Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
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September 9, 1995
[unpublished]
Corruption
in “Indian Country” are making the news, with the
indictment of Chip Wadena and his cohorts.
But fraud, embezzlement, stealing has been business as usual on
the U.S.
Indian Reservations since the United States began.
The stage was set in the U.S. Constitution with the clause,
“Indians not taxed,” meaning that those defined as Indians would have
neither
land nor political representation.
The
pattern in “Indian Affairs” has been fraudulent dealings,
investigations including Congressional hearings, hand-wringing in the
media,
and surface restructuring of the political administration of Indians,
which set
the stage for a new round of corruption.
The Indian Treaties were understood to be “shameful documents”
even at
the time that they were signed; the halfbreed scrip issued from the
Treaties
was the subject of years of Congressional investigations; the
crookedness
emanating from the General Allotment Act has not yet been fully put to
rest
(for example, the White Earth Land Settlement Act which contributed to
Chip
Wadena’s troubles); the Meriam Report’s documentation of abysmal living
conditions on the Reservations which fueled the cries for “reform”
which led to
the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act; in 1977 the Senate American Indian
Policy
Review Commission reported that Indians’ position was “little better
than that
which he enjoyed in 1928 when the Meriam Report was issued.”
The
most recent round of Indian corruption is leading once
again to calls for “reform;” this time the focus is on re-writing the
1934
I.R.A. Constitutions. This proposed
solution will simply lead to more corruption, and yet another round of
investigations twenty years from now; it will not break the pattern of
restructuring corrupt Indian Affairs once each generation.
Rewriting the “Indian Constitutions” does
not touch the foundations of the problems, and as long as the
policy-makers
deny their history, they cannot hope to escape from the vicious cycle
of
corruption, restructuring and corruption in which they are caught.
John
Collier was Commissioner of Indian Affairs when the
present Indian Reorganization Act constitutions were written and put in
place
on most of the reservations. Although
the I.R.A. was promoted as providing democracy for Indians, Collier
wrote that
“Over Indian matters ... Congress still holds plenary power.” Indian Commissioner Ross Swimmer confirmed
this in a Minneapolis press conference on July 12, 1988, telling a
group of
concerned Indians, “I’m telling you, you don’t have a
government!”
As
long as the phrase “Indians not taxed” remains in the U.S.
Constitution, the people who are identified as Indians are caught in a
powerless position: without representation in mainstream U.S.
democracy, and
subject to the administrative “sovereignty” ascribed to the U.S.
Secretary of
Interior in Indian Affairs.
The
root of the problem is that “Indian” is an identity
created and controlled by the European immigrants to this continent. Indian is a European word, and the U.S.
claims both the power to define Indians in a wide range of ad hoc
circumstances, and the power to terminate Indians “with a stroke of the
pen.” The crux of the entire mess which
Indian Affairs has always been, is that Indian is an artificial
identity, and
the vast majority of people who have been defined into the
Euro-American Indian
identity are not the aboriginal people who are autochthonous to this
continent.
The
United States policy-makers do not dare amend the U.S.
Constitution to eliminate the “Indians not taxed” clause, nor to deal
honestly
with the history which has led them to the current round of corruption
and
cries for reform; not one man nor woman among them has the courage to
confront
the genocide and blood-soaked land upon which the U.S.A. is founded. They do not want to acknowledge or deal with
the realities of their national past, to see the linear-thinking
structure
which generates endless cycles of corruption, debate, reform and
corruption. It is far more politically
expedient to focus
their attention away from history and onto the present, patching
together
another quick fix in the same old pattern, and pretending it is “new.”
Writing
and re-writing Indian Constitutions will not fix the
problem, because what the media are portraying as an “Indian problem”
is really
a white man’s problem—inextricably connected to the violence in the
streets,
the decay of the social and environmental infrastructure, to the sham
democracy
presented to far more Americans than merely Indians with 1934 I.R.A.
Constitutions. I would like to see the
white men in the power structure take responsibility for what they are
doing,
and where they have come from, and honestly speak to what their
ancestors have
done, and why those ancestors ran away from their plundered homelands. Instead of barrelling into the next century
like a runaway bulldozer, they need to turn around and take a look at
where
they came from; they need to take responsibility for the species that
they have
sent into extinction, and the peoples and languages they have destroyed. Without a clear view of the past, corruption
and fraud will continue. A criminal
will change his name to evade responsibility for the crimes he has
committed in
the past. Western European man has also
changed his identity—here, they call themselves Americans, and some
even call
themselves Indians.
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