American Indian Culture and Research Journal

”Men [and women] make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” After nearly a century-and-a-half, Marx’s statement still provides a most cogent affirmation of historicity against both a libertarian obliviousness to the burden of the past and a determinist denial of the possibility of human agency. But I begin with this statement for still another reason. While Marx’s own work lies at the origins of so much of present-day theorizing about society and history, against our theory-crazed times, when once again the logic of abstraction seems to take precedence over the evidence of the world, the statement is comfortingly common-sensical. Issues of historicity and common sense are both pertinent to the problem I take up in this discussion. The problem derives from a paradox in contemporary cultural criticism and politics. In academic circles engrossed with postmodernity / postcoloniality as conditions of the present, it is almost a matter of faith these days that nations are ”imagined,” traditions are “invented,” subjectivities are slippery (if they exist at all), and cultural identities are myths.

On 29 August 1990 the Devils Lake Sioux tribe filed suit in federal court (District of North Dakota, Southwestern Division) challenging the asserted authority of the state of North Dakota and the North Dakota Public Service Commission to regulate public utilities within the boundaries of the Fort Totten (Devils Lake Sioux) Reservation. The prologue to this case was a dispute between two electrical providers-the investor-owned Otter Tail Power Company and the consumer-owned Baker Electric Company, a North Dakota electrical cooperative-over the right to service the reservation, particularly the newly established Dakota Tribal Industries, a tribally owned manufacturing plant situated on tribally owned trust land. The tribe sought to continue to contract with otter Tail, arguing that this was within their authority and also the most economical means of obtaining electricity. The North Dakota Public Service Commission disagreed, claiming that this contra- the consumer-owned Baker Electric Company, a North Dakota contravened their right to regulate utilities within the entire state of North Dakota. On 21 August 1990 the commission, backed by a North Dakota Supreme Court ruling, issued an order directing Otter Tail to desist from supplying electricity to the reservation and to remove all equipment. The 29 August complaint was in response to this order.

PREFACE Compilations of information such as bibliographies and legislative histories on major pieces of legislation in American history are plentiful. Some legislation such as the Tax Reform Act of 1986 have legislative histories that fill many shelves of law libraries. However, with the possible exception of the Indian Claims Commission Act, this is not so in the area of federal government/American Indian relations, hereinafter referred to as ”federal Indian law.” My efforts to locate any compiled information on the Indian General Allotment or Dawes Act in the offices of Indian interest groups and government repositories in Washington, D.C., at regional offices of the National Archives, and at law schools revealed that none existed. However, such compilations are at the heart of court decisions, legislation, and government and business practices throughout the modern world; without possession of them, groups are liable to be greatly hindered in their ability to meet new social, economic, and political challenges. Because American society is increasingly technology driven, the old adage ”knowledge is power” takes on increasing significance. Those without the information contained in such compilations are without the power to operate as equals among those who have knowledge and know how to use it. Relegated to secondary status, those without power receive only what the knowledgeable choose to provide or disclose.

Environmentalists disagree with animal liberationists over how to repair the relationship between human beings and other species. While this often comes as a surprise to those not deeply involved in either movement (or those like me who identify with both movements), the fact is that the agenda and values of each group sometimes contradict those of the other. For the purposes of this paper we can summarize the basic, conflicting intuitions of environmentalists and animal liberationists as follows: Environmentalists often argue that human consumption of animals is natural, and what is natural is permissible, and therefore human consumption of animals is permissible (hereafter this will be referred to as "the naturalistic argument"). Animal liberationists often argue that pain and death are evil, and that it is incumbent upon humans to eliminate evil to the extent that they can; therefore, it is incumbent upon humans to eliminate the pain and death that accompany the consumption of animals. In arguing against the vegetarian plank of animal liberation, some environmentalists have tried to strengthen the naturalistic argument with an appeal to the example of indigenous cultures in general and Native American cultures in particular. In this paper I will examine and criticize this strategy. However, I am not concerned here with defending animal liberationism. Rather, I would like to show how these arguments reveal-unintentionally, I am sure-an unflattering view of Native Americans and are damaging to Indians of the past, present, and future. It is my contention that environmentalists who argue by appealing to American Indian cultures tend to (1) characterize Indians of the past as noncultured, (2) characterize Indians of the present as culturally contaminated or nonexistent, (3) “disappear” important concerns of contemporary Indians, and (4) trivialize American Indian cultures. This critique is not to be construed as a denial of the power of American Indian cultures as models of environmental consciousness. Nor does anything written here against this particular line of ar ment imply the falsehood of the environmentalists’ belief in the permissibility of animal consumption (the fact that an argument is unsound or dangerous does not mean that its conclusion is false).

On 11 June 1971, twenty-five years ago, U.S. government forces reoccupied Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, ending the Indian occupation of the island that had begun on 20 November 1969. The removal force consisted of ten FBI agents, along with United States marshals from the San Francisco, Sacramento, and San Diego offices, armed with handguns, M-1 thirty-caliber carbines, and shotguns. Supporting the marshals were the federal protective officers, a group that had been formed in April 1971 as a security arm of the GSA. These officers were equipped with radio transceivers, thirty-eight-caliber revolvers and ammunition, helmets, batons, and flashlights. Only fifteen Indians remained on the island to face this formidable force: six men, four women, and five children. The nineteen-month occupation came to an end. The impact of the Alcatraz occupation went beyond the individual lives and consciousnesses it helped to reshape, however. The events on Alcatraz marked the beginning of a national Indian activist movement, sometimes referred to as ”Red Power,” that kept national attention on Indian rights and grievances. The founding of Deganawidah Quetzalcoatl University (DQU) in California, the Trail of Broken Treaties, the takeovers of the BIA, the siege at Wounded Knee, the Longest Walk-all of these followed in the wake of Alcatraz.

Since the early 1990s, I have kept a running bibliography of commentary on assertions that the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and other Native American confederacies helped shape ideas of democracy in the early United States and Europe. By late 1995, the bibliography had reached 120 tightly packed pages, roughly 550 items from more than 130 books, as well as newspaper articles and book reviews numbering in the hundreds, academic journals, films, speeches, documentaries, and other sources. The bibliography was assembled with the help of friends (especially John Kahionhes Fadden and Donald Grinde), searches of libraries and bookstores, and personal involvement in various skirmishes of the debate. The number of references exploded during 1995, in large part because I began to use computer-aided searches of databases, such as LEXIS, which allows nearly instant access (using a legal-style key-word system) to most of the major newspapers in the United States, Canada, and England.

The Navajo people perceive the world as an interconnected whole. This applies to religion, concepts of health, and their view of themselves in relation to the world. In effect, a disruption in one part of their lives creates a disharmony in the overall system. This disruption not only creates stress on the individual but threatens the Navajo fabric of life. In the late 1940s and 1950s the Navajo fabric of life was disturbed by the ill effects of uranium mining. With the rise of the Cold War, the United States government opened uranium mines in the Four Corners area of the Navajo Nation and remained the sole purchaser of uranium for defense purposes from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. During this period, the government offered higher paying jobs to local Navajo people in return for uranium. The Navajo were Unaware of the dangers associated with uranium mining and radon daughters. In contrast, the federal government was hardIy naive about the situation when it allowed thousands of Navajo people to face hazards to their health and their lives in the pursuit of the rich resources underneath reservation lands. The hazardous conditions in the mines eventually led to lung cancer and respiratory diseases that cause severe disability or death.