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

According to historian Alvin M. Josephy Jr. and former NCAI
Executive Director Robert Burnette (Rosebud Sioux), the
Chicago Conference and the Declaration constituted a move
toward "self-determination." 5
To be sure, the creation of such a statement did not
mean that the AICC participants were wholly united in their
views. The proceedings of a series of regional meetings
leading up to Chicago and the discussions at the conference
itself revealed deep divisions. For example, Eastern and
Western Indians clashed on several issues. A few critics
felt that "elitist insiders" dominated the conference. 6
documents in fd. 11, box 216, Sol Tax Papers, Department of
Special Collections, University of Chicago Library, Chicago,
Illinois. See also Progress Reports #4 and #5, 26 April
1961, "American Indian Chicago Conference (Charter
Convention), 1961)," series XI, box 148/5, National Congress
of American Indian Papers, National Anthropological Archives,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
For secondary accounts, see Thomas Clarkin, Federal
Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 17-20;
Thomas W. Cowger, The National Congress of American Indians:
The Founding Years (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1999), 133-140; Laurence M. Hauptman, Tribes and
Tribulations: Misconceptions About American Indians and
Their Histories (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1995), chapter 8; Alvin M. Josephy Jr., Now That the
Buffalo's Gone: A Study of Today's American Indians (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1982), 224; McNickle, Native
American Tribalism, 115-117; Dorothy R. Parker, Singing an
Indian Song: A Biography of D'Arcy McNickle (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 187-191, 283.
5 Alvin M. Josephy Jr., Red Power: The American Indians'
Fight for Freedom, 1st ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1971),
38; Philp, Indian Self-Rule, 211.
6 Hauptman, Tribes and Tribulations, 99, 102-106; John
4