Edward Charles Valandra - Not Without Our Consent: Lakota Resistance to Termination, 1950-59

Not Without Our Consent

Not Without Our Consent

Lakota Resistance to Termination, 195059

EDWARD CHARLES VALANDRA

Foreword by Vine Deloria Jr.

UNIVERSIT Y OF ILLINOIS PRESS

Urbana and Chicago

2006 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

C 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Valandra, Edward Charles, 1955

Not without our consent : Lakota resistance to termination, 195059
Edward Charles Valandra ; foreword by Vine Deloria, Jr.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-252-02944-5 (Cloth : alk. paper)

1. Rosebud Sioux TribeLegal status, laws, etc.

2. Teton IndiansLegal status, laws, etc.

3. Indians of North AmericaLegal status, laws, etc.South Dakota.

4. Indian termination policySouth DakotaHistory20th century.
I. Title.

KF8228.R67A3 2006

342.7308'72dc22 2003028179

What is now needed on this reservation are dedicated men and women on the council who have the general welfare of the people at heart. We need council members who will study their constitution and by-laws and the history of the tribe and use this knowledge for the betterment of the people and not against them. Most important, we need leaders who will work towards the restoration of the original right the tribe had as a sovereign nation.

Frank D. Ducheneaux (19031976)

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe

Lakota Journal

Contents

.

Tables

Foreword

VINE DELORIA JR.

World War Two brought frightening times for American Indians. Wartime budgets drastically reduced domestic spending to support war expenditures and the Bureau of Indian Affairs suffered proportionately. A stirring of the civil rights conscience was felt when it was observed that the German prisoners of war were treated better than were African Americans in the South. German concentration camps became the embarrassment of the civilized world, and South African apartheid and American Indian reservations were considered less extreme instances of negative racial policies. Two waves of reform originated in the immediate postwar world: a desire to reduce the size of government and a determination to resolve racial problems in the United States.

The Hoover Commission studied the size of the federal government and recommended a laundry list of suggestions for reform and reduction. But the commission went far beyond its mandate by offering gratuitous advice regarding Indians. Failing to understand the centuries-old relationship between Indians and the national government, the commission suggested that the states could provide many of the services that flowed from the federal relationship. Such a move would place rural Indian communities in great jeopardy because the social programs that the Indians needed were virtually nonexistent in the various states. The fast-escalating movement toward African Americans receiving full citizenship rights threatened to swallow Indians in a society determined to assimilate them. Indians appeared to be old fashioned and reactionary when they expressed a desire to live apart from the rest of American society in their rural communities.

The authorization of the Indian Claims Commission in 1946 gave tribes permission to sue the United States for loss of lands and for unfair compensation for lands lost in treaties and agreements. That tribes could receive multimillion dollar settlements as a result of their claims litigation irritated some congressional representatives, and they sought to be rid of the Indian issue as quickly as possible. Some Indians, returning from war and having seen the world outside the reservations, chafed at the idea of keeping themselves and their property in the hands of ignorant or callous federal bureaucrats.

In 1950 a massive study was done of the state of Indian affairs and pressure began to build for the government to get out of the Indian business. Dillon Myer, the Indian commissioner and former superintendent of Japanese internment camps, sent out a letter requiring Indian agents on the reservation to prepare the tribes for a termination of their federal benefits and protections. In 1953 a congressional resolution declared that Indians would be freed from the federal government as quickly as possible. With a Republican majority in control of Congress, it was not long before hearings were held to determine which tribes could be separated from their federal relationship and how quickly.

With little forethought, bills to terminate the Klamath, Menominee, Ute, Grand Ronde, Siletz, and Texas tribes were presented to the joint committee, which promptly approved the bills and sent them to the floor of Congress for passage. The National Congress of American Indians held emergency meetings to slow the movement for termination, and tribes pressured their congressional representatives to protect them from the actions of the committee. The Osage of Oklahoma, certain to be placed on the list of most capable tribes, chartered an airplane and hastened to Washington to ensure that their delegation exempted them from the tidal wave of terminal legislation then coming from the committee.

A number of bills did become law, and by the late 1950s the government was cutting loose tribes that had been nearly self-supporting with minimal government aid. Even more radical schemes were proposed when the movement began to lag under protests from the Indians. Glen Emmons, the commissioner of Indian affairs, suggested that all the Indian land be appraised and purchased by the United States and the funds distributed on a per-capita basis to all federally enrolled Indians. Everyone ridiculed the idea. Graham Holmes, the superintendent of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, was driving into Washington, D.C., with an old councilman and suggested that the councilman propose the plan to the commissioner. The councilman looked at Graham for a minute and then said: Why, hed think I was crazy to suggest something like that!!!

For the most part, the Sioux tribes of North and South Dakota escaped the immediate threat against their rights, but it was not simply the formal severing of ties that worried them. A program, which was called Relocation, to move Indians from reservations to cities siphoned off some of the best and most substantial families who tried to enter the American economic mainstream. Local institutions and traditional customs were severely damaged by this program, which sought to terminate the tribe family by family. For most people, relocation did not work, and it was not until a decade later, with the development of the poverty programs, that progress was made in stabilizing and educating rural families and enrolling younger people in colleges or vocational schools. Finally, with the development of tribal colleges, reservations began to become the homelands that they were intended to be. This book is the story of one Peoplethe Lakota Nationduring those perilous times.

Abbreviations