This chapter is about matters that remain ambiguous to me, I think because they really WERE ambiguous. What the Office of Indian Affairs thought they were doing was preparing the tribes to be on their own, self-governing and self-sustaining. What the tribes thought they were doing was mostly surviving -- they could not see into the future and they did not trust assurances that all would be well.
Much of the struggle in these years was still trying to come to terms with the split between full-blood and mixed-blood -- who now outnumbered full-bloods two to one and who now included not just half-bloods, but quarter and one-eighth. No one wanted to cut off their own children, so people fought to maintain the enrollment of those with a lesser blood quantum, but also the full bloods fought to keep what they felt was their entitlement, not necessarily earned by those who came later and didn’t remember the buffalo life. White officials were split within themselves: on the one hand, they couldn’t help feeling that the full-bloods were the REAL Indians and that they should be protected -- yet, legally, the lesser quantums were defined as Indians (so far) and to be really honest, they were the ones with the capacity to learn the new world and thrive in it. The more assimilated they were, the more it seemed likely that they could lead the tribe to success. BUT one could not define “Indianness” by blood quantum, since some clung to old ways even though they were largely white and some full-bloods made the leap to the modern world.
The idea that the government had seized was that of the business corporation, and their attention was on getting the Blackfeet to write a constitution. Yet there were elements in the constitution that had nothing to do with commerce -- like giving the Tribal Council the power to banish individuals, just as the agent had done to Horace Clarke. The suspicion was that the mostly mixed-blood council would banish -- ironically -- the old troublesome full-bloods from the reservation. Also the government was just beginning to use the word “sovereignty” without any clarity about what it meant. And what was happening to the idea of “tribe?” Was it to be replaced by the notion of a corporation? Should everyone be issued shares and malcontents be “bought out,” given money for their shares and sent on their way?
Once the Constitution was prepared, ratified by the “tribe” as defined at that moment, sent to the Office of Indian Affairs, and months later returned and voted on, then work began on a Charter. I could not figure out the difference between a Constitution and a Charter. I’m guessing that the Constitution tried to define the tribe and the Charter tried to define the Tribal Council, which was seen as a “business council.”
The great preoccupation was with the handling of money: leases, access to loans for infrastructure and other development, and at least a loosening of the grip of the Office of Indian Affairs. There doesn’t seem to be much loosening, partly because government officials (there is SO much irony all through here) was afraid that the tribe would be so devoted to short term profit and so neglectful of long-term conservation, that they would cut all the timber to sell, overgraze, issue per capita instead of reserving funds for emergencies, and so on. (Sounds like government management!)
Little attention was paid to self-governance matters that normal states would be expected to undertake, like law and order or education or protection of the indigent, helpless, aged and so on or even taxation. The idea seems to have been to let the State of Montana assume those responsibilities, on grounds that the Indians were citizens now and entitled to everything that any other citizen of Montana could expect. This has been a bone in the throat for the state ever since, because at the same time the tribes claimed exemption from state taxes and resisted the enforcement of state laws. Many whites and landless Indians benefited from this, finding that in this way the reservation was still like a territory. They walked under the Blackft umbrella.
Another peculiarity was that Glacier National Park is also like a little nation of its own -- a creature of the federal government that had no accountability or obligation to the state of Montana. The Park has its own management hierarchy, its own goals, its own law and order, and its own boundary. In this time period the Park was negotiating to get “the ceded strip,” between what was originally sold to be the Park and what was still reservation. The original Park boundary was supposed to be “from peak to peak,” but in fact was surveyed far down the shoulder on the reservation side. Another point of contention was that Blackfeet had reserved the right to hunt in the Park, but the Park tried to keep them out. Cases about this are still going through the courts in the 21st century.
The Depression was making life miserable all across the nation and even around the world. Women’s rights were beginning to become important and Blackft women were beginning to assert themselves. Mostly they were active through the Blackft Indian Welfare Association, but soon there would be female council members.
Agent Campbell was followed by Agent Stone, who did such a good job that he was transferred to Wyoming to help underachieving tribes there -- this meant that all the groundwork in terms of trust and definition among the Blackfeet was lost. The same thing happened with O’Hara, the next agent. It was a kind of Peter Principle -- if a man were succeeding, give him a more hopeless situation.
The full-blood/mixed blood schism has become today a split between the “north reservation” and the “south reservation” because most of the full-bloods were in Heart Butte and Old Agency. But there was a little bubble of full-blood old-timers in Starr School where Jim Whitecalf often acted as spokesman. They were doomed by the fact that the small community was included in the Browning voting district and Browning was overwhelmingly where the mixed bloods dominated. Starr School full-bloods did not feel represented and, of course, they were not. Whites and mixed bloods scoffed at Jim Whitecalf.
Here’s a final irony. Two books, “Piegan” by R.L. Lancaster and “Shadow of the Buffalo” by Adolph Hungry Wolf lifted up Jim Whitecalf as a great chief and ceremonialist. He lived to be a very old man, one willing to deal with whites right up to the end. His little house up by Starr School was visited by white pilgrims all through the hippie era. Many mixed bloods would have liked to feel so venerated.
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