For all his faults, and the sputtering end to his tenure as President, Joe Biden, with the help of his strong Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, has been a big and positive presence in Indian Country. In the last flurry of pardons and commutations, Biden sent Leonard Peltier home to serve out his days in home confinement, after over 50 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. Peltier was convicted in the murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1965. He admitted to being a member of AIM, the American Indian Movement, and to being present at the confrontation, but has always denied he did the shooting. Tribal and world leaders have long called for Peltier’s release; Biden did it.
The question now is how much of the work that Biden and Haaland have done in Indian Country will stand up—and how much of past legislation involving Tribal issues will survive.
This January marks the fifty-year anniversary of “The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975.” Two recent issues of “Native News Online” have highlighted this significant milestone in American Indian-government affairs.
In the January 4 edition of “Native News,” Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland wrote:
“Fifty years ago, President Ford signed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 into law. This seminal law – the product of tireless Native activism that rallied against a centuries-long status quo – changed how tribal governments serve their people. It solidified that, while the federal government is a partner with trust and treaty obligations to tribes, it is tribes that know best what their people need from their governments.”
In a January 5 interview in “Native News,” John Echohawk, Executive Director of NARF (Native American Rights Fund), says this about the act:
“It basically allowed tribes to administer federal programs that had previously been administered by federal employees on reservations. It allowed tribes to administer those programs themselves, in recognition of their status as sovereign governments able to govern things on the reservation.”
Here, Echohawk gets interesting, as he lauds President Nixon for his role in bringing about the events that allowed the Act to pass:
“He was the one in 1970 who first set the National Native American policy for the federal government for self-determination and recognition of tribal sovereignty, changing that from the previous federal policy of terminating tribes, eliminating tribes, ignoring treaties, and the right to self-determination of tribes. President Nixon changed all that beginning in 1970 and it set all of these very positive developments for tribes in motion, and of course, culminated there in early 75 in the approval of the Indian Self Determination Act.”
I have written before about Nixon’s role in advancing Indian-Government relations, about the Whittier College Native American football coach who was an early mentor, and about Nixon’s attempts to recruit more Natives into the BIA and make a radical turn in Federal Indian policy. I’ve also written about the Doctrine of Discovery and the evolution of Indian Law. I think it is important that we now remember what has happened in the past, and that we continue to press forward on issues that involve Tribes and state and federal governments and, in the important areas of natural resources, issues that affect us all.
My friend and mentor, Alvin Josephy, had a role in the Self Determination saga. From the late 1950s, when he began his career as a historian of American Indians, to his many books and work with the National Museum of the American Indians, Josephy was a strong advocate for Indian sovereignty, Indian management of Indian affairs. As Nixon came into office, his team asked Josephy for help. And on February 11, 1969, Alvin Josephy wrote to James Keogh at the White House:
“Per your request of January 16, 1969, I am pleased to submit herewith a study of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, The Indian and the Bureau of Indian Affairs – 1969, with recommendations.”
In less than a month and almost 100 pages, Josephy advised Nixon to put the coffin lid on the Termination and Relocation programs and to give Tribes voice and administrative power in health, education, and social programs affecting them. The full text of what became known as the Josephy White Paper is on our web page here:
And on July 8, 1970, in an address to Congress, President Nixon said:
“The first Americans—the Indians—are the most deprived and most isolated minority group in our nation. On virtually every scale of measurement—employment, income, education, health—the condition of the Indian people ranks at the bottom.
“This condition is the heritage of centuries of injustice. From the time of their first contact with European settlers, the American Indians have been oppressed and brutalized, deprived of their ancestral lands and denied the opportunity to control their own destiny. Even the Federal programs which are intended to meet their needs have frequently proven to be ineffective and demanding.”
The full text of Nixon’s speech to Congress is here:
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-indian-affairs
The coming months will show us whether the huge strides in Indian-government relations that have been made in the last 50 years will stand, and will challenge those of us who are non-Native to speak up when we are called to.
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