United States Indian Policy

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Indian reservations in the USA
Dealing with historical heritage: a farm in Oregon (not far from the corner of Interstate 84 and US Route 197) and an Indian Shaker Church in The Dalles, which have been on the historical heritage list since 1978. The church was founded by John Slocum from 1881. The church building collapsed in 1996 under the load of snow and was not restored in 2011; it was one of five Shaker churches in Oregon.
Bison skull bones, around 1870

An independent Indian policy of the United States , differentiated from the British and national, began towards the end of the War of Independence from Great Britain from 1781. That year, Congress was given the ultimate authority to "regulate trade and all affairs with the Indians." The Indian policy is rooted in the British policy towards the Indians and developed its own dynamic for a variety of reasons. There were relations with Great Britainand the role of the Indians in the wars between the two powers is important, as is the extremely strong and long-lasting resistance of the comparatively small Indian groups. On the other hand, there was strong settlement pressure from a rapidly growing population, especially those who immigrated from Europe, increased by the almost uncontrolled nature of land appropriation by settlers ( squatting ) , but also their claim to religious and cultural superiority ( Manifest Destiny ) .

From a mixture of respect for their services to the USA and calculation, contracts were initially concluded, so around 1830 almost all Indians from the area east of the Mississippi were resettled by force ( path of tears ). It has never been the prevailing policy to exterminate the “ indigenous people ”, but they should not stand in the way of settlement and should adapt religiously, culturally and economically to the ideals of white society; so they should become Christians, "Americans", farmers and ranchers.

However, the direct assimilation policy failed - often the adaptation efforts were not even considered or recognized - and so the idea of ​​separate areas (reservations) arose in which the Indians were to be prepared for the American way of life. The destruction of their livelihoods, as in the case of the bison , on which the tribes of the grasslands lived, forced many groups to give in, with the government often grouping several tribes in large reserves , including those that could barely communicate. This often led to internal conflicts, especially since the areas were mostly unsuitable for the new way of life. In addition, the Indians increasingly became the wards of the Bureau of Indian Affairs responsible for them since 1824 . This authority, which was subordinate to the War Ministry and then the Ministry of the Interior until 1849 , also proved to be very susceptible to corruption .

The land was initially considered a common property reserved for the Indians, which everyone living there could use. From 1887 the land was given to individuals or families by the state. The Indians could not inherit the land allocated for cultivation, so that the land was publicly auctioned after the death of the owner. In addition, they took children of the Indians out of their families and banned them from using their mother tongue and practicing their culture.

It was not until 1924 that the Indians received general civil rights , with which they could participate in elections; In 1934 they voted on a kind of self-government made up of democratically elected tribal councils and chiefs , which, however, stood in contrast to the traditional means of balancing power and property. From 1953, the state institutions increasingly withdrew from the affairs of the Indians, whereby any support for the often rural regions characterized by sparse infrastructure was also dropped. This caused a strong migration to the prosperous cities, which led to a further impoverishment of many neglected areas.

From the end of the 1960s, the Indian groups, especially the American Indian Movement , were able to achieve greater independence; some tribes became extremely successful economically. Numerous courts awarded compensation to the abused, displaced and dispossessed Indians. Some groups are trying to buy back their traditional areas.

The American government had not publicly apologized for more than two centuries of Indian policy until 2009, although debates had begun. In 2009, the government and tribal officials reached an agreement on compensation for the economic use of the reservations since 1896. On December 19, 2009, President Barack Obama finally signed a statement, without significant media attention, in which he spoke “on behalf of the people of the United States to all indigenous people (Native peoples) for the many incidents of violence, mistreatment and neglect inflicted on Native peoples by citizens of the United States.

Forced resettlement in completely different areas and desolate social conditions, neglect, armed conflicts, severe epidemics, " ethnic cleansing " and genocide attempts had an unquantifiable part of a demographic catastrophe that not only hit the North American Indians - the low point was only in the first decades of 20th century passed. Although the targeted spread of diseases was called for in rare cases and in one case attempted using blankets infected with smallpox, the risks for the non-Indian population were assessed as too high. To this day, the question of whether the sum of the individual acts meets the legal requirements of genocide is discussed. Recognition on the basis of the UN Convention against Genocide (Resolution 260) does not yet exist. The real collapse of the population came from the smallpox epidemics , which raged in the east long before the emergence of the US, and in the west in most cases before the US took possession.

At the end of 2010, 5,220,579 people traced back at least partially to Indian ancestors, 2,932,248 saw themselves exclusively as Indians or native people of Alaska (Alaska Natives) . Since the last census in 2000, the total number of those who consider themselves Indians has increased by 27%. Their numbers rose the fastest in Texas , North Carolina, and Florida , by 46, 40, and 38 percent, respectively. The largest groups were Cherokee (819,000) and Navajo (287,000), the largest Alaskan groups were Yup'ik (34,000) and Inupiat (33,000). In 2015 there were 5.4 million Indians, 48% of whom belonged exclusively to an Indian family, 52% had ancestors of both Indian and non-Indian “races”. The median was 31 years, while it was 37.7 years for the total population. The number of reserves was 326, the number of “tribes” recognized by the federal government was 566.

All three branches of the federal government and the individual states were involved in shaping Indian policy . On several occasions, the Indian peoples came between the interests of the states and the federal government. Their own legal institutions were formally recognized in the early days, but in the course of displacement to the West, consideration for independent government and administration decreased.

Responsibilities before 1783

The United States, which had declared itself independent in 1776, was at war with the colonial power Great Britain until 1783. The main fighting ended as early as 1781. In the same year, Congress received supreme authority over Indian affairs. As early as 1775, the Continental Congress had determined the establishment of three departments that were to exert an overarching influence on the Indians. The need to assign political relations with the Indians, especially the Iroquois, to a central authority outside the British Colonial Office , had first been expressed in 1754. That year the Albany Congress, with the participation of the Iroquois, had given Congress responsibility for Indian affairs.

Treaties, rejected attempts at assimilation (1783–1830)

The first page of the First Treaty of Greenville of August 3, 1795 between Wyandot , Delaware , Shawnee , Ottawa , Chippewa , Potawatomi , Miami , Eel River (they were considered a sub-tribe of Miami), Wea , Kickapoo , Piankashaw and Kaskaskia on the one hand and the US on the other. The signatory here was Anthony Wayne, after whom the war is also known as Wayne's War .
Thomas Jefferson
George W. Harkin, chief of Chahta, mostly in the anglicized form as Choctaw be called

In the years after 1783 the USA did not pursue any specific Indian policy. Many Indians took part in the struggle for independence, and numerous allies of the opposing British fled to Canada . The benevolent attitude towards its own allies conflicted with the fact that the state had to develop new land in order to be able to pay off its debts with the proceeds from the sale of land to incoming settlers . This resulted in a policy of “restrained colonization ” that lasted until around 1820. This policy can be seen as a continuation of the imperialist policy of the Spanish , Dutch and French . These justified the seizure of the continent with the principle of discovery , according to which the mere discovery of the coastal strip was enough to claim it and its undefined hinterland. The Americans combined this policy with that of the British, who accepted the Indians as equal negotiating partners. They appropriated the areas of the Tsalagi ( Cherokee ) and the Muskogee (Creek) in the states of Georgia , North Carolina , South Carolina and Tennessee in order to separate their own spheres of interest from the French, Spanish and British. These areas were initially of no importance to the settlers and were thus largely treated as autonomous state areas. This only changed with improved techniques in the cotton industry ( Egrenier machine from 1793).

From 1784 to 1786 treaties were signed with Indians in the Ohio area , with the government giving priority to settlement policy. In 1786 Henry Knox , head of the War Department , and later President George Washington outlined a plan based on the pillars of civilization and assimilation . The authors stated that the robbery of land would damage the US reputation.

For most Americans, it seemed godly to introduce pagan savages into their progressive way of life. However, they encountered fierce Indian resistance in Ohio. Heavy defeats by government troops in 1791 and 1792 were followed by a decisive victory in 1794 ( Battle of Fallen Timbers ). In 1795 the government signed the Treaty of Greenville with the twelve defeated tribes who had to cede large areas of the Ohio area.

One proponent of assimilation was the third President, Thomas Jefferson ; there was talk of a Jeffersonian Indian policy . Marked by enlightenment thinking, he was convinced that the “light of civilization” could be brought to the Indians if the men were familiarized with agricultural activities, and women with domestic chores and weaving. When the Indian leader Tecumseh and his brother, the religious prophet Tenskwatawa , formed an Indian union and began their great rebellion, which was put down in the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 , this policy was considered to have failed and military submission became the goal. The fear that the Indians might ally themselves with the British contributed significantly to this.

At the end of the Tecumseh War, the United States made peace with the Shawnee in 1814. They were given this pipe of peace

The Indians experienced a temporary equal treatment on an economic level through the so-called Indian Factory System , a trading system which centered on the fur trade , for the promotion and control of which a system of trading posts was set up. There, the Indians exchanged furs from the animals they had killed for weapons, tools, jewelry, household utensils and metal goods. The Indians should be paid fair prices. This system was based on An Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse With the Indian Tribes , a law regulating trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes of July 22, 1790 and lasted from 1796 to 1822; it ultimately failed because of the private opposition of the whites involved .

In 1815 the Knox, Washington, and Jefferson policies had failed. A politics of segregation began to override that of assimilation. The Indians were settled in reservations and protected there from the whites - and, it was assumed, the whites from them. The sale of land by Indians to whites was only allowed through the government, not directly through private individuals. The trade was regulated, especially in alcohol . The only continuation of assimilation was the spread of the standards of European culture and education; the Civilization Fund Act of March 3, 1819 was intended to encourage private company activities. The right of the Indians to own land remained officially untouched, although around 1816 interest groups of settlers demanded the expulsion of the Choctaw from Mississippi .

Meanwhile, the government encouraged the settlers to spread across the continent. Some tribal leaders tried to adapt to society in order to protect themselves from displacement and dispossession. This was especially true for the "Five Civilized Nations", ie the Cherokee , Choctaw , Chickasaw , Muskogee and the Seminoles . But like whites, many Indians also refused to adapt to the foreign culture. Thus the Federation of the Creek and Muskogee fell into two warring parts. The Cherokee, however, developed a system of rule and law based on the American model, built schools and dressed accordingly. With the Cherokee Phoenix they even published their first newspaper in 1828.

Relocation to the West (from 1830)

On May 28, 1830 signed by President Andrew Jackson that forced him and a narrow majority in the House of Representatives enforced removal or relocation Act ( Indian Removal Act ) . It authorized the President to designate districts west of the Mississippi into which the Indians could be resettled without their consent . John Ross , Cherokee chief, filed a lawsuit against the United States in the Supreme Court . This was rejected in January 1831 by Chief Justice John Marshall on the grounds that the Indian tribes were not sovereign nations, but that their relationship with the USA was that of a ward to his guardian . In the dogmatically and structurally confused decision in the Worcester v. Georgia he explained his view in more detail: Although the Cherokee are a sovereign nation, no other sovereign nation should interfere in the relationship between them and the United States. There is neither a right of ownership of the land of the indigenous people nor the right to rule over them. Only the federal government can exercise these rights. This understanding of sovereignty rights, which were recognized but at the same time defined away, was to remain in place until 1959, when the Indians were granted further sovereign rights for the first time.

At the beginning of the deportation and expulsion, smaller tribes from the east coast were resettled, later the five civilized nations were particularly affected. Around 8,000 people died in the Cherokee resettlement alone - this event is part of a state-organized displacement and deportation that has gone down in history as the path of tears .

The Chickasaw and Choctaw accepted the resettlement plans. In contrast, the Muskogee ( Creek War of 1836 ), a group of the Cherokee under John Ross, and the Florida's Seminoles , who called themselves Ikaniúksalgi, under Osceola offered considerable resistance. But the subjugation of the Seminoles, who were hiding in the swamps of Florida, cost the US during the Second Seminolenkriegs December 1835 to August 1841 more than 1,500 soldiers and an estimated 20 million dollars . Spain received a quarter of this amount for Florida. The number of Seminoles killed is unknown. Descendants of factions from the Cherokee and Seminoles still live in their ancestral lands today.

Osceola, chief of the Seminoles
Oklahoma and Indian Territory

Between the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the American Civil War (1861-1865), a total of 50 tribes were stripped of their traditional habitat. Well over 50,000 people moved west, well over a quarter of them died. The survivors encountered completely new climatic and landscape conditions, their economic situation was catastrophic.

Nevertheless, they managed to gain a foothold in the Indian territory, where several cities emerged. However, the territory was dissolved in 1907 and united with the Oklahoma Territory to form the state of Oklahoma , after it had tried unsuccessfully to become a state in the United States in 1905.

Displacement into reserves (from 1858)

Especially since the forced resettlement of 1830, various proposals have been circulating for an Indian state in the west, which should be integrated into the USA as a federal state. However, none of them found enough approval in Congress to be able to prevail.

For a long time the Mississippi was considered the border of white settlement. Now the settlers streamed across the river in ever greater numbers. They justified their land acquisition and expansion policy no longer with the principle of discovery, but with the principle of better land use. This led to a series of treaties in the far west that the governor of the Washington Territory concluded with numerous tribes from 1854 onwards. In most cases, several tribes were intended for individual large reserves.

In Oregon, the Indians apparently knew about the expulsions in the east, because they resisted the settlement of their areas from the beginning. In 1850, Congress decided that the Indians west of the coastal mountain range, the Cascade Mountains , should no longer have any claim to land. In 1851 there was the Battle of Table Rock from June 17th to 25th , the war initially ended in 1852. Further clashes, fights and deportations also followed here. Experiments were made with the establishment of various reserves, but these often ended in catastrophic conditions.

General William T. Sherman negotiating with Indians at Fort Laramie

In 1858, the "Commissioner of Indian Affairs" explained (Commissioner of Indian Affairs) for the newly created reservation system. The Indians should therefore be concentrated in small reservations until they could make their way through civilization . In addition, the reservations were closed to the whites, only a few officials were admitted.

Military pressure and the slaughter of the buffalo , which served as the livelihood of many tribes in the Midwest and finally disappeared from the Great Plains in 1884 , drove almost all Indians to the reservations by 1877. However, some Apaches fought against it until the mid-1880s.

It was difficult for American politicians to understand that the loose internal structures of the tribes, which one imagined as hierarchical groups, as in their own society exclusively dominated by men, did not allow anything like a treaty between states. This was especially true for the equestrian nomads of the Midwest, who mostly offered long resistance in small groups.

End of contracts, ward status, fiduciary management (from 1871)

In 1871 the government ended the practice of signing treaties with the Indians on the grounds that they had no organized government. As a result, they were no longer accepted as the legal owners of their land, a view that had already become fragile in the two decades before. The Indians became wards of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) founded in 1824, and their land was nationalized and administered in trust. The BIA was initially subordinate to the War Ministry, later to the Ministry of the Interior. The reservations were no longer Indian-owned, but state-owned, which the government made available for the Indians to use. In contrast to Canada, large-scale reservations emerged in which several tribes usually lived, including those that differed greatly from one another culturally. In extreme cases, English was their only common language.

Carlisle Boarding School Graduates, 1890. The picture is subtitled: “Educating the Indian Race. Graduating Class of Carlisle, PA. ”(Forming the Native American Race. Graduating Class of Carlisle , Pennsylvania).

From then on the Indians came under enormous pressure to adapt. The government, represented by the BIA, acted according to the motto: "Kill the Indian in him and save the people" (Richard H. Pratt). Their political, economic and cultural independence was largely denied. Based on the model of the US Training and Industrial School in Carlisle Barracks , Pennsylvania , founded in 1879 , around 150 boarding schools were created , schools in which children were not allowed to use their mother tongue or practice their culture. They were placed outside the reservations to increase the pressure to adapt and to separate the children from their parents for a longer period of time. The disease and death rates were high, the psychological consequences of this system that has existed for decades are only in an early stage of coming to terms with. The Canadian government apologized in 2008 for its analog school system, and the USA hesitantly followed suit in 2010.

Collapse of the Indian population, displacement in the west

Until the second third of the 19th century the government could do little to counter the collapse of the Indian population due to a lack of vaccinations; later there were smallpox vaccinations , such as in 1837 on the Pacific coast of Washington. These epidemics often spread decades before the actual settlement, especially since the Indians hardly had any resistance to diseases that were unknown to them. Smallpox decimated the Indian inhabitants on the Pacific coast as early as 1775 , just as they had done in the east from the 16th century. Overall, the number of Indians before and during the colonization was greatly reduced by introduced diseases, then by malnutrition, alcohol, violent resettlement, wars, traumatization and the destruction of social associations, numerous groups disappeared completely or dissolved into other associations. With the resettlement of 70,000 Indians from the southeast alone, around 20,000 did not reach their destination or died shortly afterwards. The gold rush in California also had a devastating effect . Between 1850 and 1906 the Indian population there fell from 100,000 to 20,000 people.

To encourage settlement, the Donation Land Claim Act opened the Oregon Territory to settlers from 1850 . This was formally not in conflict with the Intercourse Act of 1834, which banned white settlers from entering reservations, as these were only established from 1855. The Whitman massacre was the prelude to the first Indian War in the region, the Cayuse War , which lasted from 1848 to 1855 and which was followed by around three decades of fighting. In the military conflicts, the government never formally regarded the Indians as opponents of the war, and so there were no prisoners of war opponents, but executions for violent crimes. From 1850 they had to gradually evacuate the fertile coastal areas.

Expropriation of unused land according to the government (from 1862)

Homestead Act

President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862 . This law allowed any adult to settle on an unpopulated piece of land, to own 160 acres of land and to work it. After five years he automatically became the owner. For $ 1.25 per acre, this period could be shortened to half a year. This law legitimized the expropriation of traditional territories, hit nomadic groups in particular, and encouraged increased displacement into reservations. It encouraged fraud and led to countless conflicts, in which the courts almost always sided with the settlers.

General Allotment Act : Land Allocation Policy (1887-1933)

Now began what Frederick Hoxie called the “final promise”, the final stage of assimilation. After the Indians had been defeated and locked in reservations, Indian policy was shaped by the respective president and the party supporting him, as well as by the head of the BIA. The Indian problem was to be solved in various attempts , that is, the costs for the Indians should be minimized and any legal claims for illegal land appropriation avoided. However, these attempts failed.

In 1877, with the Ingalls Bill, a first attempt to grant the Indians citizenship failed. Many of them feared that they would forfeit their contractual rights. In addition, they saw the project as a further step towards the dissolution of the tribes and the fragmentation and privatization of their land. This is how the Choctaw and Chickasaw , the Seminoles and Creek thought .

In 1887 this fear was confirmed. That year the government passed the Dawes General Allotment Act, a law that brought about radical changes. Until then, the land was considered a common property for the Indians that everyone could use. The General Allotment Act cut it up into small plots and divided it up among the families. Each head of the family - this was basically a man - received 40, 80 or 160 acres (16, 32, 64 hectares) of land. In addition to the land allotment, further measures should let the Indians merge in the melting pot USA. To protect against land speculators, the Indians were not allowed to sell their land for 25 years. Nevertheless, the BIA continued to interfere in the life of the Indians and determined it down to the most personal things, such as the details of religious practice. There had been around 11,000 allotments before 1887 , but now a massive loss of property began. In 1881 the Indians owned 155,632,312 acres of land, in 1900, despite restrictions, they only had 77,865,373. In 1898, the Curtis Act expanded these provisions to include the five civilized tribes that had been spared .

US President Calvin Coolidge with four Osage Indians after signing the Indian Citizenship Act

The Indians increasingly began to defend themselves on the legal level. But the decision of the Supreme Court in the Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock of January 5, 1903, showed that the government wanted to enforce its allotment policy even when it broke contract law and that the chief justices were on its side. The Supreme Court ruled that the government had the right to unilaterally revoke contract rights, a legal concept that continues to this day and was last confirmed in 1986. Since historical arguments often had to be made before the courts, huge compendiums were created that were intended to clarify the extremely complicated legal relationships between the tribes and the USA, but also among the tribes and with the individual states. At the same time, the Brotherhood of North American Indians was the first Pan-Indian organization to emerge in 1911.

The Burke Act of 1906 ended the trust period in which the land was administered by the BIA for competent Indians . This status still existed for those classified as incompetent . Here, Commissioner Cato Sells stood out, who simply declared everyone to be “competent”, half of whom were non-Indian or who had completed a boarding school ( Declaration of Policy in the Administration of Indian Affairs , 1917).

In 1924, as a continuation of this assimilation policy, the Indian Citizenship Act gave the Indians citizenship and thus the right to vote. But after losses, especially after the 25 years of protection had passed, they had barely 52 million of the 150 million acres of land left in 1934. In addition, only around 125,000 of the 300,000 authorized persons accepted these rights.

John Collier , a social worker in the area of ​​the Pueblo Indians , fought against the assimilation ideology from 1924 and collected complaints about land expropriations, too low prices for raw materials, lack of religious freedom in the reservation, poor teaching in schools and mismanagement of the paternalistic administration of the Indian finances through the BIA. An investigation was carried out between 1926 and 1927, the results of which were published in 1928 ( The Problem of Indian Administration ). The report confirmed the allegations, but the resulting proposals were not implemented by the Hoover administration .

Indian Reorganization Act : Politics of Cultural Pluralism (1933–1953)

John Collier, who had criticized the policy of the BIA so sharply, was appointed Indian commissioner (1933-1945) in 1933. He set up emergency programs like the Public Works Administration that provided work and experience on the reservations.

In 1934 the Indian Reorganization Act was passed, with which fundamental cultural pluralism was accepted for the first time. In addition, Collier reversed the previous land allocation program. He banned all further subdivisions of reserve land and encouraged tribal businesses. Each reservation should have its own constitution and an elected tribal government, with the electoral process being based on the Western principles of freedom, equality and secret voting. Self-determination was still very limited; the real power often remained with the BIA. In addition, traditional ways of making decisions and exercising power and the associated power and prestige structures came into conflict. In this way, parallel power structures emerged among many tribes, with the elected chiefs having money and jobs at their disposal through federal funds and the hereditary chiefs being able to win the elections in many cases. Their exercise of office increasingly resembled the external notions of a chief , while more group-specific, traditional structures were lost, especially where several, initially culturally distant tribes were deported to a reservation. In 1936, the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act extended these provisions to Oklahoma.

From 1938 Collier was on the defensive. During the war he tried to propagate all-Indian combat units, as during this time everything was subordinated to the war and the Indian question temporarily lost its importance. But he couldn't prevent the headquarters of the BIA from moving to Chicago in 1942 . In 1945 he resigned.

Termination : Politics of Dissolution (1953–1961)

With Dillon S. Myer as Indian commissioner (1950-1953), Indian policy changed again, even if it was stopped by a change of government. He was responsible for the deportation of 120,000 citizens of Japanese descent from the Pacific coast to camps in the hinterland under his supervision during World War II . His autocratic leadership style brought him into conflict with the tribal claims to sovereignty. He also thought the Indian Reorganization Act was a mistake, wanted to release the Indians from the guardianship of the state and deprive them of all group rights. For him, this included the sale of unproductive tribal land, the transfer of unemployed Indians to the cities, the renegotiation of all contractual provisions and the handing over of BIA responsibilities to the Indians themselves. He fired numerous BIA employees and brought the men who were with him in the War Relocation Authority had worked in deportation and camp administration. In doing so, he followed the Bosone Resolution , in which Reva Beck Bosone , a Democratic Congresswoman from Utah , came to the conclusion that all Indians wanted to live like the "White Man".

Some Indians, such as the Choctaw Tom Pee-Saw, saw this as an opportunity to free themselves from paternalism. William Fire Thunder, however, former president of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council , saw it as a breach of the treaties, an abrupt removal of state aid and the repeal of the Reorganization Act . For him, Bosone's resolution was tantamount to final expropriation. Although the resolution failed, Myer nevertheless tried to implement her policy, all the more so since the political and social environment gave him a tailwind. The United States had risen to become a superpower as the victor in World War I, and the belief that it was responsible for the spread of democracy and individualism had grown rapidly. This also applied to domestic politics. On the other hand, Indian war veterans had brought with them experiences that they brought into the political disputes as demands for freedom. But after the presidential election of 1952 , in which the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower prevailed, Myer was sacked.

Arthur Vivian Watkins, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, was the driving force behind the termination policy

Senator Arthur Vivian Watkins from Utah, Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, was in charge of the tightening that is now beginning . In August 1953 House Concurrent Resolution 108 came into force, which provided for the abandonment of all state responsibility for the Indians. The various tribes were to be dissolved and the Indians treated as "normal" citizens. This era went down in history as a termination as it was supposed to dissolve the Indians as a separate group with collective rights. Watkins saw in her, however, the liberation of the Indians from state trustees. The Menominee , whose forest management gave them a certain economic independence in Watkins' view , were the first tribe to be included in the termination . The Menominee had won a lawsuit against the BIA that was proven mismanagement. The BIA was to pay the tribe $ 8.5 million in reparation. This amount, which has not yet been paid out, should help finance the upcoming process. The only thing left to the tribe was approval. Other tribes were not even told that they had no say.

Above all, resettlement in the cities was promoted. As a result, their previous land has been leased by white farmers or mining companies or has been claimed by the government. In the cities, the Indians often lived without prospects and in isolation, and at the same time were confronted with racially motivated rejection. This is how Indian slums came into being. In Alaska , apart from Metlakatla , which had its own treaty with Washington , the reservations were dissolved. Ultimately, the termination policy failed due to cultural resistance.

The National Congress of American Indians initially underestimated this attack on the sovereignty of Indian nations, but then fought it nationwide. Indian Commissioner Glenn L. Emmons (1953–1961) encouraged urban migration to a greater extent. The vast majority of the Indians who went to the cities did so without funding, because the conditions in the reservations were often desolate. One of the particular excesses of “well-meaning” Indian policy is the Indian Adoption Project , in which around 400 children were forcibly given up for adoption . There was also no progress in the negotiations on the tribes' land claims, especially since Watkins presided over the Indian Claims Commission from 1959 to 1967 .

Moving away from termination (1961–1968)

Stewart Udall, Minister of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, responsible for the changed Indian policy under Kennedy

In 1961 a counter-movement began, which was connected with the election of John F. Kennedy . Home Secretary Stewart Lee Udall conducted an investigation and came to the conclusion that Indian policy must be changed on three points: economic independence, greater participation and equality as citizens. That same year, the Commission on Rights, Liberties, and Responsibilities of American Indians condemned the termination policy. A meeting of 450 Native American leaders at the University of Chicago in June 1961 made such demands. Kennedy chose Philleo Nash as Indian commissioner , who held this office from 1961 to 1966. Nash attacked the BIA's supply monopoly. By mid-1968 there were 63 aid programs in 129 reservations. On the direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson , a National Council on Indian Opportunity was established in 1968 to coordinate these numerous activities. It was chaired by Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey . In the 1968 election campaign, Richard Nixon called for a final farewell to the termination.

However, one of Udall's 500 million dollars in economic development on the basis of the Indian Resources Development Bill , introduced on May 16, 1967 , which was supposed to guarantee economic autonomy while maintaining collective rights, failed due to the resistance of the Indian representatives. The representatives of more than 60 tribes gathered in Santa Fé saw the Bureau of Indian Affairs as no trustworthy guarantor of collective rights on land. In addition, they saw their rights as sovereign nations still not respected, it was not, as Deloria put it, a "land contract".

In 1968 the Menominee , who were the first to fall victim to the termination policy, achieved success in the Supreme Court. In the case of Menominee Tribe v. In the United States , the majority of the judges decided that despite termination, fishing and hunting rights would only be dissolved if this dissolution was expressly the subject of a legal ruling. However, such a judgment requires a justification. As a result, these livelihoods, which are important for subsistence farming, have been preserved in many reservations. This precedent had a significant impact on numerous tribes, felt as far as Canada and Australia . Although the government granted the tribes more sovereign rights, they wanted under all circumstances to ensure that the general rights from the Bill of Rights were also valid where Indian legislation was introduced. This should be ensured by the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968.

Meanwhile, the Indian resistance became more militant. The American Indian Movement organized fish-ins , occupied the former prison island of Alcatraz from November 20, 1969 to June 10, 1971 , the BIA in Washington and in 1973 Wounded Knee . Again and again there were sharp arguments between traditionalists and their opponents. The Red Power movement increased pressure and the government supported moderate groups to isolate them. An American Indian Policy Review Commission prepared a drastic change in the law. Their 1977 final report made a strong request for a Native American representative in the White House , a request that President Jimmy Carter complied with later that year.

Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971)

Alaska and the twelve regional groups created in 1971

On December 18, 1971, President Richard Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act , which was intended to regulate the claims of the Alaskan Natives. This regulation is the most comprehensive that has been made in American history. In it, the claims of the approximately 225 recognized tribes were transferred to 12 regional groups (a 13th was created for those who had left Alaska). This was due to the fact that large oil reserves were discovered in 1968, which induced the government to simplify and accelerate the process of collusion with the indigenous groups. To compensate for the fact that the indigenous people renounced eight-ninths of the land they claimed, they were given ownership rights over 180,000 km² of land and compensation of 963 million dollars. 601,000 km² of land changed hands. Only the residents of Metlakatla on Annette Island in southern Alaska kept their reservation under an 1891 treaty.

Protected areas established in 1980

The law of 1971 provided that significant parts of the now non-indigenous area should be placed under protection. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), a law of 1980 that placed 321,900 km² under protection and thus placed under the supervision of the United States Forest Service and United States Fish and Wildlife Service , was supposed to accomplish this task. Home Secretary Rogers Morton had reserved 160,000 km² in 1972 for settlements and traditional aboriginal places that were to be made available to them, as well as a further 12,000 km² as compensation for land that would be lost to them through the creation of the protected areas.

110,000 km² were placed under the strictest nature protection as wilderness areas . However, many indigenous people are directly dependent on the surrounding nature for their livelihood. The ANILCA therefore allows their continued use in the traditional framework and allows this use only for the rural population. For this purpose, the law of 1971 had already restricted hunting in their traditional areas in favor of the indigenous people. On July 1, 1990, the federal government took over management of personal use in their area.

Indian Self Determination Act : Politics of Self Determination (since 1975)

Self-determination

With the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, the Indians were given the opportunity to plan and carry out their own projects with the help of BIA funds. With this, the economic influence of the BIA gradually waned and the paralyzing effect of external control began to subside. In addition, the tribes should take the education and training into their own hands, for which they, like every community, received state funding. The same was true for other community services such as Indian Health Service , police, and justice. The policy of Selfdetermination (self-determination) replaced that of the termination (resolution) final. By the year 2000, public funds made available in blocks already made up half of the BIA budget. By then, 76 tribes had signed agreements on the construction of clinics, diabetes programs, mobile supply stations, alcohol and drug prevention and therapy, and had taken advantage of the training of appropriate personnel.

Economic peculiarities

A number of tribes tried to orient their lives according to their traditions as far as possible, but many of them live in great poverty, as there are hardly any traditional sources of income in the Midwest besides horse and buffalo breeding. In many cases, they were only allowed to fish for their own needs, so that commercial use was excluded for a long time. These restrictions on economic activity were particularly severe at a time in the American economy when urbanization accelerated significantly as the focus of economic activity shifted from the country to it.

Tulalip casino and entertainment company in Washington state

The Indian reservations therefore use their special status to strengthen their traditional structures by means of a more stable economic situation. In 2007 around 230 of the 562 recognized tribes had Indian casinos . Their total number was 425. Since many states banned gambling outside of the Reserves, these companies make significant profits in unrivaled areas. With the profits, the respective tribes improve their social situation and buy back land. Health care is being improved, schools and better houses are being built, and traditions, such as the tribal language, are being strengthened with special programs. The Oneida are particularly successful . On the other hand, the Ministry of Justice has the possibility of supervision by the FBI , the federal police.

The improvement in economic opportunities is based, in turn, on a ruling by the Supreme Court of 1973. In it, the state of Arizona was prohibited from levying taxes on income earned in the Navajo Reserve (McClanahan v. Arizona State Tax Comm'n) . The reason is the assumption that the profits are drawn from the reservation's resources and thus from one's own land. The two competent Arizona courts, the Arizona Superior Court and the Arizona Supreme Court , had refused to accept the lawsuit, but the Supreme Court had accepted. Ruth McClanahan, who had earned her low income exclusively on the reservation, had sued from 1967. Only after six years could it prevail in 1973. The 1975 case of Bryan v. Itasca County .

Another law has been protecting the indigenous economy since 1990, namely the Indian Arts and Crafts Act . The law prohibits any supplier of works of art that do not come from Native American hands from creating the impression that they are Native American handicrafts.

Claims from contracts

Numerous disputes over land have long been pending in court. Indian groups are trying to enforce the treaties they made with the United States in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Often they did not get the disputed land back, but only a small amount of compensation. The Lakota refused to do so for the Black Hills , otherwise their claims to this land would have been forever nullified. The Western Shoshone in gold-rich Nevada , however, did not succeed in maintaining their contractually guaranteed rights to just over half of the state. After decades of fighting against the payment of “trustee” administered compensation funds, they had to accept an imposed money-for-land rule in 2004 after the defeat in manipulated tribal votes.

American Indian Movement

Flag with the logo of the American Indian Movement

With the establishment of the American Indian Movement AIM ("Movement American Indians") in 1968, which started out particularly from urban Indians in Minneapolis and Cleveland , some young Indians, especially in the early 1970s, used more militant methods to gain a new level of self-confidence to promote and enforce an autonomous status of the reserves. International public received the AIM through some spectacular actions such as the Trail of Broken Treaties (path of broken contracts) , which for short-term occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs led, or with the occupation of the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973, where AIM activists had proclaimed the independent Oglala nation. The occupation was militarily suppressed by the FBI and the army after a few weeks . The AIM later gave up its militancy and claims to the present day to represent specifically Indian interests, more self-determination and traditional values ​​of the Indians.

Protection of cultural particularities (1978 and 1990)

In 1978, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act , which was intended to protect religions from outside interference, but also to protect them in practice. This gave religious sites the protection of the constitution, and this also strengthened the legal basis of the ties between the indigenous people and their respective territories. This also means that all state authorities are required to find out about the corresponding places in the area of ​​their responsibility and to ensure their protection. However, the means of enforcement were too weak to give the law enforceability in any case. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act ensured that even religious acts that contravene other laws, such as the traditional use of drugs in ritual acts, such as is common in the Southwest, could be carried out.

Of particular importance for the cultural heritage of the Indians is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act , or NAGPRA for short, of November 1990, a law that protects the graves of all indigenous peoples and guarantees the return of the body finds and the associated objects to the tribes concerned . This refers to the culturally significant artifacts and, above all, the human remains, about which numerous disputes have broken out. Archaeologists have to observe strict laws with finds on indigenous land or on federal property, because the objects are in the decision-making power of the indigenous groups who have since been the owners and on whose land cultural objects or human remains have been discovered. Trading in these objects is prohibited, as is that in cultural artefacts from these contexts. So in 1991 the remains of the more than 10,000 year old Buhl woman from Idaho were returned after a thorough scientific investigation and reburied according to local traditions.

In addition, the 1994 reform of the National Eagle Repository benefited Indian cultures. All authorities and other agencies deliver dead bald eagles and golden eagles to the repository , the NER then distributes these strictly protected animals to members of the recognized peoples for cultural and religious purposes.

internationalization

The protest of international organizations like the UN became more and more important . In 1976, Indian representatives began to prepare a UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. They later traveled to Geneva to present their complaints in working groups set up specifically for indigenous people. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) rose on 10 March 2006 against the US accusations of continued discrimination and disregard for indigenous rights of the people of the Western Shoshone . The US was asked to take appropriate steps to end discrimination.

Against the opposition of Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand , the UN passed a resolution on September 13, 2007, in which not only the elimination of all discrimination against indigenous peoples and the right to have a say in matters affecting them was demanded, but also the right to “otherwise to stay " (to remain distinct) . After Australia, New Zealand and Canada gave up their resistance, President Obama declared on December 16, 2010 that the USA also wanted to sign the declaration.

Coming to terms with the mismanagement of the BIA, violence and neglect

Front page of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, September 18, 1873. It caricatures peace negotiators who offer the turning Indians "ventilated" blankets, empty rifle boxes and stinking meat.

In 1996 Elouise Pepion Cobell and Earl Old Person, members of the Blackfeet from Montana , Mildred Cleghorn, an Apachin who died in 1997, Thomas Maulson of the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians from Wisconsin and James Louis LaRose, Winnebago filed a class action lawsuit ( Cobell v. Salazar ). It accuses the trust fund, established in 1896, of robbing them of funds that had been paid to the funds for rights of use in the reserves. These are resources related to resource explorers looking for oil and gas, uranium and coal, but also those related to grazing rights, forestry and deforestation. The United States Department of the Interior is in charge of these funds, and that was the department's action. In December 2009, it offered the plaintiffs a comparison to, for distribution in accordance to 1.4 billion dollars of the beneficiaries of the Fund and a further 2 billion for the purchase of through inheritance are provided fragmented land ownership. Of this, up to 60 million are earmarked for funding educational programs. President Obama had already lamented "a century of mismanagement" in a speech to what he called the "First Americans" during the election campaign and promised a change. In December 2010, the President signed the Cobell settlement , in which they agreed on a sum of 3.4 billion dollars.

In May 2010, the Republican senator apologized Sam Brownback of Kansas of Congress for a "misguided policies" and acts of violence against the Indians by the US government as well as for neglect in the name.

In April 2012, the Ministry of the Interior announced a settlement with 41 peoples in which they would be awarded around one billion dollars to compensate for mismanagement of Indian trust assets in the Bureau of Indian Affairs . With the agreement, claims are settled that go back up to 100 years. It mainly concerns the embezzlement of license fees for the extraction of raw materials on Indian land. At the end of September 2014, the US agreed to pay the Navajo $ 554 million in compensation. From 1946 to 2012, when the United States held the Navajo's natural resources in trust, the government had entered into inappropriate contracts with extractive companies and had not invested the resulting income wisely.

Division of the country over the question of assimilation

By contrast, forbade the Republican governor of Arizona Jan Brewer in 2010 teaching in the subject "Ethnic Studies" (ethnic studies) from the end, as this reinforces their opinion, the ethnic divide. Classes in public schools should see students as individuals, not as members of an ethnic group, and thus contribute to assimilation.

A demonstration with around 100,000 participants was set up on May 29, 2010 against this continuation of the assimilation approach towards ethnic groups in politics and, above all, against the measures intended to prevent the immigration of Latin American individuals, who to a large extent belong to Indian groups the focus in Los Angeles . In addition, members of the Tohono O'odham Nation are protesting the bill as their traditional territory stretches on both sides of the border and they await restrictions. The situation is similar with the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, whose relatives also fear being cut off from their relatives.

The President of Mexico , Felipe Calderón , described the law as an attack on human rights. Several major cities called for a boycott against Arizona. However, some of the Republican-ruled states want to adjust their laws accordingly.

See also

literature

  • Raymond I. Orr: Reservation Politics: Historical Trauma, Economic Development, and Intratribal Conflict. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 2017, ISBN 978-0-8061-5391-9 .
  • David E. Wilkins, Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark: American Indian Politics and the American Political System , 4th Edition, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham et al. 2017. ISBN 978-1-4422-0387-7 .
  • Susan Sleeper-Smith, Juliana Barr, Jean M. O'Brien, Nancy Shoemaker (Eds.): Why You Can't Teach United States History without American Indians , The University of Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2015.
  • Roberta Ulrich: American Indian Nations from Termination to Restoration, 1953-2006 , University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln et al. 2010. ISBN 978-0-8032-3364-5 .
  • Daniel M. Cobb: Native activism in Cold War America. The Struggle for Sovereignty , University Press of Kansas, Lawrence 2008. ISBN 978-0-7006-1597-1 .
  • Kevin Gover: An Indian Trust for the Twenty-First Century , in: Natural Resources Journal 46 (2006) 317-374. ( online (PDF; 3.2 MB) )
  • Jane E. Simonsen: Making Home Work. Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the West, 1860-1919 , University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2006. ISBN 0-8078-3032-1 .
  • Susanne von Karstedt: Actors, ideologies, instruments. A comparison of the basics of American and Argentine Indian policy (1853–1899) , Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Berlin 2006 (also: Cologne, Univ., Diss., 2005). ISBN 3-86573-132-5 .
  • Colin G. Calloway: One Vast Winter Count. The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark (= History of the American West ), University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln et al. 2003. ISBN 0-8032-1530-4 .
  • Roger L. Nichols : American Indians in US History (= The Civilization of the American Indian Series , 248), University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 2003. ISBN 0-8061-3557-3 .
  • Donald L. Fixico: The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century. American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources , University Press of Colorado, Niwot 1998. ISBN 0-87081-517-2 .
  • Klaus Frantz: The Indian reservations in the USA. Aspects of territorial development and socio-economic change (= geographic knowledge , 109), Steiner, Stuttgart 1995 (also: Innsbruck, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1991). ISBN 3-515-06217-3 .
  • Francis Paul Prucha: The Great Father. The United States Government and the American Indians , 2 volumes, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln et al. 1995. ISBN 0-8032-8734-8 .
  • Sidney L. Harring: Crow Dog's Case , Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-521-41563-2 .
  • Christine Massing: The Development of United States Government Policy Toward Indian Health Care, 1850-1900 , in: Past Imperfect 3 (1994) 129-158. online (PDF; 2.2 MB)
  • Vine Deloria Jr. (Ed.): American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman et al. 1992. ISBN 0-8061-2424-5 .
  • Robert M. Kvasnicka, Herman J. Viola (Eds.): The Commissioners of Indian Affairs, 1824-1977 , University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln et al. 1979. ISBN 0-8032-2700-0 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Lloyd Meeds: The Indian Policy Review Commission , in: Law and Contemporary Problems 40.1: The American Indian and the Law (1976), pp. 9-11.
  2. ↑ Senate Committee Apologizes to All Native Americans for Violence and Maltreatment by US Citizens , CNS News, August 10, 2009 .
  3. ↑ "on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native peoples by citizens of the United States" - quoted from US Copyright Office , p. 3453, Sec. 8113 (PDF; 277 kB).
  4. ↑ On the debate on the genocide question, cf. Guenter Lewy: Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide? , History News Network, November 22, 2004 .
  5. ↑ This experiment is always the subject of non-scientific discussion. Thomas Brown, for example, said: Did the US Army Distribute Smallpox Blankets to Indians? Fabrication and Falsification in Ward Churchill's Genocide Rhetoric , in: plagiary 1/9 (2006) 1-30 or [Guenter Lewy: Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide? , History News Network, November 22, 2004]. See also Peter d'Errico: Jeffrey Amherst and Smallpox Blankets , University of Massachusetts 2007 .
  6. ↑ Steady Population: 5.2 Million Indians Counted ( Memento of November 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), in: Indian Country, April 20, 2011.
  7. ↑ The American Indian and Alaska Native Population: 2010. 2010 Census Briefs , January 2012 (PDF; 2.9 MB).
  8. ↑ "Of this total, about 48 percent were American Indian and Alaska Native only, and about 52 percent were American Indian and Alaska Native in combination with one or more other races." ( FFF: American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month: November 2015 , United States Census).
  9. ↑ Harring 1994, p. 21 ff
  10. ↑ On the first contracts with Indians, cf. Early Recognized Treaties with American Indian Nations .
  11. ^ Reginald Horsman: United States Indian Policies, 1776-1815 . In: Handbook of North American Indians, No. 4, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1988.
  12. ^ Anthony FC Wallace: Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans , Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press 1999.
  13. ^ Russell M. Magnaghi: Factory System. aka: Trading Posts , Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Central Arkansas Library System 2007 .
  14. ↑ Carolyn Keller Reeves: The Choctaw Before Removal , University Press of Mississippi and Choctaw Heritage Press 1985, p. 203.
  15. ^ Charles F. Wilkinson: American Indians, Time, and the Law: Native Societies in a Modern Constitutional Democracy , Yale University Press 1986. The decision can be found here .
  16. ↑ see Harring 1994, p. 22
  17. ^ Seminole Indian Tribe , Native American Nations website
  18. ^ Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States , Harper Perennial, 2005, p. 144 ISBN 0-06-083865-5 .
  19. ↑ Krewasky A. Salter: Combat Multipliers. African-American Soldiers in Four Wars , Combats Studies Institute Press, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 2003, p. 22. Most recently: Ron Field: The Seminole Wars 1818–58 , Osprey Publishing, 2009, p. 19.
  20. ^ William T. Hagan: United States Indian Policies, 1860-1900 . In: Handbook of North American Indians, No. 4. 1988, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
  21. ↑ "Kill the Indian, and Save the Man": Capt. Richard H. Pratt on the Education of Native Americans , History Matters .
  22. ^ David Wallace Adams: Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 ; Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
  23. ↑ The text of the law .
  24. ↑ On the Indian policy of the Lincoln government cf. David A. Nichols: Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics , Columbia: University of Missouri Press 1978.
  25. ^ Frederick E. Hoxie: The Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1888-1920 , Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.
  26. ↑ Peter R. Gerber writes of the "dissolution of tribal ownership and the privatization of the land in 1887 by the Dawes Act (or General Allotment Act) ..." (Peter R. Gerber: On the right to be Indians America , Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich, 1986, p. 49).
  27. ^ "... the General Allotment Act extended citizenship to Indians whose land would be devided and privatized." (Bruce Elliott Johansen: The encyclopedia of Native American legal tradition , Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998, p. 137).
  28. ↑ Bruce Elliott Johansen: The encyclopedia of Native American legal tradition , Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998, pp. 137 f.
  29. ↑ US Bureau of the Census: Statistical abstract of the United States 1956 , Washington 1956, p. 188, Table No. 228: Indian Lands under Jurisdiction of Bureau of Indian Affairs - Acreage by States .
  30. ↑ The text can be found here .
  31. ↑ Supreme Court of the United States: United States vs. Dion , June 11, 1986.
  32. ↑ The text can be found here .
  33. ↑ US Bureau of the Census: Statistical abstract of the United States 1956 , Washington 1956, p. 188, Table No. 228: Indian Lands under Jurisdiction of Bureau of Indian Affairs - Acreage by States . In general: Janet A. McDonnell: The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934 , Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
  34. ↑ Helen L. Peterson: American Indian Political Participation , in: American Academy of Political and Social Science, (1957) pp. 116-121, here: p. 121.
  35. ^ The Problem of Indian Administration. Report of a Survey Made at the Request of Honorable Hubert Work , Secretary of the Interior, and Submitted to Him, February 21, 1928. The text can be found here , PDF version .
  36. ↑ Lawrence C. Kelly: United States Indian Policies, 1900-1980 . In: Handbook of North American Indians, No. 4. 1988, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
  37. ↑ Frank Miller gives an example of the diversity of the question of chiefhood with a view to the question of succession: Problems of Succession in a Chippewa Council. In: Marc J. Swartz, Victor Witter Turner, Arthur Tuden (Eds.): Political Anthropology. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers 1966, reprinted 2009, pp. 173-186.
  38. ↑ This section in Dillon S. Myer's life is examined by Richard Drinnon: Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism , Berkeley: University of California Press 1987.
  39. ↑ Kenneth R. Philp: Termination Revisited: American Indians on the Trail to Self-Determination 1933-1953 , University of Nebraska Press 1999, p. 168 f.
  40. ↑ Lawrence C. Kelly: Federal Indian policy , Chelsea House, 1990, p. 93.
  41. ↑ Christopher K. Riggs: American Indians, Economic Development, and Self-Determination in the 1960s , in: The Pacific Historical Review 69.3 (August 2000) 431-463.
  42. ^ After Karen Engle: The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development. Rights, Culture, Strategy , Duke University Press 2010, p. 53 f.
  43. ↑ US Supreme Court. Menominee Tribe of Indians v. United States, 391 US 404 (1968)
  44. ^ The resulting regional groups can be found on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act Network ( memento of October 29, 2005 in the Internet Archive ).
  45. ↑ An Act To provide for the designation and conservation of certain public lands in the State of Alaska, including the designation of units of the National Park, National Wildlife Refuge, National Forest, National Wild and Scenic Rivers, and National Wilderness Preservation Systems, and for other purposes , December 2, 1980 .
  46. ↑ Kenneth R. Philp (ed.): Indian Self-Rule: First-Hand Accounts of Indian-White Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan , Logan: Utah State University Press 1995.
  47. ↑ Economist: Indian gaming slowdown is 'artificial' , in: Gallup Independent, August 20, 2008 ( Memento of October 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ).
  48. ↑ The decision can be found here .
  49. ^ The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (Indian Arts and Crafts Board)
  50. ↑ The last battle of the Indians: Red Power in the USA ( Memento from January 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Interview with Heike Bungert in Q History from April 1, 2011.
  51. ↑ President Carter commented on the law August 12, 1978. The text can be found here .
  52. ↑ See United Nations adopts Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples (www.un.org) .
  53. ↑ Obama adopts UN manifesto on rights of indigenous peoples , in: The Washington Times, December 15, 2010 .
  54. ↑ The original lawsuit and memorandum can be found here (PDF; 381 kB) .
  55. ↑ Obama Admin Strikes $ 3.4B Deal in Indian Trust Lawsuit , in: New York Times, December 8, 2009 . You can find more information here .
  56. ^ Barack's Message for First Americans .
  57. ↑ Obama signs historic Cobell settlement , in: Indian Country Today, December 9, 2010.
  58. ↑ There it says: The government "acknowledges years of official depredations, ill-conceived policies and the breaking of covenants" ( Kansas senator reads apology to American Indians , in: Seattle Times, May 19, 2010 ( Memento of May 26, 2010 in Internet Archive ), archive.org, May 26, 2010).
  59. ↑ Department of the Interior: Secretary Salazar and Attorney General Holder Announce $ 1 Billion Settlement of Tribal Trust Accounting and Management Lawsuits Filed by More Than 40 Tribes , press release April 11, 2012.
  60. ↑ USA want to pay Navajo $ 550 million , in: Süddeutsche.de, September 25, 2014.
  61. ↑ Ariz. Ban On Ethnic Studies Divides Educators , npr, May 28, 2010 .
  62. ^ Native contingent leads anti-SB 1070 March , in: Indian Country Today, June 9, 2010.
  63. ^ Mexican officials condemn Arizona's tough new immigration law , in: The Washington Post, April 27, 2010 .
  64. ^ Following Passage Of Arizona Law, At Least Seven States Contemplate Anti-Immigrant Legislation , Think Progress .
  65. ^ Report to the Honorable Dan Boren, House of Representatives , United States Government Accountability Office , April 2012.
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on June 23, 2011 in this version .