The enduring stereotype of the indigenous native of this country is that of the public drunk. It is an image that has prevailed since colonial times. Accompanying the strong visual nature of this impression is the vague sense that American Indians are somehow more susceptible to the lure of alcohol than other people. They either can’t hold their liquor or they can’t resist it and will drink until they drop, no matter where they happen to be; thus the public drunk image.
The likelihood that the average American has actually seen a drunken Indian is infinitesimal. With regional exceptions, few Americans see Indians at all. This is because the second most common stereotype of Indians is the fully costumed dancer. In mufti, doubtless many Indians pass by average Americans without registering the response, “isn’t that an Indian?”
Yet behind the drunken stereotype is some truth. In colonial times, alcohol was used by Europeans as a negotiating tool, among themselves and with Indians. The stress of the European invasion went hard on the native people who had lived in North America for a hundred thousand undisturbed years. So prevalent was the use of alcohol in dealings with Indians that the early history of the country is full of references to the drug. It was the excuse for the first prohibition laws—not because alcohol was a drug, but because when manipulated by special interests, it disrupted Federal Indian policy and the settling of the west.
Part I: The U.S. Structural Approach
The extent of alcoholism among American Indians, as verified by demographic and statistical data, shows that it is the most severe problem of its kind to appear among any definable cultural population in the United States. But unlike the other social problems which affect the general population, Indian alcoholism has historical roots that extend to the first contact made with Europeans 500 years ago.
Initial exposure to distilled alcohol coincided with forced social disruption, wars, land loss and the introduction of new diseases for which there was no Indian resistance. As dependence on alcohol increased, so did repressive laws that began to define the legal relationship between Indians and the United States.
Did alcohol exist here before the Europeans came? Oral traditions handed down over the centuries refer to the consumption of drugs and some forms of non-distilled alcohol in relation to specific rites, usually associated with religious practice, or in some cases, agricultural celebrations.
The practice of ingesting drugs or alcohol in non-ceremonial settings is not to be found in any oral recollections. There is no evidence of distilled spirits having been produced by native people.
Here is an excerpt from Maria Chona’s autobiography, as told to Ruth Underhill in 1936, when Chona was 90 years old:
It was good at cactus camp. When my father lay down to sleep at night, he would sing songs about the cactus liquor. And we could hear songs in my uncle’s camp across the hill. Everybody sang. We felt as if a beautiful thing was coming. Because the rain was coming and the dancing and songs...
Then the little rains began to come. We had jugs of the juice that my mother had boiled, and all the women carried them in their nets as we came running down the mountain back to our village. Much, much liquor we made, and we drank it to pull down the clouds, for that is what we call it. It was too little to drink. They put me on the house top with my solder sister. Our jars of liquor were up there, too. The housetop was the only safe place.
We heard the people singing over by the council house:
There sits the magician of the east
Holding the rain by the hand
The wind holding by the hand
He sits.
Then we began to drink. Making themselves beautifully drunk, for that is how our words have it. People must all make themselves drunk like the plants in the rain and they must sing for happiness...
The next day a relative came and said: ‘Your father and mother are out by the arroyo sleeping. Let a child go and stay with them until they wake...
At last my father and mother awoke and came home very happy...
The practice of ingesting drugs or alcohol in non-ceremonial settings is not to be found in any oral recollections. There is no evidence of distilled spirits having been produced by native people. Neither were there any secular places established for the ingestion of alcohol, such as the tavern (a northern European invention).
Felix S. Cohen, former legal counsel in the U.S. Department of the Interior from 1933 to 1948, made a partial listing of laws relating to alcohol and American Indians in his seminal work, Handbook of Federal Indian Law. There were dozens of laws enacted in Colonial America and later by Congress which show the extent of a structural approach to alcohol regulation by the political powers of the day.
Massachusetts colonial laws (1660 to 1672) restricted the sale of liquor to Indians. Pennsylvania and New Jersey passed similar laws. On January 28, 1802, president Thomas Jefferson asked the United States Congress for a prohibition of “ardent spirits” among Indians for the “benefit of Indians” and “to keep peace.” The Act of March 30, 1802 (Sec. 21, 2 Stat. 139, 146), gave authority to the president to “prevent or restrain the distributing of spirituous liquors among all or any of the said Indian tribes.”
Then on July 9, 1832 Congress passed a general statutory prohibition on the traffic in liquor with Indians (C.174, Stat. 564). Two years later, on June 30, 1834, Congress added to section 18 of the Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse with the Indian Tribes (4 Stat. 729), referring to the Constitutional powers of the Federal government to regulate affairs having to do with Indian tribes.
Continuing through the 1800s to the 1860s, treaty language in compacts with tribes included specific language regarding the prohibition or introduction of liquor. The Act of December 19, 1854, (10 Stat. 596 Chippewa), imposed liquor restrictions on lands adjoining reservations. Other non-contiguous lands would be regulated by states. The restriction was withdrawn in 1934.
On February 13, 1862, liquor laws were amended further (C.24, 12 Stat. 338) to apply prohibition laws to Indians who were under “the charge of a superintendent or agent” (wherever they might live). Indians and whites alike could have committed this crime.
The Act of July 23, 1892 (27 Stat. 260) established two classes of Indians who could not be sold or introduced to “ardent spirits: any Indian to whom an allotment of land has been made while the title to the same shall be held in trust by the government (Indians who held trust land as compared to fee simple land), or to any Indian who is a ward of the government under charge of any Indian superintendent or agent.” (This class included any Indians who were under the guardianship of any department of the Federal government). The 1892 Act also provided for a general prohibition against any introduction of liquors, wines, beers, and sales into Indian Country. Penalties included one year imprisonment and a fine of up to $500 with second offense penalties of five years in prison and a fine of up to $2,000.
What comes to mind when most Americans hear the term “Prohibition” is the Volstead Act, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1919. Special language was inserted so that the enactment and the repeal of Prohibition, “had no effect to supplant or repeal any of the special Indian liquor laws,” as researched by Cohen.
By 1916, possession of liquor in Indian Country had become “prima facie evidence of unlawful introduction” (39 Stat. 123, 124, 25 U.S.C. 245). In 1918, possession became a crime in itself. (40 Stat. 561, 563).
What comes to mind when most Americans hear the term “Prohibition” is the Volstead Act, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1919. Special language was inserted so that the enactment and the repeal of Prohibition “had no effect to supplant or repeal any of the special Indian liquor laws,” as researched by Cohen.
The Act of June 21, 1906, established the special officer’s jurisdiction in Oklahoma, “through detective operations, to supplement the efforts of superintendents in charge of reservations.” From 1909 to 1911, the effort was expanded to 21 States with a staff of 159 officers and local deputies imposing fines of $84,463—more than the $70,000 appropriation to carry out the work. Clearly, the effort paid for itself.
Ordinary rules of social behavior were generally suspended in the push westward by Europeans. Into this chaos came disruption and devastation in the daily lives and customs of the Indian tribes.
These laws, referring exclusively to prohibitions against alcohol relative to American Indians, are just a small part of the vast array of federal laws, executive orders, federal regulations, and agency rules that governed the daily lives of American Indian people. In amended form, they continue to govern today. A systematic effort was made from colonial days to suppress and subjugate the indigenous peoples of the American continent. This suffocating approach clearly led to social problems among Indians as a result of the accompanying oppression.
There were also waves of social clashes with encroaching settlers and individuals who wanted to exploit the country’s resources for personal gain. Ordinary rules of social behavior were generally suspended in the push westward by Europeans. Into this chaos came disruption and devastation in the daily lives and customs of the Indian tribes.
In his work The Sovereignty of American Indian Tribes: A Matter of Legal History, George S. Grossman, writing for the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union Foundation, divided the chaos into time periods. Thus the waves of destruction can generally be categorized chronologically:
•The Colonial Era, ending with the U.S. Constitution, 1788. This period saw enactment of hundreds of colonial laws relating to Indians, including trespass laws, vagrancy laws, and religious laws.
•U.S. Federal early period. Taking England’s lead, the United States reserved the right to deal with Indians as a federal power and moved quickly to regulate trade and interaction with Indians.
•The Removal Period. Frontier land greed led to the election of Andrew Jackson as President and the interests who wanted Indians out of the way were successful in the 1830s in removing thousands to “Indian territory.” This is commonly referred to as one of the most shameful periods in American history.
•The Civil War Era. Troops were used against tribes and bands with disastrous results. Provisions provided for by treaty were not sent. Later, President U.S. Grant asked religious groups to assist with Indian policy. This is one clear example of church/state collaboration in official U.S. policy.
•The Plains War period. Following the Civil War up to the last battle at Sugar Point, Minnesota, U.S. Army troops were called out again and again to open European settlement routes and quell “rebellions” by Indians. Thousands of Indians died as a result of the wars, from starvation or from disease introduced accidentally or purposefully by military and civilian personnel.
•End of the Treaty Making/Allotment period. As the military power of tribes ebbed, Congress declared an end to treaty making in 1871. In 1887, the General Allotment Act was passed. Its purpose was to destroy the tribal concept of commonly held land and take more land away from Indian control. Parcels or “allotments” were assigned to heads of households and 90 million acres of the “surplus” land was opened up to European settlers.
Several developments followed swiftly on the heels of the 50-year period at the end of treaty making and allotment. The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act attempted to create Indian governments by setting up political structures according to strict federal guidelines and oversight. Felix Cohen was recruited by the Franklin Roosevelt administration to lead this effort. He eventually had 250 staff persons working with him to help extricate Indians from what was beginning to look like political annihilation.
In the 1950s, Federal regulation without the benefit of Federal law was used to remove thousands of Indians from reservations and move them to distant urban centers. In the same decade, Congress, probably illegally, terminated several tribes from trust status and offered criminal and civil jurisdiction over reservations within their borders to states that wanted it.
Two decades later, the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Act sought to consolidate several laws dealing with tribes to restore tribal powers of “self-determination” in the areas of law and order, construction, education, and health, among others. However, the federal government still retained broad powers to approve tribal decisions and the law restricted several areas of tribal governance. It was more than a halfway measure, but less than self-rule.
From the end of the U.S. Civil War to the 1975 Act, government and missionary-controlled schools refused to let Indians speak their native languages, practice their religion, wear their native clothing, or practice any custom that did not suit the methodology of “acculturation” which was being applied. Under such conditions, families were torn apart, kinship systems were destroyed, cultural and religious customs were torn away from previously orderly societies.
Dispossessed of national status, tribes became reactionary bodies, unable to govern the affairs of their citizens. By the 1970s, several social indicators were showing the resultant effects on the general Indian population:
The United States Health Report of 1979, issued by the then U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare stated that:
a. The health of American Indians and Alaskan Natives lags 15 to 20 years behind that of the general population.
b. An Indian child born in 1970 has a life expectancy of 65.1 years.
c. Infant mortality has been reduced by 74%. Maternal mortality has been reduced by 91%.
d. The accidental death rate for ages 25-54 is 5 times that for the total U.S. population of comparable ages.
e. Alcoholism death rates for Indians are 4.3 to 5.6 times the rates of the total population.
There has been considerable recent effort to redress past oppression, with some positive political effect. However, the changes are too recent to have any discernible effect in the short term. Now that all the prohibitions and repeals have occurred, Indian alcoholism remains a widespread problem.
A clear and consistent approach has not been maintained in addressing alcoholism or other problems experienced by Indian people. This has resulted in a continuation of problems including high unemployment, low educational attainment, the continuing breakup of families, and stratification of the Indian population at the lowest level of society.
The federal government, state government, and in some instances local government all continue to play key roles in addressing Indian alcoholism. Because these political entities reflect the attitudes of the general population, and because American Indians by and large represent a weak segment of the electorate, societal trends and government policies ebb and flow without much regard for Indian opinion. A clear and consistent approach has not been maintained in addressing alcoholism or other problems experienced by Indian people. This has resulted in a continuation of problems including high unemployment, low educational attainment, the continuing breakup of families, and stratification of the Indian population at the lowest level of society.
Arguments that Indians are “predisposed” to alcoholism, that Indians are susceptible to widespread mental illness, or that Indians simply “won’t help themselves,” do nothing to alleviate the problem.
As long as governmental policy waivers with the general mood of society, an even larger burden on public dollars will be the result. A few public planners understand that early changes are more effective and less costly than later treatment, but the arguments over spending public dollars are usually made to reflect or lead public opinion.
Part II: Societal Attitudes and Trends
Partly because there is disagreement as to the causes of Indian alcoholism, and partly because the changes necessary to retard the incidence of the problem have not been defined, the status of drug treatment among Indians is in a sort of limbo. Further, the fact that no widespread alcoholism existed before colonization by Europeans has not deterred some medical researchers from attempting to assign a genetic cause to Indian alcoholism.
Some treatment strategies, such as having Indians treating Indians and allocating more funds for programs, depend in the main on a generous public policy because the greatest majority of clients are poor. But when public dollars are not sufficiently allocated to the problem, fewer Indian victims are treated, no matter what the strategies are.
Indian alcoholism was seen as a nuisance and at times dangerous to early European settlers; thus many of the laws were enacted as a result of complaints against those who provided the liquor. There was no mention made of treating the victims. At the same time, official delegations from the federal government, local governments, and private companies had a practice of supplying alcohol to groups and individuals when negotiations or treaty making were underway. A dual policy existed: prohibitions with penalties were in place for those who wanted to deal in alcohol to Indians, and the federal government alone had the constitutional right to negotiate with tribes; nevertheless, government representatives often themselves used alcohol in the treaty making process. In this dangerous environment, the key actors experiencing the problem were neither part of policy making nor enforcement, nor could they exert any control over the “unofficial” practices of the government representatives.
Colonial laws regarding American Indians were enacted as early as 1660. The first federal law on alcohol and Indians was passed in 1802. During this same period, waves of northern Europeans were settling the Indian territories east of the Mississippi. After the Constitution was ratified, and relations with Indians were reserved to the federal government, laws and treaties made by colonies and states were nullified. This alone did nothing to deter territories and states from attempting to pass restrictive laws on Indian tribes and encroach on Indian land, but there was at least an avenue of relief for those lucky enough to gain federal attention. Out on the prairies, Washington’s reach was not long enough to inhibit territorial governors in a timely fashion.
Those who made claims about Indian alcoholism were usually not Indians. A few individual chiefs and other powerful members of tribes were able to make themselves heard. They made expensive and time-consuming trips to Washington, D.C. to ask that alcohol not be brought among their people or into their territories. These requests must be viewed in the context of the times. As heads of nations, Indian leaders were asking the federal government to control its own wayward citizens. The leaders were not applying as supplicants for relief.
There was also a humanitarian element, particularly among missionary groups who did wish to reduce the trade in alcohol to Indians. They included some members of congress and President Thomas Jefferson. The most powerful white voices, however, had reasons unassociated with alcoholism for asking that laws be passed restricting the trade in alcohol to Indians. They were in favor of restricting all trade with Indians in order to reduce the tribes’ military capability to fight off further land encroachment.
Arguments in favor of free trade were coming from private companies and wealthy individuals who were supplying the alcohol and arms to tribes in trade for furs and other commodities. In the process of the bigger shutting out the smaller interests, entreprenuerism was stifled.
These varying interests soon collided—Indian leaders who wanted commerce in alcohol curtailed; missionaries supporting humanitarian measures; and the ruling class who wanted to weaken tribes militarily. The powerful who desired capital gain prevailed. Extremely few individuals occupied the top strata of American economic life and they had direct access to public policy formation. The group included congressmen, governors, military leaders, land company officials and bankers.
The smaller entrepreneurs who wanted to trade with tribes on a free market basis were shut out and found they had no political power. The overwhelming majority of the population was illiterate, could not vote, and had no organizing ability. American Indians in this configuration occupied a position totally outside of this stratified system. As time passed and Indian power and curiosity status waned, tribes were subsumed into the social system at the bottom.
Treatment for alcoholism did not come into acceptance until tribes were subdued militarily and politically, forced into citizenship of the United States, and recognized as having treaty rights.
American social custom changed over time, so much so that present day alcoholism has little connection with its historical roots. More than a century passed following enactment of the first prohibition before any thought was given to the effect alcohol had on habitual users. Treatment for alcoholism did not come into acceptance until tribes were subdued militarily and politically, forced into citizenship of the United States, and recognized as having treaty rights.
In fact, the treatment of Indian alcoholism did not really begin until Indian prohibition was repealed in 1953. Recognition began with two views: that alcoholism is a widespread problem among Indians which has devalued their quality of life (no blame), or that alcoholism is the fault of a system that encourages consumption (blame and thus obligation to treat).
Twenty years later, alcohol would be classified as a disease, and the only effective treatment was said to be total abstinence. There is more general agreement now on what the problem of alcoholism is and how it affects its victims, but much less agreement on how to treat it and how much government should pay for care. The disease classification clearly is of some advantage to the middle class who can argue for insurance coverage for their treatment. For poor Indians, who must rely on public assistance, the disease classification is less useful.
Importantly, the disease classification labels American Indians as individual alcoholics. Indians have become socially identified with welfare cheaters and other types of presumed weak personalities. Any connection between tribes and the federal government is lost in the disease definition.
Some medical researchers have theories on the genetic causes of Indian alcoholism. This view has the tendency to relieve government of responsibility, thus feeding into political arguments that public dollars to address the problem should be limited. Others cling to the earlier social view that Indians could stop consuming alcohol at any time if they wanted to. Indians themselves either agree with these arguments wholeheartedly or attempt to finesse the issue by creating alternative treatment models, usually strongly tied to cultural and spiritual connections. Rarely will Indians totally refute the disease model for another theory.
Two views seem to prevail alongside one another: one is that alcoholism is widespread and deleterious and it was introduced to Indians for covert reasons. Those holding this view see no one as responsible. The disease is just something that happened as a result of an unfortunate weakness for alcohol among Indians. This position tends to embrace the disease model and wants to find the causes of Indian alcoholism in the Indians themselves.
Those holding the second view see the history of organized introduction of alcohol to Indians as a tale of seduction and later abandonment. In the current context, they see a system passively promoting alcohol by permitting its widespread use as a cheap drug while at the same time withholding sufficient funds with which to treat the victims. Most holding this view agree that alcoholism is a disease but, curiously, may also see Indian alcoholics as weaker members within their own race.
If alcoholism is a disease, shouldn’t the drug be regulated more closely at the source and the pushers punished when tragedy strikes?
In either view, there are profit-making and non-profit facilities and institutions that stand to gain from a continued definition of the problem as a disease. Advertising to increase awareness about the effects of alcoholism are widespread in print, on the radio and on television. The subject of the advertising is invariably the individual alcoholic—again stressing the disease model. The alcoholic is depicted as dying young, being a strain on the family, being a dangerous person to others or himself, and being a poor worker. The images focus on awareness by stigmatizing the victim. Drunk driver laws, for example, punish the driver, not the providers of alcohol. If alcoholism is a disease, shouldn’t the drug be regulated more closely at the source and the pushers punished when tragedy strikes?
Unfortunately, as in the past, the target of responsibility is the individual alcohol user. Little research is being done to support another point of view. Almost no literature reports on why alcohol is used so frequently in the general population, why poor people become chronic users, or why the promotion of alcohol far outstrips the dollars spent on a search for prevention. Indian tribes and organizations, lacking political power, are not in a position to offer alternative definitions or treatments, even if they were to believe an alternative is possible.
Indian efforts have been confined to the fringes. Spiritual movements have surfaced over the years that offer to help individuals. Social gathering places and events have been established for non-users. While most of these alternative strategies have clearly been established to reward non-alcohol using habits, some must also be seen as image-polishing efforts that attempt to dispel the myth of Indians and alcohol as inseparably linked.
In the 44 years that have ensued since the end of Indian Prohibition, Indian tribes and organizations have attempted to identify the problem, bring it to national attention and establish treatment programs for victims, but the attempts have been resisted and they have been made secondary to what the better organized and more powerful groups are saying about causes and cures.
Part III: Possible Solutions
In the general population, the mood could be trending away from a disease definition of alcoholism. As public dollars for treatment decline, drunk driving penalties have increased, signaling a shift in public mood against the alcoholic as a victim, and toward a definition of criminal perpetrator. If drunk drivers are criminals, it is a short step to making drunkenness itself punishable.
Add to this that the insurance industry, disorganized as it might be at the moment, is moving away as fast as it can from the area of mental health treatment. Treatment coverage has been shortened, and this trend will likely continue.
Indian organizations find themselves in the hapless position of having little or no influence on change in definition—disease or not—and having to support the status quo in order to get whatever financial support there is for the treatment of victims. As weak partners in the greater network of alcohol treatment organizations, they serve to confirm the mainstream theory that alcoholism is a disease but that the individual is ultimately responsible for making the changes in her or his life that will arrest the disease. It doesn’t seem to matter that Indians never had the disease before European contact.
It would be quite a different picture if Indian organizations could nudge the debate away from the developed power base. Then a re-connect with a unified tribal/cultural model for defining and treating Indian alcoholism might be possible. Original thinking will have to occur, throwing out the established assumptions about alcoholism that stem in part from a legacy of Indian hatred. It will take a leap of faith to realize that education and jobs will lower alcoholism rates more than anything in the Physician’s Desk Reference. The interests of established treatment centers and practitioners will have to be heard and transformed. Most importantly, the “alternatives” of spiritual and cultural approaches will have to be elevated and restored to former prominence within the tribes.
In some respects this is already happening. Commonly, events on tribal lands prohibit alcohol. Now, rather than sounding vaguely like a threat, the prohibition could be a declaration of independent and positive tribal choice.
The first part of the model might be to focus away from the victim. Alcohol abusers have learned to self-medicate themselves when life becomes hard. In indigenous societies around the world, such conditions arise. Some groups have gained access to alcohol and some have not. They cope with the underlying problem within the context of their own culture. That is what Indians did before Europeans came and that is what must happen once more.
Access to alcohol will always be there and thus “cures” will not be possible. But to the extent that tribes can restore their economic, political and cultural strength, the rates of alcoholism will drop. Perhaps some day alcoholism will be known as another one of the “white man’s” diseases, rare among American Indians.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
American Democracy : Invention or Discovery?
-by Laura Waterman Wittstock
Democracy—rule by the people—is widely believed to have been invented by the brash but brave Americans of the 18th century. Their creation was a new kind of government, free from monarchs or the equally despised rule of aristocratic despots. They created a representative government in three parts: administrative, legislative, and judicial. Lifting liberally from the Greeks, early Americans took the word democracy and expanded it to represent everything from Massachusetts town meetings to the Virginia House of Burgesses’ bicameral representative assembly.
Best of all, it is said the Americans created a democracy which guaranteed individual rights so fundamental and universal they are collectively called a “Bill of Rights,” and they became the first set of amendments to the United States Constitution.
But was American democracy thus invented? Or did the revolutionists, kicking around to find something different from their historical political roots in England, discover a new way to govern right under their noses?
For all of the credit given to republican ideals, it is tragic that the freedom so loved by 18th-century Americans and held up as an example for the rest of the world, did not include African slaves, women, children nor any members of the non-human fauna family. The one exception was Natives, who in a peculiar way were conceptually free in America, because treaties with England and later with the United States acknowledged that Native nations had rights, including those of individuals (safety, education, land and water use, among others). But Natives were not literally free. They could not safely travel outside their shrinking territories, nor within them, in some cases. Families were in constant danger of attack by European settlers who were not content to build homesteads in their own territory, especially during expansionist pushes.
Interestingly, the concept of democracy, although known, was held in considerably lower esteem by 17th-century Americans. Democracy was scorned in those days because it meant the inclusion of the lower classes. The aristocratic grandees who founded Massachusetts and Virginia preferred rule by landowning white men (25 acres and a house, for example). Landless white men had virtually no chance of partaking in government, nor were they considered fit for the genteel business of government, religion and trade, inseparable as these three pursuits were in Colonial times. It was the revolutionary war that embraced the common man, enlisting him in the struggle for freedom from England. His muscle was needed for the effort. Therefore, after the war was won, the elite could hardly retreat to their former habits. Thus “democracy” began to lose its former negative connotation of “rule by the rabble” and took on a new luster among the gentry as a dignified label for the new republic.
Freely interpreting Greek philosophy, architecture, literature and art, 18th-century Americans immersed themselves in a romantic revival of a Golden Age that never was. It certainly wasn’t much in the way of being democratic.
However, back in the 17th century, particularly around the time of the Virginia Company (1607) and the Massachusetts Bay Company (1628), European “adventurers” began to colonize North America in larger numbers, with profits on their minds. Those with money ventured their capital; those without ventured their persons for labor in the hopes of making fortunes through hard work.
Virginia became a royal colony in 1624, having floundered before Native tobacco saved its failing commercial efforts. England’s Civil War (1652 to 1660) led to the ouster of the English governor in Virginia. After the war, the weakened royal monopoly over the slave trade gave Virginia planters the access to cheap labor they wanted. At the end of the century, Virginia’s primary trade was in slaves. By 1720, up to 40 percent of the Virginia population comprised African slaves.
Massachusetts never fulfilled the dreams of its Puritan backers. The financiers of the effort were aristocratic adventurers who had grown tired of the Massachusetts “Pilgrims” and, turning their attention to another Puritan colony, backed what they hoped would be a profitable investment. The colony was called Providence Island, located just off the coast of Nicaragua. (This is not to be confused with Providence, Rhode Island, which was founded by Roger Williams in 1636 after he was kicked out of Puritan Massachusetts).
Providence Island came into being in 1630, as religiously-inclined English lords hoped to get huge profits out of their efforts—profits they believed would not come out of Massachusetts—with which to launch their hotly desired Civil War against Charles I. They went heavily into tobacco, which failed. The colonists then turned to a vigorous slave trade, setting the stage for the first slave rebellion in an English colony.
This group of aristocrats, religious though they were, had no dreams of democracy. They wanted the king dead, and their class in power. The colonization process had to do with making a lot of money, so slavery was quite appropriate to their way of thinking. The colony had been deliberately positioned to be in the middle of the bloodthirsty Spanish empire as a sort of religious taunt—a Protestant Reformist’s finger, of sorts. After the 1638 slave rebellion, Spain invaded and within two years exterminated the English presence on Providence Island. The war against Charles had to wait another nine years.
It is fascinating to see that, finding themselves in the midst of a dark people who worked hard at maintaining a harmonious place in nature, the 17th-century colonists took little notice except to cook up charges to expel Natives from coveted land. The noble savage, as some were to call Native people, lived in a world where women, children and animals had just as much right, perhaps more, to inhabit space as men. Individual wealth was not an entree to society, trade and government.
Competition was used as a convenient bridge for white men to walk across the backs of the less fortunate on the way to individual wealth and glory, but this technique found no favor in the Native “New World." There was no Protestant reformer whispering in men’s ears that wealth was good and meritorious, and that some men were superior to others, God having said so. Such contradictions would resurface in the U.S. Constitution later.
Unlike the slums of London, in the wilds of America known dangers lurked. Having allies was thus preferred over individualism, no matter how rugged. The singular authority of Pope or King was unknown among the Natives encountered by the English. There was no King Henry VIII, who, as was his wont, might barge into a woman’s birthing room to force sex upon the just-delivered mother. Henry could be rugged and an individual, but no bloody one else had dare try, at least not in his royal earshot.
This and the many other accouterments of “civilization” had not reached the council fires of the northern Native people, leaving them content to live in their territories of village, town, city, or farm, building governments and confederations that reinforced group unity and welfare. Their societies, nearly perfectly suited to their environments, included choruses of hecklers who could and did run individual leaders out when they became convinced their pomposity was just the thing the tribe needed to get on with life, an acknowledgment that self-aggrandizement lurks in every population. Native government and English colonizing did collide. The question is, did they also make exchanges?
Consider the Massachusetts town meeting, one of the great examples of America’s uniqueness. The Plymouth colony of Puritans came from an Anabaptist religious background. They were Protestant separatists, or reformers, who vehemently opposed the monarchy. To say they were persecuted is perhaps understating what they would have done to the royalists if they were in power. Present day distant cousins can be seen in the gentle Amish farming communities throughout the United States.
By the time (1635) Massachusetts towns (from the Dutch “tunnes”), were defined to include not just fenced gardens, but a community with a church at the center, the Puritans had worked out several problems within their ranks. Primary among these was that members did not have to work for one another without compensation. Bickering and crop failure followed an early impasse when communal work was promoted. The historic Native figure Squanto is credited with saving the community and showing them how to live together.
Upon arrival in America, the Plymouth band of settlers took over a recently-abandoned Native town, Pawtuxet. The fields were already cleared and it was a habitable area. It was, in fact, Squanto’s home town, and he was the sole survivor of his community. He escaped death because he had been in England when a plague struck, killing the entire town. He returned to see the English taking over—members from the same group that had enslaved him—but he helped them nevertheless. Reports from the period record the unwillingness of Puritans to help one another freely without pay. Squanto introduced them to the Native model of individually-owned plots within a commonly-owned community land area. Once the Puritans had family plots, they worked diligently and learned the value of community life.
Puritan councils grew to include non-landowners, causing friction, and some plantation owners left to begin other towns, taking with them, nevertheless, the Native model of mutual help. “Town meetings,” called by the beating of a drum, included landowners and plot holders alike. Votes were often counted using beans and other seeds. Town replaced plantation, and that term went out of vogue, after the old planters who had held complete control in matters of the community moved away. The town meeting was truly born.
In their first year in America, the Puritans could not survive because they would not work in common. By subdividing their lands in the Native fashion they maintained their community and went on to include all members in the town meetings, just as the Natives did. Thus the first steps toward representative federalism were taken that would eventually lead to the Bill of Rights. The Native roots of this new democracy took hold among a people who needed Native wisdom and tutelage to survive. It was a communion of secular need and spirituel oblige, with the Natives doing the giving.
One hundred forty years later, the Iroquois Confederacy and others were invited to attend the “Grand Council Fire” in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to take part in the debates that would shape the future United States. In 1776, an Iroquois delegation visited Congress. The confederacies were held in such high esteem by William Penn that in 1683 he said of them “the kings move by the breath of their people.”
Earlier, on July 4, 1744, the Iroquois leader Canasatego spoke at Lancaster, Pennsylvania on the merits of unity. “We are a powerful Confederacy; and, by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh strength and power; therefore whatever befalls you, never fall out one with another.”
Benjamin Franklin printed the speech and sent 300 copies to London for sale.
Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union drew from Iroquois government. He attended Iroquois ceremonies in 1753, less than a year before writing the plan. His plan would include a Grand Council, a speaker, and a general government under which all colonies would retain their own constitutions, just as the Iroquois confederacy did.
Importantly, Franklin’s plan gave the Americans an identity separate from the English. This was something desperately sought. To continue to be associated with European labels made creating an American identity more difficult, and the northern colonies readily adopted Native symbols, particularly the symbol of the arrows bound together. Thirteen bound arrows signified the unified colonies. The thirteen arrows appear today in the talons of the eagle on the United States Seal.
In 1777, a small publication of the Continental Congress hinted that America was developing a government that reflected the Iroquois government, which was in fulfillment of an Iroquois prophecy that predicted an European and Iroquois symmetry of governments. Strength through unity, the Iroquois standard, became the revolutionary cry of the Americans. This sentiment was later expressed as E pluribus unum— one out of many.
By 1784, the Virginians Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe had made plans to visit the Iroquois. Madison went first, traveling with the Marquis de Lafayette to Fort Stanwix, New York. The Virginians had come from a different background than the Pennsylvanians. Slave owning Virginia had saturated its society with the ideals of the plantation, the gentry and the deeply rooted right to own slaves.
Among the Natives, Madison was surprised to hear the stories of French and American adults who lived among the Iroquois as their preferred countries. A young American woman told Madison, “I am the equal of all the women in the tribe.... I shall marry if I wish and be unmarried again when I wish. Is there a single woman as independent as I in your cities?”
Monroe went in 1784. Jefferson, who was to have gone with him, instead went to Paris as the American French Ambassador.
French interest in Natives continued. In 1796, Louis Philippe, then a future king of France, visited America over a three-and-a-half year period, spending some of his time with the Cherokees in Tennessee. The king, then the Duc d’ Orleans, kept a diary of his travels, leaving a rare record of a monarch’s view of the times. Many of the King’s observations about Natives seem to have come from the reports of others, but he did attend a pipe ceremony and met face to face with Natives. Of them he says, “Hospitality is the rule among all Indians....Any man’s tobacco and taluma are always available to all without offer or permission.” (Taluma is believed to be sumac or lobelia).
The culmination of all of this contact which resulted in a United States government had two sides. On the one, the continued alliance ( “The Covenant Chain”) between the Iroquois and the English strengthened the nation to nation relationship between two vastly different governments. After 1701, the alliance was expanded to mean that the Iroquois would take a neutral position with regard to conflicts between the French and English. The alliance was then expanded to include the colonies. Canesetago’s 1744 speech in Lancaster was part of this expansion. He told the colonists “We heartily recommend Union and a good agreement between you and our brethren. Never disagree, but preserve a strict friendship for one another, and thereby you, as well as we, will become stronger.”
Iroquois control extended from Virginia northward, a vast territory, particularly because the bulk of European settlement was along the eastern seaboard and no further west than Ohio.
On the other side, as soon as the fledgling United States had won independence and the new country was underway, revisionists began the job of creating the myth of democracy. Benjamin Franklin and his kind died, and the Virginians took center stage among the “Founding Fathers” group. This was quite far from the truth. The Virginians, including the beloved Thomas Jefferson, were never able to escape their slave-holding societal norms. They were very different from the New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians in their acceptance of human cruelty and the rule of the elite. Creating George Washington in the image of the “Father of our country” took some doing. He was a slaveholder who refused to give up this inhumane practice, even upon death, when he could have released his chattel.
Thomas Jefferson no doubt struggled with his ideals as he continued to live in a society that accepted human degradation. His words, “all men are created equal” penned into the Declaration of Independence must have haunted him to the grave, particularly since he had an African mistress. Yet the only slaves he freed upon death were the two sons and three other male kin of his mistress.
The revisionists also sought to dismiss the statesmanship, diplomacy, and cunning politics of the Iroquois in ways that emphasized the confederacy’s fading military power to the exclusion of anything else. The military forced Iroquois and other eastern tribes off their land and carried out the “removal” of dozens of tribes to the western territories. This unfortunate circumstance did not bode well for the western tribes. As the westward expansion continued, the United States choose Virginian thinking over Pennsylvanian, and created an “Indian policy” that resulted in war, disease, and enormous loss of life for Native people.
Only one gift, left by the English, mitigated the probability of Native annihilation once the Americans won independence and the United States was formed. That gift was the treaty between nations. The English crown, unlike the more sanguine Spanish, readily entered into treaties with Native governments as nations. That meant a government-to-government relationship. That meant diplomacy and the search for common ground was possible. It meant the possibility of alliance rather than intractable enmity. The American colonies followed the pattern. It would have been foolish to have done otherwise and face the military might of the confederated tribes, as the Americans might have, were it not for the treaties. After all, if the Virginians deluded themselves that slavery was possible in an otherwise free society, how without treaties would they have dealt with Native people who were considered to be wild and unschooled beings—not slaves, but not white, either?
However earnestly the Americans tried to disengage themselves from the European models of government and social norms, it would not be long after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were established before the United States began to take an imperious posture. For some, this was the beginning of America’s descent from democracy.
Jefferson wanted to expand westward. The Merriwether Lewis and William Clark expedition to map the northwest was part of the plan. Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana territory from France was intended to create a unified country, free of foreign presence. The extreme form of this policy was called “Manifest Destiny,” and it was adopted in the mid-1840s to promote nationhood in the United States—extending from sea to sea and from Canada to Mexico (or as much of Mexico as the United States could get).
America would brook no other country within its borders—not Mexico, and certainly not any independent Native nations. Manifest Destiny involved, in part, removing Native nations to the west as well as weakening the treaty tradition by creating ever less meaningful compacts.
When treaty-making ended in 1871, none of the later agreements had been ratified individually by the United States Senate. U.S. Courts routinely allowed the rest of the government to violate the treaties with Native nations in absolute violation of international law—which allowed unilateral amendment of treaties only in narrow, specific circumstances. The United States simply failed to enforce the rule of international law.
The steady deterioration of Native and U.S. Government relations hit bottom during the western expansion and the western “Indian wars.” More recently, there has been a ragged and tenuous climb back to a United States policy of true government-to-government relations.
The story of democracy, and the Native nations who found themselves hosts to the most misbehaving guests in history, is still unfolding. As it does so, there will be, sadly, a race against time for the Native nations. In order to help the United States move back toward democracy, Native nations will have to survive long enough to discharge their duty as foretold in the old Iroquois prophecy. The optimistic view is that there is just enough time.
Resource List
Brodie, Fawn M., Thomas Jefferson An Intimate History, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974
Burton, Bruce A., “Squanto’s Legacy: The Origin of the Town Meeting,” Northeast Indian Quarterly, Volume VI Number 4 (Winter 1989): 4-8
Faragher, John Mack, editor, The Encyclopedia of Colonial and Revolutionary America, New York: Da Capo Press, 1996
Drinnon, Richard, Facing West, The Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building, New York: Schocken Books, 1990
Grinde, Donald A. Jr., “Iroquoian Political Concept and the Genesis of American Government: Further Research and Contentions” Northeast Indian Quarterly, Volume VI, Number 4 ( Winter 1989): 10-21
Grossman, George S., The Sovereignty of American Indian Tribes: A Matter of Legal History, edited by Matthew Stark, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Minnesota Civil Liberties Union Foundation, 1979
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, Providence Island 1630 - 1641, The Other Puritan Colony, Cambridge, England: University Press, 1995
Merk, Frederick, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, with the collaboration of Lois Bannister Merk Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963
Prucha, Francis Paul, Documents of United States Indian Policy, 2nd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990
Prucha, Francis Paul, The Great Father, The United States Government and the American Indians, Vols l and 2 unabridged, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984
Venables, Robert W.”The Founding Fathers: Choosing to Be the Romans” Northeast Indian Quarterly, Volume VI, Number 4 (Winter 1989): 30-55
Democracy—rule by the people—is widely believed to have been invented by the brash but brave Americans of the 18th century. Their creation was a new kind of government, free from monarchs or the equally despised rule of aristocratic despots. They created a representative government in three parts: administrative, legislative, and judicial. Lifting liberally from the Greeks, early Americans took the word democracy and expanded it to represent everything from Massachusetts town meetings to the Virginia House of Burgesses’ bicameral representative assembly.
Best of all, it is said the Americans created a democracy which guaranteed individual rights so fundamental and universal they are collectively called a “Bill of Rights,” and they became the first set of amendments to the United States Constitution.
But was American democracy thus invented? Or did the revolutionists, kicking around to find something different from their historical political roots in England, discover a new way to govern right under their noses?
For all of the credit given to republican ideals, it is tragic that the freedom so loved by 18th-century Americans and held up as an example for the rest of the world, did not include African slaves, women, children nor any members of the non-human fauna family. The one exception was Natives, who in a peculiar way were conceptually free in America, because treaties with England and later with the United States acknowledged that Native nations had rights, including those of individuals (safety, education, land and water use, among others). But Natives were not literally free. They could not safely travel outside their shrinking territories, nor within them, in some cases. Families were in constant danger of attack by European settlers who were not content to build homesteads in their own territory, especially during expansionist pushes.
Interestingly, the concept of democracy, although known, was held in considerably lower esteem by 17th-century Americans. Democracy was scorned in those days because it meant the inclusion of the lower classes. The aristocratic grandees who founded Massachusetts and Virginia preferred rule by landowning white men (25 acres and a house, for example). Landless white men had virtually no chance of partaking in government, nor were they considered fit for the genteel business of government, religion and trade, inseparable as these three pursuits were in Colonial times. It was the revolutionary war that embraced the common man, enlisting him in the struggle for freedom from England. His muscle was needed for the effort. Therefore, after the war was won, the elite could hardly retreat to their former habits. Thus “democracy” began to lose its former negative connotation of “rule by the rabble” and took on a new luster among the gentry as a dignified label for the new republic.
Freely interpreting Greek philosophy, architecture, literature and art, 18th-century Americans immersed themselves in a romantic revival of a Golden Age that never was. It certainly wasn’t much in the way of being democratic.
However, back in the 17th century, particularly around the time of the Virginia Company (1607) and the Massachusetts Bay Company (1628), European “adventurers” began to colonize North America in larger numbers, with profits on their minds. Those with money ventured their capital; those without ventured their persons for labor in the hopes of making fortunes through hard work.
Virginia became a royal colony in 1624, having floundered before Native tobacco saved its failing commercial efforts. England’s Civil War (1652 to 1660) led to the ouster of the English governor in Virginia. After the war, the weakened royal monopoly over the slave trade gave Virginia planters the access to cheap labor they wanted. At the end of the century, Virginia’s primary trade was in slaves. By 1720, up to 40 percent of the Virginia population comprised African slaves.
Massachusetts never fulfilled the dreams of its Puritan backers. The financiers of the effort were aristocratic adventurers who had grown tired of the Massachusetts “Pilgrims” and, turning their attention to another Puritan colony, backed what they hoped would be a profitable investment. The colony was called Providence Island, located just off the coast of Nicaragua. (This is not to be confused with Providence, Rhode Island, which was founded by Roger Williams in 1636 after he was kicked out of Puritan Massachusetts).
Providence Island came into being in 1630, as religiously-inclined English lords hoped to get huge profits out of their efforts—profits they believed would not come out of Massachusetts—with which to launch their hotly desired Civil War against Charles I. They went heavily into tobacco, which failed. The colonists then turned to a vigorous slave trade, setting the stage for the first slave rebellion in an English colony.
This group of aristocrats, religious though they were, had no dreams of democracy. They wanted the king dead, and their class in power. The colonization process had to do with making a lot of money, so slavery was quite appropriate to their way of thinking. The colony had been deliberately positioned to be in the middle of the bloodthirsty Spanish empire as a sort of religious taunt—a Protestant Reformist’s finger, of sorts. After the 1638 slave rebellion, Spain invaded and within two years exterminated the English presence on Providence Island. The war against Charles had to wait another nine years.
It is fascinating to see that, finding themselves in the midst of a dark people who worked hard at maintaining a harmonious place in nature, the 17th-century colonists took little notice except to cook up charges to expel Natives from coveted land. The noble savage, as some were to call Native people, lived in a world where women, children and animals had just as much right, perhaps more, to inhabit space as men. Individual wealth was not an entree to society, trade and government.
Competition was used as a convenient bridge for white men to walk across the backs of the less fortunate on the way to individual wealth and glory, but this technique found no favor in the Native “New World." There was no Protestant reformer whispering in men’s ears that wealth was good and meritorious, and that some men were superior to others, God having said so. Such contradictions would resurface in the U.S. Constitution later.
Unlike the slums of London, in the wilds of America known dangers lurked. Having allies was thus preferred over individualism, no matter how rugged. The singular authority of Pope or King was unknown among the Natives encountered by the English. There was no King Henry VIII, who, as was his wont, might barge into a woman’s birthing room to force sex upon the just-delivered mother. Henry could be rugged and an individual, but no bloody one else had dare try, at least not in his royal earshot.
This and the many other accouterments of “civilization” had not reached the council fires of the northern Native people, leaving them content to live in their territories of village, town, city, or farm, building governments and confederations that reinforced group unity and welfare. Their societies, nearly perfectly suited to their environments, included choruses of hecklers who could and did run individual leaders out when they became convinced their pomposity was just the thing the tribe needed to get on with life, an acknowledgment that self-aggrandizement lurks in every population. Native government and English colonizing did collide. The question is, did they also make exchanges?
Consider the Massachusetts town meeting, one of the great examples of America’s uniqueness. The Plymouth colony of Puritans came from an Anabaptist religious background. They were Protestant separatists, or reformers, who vehemently opposed the monarchy. To say they were persecuted is perhaps understating what they would have done to the royalists if they were in power. Present day distant cousins can be seen in the gentle Amish farming communities throughout the United States.
By the time (1635) Massachusetts towns (from the Dutch “tunnes”), were defined to include not just fenced gardens, but a community with a church at the center, the Puritans had worked out several problems within their ranks. Primary among these was that members did not have to work for one another without compensation. Bickering and crop failure followed an early impasse when communal work was promoted. The historic Native figure Squanto is credited with saving the community and showing them how to live together.
Upon arrival in America, the Plymouth band of settlers took over a recently-abandoned Native town, Pawtuxet. The fields were already cleared and it was a habitable area. It was, in fact, Squanto’s home town, and he was the sole survivor of his community. He escaped death because he had been in England when a plague struck, killing the entire town. He returned to see the English taking over—members from the same group that had enslaved him—but he helped them nevertheless. Reports from the period record the unwillingness of Puritans to help one another freely without pay. Squanto introduced them to the Native model of individually-owned plots within a commonly-owned community land area. Once the Puritans had family plots, they worked diligently and learned the value of community life.
Puritan councils grew to include non-landowners, causing friction, and some plantation owners left to begin other towns, taking with them, nevertheless, the Native model of mutual help. “Town meetings,” called by the beating of a drum, included landowners and plot holders alike. Votes were often counted using beans and other seeds. Town replaced plantation, and that term went out of vogue, after the old planters who had held complete control in matters of the community moved away. The town meeting was truly born.
In their first year in America, the Puritans could not survive because they would not work in common. By subdividing their lands in the Native fashion they maintained their community and went on to include all members in the town meetings, just as the Natives did. Thus the first steps toward representative federalism were taken that would eventually lead to the Bill of Rights. The Native roots of this new democracy took hold among a people who needed Native wisdom and tutelage to survive. It was a communion of secular need and spirituel oblige, with the Natives doing the giving.
One hundred forty years later, the Iroquois Confederacy and others were invited to attend the “Grand Council Fire” in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to take part in the debates that would shape the future United States. In 1776, an Iroquois delegation visited Congress. The confederacies were held in such high esteem by William Penn that in 1683 he said of them “the kings move by the breath of their people.”
Earlier, on July 4, 1744, the Iroquois leader Canasatego spoke at Lancaster, Pennsylvania on the merits of unity. “We are a powerful Confederacy; and, by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh strength and power; therefore whatever befalls you, never fall out one with another.”
Benjamin Franklin printed the speech and sent 300 copies to London for sale.
Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union drew from Iroquois government. He attended Iroquois ceremonies in 1753, less than a year before writing the plan. His plan would include a Grand Council, a speaker, and a general government under which all colonies would retain their own constitutions, just as the Iroquois confederacy did.
Importantly, Franklin’s plan gave the Americans an identity separate from the English. This was something desperately sought. To continue to be associated with European labels made creating an American identity more difficult, and the northern colonies readily adopted Native symbols, particularly the symbol of the arrows bound together. Thirteen bound arrows signified the unified colonies. The thirteen arrows appear today in the talons of the eagle on the United States Seal.
In 1777, a small publication of the Continental Congress hinted that America was developing a government that reflected the Iroquois government, which was in fulfillment of an Iroquois prophecy that predicted an European and Iroquois symmetry of governments. Strength through unity, the Iroquois standard, became the revolutionary cry of the Americans. This sentiment was later expressed as E pluribus unum— one out of many.
By 1784, the Virginians Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe had made plans to visit the Iroquois. Madison went first, traveling with the Marquis de Lafayette to Fort Stanwix, New York. The Virginians had come from a different background than the Pennsylvanians. Slave owning Virginia had saturated its society with the ideals of the plantation, the gentry and the deeply rooted right to own slaves.
Among the Natives, Madison was surprised to hear the stories of French and American adults who lived among the Iroquois as their preferred countries. A young American woman told Madison, “I am the equal of all the women in the tribe.... I shall marry if I wish and be unmarried again when I wish. Is there a single woman as independent as I in your cities?”
Monroe went in 1784. Jefferson, who was to have gone with him, instead went to Paris as the American French Ambassador.
French interest in Natives continued. In 1796, Louis Philippe, then a future king of France, visited America over a three-and-a-half year period, spending some of his time with the Cherokees in Tennessee. The king, then the Duc d’ Orleans, kept a diary of his travels, leaving a rare record of a monarch’s view of the times. Many of the King’s observations about Natives seem to have come from the reports of others, but he did attend a pipe ceremony and met face to face with Natives. Of them he says, “Hospitality is the rule among all Indians....Any man’s tobacco and taluma are always available to all without offer or permission.” (Taluma is believed to be sumac or lobelia).
The culmination of all of this contact which resulted in a United States government had two sides. On the one, the continued alliance ( “The Covenant Chain”) between the Iroquois and the English strengthened the nation to nation relationship between two vastly different governments. After 1701, the alliance was expanded to mean that the Iroquois would take a neutral position with regard to conflicts between the French and English. The alliance was then expanded to include the colonies. Canesetago’s 1744 speech in Lancaster was part of this expansion. He told the colonists “We heartily recommend Union and a good agreement between you and our brethren. Never disagree, but preserve a strict friendship for one another, and thereby you, as well as we, will become stronger.”
Iroquois control extended from Virginia northward, a vast territory, particularly because the bulk of European settlement was along the eastern seaboard and no further west than Ohio.
On the other side, as soon as the fledgling United States had won independence and the new country was underway, revisionists began the job of creating the myth of democracy. Benjamin Franklin and his kind died, and the Virginians took center stage among the “Founding Fathers” group. This was quite far from the truth. The Virginians, including the beloved Thomas Jefferson, were never able to escape their slave-holding societal norms. They were very different from the New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians in their acceptance of human cruelty and the rule of the elite. Creating George Washington in the image of the “Father of our country” took some doing. He was a slaveholder who refused to give up this inhumane practice, even upon death, when he could have released his chattel.
Thomas Jefferson no doubt struggled with his ideals as he continued to live in a society that accepted human degradation. His words, “all men are created equal” penned into the Declaration of Independence must have haunted him to the grave, particularly since he had an African mistress. Yet the only slaves he freed upon death were the two sons and three other male kin of his mistress.
The revisionists also sought to dismiss the statesmanship, diplomacy, and cunning politics of the Iroquois in ways that emphasized the confederacy’s fading military power to the exclusion of anything else. The military forced Iroquois and other eastern tribes off their land and carried out the “removal” of dozens of tribes to the western territories. This unfortunate circumstance did not bode well for the western tribes. As the westward expansion continued, the United States choose Virginian thinking over Pennsylvanian, and created an “Indian policy” that resulted in war, disease, and enormous loss of life for Native people.
Only one gift, left by the English, mitigated the probability of Native annihilation once the Americans won independence and the United States was formed. That gift was the treaty between nations. The English crown, unlike the more sanguine Spanish, readily entered into treaties with Native governments as nations. That meant a government-to-government relationship. That meant diplomacy and the search for common ground was possible. It meant the possibility of alliance rather than intractable enmity. The American colonies followed the pattern. It would have been foolish to have done otherwise and face the military might of the confederated tribes, as the Americans might have, were it not for the treaties. After all, if the Virginians deluded themselves that slavery was possible in an otherwise free society, how without treaties would they have dealt with Native people who were considered to be wild and unschooled beings—not slaves, but not white, either?
However earnestly the Americans tried to disengage themselves from the European models of government and social norms, it would not be long after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were established before the United States began to take an imperious posture. For some, this was the beginning of America’s descent from democracy.
Jefferson wanted to expand westward. The Merriwether Lewis and William Clark expedition to map the northwest was part of the plan. Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana territory from France was intended to create a unified country, free of foreign presence. The extreme form of this policy was called “Manifest Destiny,” and it was adopted in the mid-1840s to promote nationhood in the United States—extending from sea to sea and from Canada to Mexico (or as much of Mexico as the United States could get).
America would brook no other country within its borders—not Mexico, and certainly not any independent Native nations. Manifest Destiny involved, in part, removing Native nations to the west as well as weakening the treaty tradition by creating ever less meaningful compacts.
When treaty-making ended in 1871, none of the later agreements had been ratified individually by the United States Senate. U.S. Courts routinely allowed the rest of the government to violate the treaties with Native nations in absolute violation of international law—which allowed unilateral amendment of treaties only in narrow, specific circumstances. The United States simply failed to enforce the rule of international law.
The steady deterioration of Native and U.S. Government relations hit bottom during the western expansion and the western “Indian wars.” More recently, there has been a ragged and tenuous climb back to a United States policy of true government-to-government relations.
The story of democracy, and the Native nations who found themselves hosts to the most misbehaving guests in history, is still unfolding. As it does so, there will be, sadly, a race against time for the Native nations. In order to help the United States move back toward democracy, Native nations will have to survive long enough to discharge their duty as foretold in the old Iroquois prophecy. The optimistic view is that there is just enough time.
Resource List
Brodie, Fawn M., Thomas Jefferson An Intimate History, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974
Burton, Bruce A., “Squanto’s Legacy: The Origin of the Town Meeting,” Northeast Indian Quarterly, Volume VI Number 4 (Winter 1989): 4-8
Faragher, John Mack, editor, The Encyclopedia of Colonial and Revolutionary America, New York: Da Capo Press, 1996
Drinnon, Richard, Facing West, The Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building, New York: Schocken Books, 1990
Grinde, Donald A. Jr., “Iroquoian Political Concept and the Genesis of American Government: Further Research and Contentions” Northeast Indian Quarterly, Volume VI, Number 4 ( Winter 1989): 10-21
Grossman, George S., The Sovereignty of American Indian Tribes: A Matter of Legal History, edited by Matthew Stark, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Minnesota Civil Liberties Union Foundation, 1979
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, Providence Island 1630 - 1641, The Other Puritan Colony, Cambridge, England: University Press, 1995
Merk, Frederick, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, with the collaboration of Lois Bannister Merk Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963
Prucha, Francis Paul, Documents of United States Indian Policy, 2nd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990
Prucha, Francis Paul, The Great Father, The United States Government and the American Indians, Vols l and 2 unabridged, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984
Venables, Robert W.”The Founding Fathers: Choosing to Be the Romans” Northeast Indian Quarterly, Volume VI, Number 4 (Winter 1989): 30-55
A Review of Native People of Minnesota
A REVIEW OF NATIVE PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA
By Laura Waterman Wittstock
Native People of the Hemisphere
The western hemisphere stretches 9,000 miles from top to bottom. This is the originating place for Natives of what is called Turtle Island. When Native people are referred to as “minorities” or they are represented as a small percentage of the population, that is because they have been killed, have died, or have been displaced by other people, usually Europeans. In the United States, English has displaced many Native languages. In other parts of the hemisphere, Spanish or Portuguese are the displacing languages. However, none of these European languages has succeeded in entirely replacing Native languages. For example, while Spanish is the dominant language of Guatemala, there are also over 30 major Native languages in this Central American country where the Native people constitute the population majority.
Linguists have identified twelve major Native language groups in the hemisphere. Within these groups called “phyla,” are many subgroups of related languages called “families,” and within these many more individual languages. Several others have never been identified and some are yet to be understood.
Millions of Native people once lived in the Hemisphere undisturbed. It is estimated that Christopher Columbus and his men killed five to ten million Natives on Haiti and on the other islands known as Hispanola in the first decade after Columbus’ first expedition in 1492. So complete was their work that Native people are now extinct on Haiti.
It is perhaps more pleasant to imagine what the reactions of the Europeans might have been the first time they tasted pineapple, as Columbus surely did. It was grown first in the Caribbean. Columbus was so impressed with the nutritional power of manioc that he brought quantities back to Europe and is credited with introducing it to famine-stricken Africa as a cultivated plant. It is likely Columbus and his men also used tobacco for the first time. Spanish adventurers brought coca leaves back to Spain where they quickly became a royal drug. Commoners were punished if caught with the leaves. The word barbeque is a Native term meaning essentially the same thing it means now, and comes from the area Columbus dominated. One can imagine the many delicious meals he and his men had - most likely a diet more nutritious and varied than any they had ever experienced in their lifetimes!
Two other great combinations quickly found their way into European cuisine - chocolate and vanilla. The introduction of potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and beans took somewhat longer, but they are now clearly staple foods all throughout Europe.
And, it should be remembered, these were cultivated foods from the western hemisphere, not the discoveries of Europeans.
One of the continuing controversies that extend into the current time is that when the European-style nations formed, the previous Native territories were ignored. Thus we have tribal groups living on two sides of the Canadian and Mexican political borders. The same is true in most countries of Central and South America, and the same is true of many State borders in the United States, including Minnesota.
Making Maple Sugar
Across the northern Great Lakes area of the United States and parts of Canada, northern Native people acclimated a wide variety of seeds to the shorter growing seasons. In addition, wild plants and products were harvested and processed seasonally. The two most famous of these from the Great Lakes area are wild rice and maple sugar. These foods increased people’s ability to live through harsh weather situations.
The process for producing maple syrup has been essentially the same for over 500 years. The sugar maple tree (Acer saccarum) was tapped from upper Canada to Ohio. The tapping was done by a slash method, rather than the more familiar spigots or hosing that is seen today in commercial productions. Boiling baskets were used for the evaporation process.
It takes approximately 30 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup or about four pounds of granulated sugar. Through evaporation, the water is removed and a variety of syrups, candies, and sugar are processed and used throughout the year. The work was labor-intensive but rewarding.
Ojibwe sugaring is done each Spring in Minnesota, beginning in March, depending on the region of the State.
Working Toward Religious Freedom
In the United States, where religious freedom is held to be one of the most fundamental rights of all people, Native people have been trying to save their spiritual practices.
Now, after the bloody wars and a long missionary period of prohibitions, Native spiritual practice has not died out and is undergoing a resurgence that promises to bring balance and health back to many groups.
A remedy was proposed for Congressional enactment by Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. The measure extended religious freedom to Native people, something taken for granted by most Americans, but subject to interference, prohibition and even arrest for religious practices.
The measure was enacted. It stated: “on and after August 11, 1978, it shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiians, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites.”
Congressional protection was extended in January, 1994 to include the religious use of peyote, following a Supreme Court decision that such use was unprotected and users were subject to arrest.
Alcohol in the History of Native-U.S. Relations
Prior to European contact 500 years ago, there were several drugs and alcoholic beverages prepared and consumed by Native people, although there is no evidence of distilled liquor being one of the forms. These drugs and beverages were used ceremonially and seasonally by people throughout Native lands. Even today, tobacco, peyote and some other drugs are used as part of spiritual ceremonies. Consuming drugs and alcohol apart from ritual is a northern European invention which was imported into the western hemisphere. Even coffee in the Minnesota region was labeled in the Ojibwe language as “black medicine water,” (muck-a-day-moosh-ki-ki-wah-boo), thus relegating it to a non-social drug.
Beginning in 1620, Massachusetts colonial laws restricted the sale of liquor to Native people. This was the beginning of a trend that lasted into the 1950s. The idea was not to restrict sales out of concern for Native people who were unused to distilled liquor, but to regulate all trade with them. Those that controlled the trade became rich and powerful.
Throughout the 1800s, United States treaty language usually included some form of prohibition of liquor. These provisions had the effect of creating a flourishing subrosa market. By 1862, Natives or others could be in violation of the prohibitions. This was the turning point, and by 1916, the possession of alcohol was a crime, as “prima face evidence of unlawful introduction.” Like the Chinese who were singled out for prosecution regarding opium, the Native people were linked with alcohol and experienced the first punitive efforts, long before national Prohibition
There is little doubt now that alcoholism would have taken a much lower toll on Native people had the introduction and use of the drug been normalized as it had been in Southern Europe, that is, associated with family and religious practice. By becoming a tool in the struggle to wrest land away from Native people, alcohol in the United States was historically linked with Natives. A far different outcome would have been likely without the constant interference of government and the extensive lawlessness that was the norm for over 200 years.
Native People in Minnesota
Minnesota’s boundaries were permanently set in 1858 with statehood, but they don’t approximate the territorial markers of Native people. Most indigenous Native families have relatives north in Canada, west in North and South Dakota, and Nebraska, east in Wisconsin and Michigan, and south in Iowa and Illinois.
The recent nature of the Minnesota boundaries is a reminder that Native people have lived in this area permanently before the end of the last ice age ten thousand years ago. Skeletal remains from about 20,000 years ago have been found. It is thus incorrect to refer to Native people in Minnesota as “minorities.” The name preferred by the Ojibwe language group, the largest in the State, is “Anishinabe,” or “original people.”
Minnesota is the homeland of Native people from different Nations who were then displaced by Europeans. But whereas Native Nations moved into the territory for living space and self-sufficiency, the Europeans came primarily for lumber, nearly stripping Minnesota bare in just under one hundred years. Complete destruction was averted by President Theodore Roosevelt, who established the Superior National Forest. It is virtually the only place in the State where pre-European timber can be found.
Native people who lived in the area before 1600 hunted extensively, gathered and preserved a variety of wild foods, and raised cultivated crops from seed stock, rhizomes, and cuttings. Because food was plentiful and nutrition high, the Native populations grew rapidly as soon as the glaciers from the last ice age receded.
Lakes and waterways were named for their geographic characteristics, and the Mississippi was used to carry trade goods south while bringing other goods back to the territory. It was only after the arrival of Europeans that places and bodies of water were named for individuals.
The Dakota people farmed and hunted, developing a highly organized cultural and political structure. A predominant characteristic of Dakota culture is the concept of family and alliances. Families extended to many hundreds of people in some cases. Alliances with other close language groups resulted in agreements for common defense and safe passage across thousands of miles of open territory. Art flourished and some of the most beautiful quill and beadwork ever made can be seen in museums that exhibit Dakota artifacts.
The Ojibwe people were later arrivals and they brought with them powerful political alliances. The Three Fires Confederacy which included the Ottawa, Potawatomi and Ojibwe Nations were hundreds of thousands strong. Today in Minnesota there are still extensive and complex systems of clans, bands and nations that attest to the power of the Confederacy. Far from being extinguished, Ojibwe culture and spirituality are extensively practiced in several areas.
Ho-Chunk people lived and continue to live in the region. Their reservations are located in Wisconsin and Nebraska. A sizeable population lives in Minnesota, primarily St. Paul. The tribe may be called Winnebago by some. They have an extensive culture that is associated with Great Lakes peoples. A deeply intellectual people, the Ho-Chunk have devised a highly complex spiritual code and have composed thousands of stunningly beautiful songs.
It is difficult for most Minnesotans to intimately know the cultures of the Native peoples of Minnesota, but there are some avenues to gaining insights beyond what is seen on television and in the newspapers.
Eleven “reservations” (Native tribal lands legally excluded from the rest of Minnesota) are dispersed around the State. These lands are independent and should be thought of as different countries rather than as parts of Minnesota. Even though the exact nature of tribal land is challenged from time to time, as in the recent fishing disputes, treaties still prevent Americans from running roughshod over tribal sovereignty.
The American laws known as “Indian law,” contain four doctrinal bases: 1. Tribes are independent entities, 2. The independence of Tribes is only subject to exceptionally great powers of Congress to regulate and modify, 3. only the federal government may deal with Tribes, and 4. the federal government has the responsibility for the protection of Tribes and their properties (including encroachments from States and their citizens). These are the four basic themes from which all laws dealing with Native Nations must flow.
For many people, the new gaming industry operated on tribal land is not well understood. But as the industry approaches mega-status among corporations, the net gains for at least some of the Native people have included a return to former self-sufficiency.
On September 24, 1993, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Indians opened the Nay Ay Shing Primary and Secondary Schools. The schools will serve Native children from early childhood through grade 12. The funds used to build the schools have come entirely from gaming revenues earned by the Nation. No federal or state tax dollars were used.
270 children will learn Ojibwe language and culture in a full academic curriculum. The two schools are located in a woodland setting 10 miles north of Onamia. The buildings are designed so that students enter a circular room with a skylight. Included in the design are the four sacred colors and directions of the earth.
Advising the school is a group of Ojibwe elders who will share their knowledge, wisdom and language with the students.
This latest development in Native resiliency and creativity is proof positive that the Native people of Minnesota are strong and able to care for their own communities when afforded opportunity and freedom from interference.
Interesting Facts
1. In Minneapolis, a city named for a combination of Dakota for water (mnii) and Greek for city (polis), there are some misplaced and just plain wrong names. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in his poem “The Song of Hiawatha,”(1855) mixed Iroquois culture with Ojibwe culture, and came up with the hero Hiawatha from Iroquois history, and Minnehaha, a fictional character with a name which was supposed to mean something like, “laughing water.” Mnii, as we see in the name of the city is the Dakota word for water, and “ha ha” was a figment of Longfellow’s imagination!
2. Minnetonka is Dakota for a large body of water.
3. Chaska is Dakota for the title given to a first born son.
4. Mahtomedi is Dakota for White Bear Lake.
5. Chicago is Ojibwe for a place where skunks live.
6. There are over 100 Native languages spoken in the United States today.This is a probable decrease of over two- thirds.
7. Before Europeans came, treaties were common between Native Nations. The first treaty between the United States and a Native Nation was with the Delaware in 1778.
8.As with dealing with foreign nations, the U.S. Constitution stipulates that only the United States, not the individual States, may make treaties with Native Nations, and the U.S. Government comes first over States when there are conflicting laws.
8. The first United States Trade and Intercourse Act (1 Stat. 137, 1790), said there would be no transfer of any Native lands to any individual or State except by treaty “under the authority of the United States.”
9. A short description of the laws known as “Indian law,” contains the following four doctrinal bases: 1. Tribes are independent entities, 2. The independence of Tribes is subject to exceptionally great powers of Congress to regulate and modify, 3. only the federal government may deal with Tribes, and 4. the federal government has the responsibility for the protection of Tribes and their properties (including encroachments from States and their citizens). These are the four basic themes from which all laws dealing with Native Nations must flow.
10. Native Nations, unlike women and former slaves, did not ask for the right to vote. They held no citizenship in the United States. Yet Congress passed a statute conferring citizenship on all U.S. born Native people in 1924. Some Nations to this day neither recognize citizenship nor practice it.
11. Beginning in 1953, Congress started to “terminate” Native Nations. Once such Tribe, the Menominee in Wisconsin, not only won its status back, but the new Assistant Secretary of Interior for Indian Affairs in the Clinton Administration is a member of that Tribe. Her name is Ada Deer. She was one of the key fighters against the unjust ruling of Congress.
12. Nearly 800 treaties between Native Nations and others have been signed. Over 400 of those treaties were between Native Nations and the United States.
State Names From Native Sources
Of the fifty States in the United States, the names of 28 are taken directly from Native languages. One (Indiana) refers to Native people,and another (California) is of unknown derivation. Twenty have no references to Native languages in their names. This means 56 percent of all the States have a “Native connection.”And, interestingly, most of the States with the no connection (except Montana, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington) are those that were established early, on the United States eastern seaboard. There was a stronger propensity at that time among the British to name places after their own homelands that they had left behind.
States with no connection
Colorado
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Montana
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
States with Native connections
Alabama: Choctaw, referring to thick vegetation and the reaping thereof.
Alaska: Aleut, referring to the mainland, as compared to the islands.
Arizona: Pima, for “small place of the spring.”
Arkansas: French corruption of the name for the Quapaw Nation.
Connecticut: Mohican (Maíingun) word for “the long river.”
Hawaii: Named by the Native people for their homeland.
Idaho: Shoshonean languages describing the sun coming down the mountains.
Illinois: Ojibwe, referring to men.
Iowa: Named for the Iowa (Native) people.
Kansas: Named for the Kansas (Native) people.
Kentucky: Iroquoian languages, referring to meadow land.
Massachusetts: Algonkian languages for “great hill.”
Michigan: Ojibwe, referring to a big lake.
Minnesota: Dakota, referring to the reflection of the sky on the water
Mississippi: Algonkian languages for “great river.”
Missouri: Named for the Missouri (Native) people.
Nebraska: Siouian languages, referring to a flat, wide waterway.
New Mexico: Aztec, referring to the “place of the war god.”
North Dakota: Named for the Dakota (Native) people.
Ohio: Iroquoian languages, for ‘beautiful.”
Oklahoma: Muskogean for “red people,” named by Allen Wright, a Choctaw leader.
Oregon: Shoshonean languages referring to a bountiful land.
South Dakota: Named for the Dakota (Native) people.
Tennessee: Cherokee, for the name of one of their villages.
Texas: Native derivation of the Spanish term “Tijas,” or allies.
Utah: Named for the Ute (Native) people.
Wisconsin: Ojibwe, referring to the confluence of waters.
Wyoming: Delaware (Algonkian) for “large meadows.”
A Short Chronology Of Events In Native History
1400 Iroquois Confederacy of five nations formed.
1500 European diseases ravage Native people.
1512 Spain makes it legal to make slaves of Native people.
1512 The Pope declares that Native people are descended from Adam and Eve.
1520 Hernando Cortes murders Montezuma. His crown of feathers still reposes in Vienna, where Austria refuses to give it back to the Aztec people.
1539 Francisco de Vitoria in Spain tries to advocate that Native people are free and exempt from slavery.
1585 Roanoke settlement from England is founded, disappears in one year.
1589 Acoma people revolt against the Spanish. One year later 800 Natives are killed in retaliation.
1616 Smallpox epidemic in New England.
1620 Pilgrims arrive in Wampanoag territory. They learn farming and how to give t hanks for nature’s gifts. (Thanksgiving ceremonies were practiced extensively by all Nations that had developed agriculture.)
1631 Roger Williams argues that Native lands are being illegally expropriated. He urges a more humane policy.
1633 More smallpox epidemics kill Native people.
1675 British establish a Secretary of Indian Affairs in Albany, NY
1676 Metacomet killed trying to protect home lands.
1680 Pope, a Tewa spiritual leader succeeds against the Spanish. The effort is defeated in 1689.
1682 William Penn devises treaty with the Delaware, opening up friendly relations between Natives and Quakers.
1689 75 years war between England and France; Iroquois side with British, Algonkian Nations with French.
1751 Benjamin Franklin cites the Iroquois Confederacy as a model for the Union.
1778 U.S. Treaty with the Delaware.
1787 Northwest Ordinance calls for the sanctity of Native lands but also urges further white settlements in Native territory.
1789 Department of War established and assigns matters relative to Indian
Affairs to it.
1790 Intercourse Act, requiring a treaty to sell Native land and instituting criminal
procedures for crimes against Natives.
1817 Federal courts given jurisdiction of Natives and others in Native territory.
1819 First efforts to “civilize” Native people using missionaries and other “persons of good to widespread cheating of Natives.
1830 Indian Removal Act, “voluntary” movement of Native people to west of the Mississippi River.
l849 Department of Interior established. Commissioner of Indian Affairs moves from the Department of War to Interior.
1871 Ended treaty-making without public debate. Also severely limited power of the President. Probably unconstitutional, but tolerated.
1887 General Allotment Act divided Native lands and opened up “surplus” for homesteading, pitting one vulnerable group against another.
1892 Authorizing forced attendance at Indian Service schools.
1918 Limited appropriations to Native Nations by defining blood quantum.
1921 Snyder Act; permanent authority for services to Natives. Later formed the basis for Federal services to State reservations and urban or off-reservation Natives.
1924 Citizenship conferred without being requested on all Natives born in U.S.
1934 Johnson-O’Malley Act. U.S contracts with States for services to Native people.
1946 Indian Claims Commission established to settle Indian land claims.
1953 Infamous House Concurrent Resolution 108 terminating many Native Nations.
1953 Public Law 280 passed without Native consent and allowing States jurisdiction on many reservations.
1955 Federal responsibility for health shifted from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (Now the Department of Health and Human Services.)
1969 Occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Island reclaimed by Native people.
1971 Alaska Native Land Claim Settlement Act, land settlement with 20-year termination clause.
1972 Indian Education Act assuring some community and Native control in programs to educate Native students.
1972 American Indian Movement occupies the Bureau of Indian Affairs and forges 20-point position paper, leading to several legislative reforms.
1972 Yakima Nations receives 21,000 acres of land back.
1973 American Indian Movement battle U.S. forces at Wounded Knee, SD over horrendous living conditions and rigged tribal elections.
1975 Indian Self-Determination Act permitting Nations to manage some of their own programs.
1978 Indian Child Welfare Act establishes standards to protect Native children from being separated from their families and tribes.
1984 President Reagan’s Commission on Reservation Economies accuses BIA of excessive regulation and recommends assigning the agency’s responsibility to other Federal agencies. Proposal is rejected by Native Nations.
1996 Case Law: Corbell v. Norton is a class-action lawsuit filed on June 10, 1996, in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to force the federal government to account for billions of dollars belonging to approximately 500,000 American Indians and their heirs, and held in trust since the late 19th century.
Through document discovery and courtroom testimony, the case has revealed mismanagement, ineptness, dishonesty and delay by federal officials, leading U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to declare their conduct "fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form."
Then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Kevin Gover and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin were held in contempt of court in February 1999 by Judge Lamberth for their departments' repeated delays in producing documents, destruction of relevant documents and misrepresentations to the court in sworn testimony. As the case proceeds, new revelations of false testimony, financial misconduct and bureaucratic retaliation have continued to surface.
The facts underlying the litigation involve a broad sweep of United States history. Although U.S. policy in the 1870s was to locate Indians on reservations, hunger for the land by non-Indians led to a break-up of most of the reservations starting in the 1880s. Thousands of individual Indians generally were allotted beneficial ownership of 80- to 160-acre parcels of land in the break-up. As trustee, the government took legal title to the parcels, established an Individual Indian Trust and thereby assumed full responsibility for management of the trust lands. That included the duty to collect and disburse to the Indians any revenues generated by mining, oil and gas extraction, timber operations, grazing or similar activities.
As a result of more than a century of malfeasance, the United States government has no accurate records for hundreds of thousands of Indian beneficiaries nor of billions of dollars owed the class of beneficiaries covered by the lawsuit. The suit encompasses approximately 500,000 Indian beneficiaries.
The purpose of the litigation - which was filed by Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe in Montana, and her co-plaintiffs - is two-fold: to force the government to account for the money, and to bring about permanent reform of the system.
Judge Lamberth bifurcated the case along those lines. After a trial on Phase One - reform of the system - Judge Lamberth ruled on December 21, 1999 that the secretaries of Interior and Treasury had breached their trust obligations to the Indians. The court retained judicial oversight of the system for a minimum of five years, to ensure that it is overhauled, and ordered Interior to provide an historical accounting of all trust funds. An appeal by the government, arguing that the judge had overreached his authority, was unanimously rejected by a three-judge appeals court panel on February, 23, 2001.
To help enforce his orders, Judge Lamberth has appointed both a special master, who oversees the preservation and production of trust documents, and a federal monitor, who provides the judge with assessments of the truthfulness of Interior's representations to the Court regarding execution of trust reform. In his first report to the court - 19 months after Judge Lamberth's December 21, 1999 order - the federal monitor declared that Interior's stated efforts to provide an accounting in compliance with the order are a sham, are "still at the starting gate" and have been marked by "unrealistic responses and evasion."
A trial on Phase Two - accounting for the money - has not yet been scheduled.
Resources
Periodicals
The Circle newspaper, published monthly, Minneapolis, MN
News From Indian Country, the Native Nations Newspaper, published twice monthly, write to the paper at Rt. 2, Box 2900-A, Hayward, WI 54843
A Small Group of Fundamental Book Resources
Frederic Baraga. A Dictionary of the Ojibway Language. St. Paul, MN. Minnesota Historical Society Press. 1992.
John Bierhorst. A Cry from the Earth: Music of the North American Indians. New York. Four Winds Press. 1979.
Dee Brown. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. New York. Henry Holt. 1970.
William C. Canby, Jr.American Indian Law: In a Nut Shell.St. Paul, MN: West Publishing. 1988.(with updates in 2004)
Stewart Culin. Games of the North American Indians. 2 Volumes. Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press. 1992.
Richard Drinnon. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building. New York. Schocken Books. 1990.
Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission Biological Services. Biological Impact of the Chippewa Off Reservation Fishing. Odanah, WI. P.O. Box 9, Odana, 54861. 1989.
Rayna Green and Lisa Thompson. American Indian Sacred Objects: A Resource Guide. Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution. 1992.
Inez M. Hilger. Chippewa Child Life and Its Cultural Background. St. Paul, MN. Minnesota Historical Society Press. 1992.
Fredrick E. Hoxie.America in 1492: The World of the Indian People Before the Arrival of Columbus, ed Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. New York: Knopf. 1992.
Francis Paul Prucha. Atlas of American Indian Affairs. Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press. 1990.
Francis Paul Prucha. Documents of United States Indian Policy. Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press. 1990.
Gordon Regguinti. The Sacred Harvest: Ojibway Wild Rice Gathering. Minneapolis, MN. Lerner Publications. 1992.
Alan R. Velie. American Indian Literature: An Anthology. Norman, OK. University of Oklahoma Press.1979.
Virgil J. Vogel. American Indian Medicine. Norman, OK. University of Oklahoma Press. 1982.
Jack Weatherford. Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World. New York. Ballantine Books. 1988.
Jack Weatherford. Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America. New York. Ballantine Books. 1992.
Laura Waterman Wittstock. Ininatig’s Gift of Sugar: Traditional Native Sugar Making. Minneapolis, MN. Lerner Publications. 1993.
Audio
The Cloud Family Collection. 8 Radio Plays. Cassette. MIGIZI Communications, Inc. 3123 East Lake Street. Minneapolis, MN 55406
Coming From America. 2 -hour Documentary. Cassette. MIGIZI Communications, Inc. 3123 East Lake Street. Minneapolis, MN 55406.
By Laura Waterman Wittstock
Native People of the Hemisphere
The western hemisphere stretches 9,000 miles from top to bottom. This is the originating place for Natives of what is called Turtle Island. When Native people are referred to as “minorities” or they are represented as a small percentage of the population, that is because they have been killed, have died, or have been displaced by other people, usually Europeans. In the United States, English has displaced many Native languages. In other parts of the hemisphere, Spanish or Portuguese are the displacing languages. However, none of these European languages has succeeded in entirely replacing Native languages. For example, while Spanish is the dominant language of Guatemala, there are also over 30 major Native languages in this Central American country where the Native people constitute the population majority.
Linguists have identified twelve major Native language groups in the hemisphere. Within these groups called “phyla,” are many subgroups of related languages called “families,” and within these many more individual languages. Several others have never been identified and some are yet to be understood.
Millions of Native people once lived in the Hemisphere undisturbed. It is estimated that Christopher Columbus and his men killed five to ten million Natives on Haiti and on the other islands known as Hispanola in the first decade after Columbus’ first expedition in 1492. So complete was their work that Native people are now extinct on Haiti.
It is perhaps more pleasant to imagine what the reactions of the Europeans might have been the first time they tasted pineapple, as Columbus surely did. It was grown first in the Caribbean. Columbus was so impressed with the nutritional power of manioc that he brought quantities back to Europe and is credited with introducing it to famine-stricken Africa as a cultivated plant. It is likely Columbus and his men also used tobacco for the first time. Spanish adventurers brought coca leaves back to Spain where they quickly became a royal drug. Commoners were punished if caught with the leaves. The word barbeque is a Native term meaning essentially the same thing it means now, and comes from the area Columbus dominated. One can imagine the many delicious meals he and his men had - most likely a diet more nutritious and varied than any they had ever experienced in their lifetimes!
Two other great combinations quickly found their way into European cuisine - chocolate and vanilla. The introduction of potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and beans took somewhat longer, but they are now clearly staple foods all throughout Europe.
And, it should be remembered, these were cultivated foods from the western hemisphere, not the discoveries of Europeans.
One of the continuing controversies that extend into the current time is that when the European-style nations formed, the previous Native territories were ignored. Thus we have tribal groups living on two sides of the Canadian and Mexican political borders. The same is true in most countries of Central and South America, and the same is true of many State borders in the United States, including Minnesota.
Making Maple Sugar
Across the northern Great Lakes area of the United States and parts of Canada, northern Native people acclimated a wide variety of seeds to the shorter growing seasons. In addition, wild plants and products were harvested and processed seasonally. The two most famous of these from the Great Lakes area are wild rice and maple sugar. These foods increased people’s ability to live through harsh weather situations.
The process for producing maple syrup has been essentially the same for over 500 years. The sugar maple tree (Acer saccarum) was tapped from upper Canada to Ohio. The tapping was done by a slash method, rather than the more familiar spigots or hosing that is seen today in commercial productions. Boiling baskets were used for the evaporation process.
It takes approximately 30 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup or about four pounds of granulated sugar. Through evaporation, the water is removed and a variety of syrups, candies, and sugar are processed and used throughout the year. The work was labor-intensive but rewarding.
Ojibwe sugaring is done each Spring in Minnesota, beginning in March, depending on the region of the State.
Working Toward Religious Freedom
In the United States, where religious freedom is held to be one of the most fundamental rights of all people, Native people have been trying to save their spiritual practices.
Now, after the bloody wars and a long missionary period of prohibitions, Native spiritual practice has not died out and is undergoing a resurgence that promises to bring balance and health back to many groups.
A remedy was proposed for Congressional enactment by Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. The measure extended religious freedom to Native people, something taken for granted by most Americans, but subject to interference, prohibition and even arrest for religious practices.
The measure was enacted. It stated: “on and after August 11, 1978, it shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiians, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites.”
Congressional protection was extended in January, 1994 to include the religious use of peyote, following a Supreme Court decision that such use was unprotected and users were subject to arrest.
Alcohol in the History of Native-U.S. Relations
Prior to European contact 500 years ago, there were several drugs and alcoholic beverages prepared and consumed by Native people, although there is no evidence of distilled liquor being one of the forms. These drugs and beverages were used ceremonially and seasonally by people throughout Native lands. Even today, tobacco, peyote and some other drugs are used as part of spiritual ceremonies. Consuming drugs and alcohol apart from ritual is a northern European invention which was imported into the western hemisphere. Even coffee in the Minnesota region was labeled in the Ojibwe language as “black medicine water,” (muck-a-day-moosh-ki-ki-wah-boo), thus relegating it to a non-social drug.
Beginning in 1620, Massachusetts colonial laws restricted the sale of liquor to Native people. This was the beginning of a trend that lasted into the 1950s. The idea was not to restrict sales out of concern for Native people who were unused to distilled liquor, but to regulate all trade with them. Those that controlled the trade became rich and powerful.
Throughout the 1800s, United States treaty language usually included some form of prohibition of liquor. These provisions had the effect of creating a flourishing subrosa market. By 1862, Natives or others could be in violation of the prohibitions. This was the turning point, and by 1916, the possession of alcohol was a crime, as “prima face evidence of unlawful introduction.” Like the Chinese who were singled out for prosecution regarding opium, the Native people were linked with alcohol and experienced the first punitive efforts, long before national Prohibition
There is little doubt now that alcoholism would have taken a much lower toll on Native people had the introduction and use of the drug been normalized as it had been in Southern Europe, that is, associated with family and religious practice. By becoming a tool in the struggle to wrest land away from Native people, alcohol in the United States was historically linked with Natives. A far different outcome would have been likely without the constant interference of government and the extensive lawlessness that was the norm for over 200 years.
Native People in Minnesota
Minnesota’s boundaries were permanently set in 1858 with statehood, but they don’t approximate the territorial markers of Native people. Most indigenous Native families have relatives north in Canada, west in North and South Dakota, and Nebraska, east in Wisconsin and Michigan, and south in Iowa and Illinois.
The recent nature of the Minnesota boundaries is a reminder that Native people have lived in this area permanently before the end of the last ice age ten thousand years ago. Skeletal remains from about 20,000 years ago have been found. It is thus incorrect to refer to Native people in Minnesota as “minorities.” The name preferred by the Ojibwe language group, the largest in the State, is “Anishinabe,” or “original people.”
Minnesota is the homeland of Native people from different Nations who were then displaced by Europeans. But whereas Native Nations moved into the territory for living space and self-sufficiency, the Europeans came primarily for lumber, nearly stripping Minnesota bare in just under one hundred years. Complete destruction was averted by President Theodore Roosevelt, who established the Superior National Forest. It is virtually the only place in the State where pre-European timber can be found.
Native people who lived in the area before 1600 hunted extensively, gathered and preserved a variety of wild foods, and raised cultivated crops from seed stock, rhizomes, and cuttings. Because food was plentiful and nutrition high, the Native populations grew rapidly as soon as the glaciers from the last ice age receded.
Lakes and waterways were named for their geographic characteristics, and the Mississippi was used to carry trade goods south while bringing other goods back to the territory. It was only after the arrival of Europeans that places and bodies of water were named for individuals.
The Dakota people farmed and hunted, developing a highly organized cultural and political structure. A predominant characteristic of Dakota culture is the concept of family and alliances. Families extended to many hundreds of people in some cases. Alliances with other close language groups resulted in agreements for common defense and safe passage across thousands of miles of open territory. Art flourished and some of the most beautiful quill and beadwork ever made can be seen in museums that exhibit Dakota artifacts.
The Ojibwe people were later arrivals and they brought with them powerful political alliances. The Three Fires Confederacy which included the Ottawa, Potawatomi and Ojibwe Nations were hundreds of thousands strong. Today in Minnesota there are still extensive and complex systems of clans, bands and nations that attest to the power of the Confederacy. Far from being extinguished, Ojibwe culture and spirituality are extensively practiced in several areas.
Ho-Chunk people lived and continue to live in the region. Their reservations are located in Wisconsin and Nebraska. A sizeable population lives in Minnesota, primarily St. Paul. The tribe may be called Winnebago by some. They have an extensive culture that is associated with Great Lakes peoples. A deeply intellectual people, the Ho-Chunk have devised a highly complex spiritual code and have composed thousands of stunningly beautiful songs.
It is difficult for most Minnesotans to intimately know the cultures of the Native peoples of Minnesota, but there are some avenues to gaining insights beyond what is seen on television and in the newspapers.
Eleven “reservations” (Native tribal lands legally excluded from the rest of Minnesota) are dispersed around the State. These lands are independent and should be thought of as different countries rather than as parts of Minnesota. Even though the exact nature of tribal land is challenged from time to time, as in the recent fishing disputes, treaties still prevent Americans from running roughshod over tribal sovereignty.
The American laws known as “Indian law,” contain four doctrinal bases: 1. Tribes are independent entities, 2. The independence of Tribes is only subject to exceptionally great powers of Congress to regulate and modify, 3. only the federal government may deal with Tribes, and 4. the federal government has the responsibility for the protection of Tribes and their properties (including encroachments from States and their citizens). These are the four basic themes from which all laws dealing with Native Nations must flow.
For many people, the new gaming industry operated on tribal land is not well understood. But as the industry approaches mega-status among corporations, the net gains for at least some of the Native people have included a return to former self-sufficiency.
On September 24, 1993, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Indians opened the Nay Ay Shing Primary and Secondary Schools. The schools will serve Native children from early childhood through grade 12. The funds used to build the schools have come entirely from gaming revenues earned by the Nation. No federal or state tax dollars were used.
270 children will learn Ojibwe language and culture in a full academic curriculum. The two schools are located in a woodland setting 10 miles north of Onamia. The buildings are designed so that students enter a circular room with a skylight. Included in the design are the four sacred colors and directions of the earth.
Advising the school is a group of Ojibwe elders who will share their knowledge, wisdom and language with the students.
This latest development in Native resiliency and creativity is proof positive that the Native people of Minnesota are strong and able to care for their own communities when afforded opportunity and freedom from interference.
Interesting Facts
1. In Minneapolis, a city named for a combination of Dakota for water (mnii) and Greek for city (polis), there are some misplaced and just plain wrong names. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in his poem “The Song of Hiawatha,”(1855) mixed Iroquois culture with Ojibwe culture, and came up with the hero Hiawatha from Iroquois history, and Minnehaha, a fictional character with a name which was supposed to mean something like, “laughing water.” Mnii, as we see in the name of the city is the Dakota word for water, and “ha ha” was a figment of Longfellow’s imagination!
2. Minnetonka is Dakota for a large body of water.
3. Chaska is Dakota for the title given to a first born son.
4. Mahtomedi is Dakota for White Bear Lake.
5. Chicago is Ojibwe for a place where skunks live.
6. There are over 100 Native languages spoken in the United States today.This is a probable decrease of over two- thirds.
7. Before Europeans came, treaties were common between Native Nations. The first treaty between the United States and a Native Nation was with the Delaware in 1778.
8.As with dealing with foreign nations, the U.S. Constitution stipulates that only the United States, not the individual States, may make treaties with Native Nations, and the U.S. Government comes first over States when there are conflicting laws.
8. The first United States Trade and Intercourse Act (1 Stat. 137, 1790), said there would be no transfer of any Native lands to any individual or State except by treaty “under the authority of the United States.”
9. A short description of the laws known as “Indian law,” contains the following four doctrinal bases: 1. Tribes are independent entities, 2. The independence of Tribes is subject to exceptionally great powers of Congress to regulate and modify, 3. only the federal government may deal with Tribes, and 4. the federal government has the responsibility for the protection of Tribes and their properties (including encroachments from States and their citizens). These are the four basic themes from which all laws dealing with Native Nations must flow.
10. Native Nations, unlike women and former slaves, did not ask for the right to vote. They held no citizenship in the United States. Yet Congress passed a statute conferring citizenship on all U.S. born Native people in 1924. Some Nations to this day neither recognize citizenship nor practice it.
11. Beginning in 1953, Congress started to “terminate” Native Nations. Once such Tribe, the Menominee in Wisconsin, not only won its status back, but the new Assistant Secretary of Interior for Indian Affairs in the Clinton Administration is a member of that Tribe. Her name is Ada Deer. She was one of the key fighters against the unjust ruling of Congress.
12. Nearly 800 treaties between Native Nations and others have been signed. Over 400 of those treaties were between Native Nations and the United States.
State Names From Native Sources
Of the fifty States in the United States, the names of 28 are taken directly from Native languages. One (Indiana) refers to Native people,and another (California) is of unknown derivation. Twenty have no references to Native languages in their names. This means 56 percent of all the States have a “Native connection.”And, interestingly, most of the States with the no connection (except Montana, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington) are those that were established early, on the United States eastern seaboard. There was a stronger propensity at that time among the British to name places after their own homelands that they had left behind.
States with no connection
Colorado
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Montana
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
States with Native connections
Alabama: Choctaw, referring to thick vegetation and the reaping thereof.
Alaska: Aleut, referring to the mainland, as compared to the islands.
Arizona: Pima, for “small place of the spring.”
Arkansas: French corruption of the name for the Quapaw Nation.
Connecticut: Mohican (Maíingun) word for “the long river.”
Hawaii: Named by the Native people for their homeland.
Idaho: Shoshonean languages describing the sun coming down the mountains.
Illinois: Ojibwe, referring to men.
Iowa: Named for the Iowa (Native) people.
Kansas: Named for the Kansas (Native) people.
Kentucky: Iroquoian languages, referring to meadow land.
Massachusetts: Algonkian languages for “great hill.”
Michigan: Ojibwe, referring to a big lake.
Minnesota: Dakota, referring to the reflection of the sky on the water
Mississippi: Algonkian languages for “great river.”
Missouri: Named for the Missouri (Native) people.
Nebraska: Siouian languages, referring to a flat, wide waterway.
New Mexico: Aztec, referring to the “place of the war god.”
North Dakota: Named for the Dakota (Native) people.
Ohio: Iroquoian languages, for ‘beautiful.”
Oklahoma: Muskogean for “red people,” named by Allen Wright, a Choctaw leader.
Oregon: Shoshonean languages referring to a bountiful land.
South Dakota: Named for the Dakota (Native) people.
Tennessee: Cherokee, for the name of one of their villages.
Texas: Native derivation of the Spanish term “Tijas,” or allies.
Utah: Named for the Ute (Native) people.
Wisconsin: Ojibwe, referring to the confluence of waters.
Wyoming: Delaware (Algonkian) for “large meadows.”
A Short Chronology Of Events In Native History
1400 Iroquois Confederacy of five nations formed.
1500 European diseases ravage Native people.
1512 Spain makes it legal to make slaves of Native people.
1512 The Pope declares that Native people are descended from Adam and Eve.
1520 Hernando Cortes murders Montezuma. His crown of feathers still reposes in Vienna, where Austria refuses to give it back to the Aztec people.
1539 Francisco de Vitoria in Spain tries to advocate that Native people are free and exempt from slavery.
1585 Roanoke settlement from England is founded, disappears in one year.
1589 Acoma people revolt against the Spanish. One year later 800 Natives are killed in retaliation.
1616 Smallpox epidemic in New England.
1620 Pilgrims arrive in Wampanoag territory. They learn farming and how to give t hanks for nature’s gifts. (Thanksgiving ceremonies were practiced extensively by all Nations that had developed agriculture.)
1631 Roger Williams argues that Native lands are being illegally expropriated. He urges a more humane policy.
1633 More smallpox epidemics kill Native people.
1675 British establish a Secretary of Indian Affairs in Albany, NY
1676 Metacomet killed trying to protect home lands.
1680 Pope, a Tewa spiritual leader succeeds against the Spanish. The effort is defeated in 1689.
1682 William Penn devises treaty with the Delaware, opening up friendly relations between Natives and Quakers.
1689 75 years war between England and France; Iroquois side with British, Algonkian Nations with French.
1751 Benjamin Franklin cites the Iroquois Confederacy as a model for the Union.
1778 U.S. Treaty with the Delaware.
1787 Northwest Ordinance calls for the sanctity of Native lands but also urges further white settlements in Native territory.
1789 Department of War established and assigns matters relative to Indian
Affairs to it.
1790 Intercourse Act, requiring a treaty to sell Native land and instituting criminal
procedures for crimes against Natives.
1817 Federal courts given jurisdiction of Natives and others in Native territory.
1819 First efforts to “civilize” Native people using missionaries and other “persons of good to widespread cheating of Natives.
1830 Indian Removal Act, “voluntary” movement of Native people to west of the Mississippi River.
l849 Department of Interior established. Commissioner of Indian Affairs moves from the Department of War to Interior.
1871 Ended treaty-making without public debate. Also severely limited power of the President. Probably unconstitutional, but tolerated.
1887 General Allotment Act divided Native lands and opened up “surplus” for homesteading, pitting one vulnerable group against another.
1892 Authorizing forced attendance at Indian Service schools.
1918 Limited appropriations to Native Nations by defining blood quantum.
1921 Snyder Act; permanent authority for services to Natives. Later formed the basis for Federal services to State reservations and urban or off-reservation Natives.
1924 Citizenship conferred without being requested on all Natives born in U.S.
1934 Johnson-O’Malley Act. U.S contracts with States for services to Native people.
1946 Indian Claims Commission established to settle Indian land claims.
1953 Infamous House Concurrent Resolution 108 terminating many Native Nations.
1953 Public Law 280 passed without Native consent and allowing States jurisdiction on many reservations.
1955 Federal responsibility for health shifted from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (Now the Department of Health and Human Services.)
1969 Occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Island reclaimed by Native people.
1971 Alaska Native Land Claim Settlement Act, land settlement with 20-year termination clause.
1972 Indian Education Act assuring some community and Native control in programs to educate Native students.
1972 American Indian Movement occupies the Bureau of Indian Affairs and forges 20-point position paper, leading to several legislative reforms.
1972 Yakima Nations receives 21,000 acres of land back.
1973 American Indian Movement battle U.S. forces at Wounded Knee, SD over horrendous living conditions and rigged tribal elections.
1975 Indian Self-Determination Act permitting Nations to manage some of their own programs.
1978 Indian Child Welfare Act establishes standards to protect Native children from being separated from their families and tribes.
1984 President Reagan’s Commission on Reservation Economies accuses BIA of excessive regulation and recommends assigning the agency’s responsibility to other Federal agencies. Proposal is rejected by Native Nations.
1996 Case Law: Corbell v. Norton is a class-action lawsuit filed on June 10, 1996, in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to force the federal government to account for billions of dollars belonging to approximately 500,000 American Indians and their heirs, and held in trust since the late 19th century.
Through document discovery and courtroom testimony, the case has revealed mismanagement, ineptness, dishonesty and delay by federal officials, leading U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to declare their conduct "fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form."
Then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Kevin Gover and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin were held in contempt of court in February 1999 by Judge Lamberth for their departments' repeated delays in producing documents, destruction of relevant documents and misrepresentations to the court in sworn testimony. As the case proceeds, new revelations of false testimony, financial misconduct and bureaucratic retaliation have continued to surface.
The facts underlying the litigation involve a broad sweep of United States history. Although U.S. policy in the 1870s was to locate Indians on reservations, hunger for the land by non-Indians led to a break-up of most of the reservations starting in the 1880s. Thousands of individual Indians generally were allotted beneficial ownership of 80- to 160-acre parcels of land in the break-up. As trustee, the government took legal title to the parcels, established an Individual Indian Trust and thereby assumed full responsibility for management of the trust lands. That included the duty to collect and disburse to the Indians any revenues generated by mining, oil and gas extraction, timber operations, grazing or similar activities.
As a result of more than a century of malfeasance, the United States government has no accurate records for hundreds of thousands of Indian beneficiaries nor of billions of dollars owed the class of beneficiaries covered by the lawsuit. The suit encompasses approximately 500,000 Indian beneficiaries.
The purpose of the litigation - which was filed by Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe in Montana, and her co-plaintiffs - is two-fold: to force the government to account for the money, and to bring about permanent reform of the system.
Judge Lamberth bifurcated the case along those lines. After a trial on Phase One - reform of the system - Judge Lamberth ruled on December 21, 1999 that the secretaries of Interior and Treasury had breached their trust obligations to the Indians. The court retained judicial oversight of the system for a minimum of five years, to ensure that it is overhauled, and ordered Interior to provide an historical accounting of all trust funds. An appeal by the government, arguing that the judge had overreached his authority, was unanimously rejected by a three-judge appeals court panel on February, 23, 2001.
To help enforce his orders, Judge Lamberth has appointed both a special master, who oversees the preservation and production of trust documents, and a federal monitor, who provides the judge with assessments of the truthfulness of Interior's representations to the Court regarding execution of trust reform. In his first report to the court - 19 months after Judge Lamberth's December 21, 1999 order - the federal monitor declared that Interior's stated efforts to provide an accounting in compliance with the order are a sham, are "still at the starting gate" and have been marked by "unrealistic responses and evasion."
A trial on Phase Two - accounting for the money - has not yet been scheduled.
Resources
Periodicals
The Circle newspaper, published monthly, Minneapolis, MN
News From Indian Country, the Native Nations Newspaper, published twice monthly, write to the paper at Rt. 2, Box 2900-A, Hayward, WI 54843
A Small Group of Fundamental Book Resources
Frederic Baraga. A Dictionary of the Ojibway Language. St. Paul, MN. Minnesota Historical Society Press. 1992.
John Bierhorst. A Cry from the Earth: Music of the North American Indians. New York. Four Winds Press. 1979.
Dee Brown. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. New York. Henry Holt. 1970.
William C. Canby, Jr.American Indian Law: In a Nut Shell.St. Paul, MN: West Publishing. 1988.(with updates in 2004)
Stewart Culin. Games of the North American Indians. 2 Volumes. Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press. 1992.
Richard Drinnon. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building. New York. Schocken Books. 1990.
Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission Biological Services. Biological Impact of the Chippewa Off Reservation Fishing. Odanah, WI. P.O. Box 9, Odana, 54861. 1989.
Rayna Green and Lisa Thompson. American Indian Sacred Objects: A Resource Guide. Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution. 1992.
Inez M. Hilger. Chippewa Child Life and Its Cultural Background. St. Paul, MN. Minnesota Historical Society Press. 1992.
Fredrick E. Hoxie.America in 1492: The World of the Indian People Before the Arrival of Columbus, ed Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. New York: Knopf. 1992.
Francis Paul Prucha. Atlas of American Indian Affairs. Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press. 1990.
Francis Paul Prucha. Documents of United States Indian Policy. Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press. 1990.
Gordon Regguinti. The Sacred Harvest: Ojibway Wild Rice Gathering. Minneapolis, MN. Lerner Publications. 1992.
Alan R. Velie. American Indian Literature: An Anthology. Norman, OK. University of Oklahoma Press.1979.
Virgil J. Vogel. American Indian Medicine. Norman, OK. University of Oklahoma Press. 1982.
Jack Weatherford. Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World. New York. Ballantine Books. 1988.
Jack Weatherford. Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America. New York. Ballantine Books. 1992.
Laura Waterman Wittstock. Ininatig’s Gift of Sugar: Traditional Native Sugar Making. Minneapolis, MN. Lerner Publications. 1993.
Audio
The Cloud Family Collection. 8 Radio Plays. Cassette. MIGIZI Communications, Inc. 3123 East Lake Street. Minneapolis, MN 55406
Coming From America. 2 -hour Documentary. Cassette. MIGIZI Communications, Inc. 3123 East Lake Street. Minneapolis, MN 55406.
Public In Dark about Library Danger
The City of Minneapolis provides a pie chart to illustrate the recommended $1.3 billion 2007 budget. It reveals at a glance the fat and thin slices, fat for more money, thin for less.
Among the thin slices of two-percent or less are Health & Family Support, Regulatory Services, the City Attorney, Other City Services, Other Boards, and the Library Board. That’s two cents or less of the city dollar.
Among the fat slices of nine-percent or more are the Police Department, Public Works, Debt Service, and Community Planning and Economic Development. That’s almost a dime or more of the city dollar.
The Mayor’s recommended revenue for the Library Board is $22.8 million, a 2.4% sliver of an increase over the adopted budget of 2006. In the details are differences between how the library calculates revenue and how the City did its calculations. It’s safe to say that the real increase is not an increase at all, given rising costs. The 2007 proposed budget is radically insufficient to support the operations of the Minneapolis library system.
So what is the Library Board to do?
Because the Library Board is an independently elected board in Minneapolis, voters have been asking why the Board is not able to set its own tax levy, subject to the approval of Board of Estimate and Taxation. Some of the answer lies in the City Charter itself.
The Charter is Minneapolis’ Constitution that describes the powers the people of the city give their city government. In the Charter, Minneapolis citizens give the Library Board the power to levy taxes for its operating requirements. This, as with all levy intentions, goes to the Board of Estimate and Taxation, which sets the annual levy limit for the city for the year.
This process is intended to give the boards their independence and ability to represent all Minneapolis citizens in the operation of the library system. Six of the eight Library Board Trustees, as they are called, are elected in citywide elections. They do not represent districts or wards, but all of the citizens of the city.
Under then Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, with no doubt advice from the city’s finance department, a formula was fashioned to thwart the Charter process for the independent boards. The formula held property tax increases to 3% and gave the Mayor and city council authority to adjust the Local Government Aid (LGA) portion of the library’s revenue. This meant that if the library raised property taxes, approved by the Board of Estimate and Taxation, the city would then reduce the amount of LGA by the same amount. The net outcome would be zero. Power is stripped from the Library Board.
Even setting aside the fact that the 1994 City Council resolution set in place policy by the numbers instead of policy by the wishes of the citizens for the service levels they desired, the practice over the past 12 years has resulted in a Library Board that can only offer representation without taxation. It is hobbled from exercising the wishes of the public as stated in the City Charter.
Transferring the power of the purse to the City Council was not intended in the language of the Charter. The council members are elected in wards and have no citywide constituency as the Library Board does. And, there is little collegiality between the City Council and the Library Board. So opportunities for collaboration and negotiation as peers are absent in the relationship. The Library Board is reduced to the status of a supplicant, again a position not envisioned in the Charter nor expressing the intention of the citizens of Minneapolis.
In 2002, the City Council increased the property tax levy limit to 4% and kept the LGA controls firmly in its hands. None of this envisioned a radical change in the LGA amount coming to the City, nor did the Council’s policy change even after the devastation to the library system made the case that policy by the numbers does not work for all systems. Further, the wishes of the citizens were ignored.
In 2003, the Library Board accepted what it thought was the desire of Minneapolitans and kept all libraries open in 2004, even though this meant the loss of over 70 staff and workers. Short hours forced library users to fit their needs into the very short library hour schedule. No one was happy.
Faced with irrefutable evidence that future budgets will fall short of providing for the entire library system, some in the City Council say sell the new Central Library or close and sell some of the community libraries, a prospect the Council has made likely by its control of the library’s budget.
What is really at issue here is that the public knows little about the annual budgeting process of the City. The City Charter is a mystery to the greater majority of the citizens. When there is a lack of transparency in how the City does its business, and when policies are made that are expected to fit every service in every situation, the people are no longer served well.
Citizens should be assured that their elected public officials are not gathering power to themselves inappropriately.
Among the thin slices of two-percent or less are Health & Family Support, Regulatory Services, the City Attorney, Other City Services, Other Boards, and the Library Board. That’s two cents or less of the city dollar.
Among the fat slices of nine-percent or more are the Police Department, Public Works, Debt Service, and Community Planning and Economic Development. That’s almost a dime or more of the city dollar.
The Mayor’s recommended revenue for the Library Board is $22.8 million, a 2.4% sliver of an increase over the adopted budget of 2006. In the details are differences between how the library calculates revenue and how the City did its calculations. It’s safe to say that the real increase is not an increase at all, given rising costs. The 2007 proposed budget is radically insufficient to support the operations of the Minneapolis library system.
So what is the Library Board to do?
Because the Library Board is an independently elected board in Minneapolis, voters have been asking why the Board is not able to set its own tax levy, subject to the approval of Board of Estimate and Taxation. Some of the answer lies in the City Charter itself.
The Charter is Minneapolis’ Constitution that describes the powers the people of the city give their city government. In the Charter, Minneapolis citizens give the Library Board the power to levy taxes for its operating requirements. This, as with all levy intentions, goes to the Board of Estimate and Taxation, which sets the annual levy limit for the city for the year.
This process is intended to give the boards their independence and ability to represent all Minneapolis citizens in the operation of the library system. Six of the eight Library Board Trustees, as they are called, are elected in citywide elections. They do not represent districts or wards, but all of the citizens of the city.
Under then Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, with no doubt advice from the city’s finance department, a formula was fashioned to thwart the Charter process for the independent boards. The formula held property tax increases to 3% and gave the Mayor and city council authority to adjust the Local Government Aid (LGA) portion of the library’s revenue. This meant that if the library raised property taxes, approved by the Board of Estimate and Taxation, the city would then reduce the amount of LGA by the same amount. The net outcome would be zero. Power is stripped from the Library Board.
Even setting aside the fact that the 1994 City Council resolution set in place policy by the numbers instead of policy by the wishes of the citizens for the service levels they desired, the practice over the past 12 years has resulted in a Library Board that can only offer representation without taxation. It is hobbled from exercising the wishes of the public as stated in the City Charter.
Transferring the power of the purse to the City Council was not intended in the language of the Charter. The council members are elected in wards and have no citywide constituency as the Library Board does. And, there is little collegiality between the City Council and the Library Board. So opportunities for collaboration and negotiation as peers are absent in the relationship. The Library Board is reduced to the status of a supplicant, again a position not envisioned in the Charter nor expressing the intention of the citizens of Minneapolis.
In 2002, the City Council increased the property tax levy limit to 4% and kept the LGA controls firmly in its hands. None of this envisioned a radical change in the LGA amount coming to the City, nor did the Council’s policy change even after the devastation to the library system made the case that policy by the numbers does not work for all systems. Further, the wishes of the citizens were ignored.
In 2003, the Library Board accepted what it thought was the desire of Minneapolitans and kept all libraries open in 2004, even though this meant the loss of over 70 staff and workers. Short hours forced library users to fit their needs into the very short library hour schedule. No one was happy.
Faced with irrefutable evidence that future budgets will fall short of providing for the entire library system, some in the City Council say sell the new Central Library or close and sell some of the community libraries, a prospect the Council has made likely by its control of the library’s budget.
What is really at issue here is that the public knows little about the annual budgeting process of the City. The City Charter is a mystery to the greater majority of the citizens. When there is a lack of transparency in how the City does its business, and when policies are made that are expected to fit every service in every situation, the people are no longer served well.
Citizens should be assured that their elected public officials are not gathering power to themselves inappropriately.
Librarian: Make My Day
One of the best resources for area businesses is hiding in plain sight at the Minneapolis Public Library. And, the services are free or incredibly cheap.
Downtown businesses have applauded the new Central Library with its vistas, spaciousness, and architectural beauty. What is not so easily seen are the 80,000 volumes of circulating and reference materials available for business users. The business collection, especially its reference section, has had a lot of and frequent use as seen by reference statistics which show business use as substantially higher than any other area of the library. This includes electronic databases in business subjects.
The Library is also developing small business sections in both East Lake and North Regional – set to open in Spring 2007 when renovations are complete. North Regional will have 400 books, periodicals and newspapers at its Business and Careers Center and there will be about 500 items at the East Lake Library.
While the library system operating revenues are only two percent of the Minneapolis budget, the library system also offers smart and fast research. INFORM is the research service of the Minneapolis Public Library. It relies on current information from reliable resources to provide research and document needs to small businesses, multinational corporations, law firms, and professionals in marketing, advertising and public relations, and media organizations. The service is also used by investment and engineering firms.
Fabulous as this all is – and this is not hyperbole – revenue shifts toward the negative are coming down hard on the glass jewel in downtown Minneapolis. And glass, as we know, can shatter under pressure.
This is essentially a supply side issue. By artificially narrowing the stream of revenues through caps and ceilings, the Minneapolis City Council has forced the library system to cut everything but essential services. But even after curtailment, which is not good when the services are virtually free to the public, including the business community, the library system faces forced closures to remain in operation. Yes, it is eating the seed corn to stay alive.
Of primary importance to business is its future workforce. Failure to invest in this area has resulted in some alarming statistics as far as new entries into Kindergarten are concerned. Less than 50% of entering students in Minnesota are proficient enough to succeed. An important link in addressing this statistic is the availability of free, open libraries. These services are invaluable for helping the coming generations of future workers in our city.
So on the demand side, the legendary Minneapolis Public Library rate of new items in the collection is going down as circulation increases. All over the country, library circulation is rising. Patrons are thirsty for collection depth and breadth. When it isn’t there, the population at the bottom of the economic ladder loses first, but eventually everyone loses.
However, the Minnesota attributes we love and have come to expect may desert us if we don’t pay more attention to demand. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) points to the top ten. These include business friendly climate, fertile ground for innovation, excellence in education, proven performance, wealth of resources and our ranking as a “most livable state.”
We wear all of these labels proudly and with a lot of optimism. But it is time to take stock. Our inventory is shrinking and that has gone largely unnoticed. In the future, when we start to see the effects of this, it will be too late to market the best we have to offer. Now, while we enjoy these high ratings, attention must be paid to our resources.
Minneapolis has to come to a better solution than a one size fits all fiscal policy that is bearing down hard on one of its greatest resources, its libraries. She may not be a cop, but a librarian is one of best public servants we have for the price, and little kids are not afraid of her.
Downtown businesses have applauded the new Central Library with its vistas, spaciousness, and architectural beauty. What is not so easily seen are the 80,000 volumes of circulating and reference materials available for business users. The business collection, especially its reference section, has had a lot of and frequent use as seen by reference statistics which show business use as substantially higher than any other area of the library. This includes electronic databases in business subjects.
The Library is also developing small business sections in both East Lake and North Regional – set to open in Spring 2007 when renovations are complete. North Regional will have 400 books, periodicals and newspapers at its Business and Careers Center and there will be about 500 items at the East Lake Library.
While the library system operating revenues are only two percent of the Minneapolis budget, the library system also offers smart and fast research. INFORM is the research service of the Minneapolis Public Library. It relies on current information from reliable resources to provide research and document needs to small businesses, multinational corporations, law firms, and professionals in marketing, advertising and public relations, and media organizations. The service is also used by investment and engineering firms.
Fabulous as this all is – and this is not hyperbole – revenue shifts toward the negative are coming down hard on the glass jewel in downtown Minneapolis. And glass, as we know, can shatter under pressure.
This is essentially a supply side issue. By artificially narrowing the stream of revenues through caps and ceilings, the Minneapolis City Council has forced the library system to cut everything but essential services. But even after curtailment, which is not good when the services are virtually free to the public, including the business community, the library system faces forced closures to remain in operation. Yes, it is eating the seed corn to stay alive.
Of primary importance to business is its future workforce. Failure to invest in this area has resulted in some alarming statistics as far as new entries into Kindergarten are concerned. Less than 50% of entering students in Minnesota are proficient enough to succeed. An important link in addressing this statistic is the availability of free, open libraries. These services are invaluable for helping the coming generations of future workers in our city.
So on the demand side, the legendary Minneapolis Public Library rate of new items in the collection is going down as circulation increases. All over the country, library circulation is rising. Patrons are thirsty for collection depth and breadth. When it isn’t there, the population at the bottom of the economic ladder loses first, but eventually everyone loses.
However, the Minnesota attributes we love and have come to expect may desert us if we don’t pay more attention to demand. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) points to the top ten. These include business friendly climate, fertile ground for innovation, excellence in education, proven performance, wealth of resources and our ranking as a “most livable state.”
We wear all of these labels proudly and with a lot of optimism. But it is time to take stock. Our inventory is shrinking and that has gone largely unnoticed. In the future, when we start to see the effects of this, it will be too late to market the best we have to offer. Now, while we enjoy these high ratings, attention must be paid to our resources.
Minneapolis has to come to a better solution than a one size fits all fiscal policy that is bearing down hard on one of its greatest resources, its libraries. She may not be a cop, but a librarian is one of best public servants we have for the price, and little kids are not afraid of her.
Public Meetings with No Choices
From September 14 to September 25, five public meetings were conducted by the Minneapolis Library Board to hear what the public thinks of its 2007 to 2009 budget approaches for the library system. Because the Library must have an annual balanced budget, continuing shortages of revenue going back as early as 1994 are forcing damaging changes to the entire system, changes that now include selling libraries for one-time revenues.
In addition to the public meetings, the library conducted a survey that was available to all library patrons either online or in paper form, displayed at all Minneapolis libraries. The survey was offered in multiple languages. Further, four listening sessions with library patrons, drawn from the roster of those who hold library cards were conducted. And finally, an online discussion forum is available on the library’s website.
The Library Board intends that these efforts open the discussion about the operating budget as broadly as possible to the Minneapolis public. This is an important function of the Library Board because its work comes under the Minneapolis Charter, the City’s Constitution that describes the powers the people of the city give their city government. In the Charter, Minneapolis citizens give the Library Board the power to levy taxes for its operating requirements. This, as with all levy intentions, goes to the Board of Estimate and Taxation, which sets the annual levy limit for the city for the year.
This process is intended to give the boards their independence and ability to represent all Minneapolis citizens in the operation of the library system. Six of the eight Library Board members are elected in citywide elections. They do not represent districts or wards, but all of the citizens of the city.
As with all Constitutions in our country at least, the granted powers in the Charter result in representative government. As the elected Library Board members sit in session and govern, they are acting on behalf of all of the citizens of Minneapolis. This is a great and distinguished privilege, one not to be taken lightly, nor one to be confined into smaller and smaller spaces, slipping away from public control.
Yet this appears to be the case when it comes to controlling the annual budget of the library system. The public’s ability to tax itself for high quality library services has been thwarted. It was done so easily because voters are largely unaware of the limiting controls placed on the Library Board’s fiscal role under the Charter. This has resulted in the long history of shortchanging libraries.
When this fact was brought to the attention of the City Council’s Ways and Means Committee in October 2005, and along with it the suggestion that while the damage done may not have been anyone’s fault, future damage to the library if sustained, could be considerable. That was the awakening point, which the City Council should have taken to heart and reconsidered its one-size-fits-all policy of capping annual budget increases while using the Local Government Aid allocation to Minneapolis to control budget levels. One fiscal policy does not fit all systems in the city.
Placing a noose around the library system and pulling it tighter and tighter each year has been the result. But with irrefutable evidence at hand that the library system is on the brink of breaking apart, the recommendation from the City is to go ahead and break apart. The only choice now left to the independently elected Library Board is to decide which library stands and which library falls. That is not the choice given to the Library Board in the Charter.
On the subject of library buildings, the voters have already spoken. They approved a new Central Library and renovations to all existing community libraries. But when they voted on these improvements, they did not know (or very few knew) that back in 1994, the City Council had passed a resolution affecting the Library Board, among others. Under then Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, with no doubt advice from the city’s finance department, a formula was fashioned to thwart the Charter process for the independent boards. The formula held property tax increases to 3% and gave the Mayor and city council authority to adjust the Local Government Aid (LGA) portion of the library’s revenue.
This meant that if the library raised property taxes, approved by the Board of Estimate and Taxation, the city would then reduce the amount of LGA by the same amount. The net outcome was zero. Power was stripped from the Library Board.
So what have citizens been saying in this last round of public meetings? At the Nokomis meeting on September 19th, held at a nearby Methodist Church, there was a group of about 70. Two comments stand out.
“If the City were going to close down and there weren’t going to be any people living here – then some of the alternative approaches (presented) would make sense.”
And from State Senator Wes Skogland: “The reason not to close libraries is that they will do it again. You will take care of their (the City’s) problem for them.”
In the Southeast community, with its advantageous proximity to the University of Minnesota, the outstanding public schools of the old Southeast Alternatives, a generational turnover is underway, likely to pick up its pace as we move further into the century. The Southeast Library may not be in the best building it could be. There are few, if any options for expansion and enhancement. But the idea of a library, the presence of a public place of free learning, fits exceedingly well in this community that is the home of a diverse population, growing numbers of new families and a cultural strain that reveres soccer over football and books over video games. Said a Somali elder at the Nokomis meeting: “When we close libraries, we close the door on knowledge and we close the door on life.”
In addition to the public meetings, the library conducted a survey that was available to all library patrons either online or in paper form, displayed at all Minneapolis libraries. The survey was offered in multiple languages. Further, four listening sessions with library patrons, drawn from the roster of those who hold library cards were conducted. And finally, an online discussion forum is available on the library’s website.
The Library Board intends that these efforts open the discussion about the operating budget as broadly as possible to the Minneapolis public. This is an important function of the Library Board because its work comes under the Minneapolis Charter, the City’s Constitution that describes the powers the people of the city give their city government. In the Charter, Minneapolis citizens give the Library Board the power to levy taxes for its operating requirements. This, as with all levy intentions, goes to the Board of Estimate and Taxation, which sets the annual levy limit for the city for the year.
This process is intended to give the boards their independence and ability to represent all Minneapolis citizens in the operation of the library system. Six of the eight Library Board members are elected in citywide elections. They do not represent districts or wards, but all of the citizens of the city.
As with all Constitutions in our country at least, the granted powers in the Charter result in representative government. As the elected Library Board members sit in session and govern, they are acting on behalf of all of the citizens of Minneapolis. This is a great and distinguished privilege, one not to be taken lightly, nor one to be confined into smaller and smaller spaces, slipping away from public control.
Yet this appears to be the case when it comes to controlling the annual budget of the library system. The public’s ability to tax itself for high quality library services has been thwarted. It was done so easily because voters are largely unaware of the limiting controls placed on the Library Board’s fiscal role under the Charter. This has resulted in the long history of shortchanging libraries.
When this fact was brought to the attention of the City Council’s Ways and Means Committee in October 2005, and along with it the suggestion that while the damage done may not have been anyone’s fault, future damage to the library if sustained, could be considerable. That was the awakening point, which the City Council should have taken to heart and reconsidered its one-size-fits-all policy of capping annual budget increases while using the Local Government Aid allocation to Minneapolis to control budget levels. One fiscal policy does not fit all systems in the city.
Placing a noose around the library system and pulling it tighter and tighter each year has been the result. But with irrefutable evidence at hand that the library system is on the brink of breaking apart, the recommendation from the City is to go ahead and break apart. The only choice now left to the independently elected Library Board is to decide which library stands and which library falls. That is not the choice given to the Library Board in the Charter.
On the subject of library buildings, the voters have already spoken. They approved a new Central Library and renovations to all existing community libraries. But when they voted on these improvements, they did not know (or very few knew) that back in 1994, the City Council had passed a resolution affecting the Library Board, among others. Under then Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, with no doubt advice from the city’s finance department, a formula was fashioned to thwart the Charter process for the independent boards. The formula held property tax increases to 3% and gave the Mayor and city council authority to adjust the Local Government Aid (LGA) portion of the library’s revenue.
This meant that if the library raised property taxes, approved by the Board of Estimate and Taxation, the city would then reduce the amount of LGA by the same amount. The net outcome was zero. Power was stripped from the Library Board.
So what have citizens been saying in this last round of public meetings? At the Nokomis meeting on September 19th, held at a nearby Methodist Church, there was a group of about 70. Two comments stand out.
“If the City were going to close down and there weren’t going to be any people living here – then some of the alternative approaches (presented) would make sense.”
And from State Senator Wes Skogland: “The reason not to close libraries is that they will do it again. You will take care of their (the City’s) problem for them.”
In the Southeast community, with its advantageous proximity to the University of Minnesota, the outstanding public schools of the old Southeast Alternatives, a generational turnover is underway, likely to pick up its pace as we move further into the century. The Southeast Library may not be in the best building it could be. There are few, if any options for expansion and enhancement. But the idea of a library, the presence of a public place of free learning, fits exceedingly well in this community that is the home of a diverse population, growing numbers of new families and a cultural strain that reveres soccer over football and books over video games. Said a Somali elder at the Nokomis meeting: “When we close libraries, we close the door on knowledge and we close the door on life.”
The City Council's Heavy Boot
Back in the late summer of 2005, the candidates for Library Board (there were 19 in all) were invited to ten forums in the community libraries to meet directly with the public and answer questions. Another of several other forums was with Insight News. One specific question asked had to do with experience in working with communities of color. Some candidates answered more in depth than others. Fortunately, at least three of the candidates with deep experience in communities of color are now elected trustees of the Library Board. To their company has been added Hussein Samatar, who comes from the Somali Community. And, it must be said, all of the current trustees have a sincere commitment to the communities of color.
Another question, repeated over many times was, “will you close libraries?” All of the responses from those who currently sit on the Library Board were that the future was too unclear to know if that choice would have to be made. Further, they said the issues were too important and too far-reaching to close down any possible options that might otherwise benefit the broader library community. At the time, the trustees were communicating with City Council candidates and elected officials, making the case for increased funding for libraries.
But now that tragic time is here, and it’s a good thing the trustees now in office said they would keep the door open to all possibilities. Inflexibility is not a criticism that can be hurled at the Library Board. It is working hard to avoid the prospect of closed and sold libraries while reaching out more broadly to others who can help with longer-term recommendations. No one on the Library Board wants closed libraries.
The Library Board’s work comes under the Minneapolis Charter, the City’s Constitution that describes the powers the people of the city give their city government. In the Charter, Minneapolis citizens give the Library Board the power to levy taxes for its operating requirements. This, as with all tax intentions, goes to the Board of Estimate and Taxation, which sets the annual tax levy limit for the city for the year.
This process is intended to give the Library Board its independence and ability to represent all Minneapolis citizens in the operation of the library system. Six of the eight Library Board members are elected in citywide elections. They do not represent districts or wards, but all of the citizens of the city.
So why has budget support for community libraries such as North Regional and East Lake Street been put in such jeopardy? These great libraries on the North and South sides of Minneapolis surely deserve better.
Yes, they do, and when a small increase in the Local Government Aid (LGA) was allocated to the library budget, the trustees opted to save that money for North Regional and East Lake. But, it was not enough. Nearly $700,000 was needed to provide the hours needed.
People ask, “Why can’t the library manage its money better?”
The voters of Minneapolis spoke loudly when they approved a new Central Library and renovations to all existing community libraries. The old Central Library was in violation of several city codes and was in danger of being shut down. 80% of the library collection was out of immediate reach of library users. The referendum passed with the approval of 67% of those voting. But what voters did not know (or very few knew) was that back in 1994, the City Council had passed a resolution that held property tax increases to 3% and gave the City Council authority to adjust the Local Government Aid (LGA) portion of the library’s revenue.
This meant that if the library raised property taxes, approved by the Board of Estimate and Taxation, the city would reduce the amount of LGA by the same amount. The result was that power over the budget was taken from the Library Board.
Most voters are unaware of the limiting controls placed on the Library Board’s fiscal role under the Charter. This has resulted in a 12-year history of shortchanging libraries.
The City Council needs to lift its heavy boot off the budget of the Library Board and let the public have the full service of libraries it is asking for.
Another question, repeated over many times was, “will you close libraries?” All of the responses from those who currently sit on the Library Board were that the future was too unclear to know if that choice would have to be made. Further, they said the issues were too important and too far-reaching to close down any possible options that might otherwise benefit the broader library community. At the time, the trustees were communicating with City Council candidates and elected officials, making the case for increased funding for libraries.
But now that tragic time is here, and it’s a good thing the trustees now in office said they would keep the door open to all possibilities. Inflexibility is not a criticism that can be hurled at the Library Board. It is working hard to avoid the prospect of closed and sold libraries while reaching out more broadly to others who can help with longer-term recommendations. No one on the Library Board wants closed libraries.
The Library Board’s work comes under the Minneapolis Charter, the City’s Constitution that describes the powers the people of the city give their city government. In the Charter, Minneapolis citizens give the Library Board the power to levy taxes for its operating requirements. This, as with all tax intentions, goes to the Board of Estimate and Taxation, which sets the annual tax levy limit for the city for the year.
This process is intended to give the Library Board its independence and ability to represent all Minneapolis citizens in the operation of the library system. Six of the eight Library Board members are elected in citywide elections. They do not represent districts or wards, but all of the citizens of the city.
So why has budget support for community libraries such as North Regional and East Lake Street been put in such jeopardy? These great libraries on the North and South sides of Minneapolis surely deserve better.
Yes, they do, and when a small increase in the Local Government Aid (LGA) was allocated to the library budget, the trustees opted to save that money for North Regional and East Lake. But, it was not enough. Nearly $700,000 was needed to provide the hours needed.
People ask, “Why can’t the library manage its money better?”
The voters of Minneapolis spoke loudly when they approved a new Central Library and renovations to all existing community libraries. The old Central Library was in violation of several city codes and was in danger of being shut down. 80% of the library collection was out of immediate reach of library users. The referendum passed with the approval of 67% of those voting. But what voters did not know (or very few knew) was that back in 1994, the City Council had passed a resolution that held property tax increases to 3% and gave the City Council authority to adjust the Local Government Aid (LGA) portion of the library’s revenue.
This meant that if the library raised property taxes, approved by the Board of Estimate and Taxation, the city would reduce the amount of LGA by the same amount. The result was that power over the budget was taken from the Library Board.
Most voters are unaware of the limiting controls placed on the Library Board’s fiscal role under the Charter. This has resulted in a 12-year history of shortchanging libraries.
The City Council needs to lift its heavy boot off the budget of the Library Board and let the public have the full service of libraries it is asking for.
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