|
...free self-sufficient. Unfortunately, significant barriers remain in the path to the meaningful redevelopment of our nations. Many of these barriers are obvious, such as the naturally limiting consequences of having weak and ineffective governments, underdeveloped and inadequate economies, and pervasive and debilitating social dysfunction. Other barriers, however, are less obvious and include such equally crippling maladies as continued psychological reliance upon the colonizing nation, the inability to recall the memory of the colonization process upon one's nation, and the pursuit of remedies to colonization that have the practical effect of promoting rather than alleviating colonization's impact.
Historically, Indigenous peoples within the United States have been subjected to a variety of American governmental policies designed to radically transform our societies at both the individual and collective levels.(1) As evidenced by the forced removal policy of the early nineteenth century, the land allotment policy of the late nineteenth century, and the sovereignty termination policy of the mid-twentieth century, Indigenous peoples have long been a primary focus of America's social engineering agenda. Even in the present day, America's colonizing practices have continued, more intensely in some cases due to internal as well as external developmental impetus. Against this backdrop, one of the primary purposes of this article is to re-orient policy analysis relating to Indigenous peoples away from this colonial legacy and to urge policymakers both within and outside of the Indigenous nations to envision and carry out a post-colonial methodology in the course of their policy development and research activities.
In approaching this objective, I will avoid defining what "proper" policy outcomes for any particular Indigenous nation might be. Instead, this Article sets forth a comprehensive developmental theory that could serve as the basis for any Indigenous nation's (re)development efforts. Naturally, such a "unified" theory is fraught with peril especially given that there are nearly 600 Indigenous nations within the United States. "Incorrect" outcomes could easily outnumber "correct" ones. What is most important is not the developmental "answer", but instead the investigation into the common problems afflicting these nations and a remedial model to resolve them. Ultimately, it is best left to the policymakers working with particular Indigenous nations to develop the case specific policy proposals needed to resolve particular colonization-rooted maladies.(2)
Exploring the roots of the problems affecting Indigenous societies first requires an investigation into the impact of European colonization on Indigenous lands and peoples. Colonialism is "the process by which a people exploit and/or annex the lands and resources of another people--who are usually of a different race or ethnicity--without their consent and unilaterally expand political power over them."(3) Because of the pervasiveness of the forced transformation of Indigenous societies associated with American colonialism, it is my view that colonialism is the source of all problems afflicting the Indigenous nations in the United States, and thus, solutions to its crippling aftereffects must be addressed at the deepest levels so that these societies might one day be revitalized. For an Indigenous nation that is developing a particular policy agenda, engaging in such a historical inquiry is a critical first step towards achieving a meaningful outcome. Ultimately, my argument in this article is that the preservation of Indigenous peoples in the United States as distinct
members of humankind is conditioned upon their resumption of important responsibilities currently in the hands of the colonizing American government. Achieving this devolution is simply not possible without fully appreciating the extent to which one has been transformed by and incorporated within the colonizing state.
Devolution, revitalization, or as I refer to it--"indigenization"--will not take place in a vacuum. For many years, particularly during the last decade, there has emerged a global effort to mitigate the effects of the colonialism that has long impacted Indigenous societies through the development of international law governing the rights of Indigenous peoples.(4) So successful have these efforts been that some experts now indicate that the legal protection afforded Indigenous peoples' rights has approached the level of customary international law.(5) Obviously, this is a critical development for the future of all Indigenous societies and the states that surround them. It is equally critical, then, to assess the extent to which emergent international law governing the rights of Indigenous peoples will affect indigenization efforts in the future.
The threshold purpose of this Article is to stimulate critical thinking about the future of the Indigenous nations in the United States and to promote the development of strategies by those engaged in research and policy development that will ensure their survival and redevelopment. In doing so, what follows is a reflection of my experiences as a citizen of an Indigenous nation who was raised in our territory, who later served as its chief legal officer, and who continues to be concerned about our national future. Having been engaged directly in the challenge of developing policy for an Indigenous nation--and making some mistakes in the process--I know that it is vitally important to have an understanding of the roots of the problems being addressed as well as the ways in which current remedial efforts may play out against contemporary global legal and political developments.
Part I will set forth the argument that the meaningful revitalization of the Indigenous nations depends upon engaging in a process of indigenization. Part II will identify the most significant barriers towards accomplishing that objective. Part III will assess the extent to which indigenization efforts may be assisted or undermined by the efforts to develop international treaty law governing the rights of Indigenous peoples. Part IV will put forward a few observations as to how indigenization might be achieved in practice.
I. "INDIGENIZATION": THE OBJECT OF MEANINGFUL INDIGENOUS REVITALIZATION
It seems to be a truism that the survival of Indigenous peoples within the United States depends upon the preservation of societies that are distinct from American society. This axiom is deeply rooted in the legal and political traditions of my people, the Haudenosaunee.(6) One of the first Haudenosaunee treaties entered into with Dutch colonists in the late 17th century was the Guswentah, or "Two Row Wampum," which was memorialized by a belt of wampum beads. This belt contains two parallel rows of purple wampum beads, which reflect power, against a backdrop of white wampum beads, which reflect peace. The two parallel rows of purple beads represent the normative relationship that was agreed upon by the Haudenosaunee and the colonists--two vessels, each under its own power and control would travel together through time. As described by Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred, the Guswentah symbolizes a "respectful (coequal) friendship and alliance" with "any interference with the other partner's autonomy, freedom, or powers ... expressly forbidden."(7)
Despite its clarity, the history of the Indigenous-Immigrant relationship on the North American continent has not been in accord with the requirements of the Guswentah. For much of the period following its adoption, the paths of the Indigenous and the Immigrant peoples maintained a relative parallelism. Following the American Revolutionary War, however, the United States abandoned the commitment made by its colonial predecessors not to interfere in internal Indigenous affairs. Because of its expansionist desires, the United States and its citizenry aggressively and unilaterally began to assert control over Indigenous peoples and lands. These actions constituted a gross violation of the Guswentah in a manner sufficient to permanently transform the underlying social and legal relationship between the Americans and the Haudenosaunee.
The significance of this colonial aggression can best be symbolized as a convergence of the Guswentah's two parallel rows of purple wampum. If one envisions the Guswentah as a set of parallel time lines, each purple row reflects the historic developmental paths of the Indigenous and Immigrant peoples since first contact. In the beginning, the lines are parallel, reflecting the distinctness of our two societies as we meet for the first time and agree upon how best to coexist in the same territory. But the impact of Euro-American colonization on Indigenous societies has precipitated a tremendous convergence of these historical developmental paths. Settlement, trade, disease, and warfare all took a toll in reducing the ability of the Indigenous nations to sustain a distinct existence. To be sure, the path of Immigrant development converged slightly toward the path of Indigenous development shortly after first contact, reflecting some degree of influence of Indigenous society on Immigrant society. But eventually, as the Immigrant society gained strength, the path of Immigrant development was restored to a parallel course where it has stayed pretty much for the last 200 years. The immovability of the Immigrant developmental path reflects the lack of Indigenous influence on Immigrant society.(8)
During the same period, the convergence of the Indigenous developmental path towards the Immigrant developmental path has been much more dramatic. This convergence reflects the assimilating influence of Immigrant society on Indigenous society. In extreme cases, the developmental paths of some Indigenous peoples have converged completely with the Immigrant developmental path, thus reflecting their complete assimilation into the Immigrant society and their extinction.(9) But as we conceive of the Indigenous nations that have survived to the present day, in varying degrees it can be said that the two paths have not yet completely converged. It is conceivable that for a few Indigenous nations there has been an established a new, albeit narrower, parallelism of developmental paths. But given the breadth and intensity of colonization's impact on Indigenous societies, I am skeptical that this has widely occurred. It is most likely that the overall path of Indigenous development is on a collision course with the path of Immigrant development.
Against the backdrop of this "converging" Guswentah and what it symbolizes for the future of Indigenous peoples, there are but three developmental choices that an Indigenous nation can make. First, it can choose to take no action and allow the inertia of colonialism to eventually precipitate the convergence of the Indigenous and Immigrant developmental paths. This choice would reflect the elimination of any meaningful distinction between Indigenous and Immigrant societies, or, in other words, the complete assimilation of the Indigenous people into American society. I will refer to this path as the "Path of Indigenous Extinction." Second, it can choose to take some action to halt the convergence of the developmental paths and to restore some measure of parallelism, i.e., distinctness, as a people separate and apart from the American people. I will refer to this path as the "Path of Pragmatic Indigenization." Third, it can choose to take action to not just halt the convergence of the Indigenous and Immigrant developmental paths, but to actually try to widen the gap that exists between the two paths and reestablish a new parallel relationship at some greater measure of distinctness. I will refer to this path as the "Path of Enhanced Indigenization."
Given these options, an Indigenous nation must make a threshold determination as to whether it will proceed down the Path of Extinction or pursue some variation of the Path of Indigenization. As a modern policy dilemma, suggesting that this is a "choice" sounds rather ridiculous. Why would any society deliberately seek its own extinction? Given that the Indigenous nations in the United States have been colonized by a society that has pursued this policy for over 200 years, this is far from a ridiculous question. Yet when one considers that many Indigenous people, including many of the Indigenous leadership, may not even comprehend the magnitude of colonization's impact, the prospect that Indigenous peoples may choose extinction looms large.
Colonization has not just been an external force. It has also generated an internal dimension by creating an entire class of Indigenous people who have been trained to collaborate with the colonizing nation.(10) As the United States began to overwhelm the Indigenous nations militarily and to confiscate Indigenous lands, it created a new "Indian Problem."(11) What should the United States do with these people who were once free and self-sufficient but who have now been subjugated and made unable to care for themselves? While a few American policymakers supported the continued massacre of Indigenous peoples, the policy that prevailed was the one designed to ensure the eventual extinction of Indigenous peoples through their gradual assimilation into American society.(12) Thus, by the late nineteenth century, it was widely accepted by Americans that the United States should develop policies designed to "kill the Indian and save the man."(13)
Once implemented, this policy had generated considerable "success" in the twentieth century. From the boarding and missionary schools that were established, a new class of "civilized" Indians emerged to help carry out America's Indian assimilation agenda. These people and their like-minded descendants are the seed and motivating force behind many actions now being taken to further the assimilation of their own people into American society, and they continue to the extent that they live in and influence Indigenous communities. Thus, given that Indigenous collaborators are too often the ones making official decisions on behalf of their people, it is far from ridiculous to suggest that some Indigenous nations might actually choose to erode their distinctness and promote the Path of Extinction.
To be sure, there is a multitude of forces both within American and Indigenous societies that conspire to promote the Path of Indigenous Extinction. Few but the most rabid Indian-haters consciously believe that Indigenous peoples should be made extinct. But the conceptual problem is compounded by the fact that America is an extremely diverse nation in which it is entirely possible to maintain a considerable measure of autonomy and distinctness as a separate people and still remain within the legal and political framework of American society. The Amish in Lancaster County, the Chinese in San Francisco's Chinatown, and the Hasidim in New York are all but a few examples of the distinct peoples who have maintained considerable autonomy and distinctness as peoples but who have done so as Americans living in America and not as separate sovereigns.
Of course, these peoples too, have struggled mightily against the forces of assimilation that threaten all small and distinct communities in America regardless of ethnic origin. But they have survived to the present not as citizens of their own nations surrounded by America, but as Immigrant peoples who have abandoned their primary loyalty to their mother country to come to America to live as American citizens. Americans of Immigrant descent accept this approach to diversity and so too have many of the Indigenous peoples who have sufficiently assimilated this worldview. To them, Indigenous people can survive just fine as Americans living apart from one another and scattered throughout America. But Indigenous people who accept this developmental paradigm--who I believe are the "Native American" elites who most often are the official spokespersons for Indigenous peoples--have the effect of promoting the further assimilation of Indigenous peoples into American society. In accepting this worldview, they are, in effect, promoting the Path of Indigenous Extinction.
This reality is profoundly disturbing. It seems an inescapable conclusion that the survival of Indigenous peoples is predicated upon embracing Indigenization and pursuing a distinct developmental path at some level. Given the extraordinary forces of assimilation that have been unleashed against our societies, and the observable impact that those forces have had to date, the cost of not making this choice will be nothing less than the complete absorption of Indigenous peoples into American society in the long run. In the absence of making a deliberate choice and taking concerted action to ensure that Indigenous peoples remain a distinct component of humankind, it is historical fact and not hyperbole that Indigenous peoples eventually will cease to exist.(14)
My argument here is predicated upon the debatable assumption that there is something intrinsically different, and maybe even superior, about "traditional" Indigenous culture and identity, primarily because of its connotation with community-oriented values.(15) Of course all cultures change, and even in the absence of colonialism Indigenous societies would have undergone at least some degree of cultural transformation. Interactions amongst Indigenous peoples often occurred to the same degree of intensity as that associated with Euro-American colonization. War and conquest--Indigenous-style--precipitated considerable cultural transformation and, in some cases, complete transformation through annihilation and absorption. Against this backdrop, it could be argued that Euro-American colonization of Indigenous peoples simply precipitated the development of new but value-neutral conceptions of Indigenousness that otherwise might not have materialized in its absence. If culture is fluid, then, just because a particular Indigenous people might have assimilated with their colonizers to some extent and may no longer be recognized by their ancestors from seven generations ago does not mean that they are no longer "Indigenous" peoples.(16)
The problem with this post-modern critique of what is fundamentally my essentialist argument is that it fails to account fully for the fragile state of modern Indigenous existence. Colonization has induced considerable changes in Indigenous identity and culture that cannot be denied. While originally Indigenous peoples in the United States were colonized the old fashioned way with guns and brute force, later efforts focused on the more efficient process of eliminating traditional Indigenous identity as the means of eliminating Indigenous people. Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, head of the infamous Carlisle Indian School, and others like him who spent their days "killing the Indian and saving the man" were engaging in an especially effective form of social engineering. Instead of just trying to "sand down the rough edges" of what it meant to be "Indigenous," America's social engineers embraced an atomic bomb approach that sought nothing less than its complete eradication.(17)
Against this history, it just is not good enough to define "Indigenousness" solely on the basis of some relativistic definition currently in vogue. Without some intrinsic meaning, the concept of "Indigenousness" loses all meaning. While I would not defend the position that Indigenization efforts must seek to replicate a conception of Indigenous identity that existed at the time of first contact, I would argue that there is something intrinsically unique about being "Indigenous" that must be sustained into the future. This intrinsic uniqueness is far more than being able to claim that one descended from some Indian that lived hundreds of years ago. It is possessing a bundle of attributes--such as language and culture--that must be preserved, strengthened, and regenerated in order to maintain a collective existence as a separate and distinct people.(18) The absence of such attributes is a hallmark characteristic of an assimilated and extinct people.
This consequence is the reason that it is so important to focus on maintaining some conception of Indigenous culture and identity from a policy perspective. In the absence of deliberate dedication to such an effort, history tells us that colonization-inspired assimilation and extinction of Indigenous peoples is guaranteed.(19) With such an effort, there remains some chance that Indigenous peoples will survive.
What colonization has done, then, is to ravage Indigenous societies and induce a state of affairs in which it actually has become necessary to advocate that survival should be chosen over extinction. Unfortunately, the barriers to pursuing the Path of Indigenization are considerable and have precipitated a state of affairs in which arguing for survival, rather than simply having an instinct for it, has become our only hope.
II. THE BARRIERS TO INDIGENIZATION
At the time of first contact, it was obvious who were the Indigenous peoples and who were the Immigrant peoples. In almost every conceivable way, Indigenous and Immigrant peoples were different. Indigenous and Immigrant peoples looked differently, dressed differently, and talked differently. They governed themselves differently, provided for themselves differently, and defended their way of life differently. They also worshiped differently, viewed themselves in relation to one another differently, and understood their relation to the natural world differently. So great were the differences between Indigenous and Immigrant peoples that each had a difficult time even perceiving of the other as human beings.(20)
To a definitive extent, then, these differences contributed to ensuring the separateness of the Indigenous and Immigrant peoples and made the development of such agreements like the Guswentah a necessity. Other factors, such as geography, also played an important role in keeping these societies distinct. But the bundle of attributes that contributed to the distinctness of Indigenous and Immigrant societies played a critical role in defining the separation between the two peoples.
By definition, then, Indigenous populations cannot remain distinct from the Immigrant population unless they possess certain attributes that serve to define their distinctness from the Immigrant society that surrounds them. As has been discussed, colonialism has had the effect of promoting the assimilation of Indigenous peoples into the Immigrant society and has thus eroded, either in whole or in part, many of the attributes that contribute to this distinctness.
Thus, as any Indigenous nation embarks upon a Path of Indigenization, it must confront the reality that colonization has imposed considerable barriers that prevent it from doing so. These barriers break down into two primary categories: psychological barriers and physical barriers. Psychological barriers are those that lie within the mind and spirit of Indigenous peoples. Physical barriers are those that relate to the physical and institutional framework shaping and supporting Indigenous societies. Despite the apparent independence of these barriers, they do at some level occupy the same space and are thus interdependent and mutually reinforcing. The blending and interaction of these psychological and physical barriers is what I call the barrier of "auto-colonization."
Auto-colonization is the process by which Indigenous peoples, because of their inability to possess, retain, or maintain memories of the colonization process, actually seek resolutions of their colonization-induced problems in a way that promotes the colonizing nation's agenda rather than remedies its aftereffects. Against the backdrop of the converging Guswentah, auto-colonization is thus the effect of intensifying, rather than reducing or eliminating completely, the convergence of the Indigenous and Immigrant paths of development as the result of one's own actions.
A. Psychological Barriers
To properly remedy the aftereffects of colonization, Indigenous nations must confront and redress at least two different psychological barriers: psychological dependency and colonization amnesia.
1. Psychological Dependency
A significant barrier to achieving a Path of Indigenization is the belief that Indigenous nations cannot be free from the controlling influence of the colonizing nation. While Indigenous leaders quite frequently express and defend the sovereignty of their nations, the reality is that these same leaders and many of their own people have accepted the proposition that their nation is subject to the overriding authority of the United States and dependent upon its largess. This dependence is not simply a dependence associated with receiving financial benefits from the colonial government or assistance in administering Indigenous lands and resources. It is a psychology of dependence that reflects a genuine and, in some cases, complete abandonment of the belief in inherent Indigenous freedom in favor of reliance on the colonizing state.(21)
The primary cause of this psychology of dependence for Indigenous peoples in America is the so-called "trust responsibility" that has been assumed by the United States. In the modern era, whenever there is a problem confronting an Indigenous nation, it seems that there is always an appeal by Indigenous leaders to the United States to exercise its "sacred" trust responsibility to provide assistance and protection. The origins of this doctrine, however, indicate that it is primarily a tool for promoting the weakness of...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
More articles from Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal
Reclaiming humanity: economic, social, and cultural rights as the corn..., January 01, 2002
Dealing with witnesses in war crime trials: lessons from the Yugoslave..., January 01, 2002
Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.: a new standard for the enforcement ..., January 01, 2002
From laggard to leader: Canadian lessons on a role for U.S. states in ..., January 01, 2002
Looking for additional articles?
Search our database of over 3 million articles.
Looking for more in-depth information on this industry?
Search our complete database of Industry & Market reports by text, subject, publication
name or publication date.
About Goliath
Whether you're looking for sales prospects, competitive information, company
analysis or best practices in managing your organization,
Goliath can help you meet your business needs.
Our extensive business information databases empower business
professionals with both the breadth and depth of credible,
authoritative information they need to support their business
goals. Whether it be strategic planning, sales prospecting,
company research or defining management best practices -
Goliath is your leading source for accurate information.
|
