"They are ancestral homelands": Race, place, and politics in cold war native America, 1945-1961

Journal of American History

Volumn 92, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 1300-1326

  Rosier, Paul C ^a  

^a VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 37849188149     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/4485893     Document Type: Review

References (158)

1. New York Times, Oct. 30, 1947, p. 14;
2. Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line; American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 268;
3. New York Times, Feb. 16, 1958, p. 22.
4. On "integration," see Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (Berkeley, 2003), 24-29, 240-43;
5. Arthur Watkins, "Termination of Federal Supervision: The Removal of Restrictions over Indian Property and Person," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 311 (May 1957), 55.
6. On Arthur Watkins's role in the termination movement, see R. Warren Metcalf, Termination's Legacy: The Discarded Indians of Utah (Lincoln, 2002), 21-48, 234-43.
7. On HCR 108, see "House Concurrent Resolution 108," Aug. 1, 1953, in Documents of United States Indian Policy, ed. Francis Paul Prucha (Lincoln, 2000), 234;
8. Donald L. Fixico, Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960 (Albuquerque, 1986), 91-102;
9. Kenneth R. Philp, Termination Revisited (Lincoln, 2000), 168-75;
10. and Larry W. Burt, Tribalism in Crisis: Federal Indian Policy, 1953-1961 (Albuquerque, 1982), 19-47.
11. Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, 2000), 250.
12. See also Mary L. Dudziak, "Brown as a Cold War Case" Journal of American History, 90 (June 2004), 32-42.
13. On the notion of "social containment," see A. Yvette Huginnie, "Containment and Emancipation: Race, Class, and Gender in the Cold War West," in The Cold War American West, 1945-1989, ed. Kevin Fernlund (Albuquerque, 1998), 51-70.
14. On the intersection of postwar domestic race policy and international affairs, see Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, Mass., 2004);
15. Penny M. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge, Mass., 2004);
16. Brenda Gayle Plummer, ed., Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988 (Chapel Hill, 2003);
17. and Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca, 1997).
18. On the intersection of Native American history and Cold War popular culture, see Philip J. DeLoria, Playing Indian (New Haven, 1998), 128-53;
19. and Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman, 1998), 347-78.
20. Michel Foucault, "The Order of Discourse," in The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg (Boston, 1990), 1155;
21. Von Eschen, Race against Empire, 4.
22. Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala Sa), "Editorial Comment," in Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era, ed. Frederick E. Hoxie (Boston, 2001), 129;
23. "Address by Robert Yellowtail in Defense of the Rights of the Crow Indians, and Indians Generally, before the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, September 9, 1919," Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era ibid., 136, 137.
24. "Inaugural Address of Harry S. Truman," Jan. 20, 1949, in The Avalon Project at Yale Law School 〈http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/ presiden/inaug/truman.htm〉 (Jan. 20, 2006).
25. borrow here from Raymond Williams's idea of "keywords." See Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York, 1985).
26. Marc S. Gallicchio, The African American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895-1945 (Chapel Hill, 2000), 2;
27. "Address by Robert Yellowtail in Defense of the Rights of the Crow Indians," 135.
28. See also U.S. Department of State, Point Four: Cooperative Programs for Aid in the Development of Economically Underdeveloped Areas (Washington, 1949).
29. See Harold Edward Fey and D'Arcy McNickle, Indians and Other Americans: Two Ways of Life Meet (New York, 1959), 197-200. The Association on American Indian Affairs began promoting a "Point IV program for American Indians" in late 1955. See box 151, series 2, Subject Files, subseries 1, General, Archives of the Association on American Indian Affairs (Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.).
30. On Point Four funding for Native Americans, see Dorothy R. Parker, Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D'Arcy McNickle (Lincoln, 1992), 175-76;
31. Thomas W. Cowger, The National Congress of American Indians: The Founding Years (Lincoln, 1999), 108-9, 117-18;
32. and Daniel Cobb, Before Red Power: The Politics of Tribal Self-determination, 1960-1968 (Lawrence, forthcoming).
33. On the 1825 use of the term "reservation," see "Treaty of Prairie du Chien, August 19, 1825," in Documents of United States Indian Policy, ed. Prucha, 42-43.
34. "Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs," Nov. 27, 1850, Documents of United States Indian Policy ibid., 81-82;
35. "Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Nov. 27, 1851," Documents of United States Indian Policy ibid., 86.
36. The New York World quoted in Philip M. Katz, From Appomattox to Montmartre: Americans and the Paris Commune (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 132;
37. Cherokee politicians quoted in Alexandra Harmon, "American Indians and Land Monopolies in the Gilded Age," Journal of American History, 90 (June 2003), 123;
38. "Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs," Sept. 28, 1886, in Documents of United States Indian Policy, ed. Prucha, 169;
39. "Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs," Oct. 1, 1889, Documents of United States Indian Policy ibid., 176.
40. On this period, see Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920 (Lincoln, 1986), 115-45.
41. On white Americans' opposition to tribal organization, see Robert A. Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest (New York, 1990), 271-80;
42. Stephen Cornell, The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence (New York, 1988), 53-59, 112.
43. For discussions of Red Indians as Communist Reds, see Katz, From Appomattox to Montmartre, 131-36, 188;
44. Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (New York, 1985), 462-63, 480-85;
45. and Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York, 1982), 33-34.
46. Lawrence C. Kelly, The Assault on Assimilation: John Collier and the Origins of Indian Policy Reform (Albuquerque, 1983), 187. Estimates of the number of Native Americans who fought in the war range from 10,000 to 15,000. On this debate,
47. see Thomas A. Britten, American Indians in World War 1: At Home and at War (Albuquerque, 1997), 59-60.
48. Congress passed the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act in part because of this service. See Thomas A. Britten, American Indians in World War 1: At Home and at War ibid., 178-81.
49. Flora Warren Seymour, "Trying It on the Indian," 1934, in Native Americans: Opposing Viewpoints, ed. William Dudley (San Diego, 1998), 207.
50. For Joseph Bruner's comments, see Kenneth R. Philp, John Collier's Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920-1954 (Tucson, 1977), 172.
51. For John Collier's statement, see "Minutes of the Plains Congress, Rapid City Indian School, Rapid City, South Dakota, March 2-5, 1934," p. 18, file 4894-1934-066, pt. 2-AA, box 3, Records Concerning the Wheeler-Howard Act, 1933-1937, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, RG 75 (National Archives, Washington, D.C.).
52. On the American Indian Federation and the activities of Bruner and Alice Lee Jemison, see Kenneth William Townsend, World War II and the American Indian (Albuquerque, 2000), 45-60;
53. and Jere' Bishop Franco, Crossing the Pond: The Native American Effort in World War II (Denton, 1999), 1-33.
54. Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), 2;
55. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Indian Affairs, Relief of Needy Indians, 76 Cong., 3 sess. (Washington, 1940), 13;
56. U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee of the Committee on Indian Affairs, Investigate Indian Affairs, pt. 3, 78 Cong., 2 sess. (Washington, 1944), 400.
57. Other Native Americans, including the Meskwaki, Comanche, and Cherokee, worked in Signal Corps detachments during the war. Although the Navajo code talkers' service remained classified until 1968, their important role during the war helped galvanize Navajos intent on securing the benefits of such service. New York Times, Aug. 30, 1942, p. E7;
58. Oswald Villard, "Wardship and the Indian," Christian Century, March 29, 1944, pp. 397, 398;
59. O. K. Armstrong, "Set the American Indians Free!," Reader's Digest, 47 (Aug. 1945), 49, 47.
60. On veterans' views on postwar adjustments to reservation life, see "The Problem of the Returned Indian Veterans," NCAI Newsletter (Oct. 1947), 5-7, American Indian Periodicals (Firestone Library, Princeton University).
61. Cornell, Return of the Native, 121;
62. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, 1992), 271, 391.
63. On the protean notion of hybridity, see Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York, 1994), 4.
64. Villard, "Wardship and the Indian," 397.
65. Judge N. B. Johnson to Hon. Styles Bridges, Chairman, Senate Appropriations Committee, n.d., NCAI Newsletter (Oct. 1947),
66. American Indian Periodicals; "Statement of Zuni Indian Veterans of World War II and the Korean Conflict," Feb. 17, 1954,
67. folder "Emergency Conference Bulletin," box 257, Records of the National Congress of American Indians (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Suitland, Md.).
68. "Are Indians Getting a Square Deal?," radio broadcast, Aug. 21, 1947,
69. NCAI Newsletter (Oct. 1947), 5,
70. American Indian Periodicals; "Lilly J. Neil to Mr. Beatty, General Director of Indian Education," Sept. 8, 1947, in
71. "For Our Navajo People": Dine Letters, Speeches, and Petitions, 1900-1960, ed. Peter Iverson (Albuquerque, 2002), 103. My thanks to Peter Iverson for pointing me to this volume and letter. Native Americans could not vote in New Mexico and Arizona until 1948.
72. Los Angeles Examiner, Nov. 25, 1947,
73. quoted in Bernstein, American Indians and World War II, 153.
74. For Harry S. Truman's statement, see Bernstein, American Indians and World War II, 155.
75. New York Times, Dec. 10, 1947, p. 64;
76. New York Times ibid., Oct. 30, 1947, p. 14;
77. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights, 250; "Statement of Secretary of the Interior J. A. Krug before the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs of the House Public Lands Committee, April 18, 1949," folder "Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation, 1947-1948," box 313, Archives of the Association on American Indian Affairs. In 1950 Congress passed the Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act, allocating $89,946,240 for infrastructure projects. Navajo-Hopi Rehabilitation Act, Pub. L. No. 81-474, 64 Stat. 44 (1950).
78. For details, see Peter Iverson, The Navajo Nation (Westport, 1981), 56-61.
79. Bernstein, American Indians and World War II, 156;
80. New York Times, Nov. 30, 1947, p. 21;
81. "Resolution of the Navajo Tribal Council: Advisory Committee to Draft Mining Regulations," March 22, 1951 (in Paul C. Rosier's possession). My thanks to William Chenoweth, research associate for the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, for sending me this document. The Spokane and Laguna Pueblo also contributed uranium to national defense programs. On Navajo mining and its devastating health consequences,
82. see Peter H. Eichstadt, If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans (Santa Fe, 1994), 33-79.
83. Fixico, Termination and Relocation, 13;
84. New York Times, May 20, 1949, p. 6.
85. "Listing and Description of Tasks Remaining to be Done to Effect Complete Withdrawal of Bureau Services by Termination or Transfer to Other Auspices," 1952, pp. 16-17, in "Withdrawal Programming, Schedule C, Blackfeet Agency," file 17091-1952-BF-077 part I, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs;
86. Felix S. Cohen, "Indian Self-Government," 1949, in The Legal Conscience: Selected Papers of Felix S. Cohen, ed. Lucy Kramer Cohen (New Haven, 1960), 313-14.
87. On Dillon Myer's regime at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), see Felix S. Cohen, "The Erosion of Indian Rights, 1950-1953: A Case Study in Bureaucracy," Yale Law Journal, 62 (Feb. 1953), 348-90;
88. and Richard Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon Myer and American Racism (Berkeley, 1987), 163-248.
89. U.S. Congress, Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, "Statement by George Pambrun," Interior Department Appropriations for 1952: Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, 82 Cong., 1 sess., pt. 1, 1951, pp. 1228-29;
90. Walter Wetzel to Secretary of the Interior, May 1, 1952, file 1141-1946-Blackfeet-068 pt. 2, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. On the conflict between Blackfeet politicians and the BIA, see Paul C. Rosier, Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1912-1954 (Lincoln, 2001), 230-64.
91. Horatio Greenough, c. 1850, quoted in Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (New York, 1980), 20;
92. Watkins, "Termination of Federal Supervision," 55.
93. For an analysis of the statue, see Drinnon, Facing West, 119-21.
94. On the rise and literal fall of The Rescue, see Vivien Green Fryd, Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815-1860 (New Haven, 1992), 94-105.
95. Joseph Garry, "A Declaration of Indian Rights," folder "Emergency Conference Bulletin," 1954, box 257, Records of the National Congress of American Indians. Emphasis added.
96. Joseph Garry, "Address by George Abbot, counsel for the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs," Feb. 28, 1954, Emergency Conference Bulletin ibid.
97. On the Emergency Conference, see Cowger, National Congress of American Indians, 114-16.
98. On Joseph Garry's life and times, see John Fahey, Saving the Reservation: Joe Garry and the Battle to Be Indian (Seattle, 2001).
99. "Statement of the Council of the Pueblo of Isleta," Jan. 27, 1954, folder "Emergency Conference Bulletin," box 257, Records of the National Congress of American Indians;
100. "What Does Termination of Federal Trusteeship Mean to the Indian Peoples?," n.d., p. 2, folder "General Materials," ibid.
101. Jim Hayes to Lawrence Lindley, general secretary, Indian Rights Association, [March 1954] folder "Hayes Correspondence," box 257, Records of the National Congress of American Indians.
102. Hilda Cragun to Charles D. Skippon, Jan. 22, 1958, folder "Subversive Organizations" Attorney Generals List, 1957-1958, 1960, box 166, Records of the National Congress of American Indians. Emphasis added.
103. M.Muller-Fricken et al. to National Congress of American Indians, Dec. 12, 1957, Attorney Generals List ibid.;
104. Eike-M. Eckhardt et al. to the Congress of the United States of America, Dec. 21, 1957, Attorney Generals List ibid, Skippon forwarded Cragun's letter and the German group's letter to the Bureau of German Affairs.
105. See Department of State Reference Slip, Jan. 28, 1958, Eike-M. Eckhardt et al. Attorney Generals List ibid.
106. Charles Coe to National Congress of American Indians, n.d., folder "Subversive Organizations" Attorney General's List, 1957-1958, 1960, box 166, Records of the National Congress of American Indians;
107. Helen Peterson to Coe, Nov. 19, 1957, Attorney General's List ibid.;
108. Peterson to Letitia Shankle, Nov. 19, 1957, Attorney General's List ibid. Emphasis added.
109. On the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Cold War, see Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights, 29, 67;
110. Von Eschen, Race against Empire, 107-18;
111. and Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990 (Jackson, 1991), 24, 28, 30, 58.
112. "Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Colville Business Council," Nov. 14, 1947, file 8026-1946-Colville-054, pt. 1, box 12, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs;
113. Lucy Seymour Swan to Secretary of the Interior, Feb. 23, 1953, Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Colville Business Council ibid.;
114. "Minutes of Meeting, Nespelem," March 21, 1953, Lucy Seymour Swan, Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Colville Business Council ibid.;
115. "Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Colville Business Council," Aug. 21, 1950, Lucy Seymour Swan, Minutes of the Special Meeting of the Colville Business Council ibid.;
116. Frank Moore, "Behind the Buckskin Curtain, Part 2," Republic Independent, April 25, 1957, file 14300-1948-Colville-054, box 18, ibid.;
117. "Frank George talk to the Colville Business Council," Aug. 14, 1953, file 6555-1952-Colville-053, box 9, Frank Moore, Republic Independent ibid.;
118. "Minutes of the Regular Meeting of the Colville Business Council," Jan. 11, 1951, file 8026-1946-Colville-054, pt. 2, box 12, Frank Moore, Republic Independent ibid.
119. "Indians Working towards Independent Status," Republic Independent, [c. 1957], file 14300-1948-Colville-054, box 18, ibid.;
120. Harmon, "American Indians and Land Monopolies in the Gilded Age," 109.
121. For statistics on termination, see Fixico, Termination and Relocation, 183.
122. For those on relocation, see Colin Galloway, ed., First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History (Boston, 2004), 409. Between 1950 and 1970, the percentage of native Americans living in cities rose from 13.4 % to 44 %.
123. See First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, (2004), 409, ibid.
124. See also Fixico, Termination and Relocation, 134-57;
125. and Cornell, Return of the Native, 130-37.
126. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, Public Works Appropriations for 1958, 85 Cong., 1 sess., 1957, pp. 1036, 1049-50.
127. On the Kinzua Dam controversy, see Joy A. Bilharz, The Allegany Senecas and Kinzua Dam: Forced Relocation through Two Generations (Lincoln, 1998) 24-63;
128. Paul C. Rosier, "Dam-Building and Treaty-Breaking: The Kinzua Dam Controversy, 1936-1958," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 119 (Oct. 1995), 345-68;
129. and Laurence Hauptman, The Iroquois Struggle for Survival: World War II to Red Power (Syracuse, 1986), 105-22.
130. SPA v. Tuscarora Indian Nation, 80 S. Ct. 543 (1960),
131. in "Tuscarora's Lose Fight for Reservation," Race of Sorrows, 5 (April 1960), 4, American Indian Periodicals.
132. Patty Loew, "Hidden Transcripts in the Chippewa Treaty Rights Struggle," American Indian Quarterly, 21 (Fall 1997), 717;
133. Clarence Wesley, "Guest Editorial," AmerIndian, 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1957), 2.
134. Sol Tax, "To All American Indians," folder "American Indian Chicago Conference 'Charter Convention,'" box 148, Records of the National Congress of American Indians;
135. Progress Report No. 4, Sol Tax, "To All American Indians," American Indian Chicago Conference 'Charter Convention,'ibid.
136. On the American Indian Chicago Conference, see James B. LaGrand, Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-1975 (Urbana, 2002), 168-85;
137. Parker, Singing an Indian Song, 187-93;
138. and Cowger, National Congress of American Indians, 133-40.
139. Progress Report No. 4; folder "American Indian Chicago Conference 'Charter Convention,'" box 148, Records of the National Congress of American Indians;
140. Progress Report No. 6, American Indian Chicago Conference 'Charter Convention,' ibid.
141. Progress Report No. 4, American Indian Chicago Conference 'Charter Convention,' ibid. Emphasis added.
142. "Letters and other Contributors to AICC from non-Indians, Reference Material 1961," folder "Other Indian Organizations," American Indian Chicago Conference 'Charter Convention,' ibid.
143. "Declaration of Indian Purpose," American Indian Chicago Conference, 1961,
144. in Documents of United States Indian Policy, ed. Prucha, 246, 247.
145. For bell hooks's statement, see David Harvey, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Malden, 1996), 104;
146. Devon Gerardo Pena, "Endangered Landscapes and Disappearing Peoples? Identity, Place, and Community in Ecological Politics," The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics, and Pedagogy, ed. Joni Adamson et al. (Tucson, 2002), 72-73;
147. Marie Potts, "AICC Steering Committee Meets in Chicago, April 26-30," NCAI Bulletin (May 1961), American Indian Periodicals;
148. Leonard Ware, "The American Indians: In Profile, Discussion Paper on Minorities - #5," [c. 1958], pp. 3, 5, file 811.411/12-458, box 4159, Central Decimal File, 1955-1959, Records of the Department of State, RG 59 (National Archives, College Park, Md.);
149. Glenn G. Wolfe to Department of State, Oct. 5, 1959, "South African Comments on American Indian," memo, file 811.411/10-559, The American Indians: in Profile, Discussion Paper on Minorities - #5 ibid.;
150. John A. Calhoun to Gerald D. Morgan, "Request from the Civil Rights Commission," memo, Dec. 31, 1958, file 811.411/12-458, ibid. State Department archives, including the expansive File 811.411, contain little material on "the Indian problem" in contrast to the voluminous material on "the Negro problem."
151. For relocation figures, see Cornell, Return of the Native, 131.
152. Homi K. Bhabha, "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation," in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi Bhabha (London, 1990), 291;
153. Ernest Renan, "What is a Nation" (1882), Nation and Narration ibid., 19.
154. Mel Thom, "Indian War 1963," American Aborigine, 3 (n.d.), 2, 4, American Indian Periodicals;
155. "Statement of the Council of the Pueblo of Isleta," 1.
156. On red power, see Joane Nagel, American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture (New York, 1996);
157. Troy Johnson, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island: Indian Self-Determination and the Rise of Indian Activism (Urbana, 1996);
158. and Cobb, "Community, Poverty, Power."