Arthur C. Parker
Founded in 1911, the Society of American Indians (SAI) represented an indigenous version of what African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois referred to as the “Talented Tenth.” Its membership included Native people from many walks of life, but its leadership largely consisted of professionals. Seneca archaeologist, folklorist, and museum curator Arthur C. Parker (1881–1955) served as a central figure and editor of SAI’s journal. Like many of his peers, Parker put his training to unexpected uses. Rather than advocating for the obliteration of tribal identities, Parker approached Seneca stories as living texts, challenged binaries that cast “Indian” in opposition (and as inferior) to “white,” attacked pseudoscientific theories purporting Native racial inferiority, and castigated the pretentious underpinnings of Western education and Indian policy. Consider how Parker used concepts such as materialism, civilization, democracy, citizenship, and experience to connect his critique of federal-Indian relations and his defense of Native rights to issues and ideas that rested at the heart of progressivism and U.S. involvement in World War I? What do you make of his proposed solution?28
Complaint against the existing order is not always indicative of anarchism; it may be on the other hand a healthy call to greater progress and wider application of world justice. Complaints against the Indian Office have been continual since its creation but at irregular intervals these complaints become more acute and again die down to a low, almost inaudible rumble.29 It would be an interesting study to trace the curve of complaint against this branch of the Government’s activities and to determine the various causes that directed it.
Complaint against the Indian Bureau is not lodged without cause, but whatever the specific cause, the complaint is indicative of one or more evils that affect the living condition, the vital requirements of the Indians. The Bureau may be blamable. Congress may be at fault, or the errors and imperfections of modern “civilized society” may be the factors that react to the injury of the complaining people. Perhaps all these factors are responsible for the conditions bringing forth the complaint. We ought to inquire, and soberly, just what the basic trouble is and then with courage correct what we can. What we cannot correct we must seek in other ways to overcome, or, we must determine that the Indians become properly adjusted, that they may live notwithstanding the environment that militates against them.
Before we venture too far we ought to find out definitely whether or not society is not itself blameworthy for some of the defects we credit to governmental agencies. Certainly it appears to be, for the thousand frauds could never have been perpetrated on Indians, despoiling them of lands, money, resources and even life, itself, had not human society, our so-called “civilization” permitted it—which forces us to inquire whether or not a true civilization could or would permit such encroachments upon the lives and liberties of other men as have been made upon the red race in America. If we say that real civilization could not and would not permit such injustice and lack of consideration, then we must admit now, what the future will attribute to us in abundant measures, a lack of real civilization. In a large measure we are still barbarians restrained mostly by the prohibitions and penalties imposed by statutes, and not by the overwhelming force of our moral convictions. But, in material attainment we may lay some claim to civilization. This attainment has been possible largely by the subordination of human society to the direction of economic agencies. In other words, our relations one to another, our measures of expediency and our government are largely directed and controlled by the rules, customs and the laws of trade and barter. We hedge these things about by protective laws and in every way seek to conserve and encourage commerce, even though human lives are impaired, lost or dwarfed. Our aim as expressed by our attainments has been material acquisition and has not been spiritual expansion and spiritual freedom.
It is because we have been playing the game of “Get” that we have robbed the Indian. He did not know what he was playing, did not know the rules of the game, did not know that he had his lands and allotments stacked like chips; he only knew that every time the white man said, “Come on, let’s deal with one another,” that he lost something. The game was too complex for the red man, and not because he did not himself barter, but because he did not have the means of making an elaborate set of rules and have the power to enforce them. The result has been that the man who knew the rules got the possessions of the men who did not. It was an unequal game. How was the red man to know that when he signed something that he thought was a promise to deliver a hundred beaver skins that one year later he must lose all his land because what he thought and what he was told differed from what reality proved the paper he signed to be. How were the Indians to know that the treaties they signed were documents that contained verbiage that could be construed differently from what they understood. The Indians lost and the laws of the land and the courts sanctioned the winnings of the man or men who knew the rules of the game. Does not the law say that when you sign your name to a document you are bound to perform what the document says? That’s the rule of the game; society sanctions it. How the history of the Indian’s experience with the white man rings with complaint against the rules of this commercial game played by predatory society. Do the Indians’ complaints indicate nothing but pique or do they point out an evil that infects and affects all civilization built up on the “economic theory”?
Yet, how shall we of today change the order of society and rebuild civilization? Only as awakened conscience and intelligence causes us all to do so. But until we do change our way we shall continue to approve and even encourage the exploitation of all weaker peoples—peoples who are less acquainted with the rules of this game.
So much for our indictment of civilization. We have robbed the Indian because we are civilized and because it is a part of civilization to do so. Yet our higher ideals of a true relation of men one with the other disapprove of our entrenched, legalized buccaneering. . . .
The complaints of the Indians and their friends when reduced to analysis are found to consist of protests against certain actions that are admitted by all to be inconsistent with our democratic ideals. The Indians are not, and have not, been treated in a democratic way. We govern them, but not with their cooperation or consent; conversely, we impose our will upon them. In making laws for them and for their government we seldom or never consult their wishes. In our administration of Indian affairs we do not seek to make the Indians affected well acquainted with our aims. Except in a perfunctory legal way we do not publish those laws for their benefit. Very seldom have they knowledge of any contemplated action by the Indian Department. They are but silent, passive spectators of their own fate and so far as the laws and administrative policy goes have no part in it. They move as they are moved. . . .
The remedy would be the inauguration of a consistent policy philosophically constructed upon democratic principles. You never can do this by any sort of process that leaves the Indian Bureau in existence as an autocratic institution with the power to arbitrarily impose government. Though an autocratic bureau may have a perfect machine for doing what it desires with Indians; though its card indexes and loose leaf ledgers may be the latest, it will still fail in accomplishing a democratic end. This will be simply because in handling Indian money and property it also handles as commodities and chattels the souls and the liberties of men, and by its short-sighted paternalism prevents that most necessary of all things in a changing environment,—experience. Experience is a biological requisite for survival.
Therefore, if we are consistent in our aim to bring democracy to all the peoples of the earth let us deal with the Indians in a democratic way. It would be democratic for Congress to assert now, and without further delay, that all Indians within the United States of America are citizens or candidate citizens of the land. If their lands and trust funds are held under special tenure this would not then injure the status of the people as citizens. . . .
The Government through its Congress and the Department of Indian Affairs should never forget that the making of citizens who are intelligent men and women and who shall be responsive to all the requirements of a democracy is the chief function of all special dealings with the Indian on the part of the Government. Until the Government recognizes the primary right of the Indians to have full knowledge of their affairs, of acts affecting their personal rights and property, it will be making “democracy unsafe” for Indians. Indeed, a persistence of the present policy will work hardship that will be cumulative in its effects, for the natural impulses is to evade or break laws that one has had no part in framing.
Just how a speedy settlement of the details that make up the “Indian problem” may be brought about has been frequently set forth. To summarize these details of adjustment we shall but name them. 1st, a definite aim logically projected; 2d, a defined statute; 3d, admission of Indian claims to the Court of Claims for adjudication; 4th, the breaking up of tribal funds into individual apportionments; 5th, the cessation of annuities; 6th, definite and genuine participation in affairs that concern their personal and landed interests; 7th, knowledge beforehand of contemplated action; 8th, opportunity to acquire experience and to feel the weight of responsibility; 9th, real citizenship and genuine protection where special interests are involved.
If anything else is to be added to this category it might be an insistence on the part of the Government that frauds committed upon Indians will not be tolerated, notwithstanding the fact that to highly civilized businessmen who have power and a knowledge of the law’s quirks, may defraud in a “perfectly legitimate way.” Moral principle should rule in such transactions and the Government should insist that the moral principle have precedence over legal loopholes.
We are making war against autocracy in order, as we have stated our aims, “to make the world safe for democracy.” This paper, criticizing, as it does an existing order, may be called too highly theoretical, yet we are engaged in a gigantic world war over a theory—the theory of the right of the smaller peoples to determine how they shall live and be governed, and we are warring that the smaller peoples may be safe. We are making war that on earth democracy, government by the consent of the governed, may triumph as the working theory of human society. Perhaps, then, it will be well for us to reconstruct our theory of Indian administration, and in our practical affairs follow the theory of making democracy safe for the Indian.
But we shall never get anywhere until we break the grip of the Indian Department in its repressing hold upon the lives and the development of the Indians. So long as the Indian Office is constituted as it is, it will insist upon thinking for the Indians and denying them the experience they should naturally have. If we can do nothing else let us say that the Bureau shall be limited to be a Department of Indian Disbursements charged with paying out that which treaties, contracts and Congress order. Then if we still desire to send men who are to superintend the social hygiene, the civilization, of the Indians, let us insist that they be men with training, human insight and the love of God and their fellow men in their hearts. This point cannot be over-emphasized, for the converse is true—Indians cannot be civilized and made men of acumen by ex-slave-drivers or by uncouth brutes without sympathy.
Our American Indians are today in France on the battle line, fighting that liberty, fraternity and equality of opportunity may prevail throughout the world. Are they to return and find that they alone of all humankind are denied these blood-bought privileges? We who remain here to labor, to think and to conserve true democracy are responsible for the answer!