Us Indians understand the basics: Oklahoma Indians and the politics of community action, 1964-1970

Western Historical Quarterly

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 41-66

  Cobb, Daniel M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 66849101644     PISSN: 00433810     EISSN: 19398603     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/4144723     Document Type: Review

References (130)

1. LaDonna Harris, speech recorded by B.D. Timmons, 24 May 1968, T-290, Doris Duke Indian Oral History Collection, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, (hereafter cited as Duke Collection).
2. Statement of Clyde Warrior, National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty (NACRP), Rural Poverty: Hearings before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty, Memphis, Tennessee, 2-3 February 1967, (Washington, D. C, 1967), 151.
3. Jess Fronterhouse to Fred Harris, 10 May 1967, folder 1, box 68, Fred R. Harris Collection, Carl Albert Center for Congressional Research and Studies (CACCRS), University of Oklahoma, (hereafter Harris Collection).
4. For case studies, see John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana, 1994), 363-88;
5. Allen J. Macusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 1984), 249-65;
6. Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York, 1994).
7. th Annual Southwestern Social Science Association Meeting (San Antonio, Texas, April 1999). In author's possession.
8. Wesley Proctor (Cherokee), interview by Faye Delph, 19 November 1968, T-384, Duke Collection, (hereafter Proctor interview).
9. Daniel M. Cobb, "Philosophy of an Indian War: Indian Community Action in the Johnson Administration's War on Indian Poverty, 1964-1968," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 22, no. 2 (1998): 71-103.
10. For contemporaries' reflections, see Kenneth R. Philp, ed., Indian Self-Rule: First-Hand Accounts of Indian-White Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan, rev. ed. (Logan, 1995), 191-227.
11. R. David Edmunds, "Native Americans, New Voices: American Indian History, 1895-1995," American Historical Review 100 (June 1995): 717-40;
12. Donald Fixico, ed., Rethinking American Indian History (Albuquerque, 1997);
13. Melissa L. Meyer and Kerwin Lee Klein, "Native American Studies and the End of Ethnohistory,"
14. and Richard White, "Using the Past: History and Native American Studies," both in Studying Native America: Problems and Prospects, ed. Russell Thornton (Madison, 1998), 182-243.
15. Peter Iverson, "We Are Still Here": American Indians in the Twentieth Century (Wheeling, IL, 1998), 225-37.
16. Recent studies suggest renewed interest, particularly in the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. George Pierre Castile, To Show Heart: Native American Self-Determination and Federal Indian Policy, 1960-1975 (Tucson, 1998);
17. Thomas Clarkin, Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, 1961-1969 (Albuquerque, 2001);
18. Christopher Riggs, "Indians, Liberalism, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, 1963-1969," (Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, Boulder, 1997).
19. David Rich Lewis, "Still Native: The Significance of Native Americans in the History of the Twentieth-Century American West,"
20. Peter Iverson, "We Are Restored,"
21. and Barre Toelken, "New Awareness for an Old Significance," all in A New Significance: Re-envisioning the History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II (New York, 1996), 213-54.
22. Jacqueline Jones, "The History and Politics of Poverty in Twentieth-Century America," Perspectives on Modern America: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century, ed. Harvard Sitkoff (New York, 2001), 125.
23. Prevalent in the field of colonial history, the encounter model has only begun to impact the study of later periods. An illustrative collection of articles is Peter C. Mancall and James H. Merrell, eds., American Encounters: Natives and Newcomers from European Contact to Indian Removal, 1500-1850 (New York, 2000).
24. Frederick Hoxie carries the paradigm forward in Frederick E. Hoxie, Peter C. Mancall, and James H. Merrell, eds., American Nations: Encounters in Indian Country, 1850 to the Present (New York, 2001), 14.
25. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY, 1966).
26. Berger and Luckmann synthesize the theories of George Herbert Mead, Alfred Schutz, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx, W.I. Thomas, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Externalization represents "the ongoing outpouring of human being into the world" embodied in individuals' thoughts and actions. Through objectivation, the products of human agency confront their "original producers as ... facticit[ies] external to and other than themselves." As the various assigned meanings are integrated into people's "subjective consciousness," they become internalized. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, NY, 1967), 4.
27. Jean and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago, 1991), 21-2. In addition to Marx and Weber, the Comaroffs utilize Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony and Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus.
28. Eric R. Wolf, Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis (Berkeley, 1999), 57.
29. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, 23-7, 33-4;
30. Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 88-92.
31. R. Sargent Shriver to Dewey F. Battlett, 1 May 1967, folder 1f, box 121, Page Belchet Collection, CACCRS, University of Oklahoma, (hereafter Belcher Collection).
32. th Cong., 2d sess., 15-7, 20-1 April 1964 (Washington, DC), 1064.
33. Douglas Hale, "The People of Oklahoma: Economics and Social Change," in Oklahoma: New Views of the Forty-Sixth State, ed. Anne Hodges Morgan and H. Wayne Morgan (Norman, 1982), 77-89;
34. "Percent of Families with Under $3,000 Annual Income By County," attached to Dean E. Barrett to Senator Mike Monroney, 2 February 1965, folder 6, box 49, Mike Monroney Collection, CACCRS, University of Oklahoma, (hereafter Monroney Collection).
35. Murray L. Wax, Indian Americans: Unity and Diversity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1971), 95, 99;
36. Albert L. Wahrhaftig, "In the Aftermath of Civilization: The Persistence of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1975), 22;
37. "Oklahoma Industrial Development and Park Dept.," n.d.;
38. "A Study of the Indian Population Residing in Blaine County, Oklahoma," April 1966;
39. J.O. Smith to Jim Woolfork, 23 November 1965, Blaine County folder, box 9;
40. and "Work Program," attached to Cleveland County Community Action Foundation, "Office of Economic Opportunity Application for Community Action Program," 1 February 1968 to 31 January 1969, no folder, box 12, Records Relating to County Community Action Agencies, Records of the Community Action Program, Records of the Office of Economic Opportunity (RG 381), National Archives and Records Administration, Southwest Region, Fort Worth, Texas (NARA-SWR), (hereafter, CAA Records).
41. WE. Schooler (non-Indian), interview by Ruth Hankowsky, 29 June 1967, p. 6, T-130, vol. 45, Duke Collection.
42. Rennard Strickland, The Indians in Oklahoma (Norman, 1980), 35-54, 72-3;
43. James L. McElrath, "A Multi-County Community Action Program," p. 4, OEO (1968) CAP-Program Data folder, box 72, Departmental Files, Carl Albert Collection, CACCRS, University of Oklahoma, (hereafter Albert Collection).
44. See especially John H. Moore, "The Enduring Reservations of Oklahoma," in State and Reservation: New Perspectives on Federal Indian Policy, ed. Robert L. Bee and George Pierre Castile (Tucson, 1992), 92-107.
45. The official 1960 census reported 64,689 Indians; some 140,000 probably were not counted. On Indian demography, see Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492 (Norman, 1987), 159-224.
46. Wax, Indian Americans, 88-131;
47. Murray L. Wax, "Old Man Coyote: The Anthropologist as Trickster, Buffoon, Wise Man," in A Good Cherokee, A Good Anthropologist: Papers in Honor of Robert K. Thomas, ed. Steve Pavlik (Los Angeles, 1998), 17-9, 22.
48. Albert L. Wahrhaftig, "Community and the Caretakers," New University Thought 4, no. 4 (1966/1967): 56.
49. Albert L. Wahrhaftig and Robert K. Thomas, "Renaissance and Repression: The Oklahoma Cherokee," Trans-action 6 (February 1969): 42-8.
50. For a map of these Cherokee settlements, see Albert L. Wahrhaftig, "The Tribal Cherokee Population of Eastern Oklahoma," Current Anthropology 9 (December 1968) Part II: 510-8.
51. On identity, see his "We Who Act Right: The Persistent Identity of Cherokee Indians," in Currents in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Sol Tax, ed. Robert Hinshaw (New York, 1979), 255-69.
52. Wahrhaftig, "Community and the Caretakers," 59-60.
53. Albert L. Wahrhaftig, Indian Communities of Eastern Oklahoma and the War on Poverty (Chicago, 1965), 4, 10, 26.
54. A later report is Albert L. Wahrhaftig, "Making Do With the Dark Meat: A Report on the Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma," in World Anthropology: American Indian Economic Development, ed. Sam Stanley (Chicago, 1978), 481.
55. Max Witzel, Oklahoma State EOO, to Bob Haught, 2 March 1966, Cherokee County folder, box 11, CAA Records.
56. Bruce Babbitt, OEO Southwest Regional Office, to Cris Aldrete, et al., 13 January 1966, Cherokee County folder, box 11, CAA Records.
57. Donald B. Mathis, district supervisor of CAP, OEO Southwest Region to Earl Squyres, n.d., and Max Witzel to Bob Haught, 2 March 1966, Cherokee County folder, box 11, CAA Records.
58. Ele Chassy to Peter Spruance, Ed Terrones, and Jack Gonzales, 11 March 1966, Inspection Reports folder, Subject Files G-O, box 3, Office Files of the Oklahoma District Supervisor, Records of the Community Action Program, Records of the Office of Economic Opportunity, RG 381.NARA-SWR.
59. "Evaluation of Adult Driver's Training Program of Delaware (OK) County Community Action Foundation, Inc.," attached to James R. Pendergraft to Mike Monroney, 17 April 1967, folder 9, box 85, Monroney Collection.
60. Mrs. CO. Foley to Tom Steed, 3 August 1966, EOP: OEO (1966) [2 of 2] folder, box 32, Departmental Files, Tom Steed Collection, CACCRS, University of Oklahoma, (hereafter Steed Collection).
61. "Driver's Training Program," attached to James Pendergraft to William H. Richter, 11 July 1968, Delaware County Program Application folder, box 18, CAA Records.
62. "Revision of Program," n.d., Delaware County Conduct and Administration Application folder, box 18, CAA Records.
63. Abe Ned (Chickasaw), interview by Faye Delph, November 1968, T-385, Duke Collection, (hereafter Ned interview).
64. M.K. Deloach to Mrs. Fred R. Harris, 28 July 1967, folder 3, box 68, Harris Collection.
65. For a recent policy study on health services in Oklahoma during the 1960s, see Christopher K. Riggs, "The Irony of American Indian Health Care: The Pueblos, the Five Tribes, and Self-Determination, 1954-1968," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 23, no. 4 (1999): 1-22.
66. On cultural brokerage, see Margaret Connell Szasz, ed., Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker (Norman, 1994).
67. On "hidden transcripts," see James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985).
68. Murray Wax, "Report of Consultation at the Jones Center, 3-16-66," Cherokee County folder, box 11, CAA Records.
69. George Groundhog (Cherokee), interview by Faye Delph, 15 March 1969, p. 2, T-409-2, vol. 14, Duke Collection, (hereafter Groundhog interview).
70. Proctor interview; Groundhog interview, pp. 1-3, 5;
71. Statement of Clyde Warrior, NACRP, Rural Poverty, 151-2;
72. Alice Marriot to John Jarman, 2 November 1965, folder 34, box 53, Departmental Files, Albert Collection; Albert L. Wahrhaftig, "An Antipoverty Exploration Project: A Suggestion for Non-Reservation Indian Communities," Journal of American Indian Education 5, no. 1 (October 1965), 4.
73. Fred R. Harris to Shriver, 15 July 1965, folder 14a, box 8, Harris Collection.
74. Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States (Norman, 1970), 354.
75. Ernest Woods to Fred R. Harris, 1 May 1967, folder 1, box 68, Harris Collection;
76. LaDonna Harris, LaDonna Harris: A Comanche Life, ed. H. Henrietta Stockel (Lincoln, 2000), 80-1.
77. See also Sarah L. Eppler, "From Assimilation to Cultural Restoration: Image and Identity in the Activism of LaDonna Harris," (master's thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1999). Her forthcoming dissertation broadens this analysis.
78. "OIO Ideas," 13 July 1966, folder 9, box 283, Harris Collection.
79. st sess., (Washington, DC, 1969), 419.
80. "Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity," 14 June 1965, folder 5, box 282, Harris Collection.
81. "Constitution and By-Laws of OIO, Inc.," folder 5, box 282, Harris Collection.
82. "Kennedy Urges Pride for Indians," Oklahoma City Times, 14 March 1967;
83. OIO Newsletter (November 1967);
84. William Hayden, "Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, Incorporated, and Economic Development for Non-Reservation Indian People," 419-20.
85. "Report of Meeting of Oklahoma Indian Council in Oklahoma City, Sunday evening, July 17, 1966," attached to Harold Cameron to LaDonna Harris, 25 July 1966, folder 27, box 282, Harris Collection.
86. Harold Cameron, "Problems of Oklahoma Youth from Traditional Homes," pp. 1-3, 7, n.d., folder 20, box 2, Robert L. Miller Collection, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma.
87. "General Information and Data," n.d., p. 7, folder 1, box 283, Harris Collection.
88. Iola Taylor Hayden (Comanche), interview by Daniel M. Cobb, 7 June 2000, Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, Norman, Oklahoma. In author's possession.
89. th Cong., 2d sess., Part 1; 8, 10, and 18 April 1968 (Washington, DC, 1968), 8.
90. LaDonna Harris, speech recorded by B.D. Timmons, 24 May 1968, T-290, Duke Collection.
91. LaDonna Harris to M.K. Deloach, 3 August 1967, folder 3, box 68, Harris Collection.
92. Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York, 2000), 183-4, 199;
93. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York, 1969), 151;
94. Susan Abrams Beck, "The Limits of Presidential Activism: Lyndon Johnson and the Implementation of the Community Action Program," (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1985), 108-14;
95. McElrath, "A Multi-County Community Action Program," 10-1, Albert Collection.
96. "Memo to Executive Board Members of OIO from Iola Taylor," 9 May 1967, folder 5, and "Five Counties Tapped in Poverty Project," attached to Carl Albert to Fred R. Harris, 13 May 1967, folder 1, box 68, Harris Collection; Mike Monroney to Sue Naugle, 11 April 1967, folder 14,
97. and R. Sargent Shriver to Mike Monroney, 18 May 1967, folder 5, box 85, Monroney Collection.
98. Lon F. Kirk to Fletcher Baker, 25 April 1968, OEO (1968) CAP-Program Data, folder, Departmental Files, Albert Collection.
99. Neal McCaleb to LaDonna Harris, 24 July 1967 and Lois Gatchell to LaDonna Harris, 10 July 1967, folder 16, box 284,
100. and Thelma Moton to Fred R. Harris, 21 July 1967, folder 5, box 68, all in Harris Collection; Helen Chupco to Page Belcher, 18 June 1968, folder If, box 121, Belcher Collection;
101. Principal Chief Harry J.W. Belvin to William Bozman, 21 November 1969, INT-BIA-OIO folder, box 91, Department Files, Albert Collection.
102. Edward G. Starr, Jr. to Iola Taylor, 22 November 1966, attached as "Exhibit B" to Neal A. McCaleb to LaDonna Harris, 24 July 1967, folder 16, box 284, Harris Collection.
103. Starr to Iola Taylor Hayden, 22 November 1966, Harris Collection.
104. Iola Taylor Hayden, Senate Committee on Government Operations, Human Resources Development, 12.
105. "Special Personnel Committee Report," 25 July 1967, folder 16, box 284, Harris Collection.
106. Iola Taylor married William G. Hayden on 16 December 1967. For the sake of clarity, and with Iola Hayden's permission, I have used her married name throughout, including the dates before their wedding.
107. Maynard I. Ungerman to Fred and LaDonna Harris, 18 July 1967, folder 16, box 284, Harris Collection.
108. Peggy F. Southern to LaDonna Harris, 10 July 1967, folder 16, box 284, Harris Collection.
109. Principal Chief Harry J.W. Belvin to William Bozman, 21 November 1969, INT-BIA-OIO folder, box 91, Departmental Files, Albert Collection;
110. Leon Ginsberg to Fred and LaDonna Harris, 25 July 1967, folder 16, box 284, Harris Collection.
111. Wahrhaftig, "In the Aftermath of Civilization," iii-iv, 152.
112. Andrew Dreadfulwater and Scott McLemore to Fred R. Harris, 22 May 1967, folder 10, box 73, Harris Collection.
113. Earl Boyd Pierce to Senator Fred R. Harris, 21 April 1967, folder 1, box 68, Harris Collection.
114. nd sess., Part 2, 19 February 1968 (Washington, DC, 1969), 547-62.
115. Harry J.W. Belvin, "Letter to the Editor," Talihina (Oklahoma) American, 17 April 1969.
116. Iola Taylor Hayden, Senate Committee on Government Operations, Human Resources Development, 16.
117. "Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, Incorporated, Rural Development Program Proposal for Refunding Grant, Dec.l-November. 20, 1970," p. 4, attached to clw to Mr. A, n.d., OEO-Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity folder, box 78, Albert Collection;
118. William Hayden, "Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, Incorporated and Economic Development for Non-Reservation Indian People," 422-5.
119. For a critique of tribal business development programs, see Peter Collier, "The Theft of a Nation: Apologies to the Cherokees," Ramparts 9 (September 1970): 40-2.
120. "U.S. Department of the Interior New Release," 12 January 1967, folder 17a , box 116, Belcher Collection.
121. "Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, Incorporated, Rural Development Program Proposal for Refunding Grant, Dec. 1-November 20, 1970," pp. 19-20, attached to clw to Mr. A, n.d., OEO-Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity folder, box 78, Albert Collection.
122. "Statement of Senator Fred R. Harris Before the Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations for the Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare," 18 June 1970, folder 22, box 215, Harris Collection.
123. Henry Bellmon to William H. Crook, 21 June 1966, Oklahoma TA Office 1 folder, Subject Files O-T, box 4, Office Files of the Oklahoma District Supervisor, CAP records; Dewey F. Bartlett to Sargent Shriver, 11 April 1967, folder 16, box 65, Harris Collection.
124. Bill Bo:man to Fred D. Baldwin, 7 May 1969, CAP-OKLA folder, Central Files, box 6, Records of the Deputy Director, CAP Records, RG 381, NARA-SWR.
125. NAN per J.C., 8 September 1971, folder 6, box 167, Belcher Collection;
126. "OIO Rural Development Refunding Proposal," pp. 30-1.
127. "OIO Staff Cut Sharply," 16 December 1971, Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity (1971) folder, box 55 and memo, 12 December 1975, Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity (1975) folder, box 85, Departmental Files, Steed Collection;
128. "OEO Programs Delegated in 1973 to Other Government Agencies Under Authority of 602 (d) of the Economic Opportunity Act," n.d., OEO-General folder, box 124, Departmental Files, Albert Collection.
129. "Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity Annual Report 1970-71," EOP:OEO (1969-70) [2 of 2] folder, box 47, Departmental Files, Steed Collection.
130. Senate Committee, Indian Education, 537-988.