Plight of the Native Americans

1. Plight of the Native Americans A View of Political Economy A Presentation by Bret Walters

2. Lend me your ears… I will take you back in time to unfold a story of truth. • Sad and increasing plight of the true Native American. • History class teaching incorrect. • Bring Truths to light.

3. Visualize 200 years ago… Native Americans • hundreds of different tribes • occupied all of the United States • culture was a rich culture • we destroyed all that.

4. 1492 came the arrival of Christopher Columbus. • “American Indian” • Indian tribes call themselves by many names. • Tsilagi translated means “The Principal People.”

5. Did you know that our government violated every treaty that we made with them, and sometimes we would massacre them, in addition?

6. Did you know that most of the Native Americans live in reservations • Theycannot grow their own food • They cannot grow maize (corn) • they cannot have buffaloes for meat

7. 1786, United States established first Native American reservation and approached each tribe as an independent nation. • This policy remained intact for more than one hundred years.

8. In 1838, as the deadline for removal approached, thousands of federal soldiers and Georgia volunteers entered the territory and forcibly relocated the Cherokees. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees died on this “Trail of Tears.”

9. Thousands of Navajos surrendered to U.S. troops in 1864. These men, women, and children were forced to walk 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. This legendary “Long Walk” ended at a small, disease-filled camp that served as a Navajo prison for four years.

10. Despite their welcome to serve in the Union Army, Native Americans were not recognized as U.S. citizens throughout the nineteenth century. • Tribes remained independent nations that were expected to sign agreements such as the Kit Carson Treaty to establish Native American reservations in U.S. territories. Kit Carson

11. The federal government opened Black Hills to gold mining in 1875 • In 1876, Custer and his 264 men died

12. A account, from Noah Armstrong, recalled the precarious relationship between U.S. soldiers and Native American hunters:

13. Violent conflicts were common throughout many territories, and it was not long before the last official military action against Native Americans took place on December 29, 1890. Government officials banned a growing religion known as the Ghost Dance on a South Dakota reservation that month. • As part of the crackdown against the Ghost Dance, the army arrested Chief Big Foot and his Lakota tribesmen and confined them to a camp near Wounded Knee Creek. The day after the arrest, the military attempted to recover the prisoner’s weapons. A gun was accidentally fired and soldiers opened fire. When the shooting stopped, more than 300 Lakota Indians were dead.

15. Here are some facts about the BIA that made the front page of the Arizona Republic, a major newspaper in Phoenix, Arizona. • Information fed into the agency's computer system is disorganized and erroneous. • An estimated $5.8 billion has not been collected (since 1979) from companies that pump oil and gas from reservation lands, thus robbing Indians. • In some cases, money that belonged to individual Indians and tribes was deposited in slush funds through accounts set up under phony names. • There are thirty recent incidents in which federal employees were allegedly involved in theft, embezzlement and fraud on Indian reservations, yet few were prosecuted. • BIA sponsored Indian programs failed to improve the economies of reservations and BIA failed to provide quality education for Indian children. • Housing programs are riddled with scandal, and housing in many areas is shockingly substandard. • Indian health remains poor, with diabetes reaching epidemic proportions on some reservations. • The BIA cannot manage its own money, or account for millions in equipment and supplies."

16. Beginning mainly in the 1880s in the United States, this government agency instituted programs that aimed to reconfigure the fabric of Native American life. Known as the assimilation campaigns, these policies attempted to transform Native Americans into “citizens” by stripping them of their lands, cultures, languages, religions, and other markers of their ethnic identity. Assimilation brought continued challenges to Native Americans, many of whom had only recently been confined to reservations.

17. For many Native Americans, such cultural attacks were often more painful than the Indian wars. Native Americans lost their children, who were shipped to boarding schools where families were prohibited from visiting and children were punished for speaking their languages. Most Native American religious rituals, such as the Ghost and Sun Dance, were outlawed. Native American men were forced to discard earlier forms of survival, such as buffalo hunting, for the hope of becoming farmers. Many communities were resettled onto reservation lands that where undesirable and infertile.

18. Before • Surviving the cultural, economic, and religious assaults of assimilation taxed many Native Americans. Many groups successfully navigated these challenges by reshaping government policies to meet tribal needs. The Northern Arapaho in Wyoming, for example, molded their existing age-based political structures to include new reservation leadership positions. The Crow in Montana similarly fought to have Crow leaders in charge of key reservation political positions; Robert Yellowtail, for example, became in 1934 the first Crow superintendent, the leading political officer on the reservation. After

19. Recognizing its failure, the U.S. government slowly abandoned its assimilation policies and granted universal citizenship to Native Americans in 1924. It also instituted dramatic political reforms in the 1930s under BIA Commissioner John Collier. Known as the Indian New Deal, these reforms included several landmark policies, particularly the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934 Sequoyah

20. By any standard, Native Americans living on reservations in the United States occupy the lowest rung on the economic ladder. At least half of the reservation population lives below the poverty line, surviving on welfare checks, food stamps, and Medicaid. On reservations across the United States, Native Americans live in rundown and overcrowded trailers and shacks. For many, central heating, piped water, and indoor toilets are luxuries. In 1990, the Indian Health Service (IHS) reported that 43 percent of Indian children younger than five years old lived in poverty • Those living on reservations have the highest rates of unemployment in the United States reaching 40 percent or more on some reservations. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Lakota peoples in South Dakota, has unemployment rates that hovered around 80 percent in 1999.

21. Some of the reasons for high unemployment among Native Americans are • lack of education • Discrimination • lack of jobs and industry on and near reservations.

22. In 1882, a Hopi reservation was created in the Arizona/New Mexico region. The Dineh (Navajo) people also occupied this land. Despite the law, the two tribes continued living as they always had, maintaining a separation. This land also held heavy deposits of coal and uranium. • In 1951, there where disputes as to who correctly owned the land. It was resolved with the Healing vs. Jones case in which the lands became a Joint-Use area and the profits of the lease were to be split between the tribes.

23. In 1974, the US government passed Public Law 93-531 or the Relocation Act. • This law required Dineh residents in the Big Mountain (also called Black Mesa) area to relocate so that the coal and uranium deposits could be mined. • Land was purchased in 1980, by the government, in Chambers, Arizona as a relocation site for the Dineh. • The relocation site was at one of the worst radioactive spills the world has ever known in 1979

24. In 1996, Congress passed Public Law 104-301 • It required all Dineh still residing in the area to sign a contract ceding all property and civil rights to the Hopi government • Those who remained on the land became tenants on what had historically been their own. They would have to purchase permits in order to do simple things such as gathering wood, grazing their animals, and burying the dead.

25. Those who refused to sign, “Agreed” to submit to forced relocation by the year 2000 Rena Babbitt Lane, A Dineh elder • Big Mountain resident • simply, without electricity or running water. 1999 BIA raided Lane’s home • confiscated 17 sheep, 3 goats, 6 cows. Lane went BIA - What happened? BIA informed her- • Everything she owned would be taken. • She could sign "Accommodation Agreement" • PL 104-301- Senator John McCain AZ By signing agreement she acknowledges • the loss of her land title • agrees to live as a tenant in her own house. • she is not allowed to vote • Nor to participate in the legal system • (except as a defendant.) Lane was one of many who refused to sign.

26. The end of the story is yet to be decided. The Dineh are still fighting for their land rights. Petitions abound attempting to overturn both Public Law 93-531 and 104-301. Children born on the “New Reservation” have marked birth defects and illnesses.

27. Despite their resiliency, however, Native Americans faced serious economic, health, and educational problems at the beginning of the 21st century. Many indigenous peoples lived in poverty. Unemployment and school dropout rates were high, and rates of alcoholism and suicide for Native Americans were far above those for the general population in both countries. However, as a testament to the cultural and economic renewal-taking place, many indigenous peoples were leaving cities and returning to their homelands. They went back for jobs, to attend tribal colleges, or to participate in long-dormant ceremonies.

28. Hundreds of Native North American peoples have survived an onslaught of government policies and wars dedicated to destroying them. What sustained them were traditional family and clan relationships, kinship with homelands, religious ceremonies, and ancient stories connecting older and younger generations, and shared traditions that maintained each tribe’s uniqueness.

29. Despite efforts to stamp out Native American cultures, many have survived and even been revived. Although they still face many economic and social challenges, Native Americans continue to survive and flourish by maintaining their distinct cultures.

30. Cherokee’s Trail of Tears Lakota Family Sitting Bull And Wife hours Before being murdered

31. Navaho Sitting Bull Lakota Community

32. 1860 Lakota Home

33. Cherokee Delegation

36. MitakuyeOyasin