1 CHAPTER 1: AMERICAN INDIAN SELF-DETERMINATION AND ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

economies and providing services like health care and education. 17 Such assistance, and the identification of it as a federal responsibility, was an important part of the trust relationship and thus an important part of self- determination. The trust relationship between tribes and the United States involved not just land, but a moral and legal responsibility on the part of the federal government to aid Native Americans. 18 Such aid was and is owed to the tribes 17 AICC, Declaration, 5-12; quotation taken from page 5. 18 On trust relationship, see Robert L. Bennett, "Workshop on Tribal Government: National Congress of American Indians," Dec. 8, 1959, folder 12, box 16, series VI, William Zimmerman Papers, Center for Southwestern Research; Felix S. Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law, 1982 ed. (Charlottesville, Virginia: Michie Bobbs-Merrill, 1982), 220-228; Gerard interview; Gilbert L. Hall, The Federal- Indian Trust Relationship: A Duty of Protection (Washington, D.C., 1979); National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), Historical Tribal Policies and Priorities, 1944-1975 (1989), 3; NCAI, "Treaties and Trust Responsibilities," 21 October 1976, "National Congress of American Indians, 1976," box 5, Bradley H. Patterson Papers, Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Donald L. Fixico, The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century: American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources (Niwot, Colo., 1998), 177-178; David E. Wilkins and K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 64-97; David E. Wilkins, American Indian Politics and the American Political System (Lanhan, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 44-45, 339-340; Charles F. Wilkinson, American Indians, Time, and the Law: Native Societies in a Modern Constitutional Democracy (New Haven, Conn., 1987), 85-86. For a more critical view of the trust concept, see Frank Pommersheim, Braid of Feathers: American Indian Law and Contemporary Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 41-46; Francis Paul Prucha, The Indians in American Society: From the Revolutionary War to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 91-92. 10
in exchange for Indians ceding their lands to the United States. 19 As legal scholar Charles F. Wilkinson has observed, "the trust relationship extends to areas such as education, housing and health. . . . Congress has a moral obligation toward Indians." 20 Therefore, the AICC concluded that the federal government should make social and economic programs available to Native Americans at least until tribal governments could take them over. 21 Economic development activities in Indian Country would hasten that takeover by helping tribes to become more self-sufficient. As former Senator Benjamin Reifel (Rosebud Sioux) and authors Joe Sando (Jemez Pueblo) and Vine Deloria have argued, self- determination requires that tribes to have a solid economic base. 22 Economic development and social programs were also important because they helped insure that there would be peoples in Indian Country to exercise their right to self- determination. High rates of Indian unemployment and poverty--combined with government relocation policies--played 19 AIPRC, Final Report, vol. 1, 126-128; O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments, 261-262. 20 Philp, Indian Self-Rule, 303; Charles F. Wilkinson, American Indians, Time, and the Law: Native Societies in a Modern Constitutional Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 85-86. 21 AICC, Declaration, 19-20; Gerard, interview. 22 Deloria and Lytle, Nations Within, 258; Philp, Indian Self-Rule, 296; Sando, interview. 11
Page 1 and 2: CHAPTER 1: AMERICAN INDIAN SELF-DET
Page 3 and 4: Anthropologists Sol Tax and Nancy L
Page 5 and 6: Nevertheless, the Declaration ident
Page 7 and 8: Such sovereignty was often recogniz
Page 9: While tribes possessed an inherent
Page 13 and 14: fashion. Instead of working with In
Page 15 and 16: cultures was necessary for tribal g
Page 17 and 18: produced intratribal conflict. Neve
Page 19 and 20: communities on trust lands were not
Page 21 and 22: new Commissioner favored the eventu
Page 23 and 24: By the late 1950s and during the 19
Page 25 and 26: activist protests in the 1960s and
Page 27 and 28: Indian nations to administer progra
Page 29 and 30: constituted an important part of Pr
Page 31 and 32: esponsibility to open up opportunit
Page 33 and 34: chance to participate in the econom
Page 35 and 36: the economic and social conditions
Page 37 and 38: address by Hubert H. Humphrey, a De
Page 39 and 40: through states to access funds and
Page 41 and 42: fight against termination in the 19
Page 43 and 44: Access to and control over such fun
Page 45: y moving the government in the dire

1 CHAPTER 1: AMERICAN INDIAN SELF-DETERMINATION AND ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?