Edward Dozier
Hundreds of American Indians from across Native America gathered at the University of Chicago in June 1961 for the American Indian Chicago Conference. Working in small committees and plenary sessions, they refined a document that had been six months in the making, the “Declaration of Indian Purpose.” This important statement intended to convey a shared vision of the future to President John F. Kennedy and to turn the page, once and for all, on termination. Little attention has been paid to other aspects of the conference, such as this keynote address by University of Arizona anthropologist Edward Dozier, a Santa Clara Pueblo who served in World War II and earned a Ph.D. from UCLA in 1952. Consider how Dozier invoked concepts such as second-class citizenship and integration but distinguished what they meant in Native America versus other contexts. How did he counter misconceptions about the federal trust relationship and assuage the anxieties regarding diversity, pluralism, and multiculturalism that pervaded the majority society during the era of the Cold War?22
This is an historic and memorable occasion. We have here a gathering of Indians from many tribes and from vast areas of the American continent to discuss problems that affect us all. This is not simply a gathering of reservation Indians, but also of Indians now living in off-reservation locations as well as of Indians who have lived for many years without federal recognition. And I might add for those Indians without such recognition, that federal supervision has not been a bed of roses. Through the years the Bureau of Indian Affairs has groped and stumbled along. It has advanced and progressed under well-intentioned and far-sighted administrators and retreated and floundered under lax and selfish bureaucrats. . . .
The importance of this conference cannot be minimized, as Indians and citizens of this great country, we can bring benefit to ourselves and contribute to the progress of our nation. From a gathering such as this, good ideas and sound proposals are bound to come.
We don’t want a free ride—we want assistance which many of us need badly. We will meet the government more than half way in our cooperation. We ask only for the aid to enable us to build and revitalize our communities and enrich our ways of life for a better America. I am sure that we go along with our President and ask: “Not simply what can our government do for us, but what can we can do for our government?”
One of the important characteristics of us as American Indians is our enormous diversity. One has merely to look over this congregation to realize the fact and when we examine the groups from which we come, the diversity is compounded. Yet, despite this variation, Indians have and continue to share a common situation. The very fact that there was an enthusiastic response to this general meeting of Indians is indicative of this commonality.
The common situation which we now face is largely the result of contact beginning from the very earliest days of European colonization and continuing until the present time. Indians as groups and as individuals have been affected by this contact in different degrees and at different rates. For most of us here, our relationship to the federal government is of two fundamental types: The first involves special Indian status stemming mainly from the ownership of land—reservations and grants—and the income therefrom held in trust and tax exempt. Allied to this is a limited sovereignty or home rule and exemption from state laws within reservation boundaries. Also a part of this general relationship is the federal responsibility for local services such as education and health among others. The second type of our relationship with the federal government is more specific and involves particular kinds of pacts or treaties which specific Indian groups have made with the federal government.
Both categories of relationships are contractual in nature and were made to adjudicate and/or compensate Indians for lands or natural resources alienated to the non-Indian population. While these are couched in legal terms there is a moral as well as a [contractual] aspect to our relations with the federal government. It may be said that the government has a moral obligation to assist Indians and that we in turn have the obligation to better ourselves and our communities. For perhaps the majority of us here, it is this rather special position of the American Indian with respect to the federal government that we must bear in mind when we consider the recommendations and proposals during this Chicago conference.
Many among us here are Indians whose tribal ties have been broken and may have been non-existent for a long time. Yet, as Indians, we may be entitled to the special obligations and services which the federal government provides other Indians. Government responsibility for Indians does not apply solely to reservation Indians nor do they end there. . . . Others of us have never or only sporadically received federal government aid and our voices need to be heard and our cases considered.
For all of us there has always been the problem of “second class citizenship.” This has expressed itself in the deprivation of full rights as citizens and the nagging and vexing problem of discrimination. Here our problems are not unique for we share them with other ethnic minority groups and many others sympathize and understand these problems. We may work here with other minority peoples, particularly in the area of racial or religious discrimination. For many other problems, however, our problems are different and demand different solutions since they arise out of our historical occupation and attachment to the American soil and its ancient heritage.
We recognize that we also have responsibilities and obligations—the burden is not only on the side of our government. The assistance we desire is to be put on our feet so that we may take over and build strong communities and as individuals face the world with pride and dignity. Our communities will not be blue print copies of one another nor will they necessarily resemble those of the dominant American society. As Indians, we have different backgrounds and different heritages and we are all proud of this ancestry. In our diversified nation, our communities can grow and change separately and together to give our nation its strength and vitality.
Such important developments as the passage of laws terminating the Indian status of several tribes since 1953 and the Supreme Court decisions outlawing segregation have focused attention on the rights of minority groups. While many of the factors which infringe on the rights of minority groups also affect the Indian, fundamentally the problems we are concerned with here are the contractual aspects of American Indian relations with the federal government. In view of this, such statements as “give the Indians freedom” and slogans like “termination” and “integration” have little or no relevance to Indians and the Indian problem.
The question of integration does lead us, however, to a consideration of the place of Indians in the dominant American society and this in turn to fundamental scientific and policy questions. Must Indians lose their distinctive identities in order to be “Americans?” Or expressed more broadly, what is the nature of the unity of a mobile and complex society like the United States? Is it possible to maintain the unity necessary to a society while permitting a wide range of cultural values and group allegiances? Most social scientists are convinced that it is possible. Indeed, they are likely to declare that not only is it possible but that even more emphatically ONLY by the maintenance of freedom for cultural variation can a heterogeneous society keep conflict at a minimum, preserve the flexibility necessary in a time of rapid change, and support the cultural value, so widely shared, of individual freedom.
In our diversity and, of course, in being the original inhabitants of this continent we American Indians are truly American. Ours is a nation of intense diversity and American Indians no less so than others. It is the inherent right for Americans to be different. Our free nation can no more insist that Jews stop being Jews, and that Catholics give up their religion than it can insist the Indians stop being Indians. Of paramount importance is that American Indians can be integrated into the total American society without giving up the inherent right of human beings to be different. Freedom to be completely assimilated as individuals is always a live option, but freedom to be related to the total society as culturally differentiated groups is also possible.
The struggle for individual freedom, whether of the individual or of groups, is at present being manifested in many parts of the world. The situation in Africa, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere are examples. In our own complex American society the various American Indian societies contribute toward the strength of the whole by providing the checks and balances so essential in a free society. There is no greater and emphatic example to the world of the effectiveness of a truly democratic society than the diversified Indian societies of America.
Our purpose in this conference is to compile a series of suggestions and recommendations. Here we must unite for it is the commonness of purpose that brings us together. While we differ as groups and as individuals our problems have a commonality. Pooling our efforts toward policies of greater benefit for ourselves is our goal. We believe that these proposals will receive the careful attention of Congress, the present administration, and the American public. We want to work toward fashioning a better world for ourselves and we want to do it with the dignity and respect due us as individuals and as groups. Above all, we do not want to be urged to give up something about ourselves which may be different in order to obtain assistance which will benefit us all. To remain Indians and yet Americans, we believe to be a democratic principle and a human right in a free world. With consultations and joint agreements with our government, we believe that we can work together to develop a strong, unified and vigorous America.