishing the U.S. Supreme Court’s authority” (Selene Phillips). The 1832 Worchester v. Georgia Supreme Court case was found in favor of the Cherokees, ruling that state law does not extend to Indian Country and that the laws of Georgia cannot be enforced on Cherokee lands. President Jackson dismissed the Cherokees’ legal victory, stating that Supreme Court Justice John Marshall had made his decision, “now let him enforce it.” The Cherokee Nation could not rely on the federal government to protect them from the violence they faced from whites in Georgia.
In an act of ethnic cleansing, the Indian Removal Act force-marched tribes to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. In 1838, members of the Cherokee tribe in the east who followed Chief John Ross were placed in unsanitary internment camps, where many died. Additionally, one in four Cherokees died on the forced march known as the Trail of Tears. Some tried to “hide in plain sight” by passing as white or black. According to multiple treaties, Indian Territory was supposed to remain Indian Territory forever, as long as “the grass grows and the water runs.” However, this land became the state of Oklahoma in 1907.
Defending the West, 1840–1890
Congress officially ended its treaty-making policy in 1871, ignoring all unratified treaties. Feeling that the United States was militarily superior to Indian nations, the federal government refused to continue to work diplomatically with tribes. By 1878, most tribes were incarcerated on segregated reservations, where they faced disease and starvation. They were placed on land that could not be farmed, and they were not allowed to leave the reservation to hunt without permission from Indian agents serving as overseers. Dependent on rations promised in treaties, labor was often mandatory. White buffalo hunters reduced the buffalo population to near extinction; this created starve-or-sign treaties and impacted the religious practices of some tribes.
Tribes responded to American expansion and colonialism with different strategies in varying time periods. Changing tactics among bands sometimes divided tribes. “From 1849 to 1865, the Apaches fought off a series of invasions by settlers on their ancestral lands. Some of the Apache tribes agreed to move into reservations, as long as they were allowed to stay in their homeland, but the United States broke their treaties when whites wanted those lands. The peaceful Apaches were displaced once again and relocated to land that could not provide a living for them” (Ramon Resendiz and Rosalva Resendiz). Apaches who resisted invasions were finally captured and imprisoned in Florida. They were allowed to return to Indian Territory in 1894 but were not allowed to return to their homelands in the Southwest until 1913.
The 1862 Dakota War (Angelique EagleWoman) was waged after land cessions in Minnesota were made in a series of treaties. Without access to lands for hunting and gathering, the food rations promised in treaties became very important for the Dakotas’ survival. A rebellion started in the summer of 1862 when whites continued to trespass on Indian land while many Dakota were starving because promised food and payments did not arrive. When the Dakotas asked white agents for their food rations, they were denied, and agent Andrew Myrick was heard to say, “Let them eat grass and their own dung.” Starvation drove some Dakotas to attack white agents’ homes and towns. Agent Myrick was one of the first casualties and was found with grass in his mouth. After the short-lived conflict, the military sentenced more than 300 Dakotas to death. Lincoln, however, pardoned more than 250 of them. Thirty-eight Dakotas were hung in a mass execution the day after Christmas in Mankato, Minnesota; this remains the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Mdewakanton and Wahpekute survivors were forced to relocate to Crow Creek, South Dakota, where hundreds died within the first year due to starvation and disease. News of the broken treaties and executions spread to other tribes on the Plains.
After gold was discovered at Pikes Peak in Colorado in 1858, there was pressure to open Cheyenne and Arapaho lands to whites. Greed by many, partnered with racism, led to violence, disease, and starvation for Indians. The Sand Creek Massacre occurred on November 29, 1864, when vigilantes attacked a peaceful camp of Arapahos and Cheyennes, murdering 200, many of them women and children. After a meeting outside Denver, the tribes understood that they could receive sanctuary by declaring peace, and camping near army posts. Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle led a group of peaceful Cheyennes and Arapahos to a camp 40 miles from Fort Lyon near Sand Creek and informed the military commanders of their movements. Colonel John Chivington, a notorious hater of Indians, led a group of volunteers with four howitzers to the Indian camp. The vigilantes returned to Denver displaying body parts from their mutilated victims to cheering crowds in a parade through the streets and exhibited them on the opera house stage. Word of the massacre spread among tribes and served to unite many of them in their mistrust of whites. “The massacre served as a watershed moment for the Cheyenne Nation and Plains Wars, which occurred over the next two decades between Plains tribes and the United States Army” (Jonathan Byrn).
Religious revivals and non-compliant Indian leaders were seen as dangerous to whites. In 1890, Chief Sitting Bull was assassinated, and troops murdered 300 Lakota at the Wounded Knee Massacre. A Ghost Dance ceremony was revitalized by the Paiute prophet Wovoka and spread to North and South Dakota. “Chief Sitting Bull (Itanca Tatanka Iyotake) was perceived as a resistor for allowing the ceremony to take place near his home site on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation” (Angelique EagleWoman). Indian police, employed by the white Indian agent, assassinated Chief Sitting Bull. After hearing of this assassination, the Lakotas, led by Chief Big Foot, fled south toward the Pine Ridge Reservation They were intercepted by the U.S. military and forced to camp at Wounded Knee Creek. Over 470 soldiers armed with rifles and four machine guns surrounded the group of Lakotas. While the military searched and disarmed Lakotas, a shot was heard, and soldiers opened fire, murdering 350. “For the rest of the day, soldiers shot any moving Lakota within a three-mile distance, including infants, small children, pregnant women, the elderly, and all others” (Angelique EagleWoman).
Educational and Cultural Assaults, 1870s–1920s
The U.S. government’s Indian policy focused on confining Indians on reservations where U.S. Indian agents controlled their labor and movement. Indians adapted by practicing their ceremonies underground and retaining their languages.
Policy focus shifted to the federal allotment of tribal lands in order to break up reservations. Meanwhile, white “friends of Indians” groups were formed in the 1880s. “Among these modernist whites were those who called themselves the ‘friends of the Indians.’ They believed they had a mission to ‘civilize’ the Indians” (Terry Ahlstedt). Their idea of helping Indians was based on assimilating them to adopt white values. Tribal lands would be turned into individual family farms, and Indian children would be placed in boarding schools away from the influence of their families and tribes who spoke their language and retained traditional religious practices. The 1887 General Allotment Act created tribal rolls in order to enact allotment. Each Indian head of household was to receive 160 acres of private property outside of tribal lands. “Surplus” lands could be sold to white families and corporations. Since these allotments were taxed, and most Indians were impoverished, many were unable to hold onto their assigned lands. These practices led to a checkerboard pattern of residence that continues today on reservations, with most of the population comprising white landowners. The Sioux Bill of 1889 is an example of the land reductions that tribes were subjected to. “Surplus” lands were then sold to white settlers, mostly ranchers. The “surplus” lands amounted to more than 9,000,000 acres of land, roughly the size of the state of Virginia. This bill was designed to begin the allotment process on the newly created Lakota reservations. However, the Oglalas successfully resisted allotment on Pine Ridge for 15 years (Jeff Means).
To summarize the goal of assimilating Indian students, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, founder of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, coined the phrase “Kill the Indian and Save the Man.” Most whites now viewed the Indian problem as being based on exposure to Indian culture. In order to achieve the massive relocation of Indian youth to boarding schools, a quota system was established for tribes. Troops rounded up children and took them far away to experience military discipline in schools modeled on prisons. Upon arrival, children’s hair was cut, and they were given uniforms to wear and assigned white names, and they could only speak in English, a language that few knew. Students were punished if they were caught speaking their own languages. Children who died from suicide, disease, or malnutrition were placed in unmarked graves. Most schools offered a limited range of vocational training and placed children in white families during the summer to work as manual laborers or domestics. Today, American Indians continue to experience the highest high-school dropout rates of any group in the United States, as well as the lowest educational attainment rates. The legacy of colonialism continues to cause the educational disparities faced by American Indians.
“One influential supporter was Henry Dawes, a senator from Massachusetts and primary author of the General Allotment Act of 1887, which resulted in the loss of more than 40 percent of tribally held lands. Pratt and Dawes made natural partners as both were interested in assimilationist policies that would strip Indian people of their cultural traditions and languages and their land” (Kiara Vigil).
Far from assimilating, most Indian students retained their tribal identities, and many generated an intertribal identity that would serve as the foundation for activism. A few elite boarding schools such as Carlisle produced graduates who became doctors, teachers, athletes, and artists. Far from repudiating Indian culture, however, a number of Carlisle alumni went on to found the Society of American Indians (SAI) in 1911. SAI was comprised of American Indian members, not whites, who advocated on behalf of tribes and American Indians. For example, they lobbied for the passage of the 1924 American Indian Citizenship Act in order to enfranchise Indians.
Members of SAI served on the committee that issued the Meriam Report in 1928 (LeRoy Saiz). The report summarized the status of American Indians regarding economic, health, and economic disparities. Most of the proposed solutions were consolidated from ideas posed at previous SAI annual conferences. The report suggested that government policy needed to reverse the assault that had occurred upon Indian lands, governments, cultures, religions, and languages. It opposed the concept of assimilation, called for an end to allotment, and advocated for the establishment of day schools on reservations to replace boarding schools. Franklin Roosevelt’s administration worked to implement an “Indian New Deal” based on recommendations in the Meriam Report.
From the Great Depression to Alcatraz, 1929–1969
Urban American Indian populations increased during the twentieth century. Graduates of boarding schools sought further educational opportunities and employment in cities. Many World War I veterans remained in cities upon their return from the war to seek jobs. The federal government had an early model relocation program for Indian families to move to cities for employment in the 1930s. World War II veterans joined urban communities after the war. Urban American Indians created both tribal and intertribal organizations in cities.
The intertribal National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), founded in Denver in 1944, is the oldest national American Indian civil rights organization. NCAI lobbying led to the establishment of an Indian Claims Commission to review tribal grievances from 1946 to 1978 pertaining to 1,771 Indian treaties that were not implemented and payments that were not made for stolen lands and resources. The Indian Claims Commission awarded over $800 million in settlements. In the 1960s, the NCAI also saw many of their policy suggestions implemented in President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” program. Johnson began an Office for Economic Opportunity (OEO), which was more progressive than the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). “OEO’s efforts were focused on ‘not only economic development but expertise development,’ which led to numerous reservations starting programs that were not dependent on the BIA” (Katie Kirakosian).
Alaska Natives successfully lobbied for the landmark Anti-Discrimination Bill in 1945. Among the Alaska Native activists was Tlingit leader Elizabeth Peratrovich. “Elizabeth Peratrovich’s debate with Senator Shattuck during the 1945 session is best remembered by history. Elizabeth sat calmly knitting during much of the debate. When her turn to speak came, Elizabeth stood before the all-white male Senate and ripped apart the pro-segregation senators” (Caskey Russell). Women filled important leadership roles in a number of tribes. In 1951, Annie Dodge Wauneka was elected to the Navajo Tribal Council and served in this position for 27 years (Claudia Ford).
Indian people moved to cities in growing numbers in the 1950s when the federal government changed course again by establishing a relocation program. “American Indian relocation was the result of the Bureau of Indian Affairs passing a series of laws that provided funds for moving Native individuals and families from rural reservations to urban centers” (Megan Tusler). In 1948, the BIA experimented with relocation programs to Denver, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. A 1952 Relocation Program expanded the number of cities that relocatees could choose from, and the program’s central administrative offices were moved from Washington, D.C., to Denver. With high levels of poverty on reservations, 70 percent of relocatees remained in urban areas.
In 1953, House Resolution 108 was passed as a Termination Policy to end the legal status of tribes. From 1953 to 1966, Congress terminated 109 tribes. “Iroquois Confederation of New York was one of the groups chosen for termination in this memo; the tribes under the confederation are the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onandaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. The Texas nation under particular scrutiny was the Alabama-Coushatta nation; for Florida, the Seminole nation was targeted. An earlier act of law, Title 25 U.S. Code § 217a ch. 276, 54 Stat. 249 in Kansas (1940) had effectively terminated Indian relations because its effect was to enforce state law upon the nations that were fully or partially within the Kansas borders: the Sac and Fox, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Iowa.” (Megan Tusler). The NCAI lobbied against the termination policy, reminding politicians that “reservations do not imprison us, they are our ancestral lands.” Younger and more militant Indians who lived in cities also demanded an end to the termination policy.
Targeted for termination, the Iroquois continued their activism. Iroquois Tax and Reservoir Protests occurred in 1957. “Specifically, after the federal government granted New York State civil jurisdiction over Indians residing within its boundaries, the state sought to levy personal income tax on Iroquois wage workers and to the construction of a series of dams/reservoirs on Iroquois reservations” (Nikki Dragone).
Termination and relocation policies backfired; they nurtured intertribal Indian identity and activist movements. A younger generation of college students were influenced by anti-colonial movements throughout the world. The National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) was founded in 1961 in Gallup, New Mexico, and is the second oldest national Indian group. One of the first actions of the NIYC was to join the fish-ins in the Northwest, where tribes confronted state law enforcement infringing on guaranteed treaty rights regarding fishing. “The NIYC campaigned tirelessly for tribal self-determination, treaty rights, cultural preservation, and culturally relevant education for the indigenous peoples of the United States. Through tactics of direct action protest, model schools, and direct dialogue with federal power brokers, the NIYC changed the shape and tone of federal Indian affairs and paved the way for later, more celebrated militant activist organizations to fight for indigenous rights” (Paul McKenzie-Jones).
Young urban Indians founded more militant Indian groups. The first Indian event to galvanize international and national media coverage was the Occupation of Alcatraz Island (Paul McKenzie-Jones), led by urban American Indian college students in California who called themselves Indians of All Tribes. Bay Area Indian Centers supported the occupation that began in November 1969 and ended in June 1971. Urban Indian Centers had been established in cities since the 1930s in order to retain Indian cultures.
The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968 in Minneapolis and modeled itself on the Black Panthers, who confronted police harassment of Black Americans. The original founders included Ojibwas Dennis Banks, George Mitchell, and Clyde Bellecourt (Frances Kay Holmes). AIM was critical of tribal leaders and American Indian professionals, whom they viewed as sell-outs. Lakota intellectual Vine Deloria felt that AIM created a political theatre that gained temporary visibility in the media but led to little change. Anishinaabe author Gerald Vizenor dismissed AIM leaders as “mouth warriors.” AIM galvanized media coverage of their events to such an extent that it is often the only American Indian group that whites are familiar with. The murder of AIM leader Anna Mae Aquash by AIM members in 1976 was seen as a tragic and perhaps cautionary tale of what can happen to female leaders in militant groups (Claudia J. Ford).
One unintended consequence of relocation was the growth of intertribal Indian militancy in cities. Diverse people in cities previously separated by the geographies of the reservation system could see their commonalities in a broader ethnic category of “Indian.” Ironically, the intention of termination and relocation was to separate American Indians from their tribal identity and encourage assimilation. Instead, the Indian community established American Indian Centers that served as hubs for Indian culture and fertile grounds for the growth of American Indian civil rights.
Self-Determination and Sovereignty, 1970–Present
After a period of increased activism, federal Indian policies changed significantly in 1970, when President Richard Nixon announced a new era of Indian self-determination. Indian people utilized education, legal avenues, protests, self-help efforts, and rebellion to rebuild their nations in the modern era.
A number of legal cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court from the 1970s through the 1990s. One such case in 1978, Mark Oliphant v. the Suquamish Indian Tribe, ruled that non-Indians could not be arrested by tribal police or prosecuted by tribal law enforcement (Amy Casselman). After violent confrontations with white protestors, two major court rulings upheld Chippewa treaty rights regarding hunting, fishing, and gathering. The court decisions were reached after a twenty-five-year struggle, lasting from 1974 to 1999 (Patricia Loew). In 1974, the Boldt decision ruled in favor of fishing rights guaranteed in treaties for Northwest tribes. In the 1980s, the Supreme Court halted legal victories and ruled against tribes 90 percent of the time.
A significant legislative victory on behalf of Indian families was achieved with the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. In the early 1970s, one-third of Indian children were placed in non-Indian homes. Indian parents lost custody for issues like having more than one child sleeping in the same bed. These practices were part of a historical legacy of colonialism; the “adoption of Native American children by non-Native families is a part of a long-lasting assimilationist policy that the federal government had embraced since the foundation of the nation” (Azusa Ono). One of the more interesting U.S. Supreme Court cases was the 1978 Martinez v. Santa Clara Pueblo decision (Torivio A. Foddor). Santa Clara Pueblo were historically matrilineal, but in 1939 a male tribal council passed a membership ordinance that allowed only the children of males to be enrolled, not the children of female members. The court ruled in favor of upholding the membership ordinance, citing tribal sovereignty.
Work to improve education within mainstream educational institutions emerged alongside a tribal college movement. The first tribal college, opened in 1966, was the Navajo Community College in Tsaile, Arizona. The American Indian College Fund was established in 1989 to support the growth of tribal colleges so that Indians on reservations would not need to leave home to achieve their educational goals after high school. “The primary role of the College Fund was to seek contributions from the private sector. The fund would offer support to the tribal colleges and universities (TCUs), and scholarships to their students. In 2002, the original headquarters in New York City relocated in to Denver, Colorado” (Azusa Ono). Electoral victories also occurred, such as the election of Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller, who served from 1985 to 1995 (Daniel Rivers).
Religious freedom for American Indians was monitored, restricted, and outlawed. By the 1970s, legislation was passed to remedy this. With the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act, “Native Americans sought a federal law that would provide legal protection for the practice of traditional cultural and ceremonial lifeways, for access and ceremonial practices at sacred sites on federal public lands, and the protection of ceremonial items” (Angelique EagleWoman). The 1990 Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) enacted the return of Indian bones and religious items stored in museums. Many important cultural items are still being returned to tribes, though some objects have been difficult to detoxify from pesticides and toxic chemicals, like arsenic, used by museums for preservation (Joe Watkins).
Sports teams who use derogatory Indian mascots, such as the Washington Redskins and Atlanta Braves, practice another sign of disrespect toward Native American religions. Fans at games mock religious practices through the use of war paint, chants, drums, and war dances. The National Congress of American Indians has lobbied on this issue since 1970. In 2005, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) ruled that it would no longer allow college teams to use Indian mascots unless they had approval from specific tribes. “Harjo et al. v. Pro Football was a legal case brought against the Washington professional football team in 1992. It sought to strip of the team of its trademarks on the grounds that the name and imagery registered with the federal government disparaged American Indians and thus did not merit legal protection. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) found in favor of the plaintiffs in 1999. The franchise subsequently appealed the decision, which higher courts reversed on technical grounds. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2009, bringing it to an end” (Richard King).
The Twenty-First Century, 2000–Present
American Indians hold dual citizenship; they are citizens of their tribal nations and of the United States. There are currently 564 federally recognized tribes; 220 of these are Alaska Native villages, and there are several state-recognized tribes. The largest state-recognized tribe is the Lumbee nation of North Carolina with around 50,000 members. If it were to receive federal recognition, it would become one of the largest federally recognized tribes. The largest tribes in the 2010 census were the Cherokees and Navajos. More than 50 percent of American Indians live in just ten states, and most Indians reside in the West, which reflects the forced relocation of tribes across the Mississippi. One in four Indians lives in Oklahoma or California. According to the 2010 census, 78 percent of American Indians reside in urban areas.
Federal allotment policies have created checkerboard residential patterns on reservations, with overlapping tribal, state, and federal jurisdictions. This complicates criminal arrests and prosecutions, which depend not only on the race of the victim and perpetrator but also whether the act occurred on private property or land held by the tribe. “Federal Indian law and policy have created complicated criminal jurisdictional issues, making it difficult for tribes to maintain law and order on their lands. Congress responded to this problem by enacting the Tribal Law and Order Act (TLOA) for Indian country on July 29, 2010. Its purpose is to empower tribal governments to effectively provide public safety and reduce the prevalence of violent crime in Indian country” (Anne Luna-Gordinier). In this jurisdictional maze, American Indian women experience the highest rates of violence of any group in the United States. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Title IX: Safety for Indian Women was passed in 2013 to try and address inequities in violence by race and gender. “American Indian/Alaskan Native women experience violent victimization at a greater rate than any other racial group.… Once tribes set about creatively utilizing VAWA, they may develop a multitude of tactics not only to address domestic violence on the reservation, but also to further tribal sovereignty” (Anne Luna-Gordinier).
Social justice strategies will continue in the twenty-first century in order to address legacies of colonization. The Idle No More movement began in 2011 among First Nations activists in Canada and spread to locations in the United States (Alan Lechusza Aquallo). Cross-border activism and international organizing remain important among indigenous people. The 2015 canonization of Father Junípero Serra to saint in the Catholic Church was very controversial, given the impact of his missions on California Indians (Angela D’Arcy). History as presented through colonizers’ viewpoints will continue to meet challenges in the 21st century.
A good deal of debate in this century may also occur over Indian identity. Tribes with higher blood quantum requirements will most likely experience population declines in the coming decades. The U.S. government in the 1880s externally imposed the concept of blood quantum in order to implement its land-allotment policy. Allotment was seen as a means to dismantle tribes and divide tribal lands into individual 160-acre private lots. More than 50 percent of American Indians are married to non-Indians. If a full-blood Lakota marries a full-blood Navajo, the children will be enrolled in only one of the tribes as one-half blood quantum. This mathematical reduction in blood quantum has been termed “bureaucratic genocide.” A number of tribes from the Southeast have African Americans whose ancestors were “freedmen” as members. Some tribes have challenged the citizenship of their freedmen members, and larger tribes have been accused of lobbying against state-recognized tribes. If American Indians are solely a race based on blood quantum rules, some may cease to exist. However, if American Indians are citizens of nations of varying racial backgrounds, then tribes will continue to implement self-sovereignty in their citizenship criteria.