Native American Heritage Month: Legalities

I like the ways that books work together. 

American Indian Stereotypes in the World of Children: A Reader and Bibliography by Arlene Hirschfelder, Paulette Fairbanks Molin, Yvonne Wakim 

It was a collection of pieces, some of which dragged but were necessary, and some that were fascinating. I wish "The Thanksgiving Epidemic" by Kathy Kerner was more widely circulated.

There was a section on how the mental image we have of all Indians came from Plains culture, until eventually other tribes had to start using the feathered headdresses. Sure enough, another book gave me a photo of Puget Sound tribes wearing the headdresses for tourists, because otherwise they were not perceived as Indians. 

Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identity Around Puget Sound by Alexandra Harmon

American Indian Stereotypes is an older book, so the focus is on children wearing the headdresses on toys, without really getting into Coachella. Before the disrespect of relegating tribal members to the best, where they can become costumes, there was requiring a costume of contemporary Indians to accept them as such, with a host of additional complications on the ways in which that acceptance helped and harmed them.

Indians in the Making was interesting being relatively local. Many of the tribe and place names were familiar, and it largely focused on fishing rights, which was the most common type of case that I remember from youth. 

It also referenced McLoughlin and Ermatinger, familiar from our Oregon City explorations, but of course the Hudson Bay Company was not just on the Pacific Coast; at least one Ermatinger also came up in a recent Pulitzer Prize winner: 

Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John Witgen

That "political economy of plunder" in the title is an apt phrase, repeated often in the book and more appropriate every time. I think I may return to it after some colonialism based reading. For now, I need to bring up one other book:

We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power by Caleb Gayle

A common thread with these books is how much of importance ends up documented due to court cases.

Harmon wrote her book after working on a case about fishing rights where the argument against upholding the treaties was that the people with the claim to the fishing rights were not actually descended from the tribe who had made the original treaty. 

There was arguably some difficulty in determining that. There were many tribes around the Puget Sound (this tended to focus on the Suquamish people), and they often intermarried, not just as a coincidence but for establishing trade relationships and alliances. They would move around, and sometimes move back. So, when there were attempts to determine land allotments or annuities, sometimes they would go by where someone was staying, or whom they were related to, but it could be paternal or maternal, and it wasn't always consistent.

The legal question then becomes not just what is documented, but what is defined. 

Harmon wrote her book because as interesting as the story of the case was, there was also more to it in terms of how social ties and customs were maintained, and how that contributed to identity.

Gayle's book runs into similar issues, with Black people who were historically members of the Creek tribe (especially focusing on descendants of Creek chief Cow Tom), all of whom were expelled in 1979. 

One important part of that was that as rolls were being worked out, at one point various members were referred to as "freedmen", a term for former slaves. There were former slaves among them, but there were also people who had married in, people who were adopted, and people who had never been slaves. It was supposed to be related to how they entered the tribe, but it made the assumption based on skin tone, with at least one pair of sisters falling on either side.

Yes, the obvious point is racism, but part of the legal question is whether the tribe is viewed as a racial group or as a sovereign nation. If they are a sovereign nation, citizenship can have factors beyond blood. Maybe it would go by geographic residence, but forced relocation disrupts that.

Seeing Red has more stolen land and broken treaties, but part of that is who gets to be Indian and who gets to be white. Often that is mostly decided by political and economic expedience. We can't punish this murderer (who is an important trade partner) because the (Eastern-educated, half-white) victim is not a member of civilization and under our authority. His Indian half gets us off the hook.

There is going to be more on that next week, and then I think I might be done with this identity topic. It does seem worth pointing out that the definitions made by the white man are generally a way of getting more of one's land, and with less reimbursement.

There was not always a great possibility of resisting historically, but it certainly bears thinking about now.