Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

strategy to its limits, the U.S. Empire now needed to switch
strategies in order to keep exploiting the rest of the reservation
lands. Now Washington would pose as the protector
of Indian culture in order to change Indians into
"something else." Officially, Indian culture would
become another respected "ethnic" remnant, like St.
Patrick's Day parades, that would add "color" to settler
society. But instead of Indian sovereignty, culture,
economy and national development, "tribal government''
was local government according to the rules of capitalist
culture. It was a partial reorganization of reservation life
to capitalism.
The 1934 Wheeler-Howard Act repealed the 1887
Allotment Act, authorized elections to pass new "tribal
constitutions" to set up the new neo-colonial reservation
governments, established a $10 million loan fund to support
the new governments, and officially gave Indians
preference for employment with the U.S. Indian Service.
The campaign to twist Indian arms to accept this
new arrangement was very heavy. U.S. Commissioner Collier
himself admitted that while the government had the
power to force the reservations to accept these bourgeois
governments, for the strategy to work at least some
number of Indians had to be persuaded to voluntarily take
it in. Large numbers of Indians were hired to work in the
Indian Service - their numbers reaching 40% of the total
employees by 1935. 19,000 Indians were hired to work in
various Federal programs, while an additional 14,000
worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps relief camps.
Close to 20% of aN adult Indians were temporarily
employed by the Federal Government.
The distrust and resistance were considerable. The
N. Y. Times commented: "This difficulty has been
recognized by the creation by the Indian Office of an
organizational unit of field agents and special men who
will cooperate with tribal councils, business committees
and special tribal commissions in framing the constitutions
now permitted." Still, some 54 reservations, with 85,000
Indians, voted against the new "tribal governments."
History has proved that the main economic function
of the neo-colonial reservation governments has been
to lease away (usually at bargain prices) the mineral, grazing
and water rights to the settlers. Great amounts of
natural resources are involved. A very conservative Euro-
Amerikan estimate said:
to end their subsistence farming and move off their land
and into government-built housing projects - and then
lease their "useless" land to the settler businessmen. Those
Euro-Amerikan ranchers pay an average of $3 per acre
each year to possess Indian land (far cheaper than buying
it). While the Sioux who insist on staying on their land are
deliberately denied water, electricity, seed and livestock, so
as to pressure them into leaving their land (the Euro-
Amerikan ranchers who use Indian land receive constant
government aid and subsidies). Control of the land and its
resources still remains a steady preoccupation to the settler
Empire.
Even most of the food production of the Indian
Nations is taken by settlers. In 1968 the Bureau of Indian
Affairs said that the reservations produced then $170
million annually in agriculture, hunting and fishing. Of
this total the B.I.A. estimated that Indians only consumed
$20 million worth, while receiving another $16 million in
rent. 75% of the total reservation food production was
owned by settlers. (5)
U.S. imperialism literally created bourgeois Indian
governments on the reservations to give it what it wanted
and to disrupt from within the national culture. These are
governments led by the Dick Wilsons and Peter Mac-
Donalds, of elements whose capitalistic ideology and income
was tied to collaboration with the larger capitalist
world. It is also tclling that those professional 11idia11>
whose well-being is dependent upon foundation grants and
government programs (such as Vine Deloria, Jr., author of
the best-selling book, Custer Died For Your Sins) praise
the Collier reorganization of the '30s as the best thing that
even happened to them.
When Native Amerikans overcome the neocolonial
rule and assert their sovereignty against U.S. imperialism
(as A.I.M. has) then the fixed ballot hnx is reinforced
by assassination, frame-ups and even massive
military repression. The U.S. military moved in 1972 to
prop up the neo-colonial Dick Wilson regime at Pine
Ridge, just as in Zaire the neo-colonial Mobutu regime had
to be rescued in both 1977 and 1978 by airborne French
Foreign Legionnaires and Belgian paratroopers.
"Indian lands are estimated to contain up to 13
per cent of the nation's coal reserves, 3 per cent of its oil
and gas, and significant amounts of other minerals including
uranium and phosphate."
Instead of the old practice of individual sale of
small plots of land - which could be blocked by an Indian's
refusal to sell - the new, capitalistic "tribal governments"
signed wholesale mineral rights leases with major
corporations. The Navaho "tribal government," led by
the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, signed leases as late as
the 1960s that gave away Navaho coal for a mere 2% of its
market value. So the impact of the 1930s "selfgovernment"
reforms was to step up the economic exploitation
of Indian nations.
At Pine Ridge the Sioux families were encouraged