Unlikely alliances: Treaty conflicts and environmental cooperation between native american and rural white communities

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Volumn 29, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 21-43

  Grossman, Zoltán ^a  

^a EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33845975963     PISSN: 01616463     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17953/aicr.29.4.9024g3927h514667     Document Type: Review

References (83)

1. This article is excerpted from the introduction to my doctoral dissertation, under the same title, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (2002), completed with the help of fellowships from the Udall Foundation and U. W. Foundation. Related links are at http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/ diss.html.
2. From 1997 to 2002 I interviewed more than eighty members of these Native/non-Native alliances. These individuals serve as living "primary documents," who can speak in their own words about their personal and community transformations. Through the interviews I found common patterns of the development of Native-rural white alliances, as well as differences among the case studies. I asked interviewees a series of questions in three categories. First, how and why did Native and non-Native communities evolve from confrontation to cooperation? What motivated Native peoples and white fishermen, farmers, or ranchers to work together? How did the level of interethnic cooperation affect the success of the alliance? Did cooperation last beyond the environmental victory or defeat, and did it extend beyond environmental issues? Second, would the interethnic cooperation have been possible without the initial conflict? Did the assertion of Native sovereignty weaken or facilitate such alliances? Were attempts made to prevent or weaken interethnic cooperation or to mask Native participation? Did the alliances actually lessen racial divisions or merely gloss over cultural and socioeconomic differences? Third, how did cultural perceptions of the value of a place affect the outcome? Did a common veneration of a specific natural resource or place help ease the way for an alliance? Were members of the other community viewed as "outsiders" who violate social boundaries or as "insiders" in a common, territorially defined "home"?
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29. This tendency has also been noticeable when the gap remains wide between tribes and white farmers. In the drought-stricken Klamath Basin of southwestern Oregon, for example, the Klamath tribes, commercial fishing groups, and environmental groups called for the restoration of fish runs in the early 2000s but met fierce resistance from ranchers and farmers. The regional tribe-to-group alliance did not affect the attitudes of white agricultural communities, whose leadership was hostile to both sovereignty and environmental policies.
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55. Quoted in Bob Secter, "Indians, Ranchers Oppose Black Hills Weapons Tests," Los Angeles Times, 30 August 1987.
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67. Tom Maulson, Wa-Swa-Gon Treaty Association, chairman of Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, interview by author, 12 July 1997.
68. Bob Schmitz, Wolf River Watershed Alliance, interview by author, White Lake, WI, 13 June 1997.
69. Zoltán Grossman, "Let's Not Create Evilness for This River: Interethnic Environmental Alliances of Native Americans and Rural Whites in Northern Wisconsin," in Forging Radical Alliances across Difference: Coalition Politics for the New Millennium, ed. Jill M. Bystydzienski and Steven P. Schacht (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 146-59.
70. Al Gedicks, Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Companies (Boston: South End Press, 2001), 127-57.
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72. See Midwest Treaty Network, "Victory on the Crandon Mine," October 2003, www.alphacdc.com/treaty/victory.html (accessed 7 October 2005); and Wolf River Protection Fund, 9 August 2004, www.wolfriverprotectionfund.org.
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76. Zoltán Grossman, "Rich Tribes, Rich Jews: Comparing the New Anti-Indianism to Historic Anti-Semitism," PowerPoint presentation at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Denver, 9 April 2005.
77. See Charles Taylor, Mulliculturalism: The Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
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79. David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 88.
80. Ibid., 240.
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82. Felix S. Cohen, "The Erosion of Indian Rights, 1950-1953," Yale Law Journal 62 (1953): 348.
83. Ron Seely, "State Tribes' Influence Had Broadened over Years," Wisconsin State Journal, 2 November 2003.