The indigenous peoples of North America have waged a centuries-long struggle against annihilation and for preservation of their political and cultural autonomy.

While early relations with Europeans were largely peaceful, conflicts began in the 1600s with the introduction of deadly diseases and increased land encroachment. The US colonists' war of independence in the late 1700s marked a turning point as many natives sided with the British and were punished accordingly. The 1800s were more contentious still.  The result has been nothing short of genocidal: Indigenous populations were decimated via smallpox infestations, forced migration and enclosure into marginal land reservations, and governmental and church groups' policies of assimilation into mainstream society.

Today, just under three million Americans claim native origin in over 500 tribes, or roughly 1% of the total population. And of these three million, only 1% practice native spirituality.  Most are of mixed ethnicity and Christian faith. Roughly 300 reservations are home to one-third of Native Americans. These are among the poorest and most dangerous places in the country, both in terms of violent crimes per capita and disease rates such as diabetes. As a consequence, American Indians are nearly invisible to mainstream society. Many natives blame this marginality on prejudice and racism on the part of their fellow citizens.

Two policies, dating from the mid-19th century President Andrew Jackson, consigned natives to their dismal fate and, conversely, championed the "manifest destiny" of European settlers cum US citizens to push west to the Pacific coast. The first was the Indian Removal Act of 1830, whereby the President could negotiate treaties with tribes east of the Mississippi River to move onto reservations further west. This result was the semi-coerced migration of up to 100,000 natives. The second, less formal policy was President Jackson's call to European settlers to kill off the American bison, or buffalo, which was the very basis of the Plains tribes' subsistence and culture. This bloodsport was enthusiastically embraced by many a cowboy across the Great Plains. In just a few years, less than 500 of the beasts were left standing. The "Lords of the Plains"—the Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, and others—were thus deprived of their raison d'etre.

These two governmental policies, coupled with relentless incursions by white settlers, miners, and ranchers as well as intermittent skirmishes with state and local militias, sparked the "Indian Wars" which raged throughout the 1800s. These wars resulted in tens of thousands dead and atrocities committed against non-combatants on both sides. Though native tribes won some battles, eventually the settler forces prevailed. The US federal government's solution for what to do with their defeated, yet internal, "enemy" was to shut them up within reservations, followed by a slow process of assimilating them into the dominant society. The Bureau of Indian Affairs within the US Department of Interior maintained 50 million acres of native lands "in trust" in exchange for signed peace treaties, settlement payments to tribal members, and limited native autonomy on reservation lands. In these treaties, tribes were granted similar rights as the fifty US states: to form their own government, draft and enforce laws, establish legal systems, tax citizens, manage natural resources, and regulate membership, but no powers to establish "foreign" affairs, declare war, or print money.

Native Americans' legal battle to gain US citizenship was won in 1924, largely in recognition of their military service in World War I. Around that time government policy turned against isolation onto reservations and toward assimilation into mainstream society, which continued through the 1970s. In the non-governmental sector, Christian missionaries had been working among the natives for centuries and had established churches and medical clinics on reservations. They embraced the new policy orientation of assimilation by establishing boarding schools, which removed children from their families in order to educate them into Christian and American ways. The "civilizing mission" of the boarding school program was eventually discredited and abandoned following mounting concern and outcries over civil rights violations, including punishing children for speaking native languages and physical and sexual abuse. Some of the schools have since been converted into public universities, and invite the children of natives who were forced to attend a boarding school to enroll for free.

In the late 1960s, younger native activists grew increasingly frustrated with pursuing rights and protections through the courts and legislative lobbying. They instead took a more assertive stance. The most well-known of these groups is the American Indian Movement (AIM). Founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, chapters quickly spread throughout "Indian Country." AIM pursued a wide agenda of protesting for greater rights for natives and defending their interests, developing cultural pride, denouncing police abuse, and providing security, employment assistance and educational services. By staging public spectacles such as occupying colonialist cultural and political symbols and events, they sought to communicate with their fellow citizens via the media. AIM actions subsided in mid-1970s after increased government infiltration and a shootout between some of its members and FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota turned deadly.

In December 2007, one of AIM's founding members, Russell Means, joined with other Lakota (Sioux) natives to declare secession from United States, due to repeated violations of treaties and the illegal settlement on lands in North and South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska and Wyoming by white settlers. In asserting their rights to independence, they referenced the US Constitution, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and a nonbinding UN resolution on rights of indigenous peoples. They immediately notified the Bolivian, Venezuelen and South African embassies asking for recognition. Drawing connections between their own struggle and that of the war in Iraq, Russell Means commented to the press, "The United States of America is an outlaw nation, we now know. We've understood that as a people for 155 years." They invite their fellow citizens to come and live in the newly formed "Lakota Nation," tax-free, if they renounce their US citizenship.

The response to this declaration among Lakota tribal members and their elected leaders, however, has been subdued, casting doubt on whether Means and his companions have the support necessary to carry forward with their plan. Their bold gesture, nonetheless, has re-focused attention on indigenous people's ongoing struggle for self-determination. It signifies a desire that has not yet been extinguished to survive, and even to thrive, in the 21st century. It is only the latest attempt to challenge and break with the lethal, twin policies of coerced marginalization and assimilation that have so degraded the North American tribes as distinct, dignified, and self-determining peoples.

27.02.08

Ruth Reitan
Asst. Professor of International Studies at the University of Miami, Visiting Researcher at Eurac

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