Activism and the Path to Self-Determination

While President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty won little bipartisan support, the idea of greater local control over community improvement did, and in turn that idea indirectly helped promote reform in federal Indian policy. LaDonna Harris worked on the national level to make people aware of the need to change policy. In 1967 she testified before the Education and Labor Committee in the US House of Representatives. She spoke about the impact of the Office of Economic Opportunity on Indigenous people in Oklahoma. She explained how much the OEO had helped tribes in Oklahoma by providing funds to improve housing, roads, and community buildings. In 1968, Harris was appointed to serve on the new National Council on Indian Opportunity. She was the only woman and the only member who was not an elected tribal leader to serve as one of the council’s original members. Her work to improve communities and decrease poverty among Indigenous Oklahomans helped lay a foundation for the shift in federal policy that took place in the mid-1970s.

Harris worked within mainstream political institutions to support greater Indigenous rights. But some Native people chose to work outside the mainstream. A number of young Native Americans formed new organizations and led protest movements to draw attention to discrimination and broken treaties. In the same way that some African Americans participated in Black Power movements, young Native Americans participated in the Red Power movement and the American Indian Movement (AIM). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Indigenous groups led several protests to fight for increased rights. The longest of those was the Occupation of Alcatraz, which went on for a year and a half (1969–71). Young people from numerous tribes took control of the abandoned federal prison on Alcatraz Island in California. Even those who were not directly involved with the occupation expressed support for it. For example, Wilma Mankiller was still living in the San Francisco area when the occupation took place, and she was inspired by what she saw.

FIG. 13.6

Preston Kimbol at Alcatraz

Preston Kimbol, a member of the Osage Nation, was one of many Oklahoma-born Native Americans who participated in the Occupation of Alcatraz. This photo shows Kimbol serving as a security guard at Alcatraz during the night shift on June 19, 1970.

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

FIG. 13.7

Grace Thorpe at Alcatraz

Published in the Daily Oklahoman on March 22, 1970, this photo shows Grace Thorpe participating in the Occupation of Alcatraz. Grace Thorpe was the daughter of Jim Thorpe and was born in Yale, Oklahoma. Throughout her life, she advocated for Native and environmental rights. During the Alcatraz occupation, she served as a publicity manager and a negotiator between the Native activists and the federal government.

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Occupation of Alcatraz

Alcatraz Island was the site of a federal prison until it closed in 1963 due to unsafe conditions, but it soon became a symbol of Indigenous power and resistance. On March 9, 1964, five people from the Sicangu Lakota tribe traveled to Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. Their leaders were Richard McKenzie and his wife, Belva Cottier. They occupied Alcatraz for four hours. They wanted to use the island as a cultural center and university for Native American students. On November 9, 1969, a much larger group occupied the island. They had the same goals as the 1964 protest. Native activist Richard Oakes, along with Native college students and other urban Native Americans from the Bay Area, planned the occupation. Oakes was a college student and a member of the Mohawk tribe. The large group contained members of many tribes. Thus, they named their group “Indians of All Tribes.”

After the November venture, Oakes began planning a much longer occupation. He recruited around eighty students to join in the next protest. He also brought in some other Native Americans. This group took control of Alcatraz Island for nineteen months, from November 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971. This was—and still is today—the longest period Native Americans had ever occupied a federal facility. After the protest began, the people on the island quickly formed a small government. They elected a council. Many referred to Oakes as the leader, the mayor of Alcatraz, or the chief. Every person had a job. They voted on every decision.

At first the federal government demanded that the protesters leave Alcatraz Island. The Native protestors demanded that they receive the deed to Alcatraz Island. They aimed to place on it a Native university, a museum, and a cultural center. They jokingly offered to buy the island for $24 in red cloth and beads. This was the alleged price that colonizers paid for the island of Manhattan. In response, the government again demanded that the protestors leave the island.

The occupation became unorganized in early 1970. Many of the students went back to school in January. New people came to replace them. These included Native Americans from urban areas and reservations. They also included non-Native people. Many of these new arrivals were from the hippie and drug cultures of San Francisco. Two groups came along that wanted to take power from Oakes. In early January, Oakes’s stepdaughter died after falling three stories from a high ledge. This caused Oakes to leave the island, leaving two rival groups to fight for power.

Around this time, the government decided not to interfere. They pretended to negotiate. They were really just waiting for the occupiers to leave. They shut off the electricity and took away the water. The group began to break down without proper leadership. In 1971, the occupiers began trying to sell copper tubing and wiring as scrap metal to buy food. The police arrested three people for these actions. The media began to publish stories of assaults on the island. Support for the occupation from outsiders decreased over time. On June 10, 1971, US government forces removed the occupiers under orders from the Nixon administration.

The core demands of the occupation were not met. Yet some good things came out of the protest, as well as from other Native-led protests during this time. Americans became more aware of Native American issues. US Native American policy shifted from termination to self-determination. More specifically, Nixon returned forty-eight acres and Blue Lake to the Taos tribe. A group of Native Americans founded a university for Native students near Davis, California. And the Bureau of Indian Affairs began hiring Native employees.

OIO tried to make change through community action grants. Some Indigenous activists took a more militant approach. They took over federal property, and these occupations often resulted in stand-offs with law enforcement. For example, in November 1972, AIM members occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) office in Washington, DC, for six days officials convinced protestors to leave. The following year, Indigenous activists took control of the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. That reservation was the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, when US soldiers killed at least 250 innocent Lakota people. Now, at this same site, activists and authorities were in a standoff for seventy-one days. The 1973 siege at Wounded Knee ended on May 8. Three people died and more than a dozen people were injured during the siege and, by the time it ended, more than 1,200 arrests had been made.

The main focus of Indigenous activists in the late 1960s and 1970s was to draw attention to broken treaties and reassert tribal sovereignty. This meant that Native Americans wanted to control their land, their government, their resources, and their lives. While property destruction (such as to the BIA offices in Washington, DC) was strongly criticized by many Americans, the push for renewed tribal rights was not. It met less partisan opposition than was the case with many social justice movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

FIG. 13.8

Pawhuska Daily Journal-Capital, October 15, 1972

The Pawhuska newspaper from October 15, 1972, reported on Oklahoma Native Americans planning to participate in AIM’s march on Washington. The article (lower half of front page) quotes Carter Camp (Ponca) as saying, “When the federal government isolated Indians on reservations, they accepted the responsibility for Indian people, and they have to finish the job, until Indian people are on par with other people.”

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

The national demonstrations heavily influenced Oklahomans like Wilma Mankiller. The government relocation programs that families like the Mankillers participated in were meant to take them further away from their culture. But something quite the opposite happened. Many of the young urban Native Americans who participated in AIM and other similar organizations had been relocated, just as Mankiller had with her family. But rather than growing further away from their traditions and culture, these young people instead came to recognize a kinship and common experience with young people from other tribes. That sense of connection helped fuel their activism, both in Oklahoma and across the country.

In Oklahoma, local activists from around the state led at least ten chapters of AIM. These activists participated in both national and local AIM efforts. One of the best examples of AIM activism in Oklahoma occurred in September 1972, when more than forty Native American activists led by Carter Camp (Ponca) occupied the office of Overton James (Chickasaw), the director of Indian Education Programs for the state and governor of the Chickasaw Nation.

FIG. 13.9

AIM Leaders Occupying the BIA Office

AIM leaders, including Carter Camp (Ponca), occupying the BIA office of James Overton. Camp was Oklahoma’s AIM leader. He participated in both the occupation of the BIA offices in 1972 and the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. In 1972, Camp led forty Native American activists in the occupation of Overton James’s office. James was the director of Indian Education Programs for Oklahoma, as well as the governor of the Chickasaw Nation. The activists accused James of misappropriation of funds. This occupation was one of many during the AIM period. In his later years, Camp shifted his focus to preventing the Keystone XL Pipeline project. Camp was an avid Native American activist throughout his life.

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Camp and others had criticized Overton for the misuse of federal money that was supposed to be used in support of Indigenous students. Oklahoma received approximately $2 million annually to help fund the education of Indigenous students. AIM argued that the money was instead being used in the general education fund and not specifically for Indigenous students. Carter and the other activists were successful. Louis Bruce, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, ordered that the funds be frozen until an investigation could be completed. This incident is an example of how Native activists fought to ensure that Native citizens would have more control over money that was allocated to help them.

A month later, members of AIM participated in the occupation of the administration building at Fort Sill Indian School near Lawton. Students and members of AIM criticized policies at the school, including a curfew that required students to be in their dorm rooms by sundown. They also disagreed with the lack of Indigenous input into the running of the school. One student and three members of AIM were arrested for trespassing, but they were released shortly thereafter. In response to the takeover and the complaints made by students and AIM, the BIA ordered an investigation. This incident and others like it drew attention to the problems that resulted from a lack of Indigenous input and control. The case for renewed sovereignty grew ever stronger.

The activism of Oklahoma AIM members like David Hill (Choctaw), Richard Ray Whitman (Yuchi and Muscogee Creek) Stan Holder (Wichita), Carter Camp (Ponca), and Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche) influenced federal policy regarding the rights of tribes. And the work of national figures like LaDonna Harris (Comanche); Democratic politicians like Fred Harris, Hubert Humphrey, and Stewart Udall; and Republican politicians like Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and Gerald Ford played a role in the changing of federal Indian policy. Nixon and Agnew compared tribal sovereignty to the upholding of states’ rights. They said tribal sovereignty was “a good old fashioned Republican philosophy.”

FIG. 13.10

David Hill and Richard Ray Whitman

David Hill (Choctaw) and Richard Ray Whitman (Yuchi and Muscogee Creek) were both key Oklahoma participants in the national American Indian Movement (AIM). In this photo from February 1980, Hill is shown talking to reporters from the Daily Oklahoman while Whitman stands to the left of Hill. Artist and activist Whitman participated in the Wounded Knee Occupation for seventy-one days.

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

In 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act into law. The impact of this new legislation was significant, if not immediate. It gave federally recognized Native American tribes far greater control. The tribes could now run their schools, healthcare facilities, businesses, and governments, among other things. The act allowed tribes to directly oversee grants and programs. For example, the Johnson-O’Malley (JOM) program, originally created in 1934 to provide educational assistance to Indigenous children, was expanded under the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act. This act empowered tribes to work directly with vendors and other service providers, including public schools. Such a shift in policy also laid the foundation for the growth of tribal police forces and it allowed for the expansion of tribal headquarters. The Chickasaw Nation experienced substantial economic growth due to greater self-determination. For instance, as a result of greater access to (and oversight of) new grant money, the Chickasaw Nation in 1977 built a new 14,000-square-foot headquarters building in Ada, Oklahoma. Tribal leaders also gained greater ability to hire and fire employees and approve maintenance repairs.

As we will see further in chapter 15, this legislation also paved the way for a range of new economic enterprises, including casinos and manufacturing. The era of self-determination has carried on well into the twenty-first century. It continues to evolve today in new ways that stimulate economic growth, religious freedom, community partnerships, and Indigenous sovereignty. For example, the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act protected and preserved the religious rights of Native people. These rights included access to sacred sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and freedom to worship through ceremonies.

FIG. 13.11

Principal Chief Mary F. McCormick Testifies

In 1976, Principal Chief Mary F. McCormick (far right, facing left) of the Sac and Fox Nation testified on community development programs in the Sac and Fox Nation before a congressional Indian policy task force in Oklahoma City. McCormick was an active member of Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity and the National Congress of American Indians.

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.