An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

However, in its content and general tone, the platform was meant to
advance the unique causes of Native people as sovereign nations whose
rights had continuously been ignored. The platform read:
1. To promote and co-operate with all efforts looking to the advancement
of the Indian in enlightenment which leaves him free as a man to
develop according to the natural laws of social evolution.
2. To provide, through our open conference, the means for a free
discussion on all subjects bearing on the welfare of the race.
3. To present in a just light a true history of the race, to preserve its
records and to emulate its distinguishing virtues.
4. To promote citizenship among Indians and to obtain the rights thereof.
5. To establish a legal department to investigate Indian problems, and
suggest and obtain remedies.
6. To exercise the right to oppose any movement which may be
detrimental to the race.
7. To direct its energies exclusively to general principles and universal
interest, and not allow itself to be used for any personal or private
interest. 9
The seven-point platform was meant to unite all Native people against
the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which the SAI believed was an impediment to
their progress. A few of the points are worth explaining. Point number three
was meant to help alter the negative perception of Indigenous
disappearance. As survivors of the boarding school era, SAI members
experienced firsthand how the boarding schools tried to “kill the Indian in
him and save the man.” They desired to challenge the settler idea that all
Native people had disappeared. With point number five, they declared their
plan to establish a separate legal department that would investigate why all
of the treaties had been violated. In other words, the SAI wanted the US
government to honor the treaties.
While the SAI as an organization sought some form of assimilation,
there were individual members who wanted to transform US society as best
as they could. In 1915, Arthur Parker published an essay in the Quarterly
Journal of the Society of American Indians in which he rebuked American