Sociology 4949: Outline--Week Four
I. Links relating to isses raised in "Spirit of Crazy Horse"
Native American Rights Fund (Notice especially the Trust Fund Mismanagement links.)
II. American Indians: Key Policy Changes
A. Indian Removal Act of 1830: Andrew Jackson
Minnesota removal of the Sioux (Lakota), including a bounty on Sioux scalps, after Indian-white war in 1862. Governor Ramsey: "
"The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state." 38 Sioux men hanged day after Christmas, 1862, in the largest mass hanging in U.S. history
B. 1849-1871: More than 400 treaties including those establishing reservations in Minnesota and Wisconsin
1. Gave up more than 1 billion acres of land and were promised retention of 138 million acres
2. Typically guaranteed education, health care, food, and sometimes a monetary annuity; retained right to fish and hunt and gather on traditional lands "as long as the rivers shall flow and the grass shall grow."
C. 1869: Boarding schools begin.
1. Similar policies in Australia ("Rabbit Proof Fence") and Canada ("Canada Apologizes...") in about the same time frame. Racial policies have an international dimension)
2. Put your children in these schools or lose your federal aid (when no other way to make a living was available on most reservations) (Boarding School Healing Project)
D. 1870s: Aggressive promotion of reservations under Indian Commissioner Walker
1. "a rigid reformatory discipline"
2. By 1884, all Indians assigned to reservations, and reservations often lumped together bands that had once been territorially discrete. e.g. the Yakima Indian reservation in central Washington. 14 separate bands placed together under the treaty of 1855.
E. 1887: Dawes General Allotment Act
1. Parcel out all reservation land to individual Indians in 160 acre parcels, with excess to be sold and the proceeds held in trust for Indians to be used for their "education and civilization" (These are the monies that a whole series of federal courts in recent years have held to be drastically mismanaged by the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, with many billions of dollars unaccounted for; the court again and again has ordered the federal government to remedy this situation and the federal government has again and again failed to do so. )
2. Allotted property initially inalienable for 25 years, but in 1906 that provision nullified... much of this land soon passed out of Indian ownership.
F. 1934: Indian Reorganization Act ended allotment
1. Almost half of Indians by then landless; some money in the Act for repurchase of lands
2. Indians as a whole had lost about 60% of the 138,000,000-acre land base they had owned at the time of allotment
3. Cultural pluralism... stop trying to suppress Indian languages and religions (although the boarding schools actually had their highest enrollment during the great depression of the 1930s, when many Indian parents simply could not support their children).
4. Indians on reservations allowed to establish adopt constitutions and establish tribal governments (mainstream U.S. government models, that usually resulted in the political victory of the so-called "stay around the fort" Indians, to adopt the terminology of the narrator in "Spirit of Crazy Horse")
G. 1953: Termination of reservations: Menominee and Klamath the first. Federal promotion of resettling Indians in urban areas.
H. 1975: Indian Self-determination Act... recognition of tribal sovereignty
III. Groups: The cultural/religious revival that we saw among the Lakota in last week's video is much more widespread, manifesting itself in powwows, Indian schools, and linguistic revival. In fact, a recent video, "We Look in All Directions: Ojibwe Oral Language," makes the argument that linguistic/cultural revival is more important to Indian communities than economic development. What do you see as the pros and cons of such a position? If you have more time, also talk about the stereotypes of American Indians in your home community. Where do those stereotypes originate, and how do they affect Indian/white relations?
V. Indians and the law
A. 1790: the federal Indian Non-Intercourse Act
1. Obligated the federal government to protect "a simple uninformed people, ill-prepared to cope with the intelligence and greed of other races" and to act "to forestall fraud" and to "prevent the improvident or improper disposition of their lands"
2. As further interpreted by the Supreme Court, "their relationship to the U.S. resembles that of a ward to his guardian." "Trust relationship"
3. Obligated U.S. Congress to oversee all treaties... all transactions without such supervision "null and void"
B. Some Key Treaty Decisions after 1970
1. 1975: Passamoquoddy Indians claimed much of northern Maine under provisions of 1790 Act. Settled in 1980, when the tribes voted 2-1 for a pact that provided 300,000 acres of land plus $81.5 million.
2. Late 1970s and early 1980s: Confrontations between whites and Indians in the state of Washington over fishing rights... Federal Judge Boldt held that treaties were valid and in 1989, agreement reached between 26 tribes and state of Washington to cooperate as governments in managing fish and game.
3. Wisconsin/Minnesota Ojibwe: Treaties of 1837, 1842, 1854 reserved rights to hunt, fish, and gather
a.1992: Federal judge upholds these rights for Fond du Lac Ojibwe
b. 1998: Supreme Court affirms these rights for Minnesota Ojibwe
4. 2001: Federal Court ruled that Department of the Interior has failed to properly supervise Indian trust accounts going all the way back to the Dawes Allotment Act... apparently lost track of many billions of dollars
VI. Rodriguez/Guzman: "Placing Race in Context"
A. Notice the contrasting conceptions of race among Puerto Rican immigrants to the mainland U.S. vs. official (Census Bureau) conceptions
1. 1980 Census: Many Puerto Ricans chose not to put themselves into the conventional race categories of black or white... not a misunderstanding.
2. "The United States may choose to divide its culture into White and Black races, but a Puerto Rican will not."
a. Greater variability, depending on physical appearance but also SES, cultural identity... a much more ethnic concept of "race"... and notice, one that can certainly vary within families.
b. Self-identification as a mixed people
B. Why this different way of viewing race?
1. Massey and Denton: special elements of the Spanish colonial system
a. Spanish history of contact with northern African peoples made them more tolerant of color differences
b. Slaves and Indians both viewed as subjects of the crown
c. Catholic church promoted conversion, baptism, attendance at integrated religious services
Instructor's note: a lot of this applies to many of the other Latin American and Central American countries as well... (for example, the distinction between Indio and Mestizo in a country like Guatemala)
2. Duany
a. Puerto Rican economy less dependent on slaves
b. Less European women immigrants in Latin America, leading to much greater rates of intermarriage
VII. Omi/Wyant: "Racial Formations"
A. Racial formation--the process by which social. economic and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories.
1. Definition of race in the U.S. a matter of political contention over time, and it has varied considerably (Role of the courts)
2. "Crucial to this formulation (for the U.S.) is the treatment of race as a central axis of social relations which cannot be subsumed or reduced to some broader category or conception."
B. Race and interaction: "One of the first things we (Americans) notice about people when we meet them (along with their sex) is their race. We utilize race to provide clues about who a person is. This fact is made painfully obvious when we encounter someone whom we cannot conveniently racially categorize... Such an encounter becomes a source of discomfort...."
C. Racialization--the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social process, or group.
1. From this perspective, race is neither an essence nor a mere illusion... "An account of racialization processes that avoids the pitfalls of US ethnic history remains to be written."
2. Preliminary observations that will have to be part of this history
a. Role of the media: e.g. Griffiths Birth of a Nation, a sympathetic account of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan
b. The struggle to define European immigrant groups as white.. part and parcel of the struggle for unions
c. The Chinese Exclusion law of 1882
VII. Video: "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow"