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IX. NEO-COLONIAL<br />
PACIFICATION IN THE U.S.<br />
Forcing<br />
Native Arnerikans<br />
We don't have to look across the world to confront<br />
neo-colonialism, since some of the most<br />
sophisticated examples are right here. The New Deal<br />
reforms on the Native Amerikan reservations during the<br />
1930s are a classic case of neo-colonial strategy. The U.S.<br />
Empire has always had a special problem with the Indian<br />
nations, in that their varied ways of life were often communistic.<br />
As the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs said<br />
in 1838: "Common property and civilization cannot coexist."<br />
(1) The U.S. Government enacted a genocidal campaign<br />
to erase Indian culture - including prison schools<br />
for Indian children, suppression of Indian institutions,<br />
economy and religion. And still the Indian nations and<br />
peoples survived,, resisted, endured. An A.I.M. comrade<br />
has pointed out:<br />
"The Founding Fathers of the United States<br />
equated capitalism with civilization. They had to, given<br />
their mentality; to them civilization meant their society,<br />
which was a capitalist society. Therefore, from the earliest<br />
times the wars against Indians were not only to take over<br />
the land but also to squash the threatening example of Indian<br />
communism. Jefferson was not the only man of his<br />
time to advocate imposing a capitalistic and possessive<br />
society on Indians as a way to civilize them. The 'bad example'<br />
was a real threat; the reason the Eastern Indian Nations<br />
from Florida to New York State and from the Atlantic<br />
to Ohio and Louisiana are today so racially mixed is<br />
because indentured servants, landless poor whites, escaped<br />
black slaves, chose our societies over the white society that<br />
oppressed them.<br />
"Beginning in the 1890s we have been 'red-baited'<br />
and branded as 'commies' in Congress (see the Congressional<br />
Record) and in the executive boards of churches.<br />
That was a very strong weapon in the 1920's and 1930's,<br />
and in the Oklahoma area any Indian 'traditional' who<br />
was an organizer was called a communist or even a 'Wobbly'.<br />
"So we have always defined our struggle not only<br />
as a struggle for land but also a struggle to retain our<br />
cultural values. Those values are communistic values. Our<br />
societies were and are communistic societies. The U.S.<br />
Government has always understood that very well. It has<br />
not branded us all these years as communists because we<br />
try to form labor unions or because we hung out with the<br />
IWW or the Communist Party, but because the U.S.<br />
Government correctly identified our political system. It did<br />
not make that a public issue because that would have been<br />
dangerous, and because it has been far more efficient to<br />
say that we are savages and primitive." (2)<br />
Not only did the Indian nations resist, but this<br />
resistance included the determined refusal of many Indians<br />
to give up their collective land. This rejection of capitalism<br />
was a hindrance for the oil corporations, the mineral interests,<br />
and the ranchers. Characteristically, the New Deal<br />
decided, in the words of the U.S. Commissioner of Indian<br />
Affairs, that: "...the Indian if given the right opportunities<br />
could do what the government had failed to do: He<br />
could arrange a place for himself and his customs in this<br />
modern America. " (3)<br />
The New Deal pacification program for the reservations<br />
was to give Indians capitalistic "democracy" and<br />
"self-government." Under the direction of the U.S.<br />
Government, bourgeois democratic (i.e. undemocratic)<br />
"tribal governments" were set up, with settleristic "tribal<br />
constitutions," paid elected officials and new layers of Indian<br />
civil servants. In other words, Indians would be given<br />
their own capitalistic reservation governments to do from<br />
within what the settler conquests had been unable to completely<br />
succeed at from the outside.<br />
This neo-colonial strategy was led by a young,<br />
liberal anthropologist, John Collier, who had been appointed<br />
U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1933 to<br />
reform the reservation system. Unlike the openly hostile<br />
and repressive pronouncements of his predecessors, Collier<br />
spoke sweetly of how much he respected Indian culture<br />
and how much Indians should be "freed" to change<br />
themselves. Honeyed words, indeed, covering up for a new<br />
assault:<br />
"In the past, the government tried to encourage<br />
economic independence and initiative by the allotment<br />
system, giving each Indian a portion of land and the right<br />
to dispose of it. As a result, of the 138,000 acres which Indians<br />
possessed in 1887 they have lost all but 47,000 acres,<br />
and the lost area includes the land that was most valuable.<br />
Further, the government sought to give the Indian the<br />
schooling of whites, teaching him to despise his old<br />
customs and habits as barbaric ...<br />
"We have proposed in opposition to such a policy<br />
to recognize and respect the Indian as he is. We think he<br />
must be so accepted before he can be assisted to become<br />
something else.. . " (4)<br />
There is the smooth talk of the welfare administrator<br />
and the colonial official in those words. Notice<br />
that the old law gave Indians only one "right" - the right<br />
99 to sell their land to the settlers. Having worked that