WOUNDED KNEE has been the catalyst,” says Donald White, an Oneida Indian
who is a student at the University of Illinois. “We have been apathetic
for too many years. The people out there are willing to die for us.
Maybe it's our time to do something too.” Many other Indians,
particularly the young, echo his sentiments.Although the American Indian has been the subject of insatiable
curiosity and unrelieved romanticization by whites, almost 500 years of
losing battles have made him nearly invisible. But recently the Indian
has begun to emerge from behind the misty stereotype of smoke signals,
tepees and Tonto. A chorus of angry voices has been making many
demands: they call for everything from control of reservation lands and
mineral rights to restoration of ancient tribal customs and the power
to specify curriculums in Indian grade schools. The move to
self-determination is characterized in the new cry: “Indian
identification of Indian problems!”In a sense, the basic Indian demand is to undo history.Throughout the 19th century, the westward expansion of white America,
protected and assisted by the U.S. Cavalry, forced the Indian nations
onto smaller and smaller reservations, usually far from their ancestral
lands. The Indian population fell from about 1,150,000 at the time of
Columbus to an alltime low of 250,000 by 1900. U.S. citizenship rights
were withheld from the Indians until 1924. Today, the Indian population
is rising fast—it is now 792,000. In the past two decades, the life
expectancy of the Indian has jumped from 44 years to 63.5 years. But
that is still seven years short of the national average. The rates of
both alcoholism and suicide among Indians, including many teenagers,
are almost twice the national norm. On the reservation, family income
averages $1,500, and off it about $3,000. Nationwide, the unemployment
figure hovers around 40%.There are exceptions to this dismal catalogue. The Agua Caliente band,
which owns most of the real estate in Palm Springs, Calif., is wealthy
indeed. The Jicarilla Apaches in northern New Mexico, blessed with rich
oil and gas deposits on their lands, have made investments in movie
productions and are developing hunting and tourist facilities.A more typical situation is that of the Osage Sioux. Less than 100 years
ago, they owned all of what is now Osage County, Okla., a choice,
oil-soaked region. Over the years, through legal maneuvering and
corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, non-Indians managed to get
onto the tribal rolls and claim land rights. Today many full-blooded
Osages are frozen out of oil profits and tribal affairs.During its 149 years of existence, the BIA has been the subject of scorn
from Indians and whites alike. As the protector of Indian resources and
lands, the BIA wields enormous power over almost every aspect of
reservation life. It runs Indian schools, from which most students drop
out by the sixth grade. It is responsible for many housekeeping chores
on the reservations: building and maintaining roads, overseeing
construction of irrigation projects and providing welfare assistance.
But the BIA does not provide services to the nearly 350,000 Indians
who live off reservations. With 13,964 employees —56% of them
Indians—the bureau is a lumbering monster, hopelessly inefficient. Yet
it is the only constant link for Indians to federal resources and
assistance.
