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Subject: Anti-Indian Movement Part I
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C O M P E T I N G S O V E R E I G N T I E S
IN NORTH AMERICA AND THE
RIGHT-WING AND ANTI-INDIAN MOVEMENT
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Preliminary Findings
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Center for World Indigenous Studies
Right-Wing Extremism & Anti-Indian Network Project
[Ed. Note: This article may be reproduced for electronic transfer and
posting on computer bulletin boards in part or full, provided that no
profit is made by such transfer and that full credit is given to the
author, the Center For World Indigenous Studies, and The Fourth World
Documentation Project]
PART I
COMPETING SOVEREIGNTIES
Indian and Native Nations, tribes and communities are in a tug-of-war
in Canada and the United States of America. The first nations of North
America are locked in a political conflict with the United States and
Canadian federal governments and individual State and Provincial
governments over the question of, "Who will exercise sovereignty over
Indian lands and resources and the people who live inside Indian and
Native lands." The struggle between Indian Nations, States and the
federal governments has its origins in European colonization, and the
subsequent formation of the United States of America and Canada.
Unsettling as this long-term dispute between nations and states has been
to Indian peoples, it now seems to have spawned a reactionary movement
among non-Indians against Indians. Incipient racism, economic hard-times
and honest fear have combined to form the basis for an organized Anti-
Indian Movement that threatens the destabilization of Indian governments
and the break-up of Indian Nations.
Organized activism aimed at the dismemberment of Indian Nations has
been growing since the late 1960s. The Anti-Indian Movement is now
organized in 13 states in the United States and at least four of the
provinces of Canada.
While the Anti-Indian movement has grown in size and organizational
sophistication in the last twenty years, it has only been in the last ten
years that a more virulent from of reactionary-racism has begun to appear
with greater frequency in Indian Country. Extreme Right-Wing groups which
include the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the "White Aryan Nation",
Survivalists, Constitutionalists, and the Identity Church appear with
increasing regularity on and near Indian reservations -- particularly in
the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes Region of the United States and
Southern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario in Canada.
Individuals associated with the Anti-Indian Movement now appear to have
occasional, if not frequent, association with Right-Wing Extremist groups.
This tide of non-Indian reaction rides on the Back of discontent, racism,
economic troubles, and uncertainties about land and natural resource
rights which are partly connected to the long-term struggle between Indian
Nations, neighboring states and the United States government.
ROOTS OF CONFLICT AND REACTION
Indian and Native Nations claim the inherent right to exercise power
over their lands and resources and people within their boundaries. State
and Provincial governments claim the right to exercise power over CITIZENS
within their boundaries -- including those living inside reservations.
The Canadian and U.S. governments claim the right to exercise power over
all matters granted to them by the federal constitution. Caught up in the
struggle between Indian governments, State or Provincial governments and
the federal governments are thousands of individual Indians and non-
Indians who experience persistent challenges to what they perceive as
their rights. In both countries, the patterns of political competition
over sovereignty are very similar.
In the United States of America
While the Tribal, State and U.S. governments dual in the courts,
executive agencies and legislative branches, individual Indians and non-
Indians feel the uncertainties produced by the struggles. Though Indian
and native governments experienced defeat after defeat and the State and
federal governments expanded their powers over Indian reservations through
the first half of the 20th Century, things began to change after 1964.
The tide of encroachments reducing Indian governmental powers began to
reverse. From 1965 to 1975, many Indian nations and tribes began to
recover many powers and authorities once eroded by various States and the
U.S. government. As a result of hard won successes, Indian governments
began to compete directly with States and the federal government for
control over lands, hunting, fishing, taxation, social welfare, commerce,
and a growing list of other powers.
Compared to the powers lost over the previous generations, Indian
nations and tribes could only consider their successes as minor compared
to their losses. To a growing number of non-Indians who took up residence
inside Indian reservations between 1900 and 1965, Indian successes caused
doubts and anxieties. Non-Indians began to express doubts about whether
their rights to land and a way of life would be protected by increasingly
active Indian governments. Individual Indians holding allotments on
reservations, but not living as members of the tribe, also began to have
doubts about the protection of their rights. Increased Indian government
activity aroused increased concerns among both Indian and non-Indian land
owners.
Non-Indians with significant economic interests on Indian
reservations sought protection from growing Indian government power by
turning to the U.S. federal courts. Their success can best be described
as modest. The U.S. courts did not produce the broad reduction of Indian
government powers originally hoped for. Non-Indians turned to the State
governments for protection and found even less success. Many non-Indians
began to express frustration which became anger and finally produced
reactionary political action.
Though reservations and native communities are recognized by the
United States government to include reserved lands and resources for
Indian and native peoples, the U.S. Department of the Interior has worked
unceasingly to move non-Indians into these lands. Since the U.S.
government enacted the General Allotment Act of 1887 it has successfully
annexed major portions of reserved Indian lands for use by non-Indians. A
little more than three-tenths percent (0.3% or about 567,000) of the total
non-Indian population in the United States now either own lands or live on
Indian reservations. Fully forty-five percent (45%) of the estimated
1,263,403 people on Indian reservations are now non-Indian. On some
reservations, the Indian population now represents less than 20% of the
total number of residents.
The Department of Interior's practice of promoting non-Indian
immigration into Indian reservations violated both the spirit and the
language of treaties and agreements with Indian Nations. Because of their
greater numbers, non-Indians began to organize inside reservations to
undermine Indian communities and their governments. Immigrant non-Indians
began to argue that their presence actually reduces the size of Indian
reservations and opens the "annexed lands" to control by the State
government. They appealed to State governments and found increasing
interest in their concerns. One-by-one, State governments have begun to
assert that where "non-Indians reside inside Indian reservations," the
authority of the State can and will be extended.
Competition for the land and resources and regulation of people's
lives is not new. This struggle has been a continuing fact of life for
Indian Nations since Europeans began to colonize the western hemisphere
495 years ago. For 428 years, until the 1920s, Indian nations and the
growing immigrant populations competed through violent means: Wars,
massacres, battles, and skirmishes. In that time, the collective
population of Indian Nations fell from an estimated 15,000,000 to fewer
than 1,000,000 -- a 94% drop. Meanwhile, the non-Indian immigrant
population swelled from a few thousand individuals to more than
100,000,000 -- a 5000% increase.
Over the same period, Indian and native peoples saw their land and
resource domain shrink from 3.6 million square miles to just 680,000
square miles -- a drop of 81.2%.
Since 1972, the size of the Indian and native land-base has further
shrunk to about 152,000 square miles -- with the enactment of the Alaskan
Native Claims Settlement Act. An area larger than the combined size of
Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, an estimated
480,000 square miles of land near Indian and native lands, remain
contested.
In the State of Canada
In Canada, Indian and Native Nations have had a similar experience
though of more recent vintage. Eleven treaties conducted by Indian
Nations and the United Kingdom deal with "Peace and Friendship,"
immigration, trade, travel, resource extraction, "to open lands for
settlement," and land cessions in regions located primarily in southern
Canada. Nearly two-thirds of what is now called Canada was never ceded to
any European or American State. Consequently, many Indian Nations in
Canada hold the view that they have a relationship based on treaties with
the United Kingdom and not with the State of Canada.
It was this perception that aroused Indian and Native Nations to
react to the Canadian government's developing plans in the late 1960s and
early 1970s to establish a new relationship with the United Kingdom. In
1969, the Canadian government published the _White Paper_ which detailed
proposals for the termination of Indian and Native Nations. After years
of public opposition by Indian governments, and the development of
alternative political proposals by Indian governments, Canada shifted its
emphasis. The Canadian government began to move toward a unilateral
redefinition of relations between Canada and the United Kingdom without
consulting with Indian and Native Nations. Canada proposed to secure its
independence from the United Kingdom by "repatriating the Constitution."
Put another way, Canada sought a political process between the Canadian
government and the British government which would formally constitute the
State of Canada under its own constitution. Along with this process was
the assumption by Canadian leaders that Canada would assume full control
over all Indians and their lands -- thus breaking the relationship between
Indian Nations and the United Kingdom by agreement between Canada and
Britain, and without Indian consent.
By 1979, the Canadian Constitutional Repatriation process had begun
to take form. Indian Nations believing that the United Kingdom would not
break the promises it made in the eleven Treaties, pursued a separate
political process to enter discussions with the British government.
During the next four years, Indian and Native Nations became a visible
participant in a political tug-of-war that involved the British
government, Canadian government and the governments of Canada's Provinces.
On April 17, 1982, Canada succeeded in gaining an agreement with the
British Parliament which allowed Canada to have its own Constitution
separate from Britain. On that date, Canada became a legitimate,
independent State in its own right.
Despite proposals and petitions from Indian and Native Nations,
Canada would not agree to include Indian Nations in its new Constitution
as a "Third Level of Government." Indian and Native Nations were
specifically left out of the Canadian Constitution as distinct political
entities. They were not permitted to join in confederation with
provincial and federal governments. Simultaneously, Treaties and
agreements between Indian and Native Nations and the United Kingdom were
unceremoniously abandoned by the British government. Canada said it would
assume the responsibilities under such treaties -- an idea soundly
rejected by many Indian and Native governments.
Since, under the new Canadian Constitution, Provincial governments
have primary authority over land and natural resource questions, these
governments began to move quickly to ensure control over Canadian,
Provincial AND Indian lands. It was this very move that Indian and Native
governments feared would be the outcome.
In the past five years since Canada became an independent State, the
political conflict between Indian and Native Nations and the Provincial
and Federal governments has continued unabated. An incipient, Anti-Indian
Movement, partly influenced by events over the previous fifteen years and
by events in the United States began to grow. But, unlike the United
States' Movement, Right-Wing political extremism has played a much more
public and active role. The growth of fundamentalist religious activities
in and around Indian and Native communities has been very rapid. Elements
of the Identity Church, in British Columbia and Alberta particularly, have
assumed considerable influence. Elements of the Church of Jesus Christ
Christian and groups of "concerned citizens" have increased in number.
While most of what is discussed below focuses on the United States,
virtually all has relevance to the situation of Indians in Canada.
END PART I
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