National Congress of American Indians
In August 1953, House Concurrent Resolution 108 and Public Law 280 announced the federal government’s intentions of terminating its special relationship with tribal nations and empowered certain states to begin arbitrarily extending civil and criminal jurisdiction on reservations. The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) took issue not only with the negation of tribal sovereignty but also with the language used to justify it. In late February 1954, the organization called an “emergency meeting” in response to a spate of termination bills. Led by President Joseph Garry (Coeur d’Alene), who served in World War II and Korea, the organization took aim at terminationists, such as Utah senator Arthur V. Watkins, who likened termination to a “freedom program” that promised to “emancipate” Indians from slavery. Consider how this document related citizenship and American values to reservation lands and tribal sovereignty. In what ways do the ideas mark a departure from those articulated in earlier documents? How might they be seen as part of a continuing American Indian intellectual and political tradition?7
Representatives of 183,000 American Indians gathered to consider the emergency created by numerous bills now pending in the Congress make to their fellow American citizens the following declaration:
American Indians seek for themselves only those things that are promised to every American citizen by our National charters, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and enjoyment of the rights of citizenship which it is the duty of Government to secure to all.
The Government of the United States first dealt with our tribal governments as sovereign equals. In exchange for Federal protection and the promise of certain benefits our ancestors gave forever to the people of the United States title to the very soil of our beloved country. We have never asked anything except that this protection be continued and these benefits be provided in good faith.
Today the Federal Government is threatening to withdraw this protection and these benefits. We believe that the American people will not permit our Government to act in this way if they know that these proposals do not have Indian consent; that these proposals, if adopted, will tend to destroy our tribal governments; that they may well leave our older people destitute; and that the effect of many of these proposals will be to force our people into a way of life that some of them are not willing or are not ready to adopt.
We feel that many of our fellow Americans do not know that we are citizens, free to move about the country like everyone else. We fight for our country, and we pay taxes like everyone else, except on the land and property our ancestors retained by agreement with United States Government.
Some of our fellow Americans think that our reservations are places of confinement. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Reservations do not imprison us. They are ancestral homelands, retained by us for our perpetual use and enjoyment. We feel we must assert our right to maintain ownership in our own way, and to terminate it only by our consent.
If the Federal Government will continue to deal with our tribal officials as it did with our ancestors on a basis of full equality; if it will deal with us as individuals as it does with other Americans, governing only by consent, we will be enabled to take our rightful place in our communities, to discharge our full responsibilities as citizens, and yet remain faithful to the Indian way of life.