D’Arcy McNickle
Born and raised on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, D’Arcy McNickle (1904–77) was enrolled and allotted land as a citizen of the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribe. In 1935, John Collier hired him to work for the Office of Indian Affairs, where he served as a tribal relations officer. During this period, he helped found the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) to provide a single voice on matters of shared concern. Established in 1944, the NCAI pledged to “enlighten the public toward a better understanding of the Indian race; to preserve cultural values; to seek an equitable adjustment to tribal affairs; to secure and to preserve rights under Indian treaties with the United States; and to otherwise promote the common welfare of the American Indians.” Its mission became more urgent when the federal government moved toward abandoning the trust relationship. Consider how, in this address at the 1954 NCAI convention, McNickle countered the idea of termination by offering an alternative based on foreign aid. Why do you think McNickle invested such import in this parallel?48
Those of you who were at our first convention in Denver in 1944 will remember how we discussed our purposes in forming an all-Indian organization. We knew there was need for taking the step we planned, but we knew also that the step had been taken before; Indians had come together in plans for mutual assistance, and they had failed. Some of us thought it would be better not to try at all, than to try and add another failure to the record. All of us were agreed, however, whatever doubts we might harbor about our ability to create a successful organization, that Indians would never be adequately represented, their views would never be properly expressed, and they would never get full consideration of their needs, unless and until they were in a position to speak for themselves. Some things, cannot be left to friends and well-wishers, and though Indians have friends, the responsibility is still theirs. That, we know. . . .
The situation is dangerous, not just serious, but dangerous. Congress has been giving warnings for the past several years that appropriations for the benefit of Indians must come to an end. The Bureau of Indian Affairs must be abolished; the Indians must be “turned loose.” Whether the abolishment of the Bureau would result in a net saving of moneys deserves our attention. Moneys appropriated by Congress for Indian affairs are used to purchase services, materials, equipment, which, for the non-Indian population are purchased and supplied out of other public moneys. Schools are financed generally out of State funds, with some forms of Federal assistance. Roads are built jointly out of State and Federal funds. Irrigation projects are constructed with Federal funds, and reimbursed out of earnings of the land over very long periods. Our national forests are managed with Federal funds. Hospitals, by and large, are supported privately, but in every city and in most counties health facilities for the indigent are provided out of public funds, and the public health nurse and sanitarians who work in the counties are paid for out of Federal funds.
Most of the activities which the Indian Service performs are counterparts of activities which the county, the city, the State, and the Federal Government provide and pay for with public funds of one kind or another for the non-Indian population. If the Bureau of Indian Affairs were abolished, the activities and the funds to pay for those activities would have to be provided by some other agency, State or Federal. The need for help would not be lessened, as you yourselves know from the conditions in which you live. No money would be saved, and it is open to serious doubt whether the Indians would get better services than they are now getting. The services might be considerably less, in States which are not economically able to take on the burdens now carried by the Federal Government.
These factors may not be weighed and balanced when the time comes to make a decision. And that is why I speak of a dangerous situation existing. In raising these grave issues, I have in mind that the Indians and this organization of Indians can bring about a larger concept of the Indian “problem” by taking action. Failure to take action and allowing events to drift from one fiscal year to another can only mean disaster. Appropriations may grow deceptively larger, while the basic jobs of attacking poverty and ill health and lack of education remain untouched. In time, Congress, out of impatience, will simply rid itself of responsibility by legislative fiat, destroying the trusts on your lands, curtailing appropriations and leaving you to your luck.
How then may individual Indians and tribes and the National Congress of American Indians, working together and working with other organizations, working with the Bureau as need be, and with your State delegations in Congress, bring about this enlarged concept? . . . Expressed in another way, how can this country, which needs the full production of its agricultural lands, which needs lumber and needs mineral wealth brought into useful form, how can this country afford to permit Indian resources to remain in their present substandard patterns of use? And how can the country afford to allow the human resources of the Indian people to remain undiscovered, unused, and unproductive?
WHAT I HAVE BEEN SUGGESTING IS, IN EFFECT, A DOMESTIC POINT 4 PROGRAM FOR OUR INDIAN RESERVATIONS, OUR UNDEVELOPED AREAS.
What I am saying is that we need a boldness of thinking, a courage of decision, such as we have not yet had in the dealings of the Government with our Indian people. Years ago, Thomas Jefferson laid down the basis of a policy which, had it been adopted at any time within the last 100 years, would have made all the difference in the situation of our Indians. Jefferson wrote: “Encourage them to abandon hunting, to apply themselves to the raising of stock, to agriculture and domestic manufacture—the ultimate point of rest and happiness for them, is to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend together, to intermix, and become one people.”
Today, on every hand, there is talk of assimilating the Indians. In the Senate a few days ago, a Senator mocked at the failure of Indians to become assimilated. He spoke disparagingly of Indians, as being unwilling to work. You and I know why Indians have been slow to assimilate. Some of the facts I have been discussing here today indicate clearly why a people haunted by poverty, by lack of education, by disease, and by lack of community acceptance, have held back from allowing their settlements to meet and blend with the settlements of the white man, from intermixing, and from becoming one people with the white men. I have also suggested how, through lack of material development of Indian resources, Indians have remained in communities apart, communities of rural slums.
I ask you to share with me again the thinking through of a program for our National Congress of American Indians. Let me now propose elements which I think should be part of that program. I offer them as a challenge to your thinking and to your desire to be leaders among your people. These proposals are not offered in any priority of importance, I set them down as they come to mind:
1. For each reservation there should be a master plan, based on complete surveys of all resources above and below the ground, including water resources, and plans should be developed to obtain maximum family subsistence from the resources. . . .
2. For each reservation there shall be a Planning Commission (or Committee), authorized by Act of Congress to call upon the Departments of the Federal Government for assistance in gathering data and for technical advice, such Commissions to consist of representatives of the tribe or tribes residing on the reservation, to be selected in a manner prescribed by the governing body. No plans shall be submitted to Congress that do not have the prior approval of such Reservation Planning Commissions.
3. Requests should be submitted to Congress immediately for authority, if needed, and funds to carry out the necessary investigations and to prepare plans for Indian lands lying within the major river drainage basins. If actions to adjudicate Indian water rights are involved, such actions should be initiated.
4. Funds should be requested to carry out timber surveys on Indian forest lands and to prepare programs for the orderly harvesting of Indian timber. Indians should be encouraged to enter into commercial production of lumber.
5. An adequate revolving credit fund should be established to permit Indians to acquire livestock and farm equipment and to develop business and industry in their home communities, the amount of funds for any given reservation and the plans for use of such funds to be determined by the reservation planning commission.
6. An adequate land purchase fund should be made available to permit Indian tribes to buy up heirship lands and lands in non-Indian ownership where these are strategically located with reference to water and other Indian land holdings, with reimbursement to the United States on terms at least as favorable as those accorded farm tenants under existing law.
7. Action should be taken immediately to transfer to tribal ownership sub-marginal lands acquired with emergency relief funds for Indian use, and to restore to the tribes lands withdrawn from homestead entry but never preempted.
8. A program of on-the-farm and on-the-job training, comparable to the GI training programs with Federal financing, should be initiated.
9. A national policy with respect to the taking of Indian lands for public purposes should be promulgated.
I urge your most earnest consideration of the points I have offered. If adopted as the program of this convention and of the National Congress of American Indians, I think I can assure you that we will have work to do for many years to come.