Chapter 2, "Disputable Truths: The American Stranger, Television Documentary and Native American Cultural Politics in the 1950s." Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1996, Pamela

8/6/2019 Chapter 2, "Disputable Truths: The American Stranger, Television Documentary and Native American Cultural Politic…

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/chapter-2-disputable-truths-the-american-stranger-television-documentary 1/106

32

Wilson, Pamela. "Disputable Truths: The American Stranger , TelevisionDocumentary and Native American Cultural Politics in the 1950s." Dissertation,

University of Wisconsin, 1996.

PART I: MEDIA DISCOURSES



33

CHAPTER TWO:

DISCURSIVE IMPERIALISM: NATIVE AMERICANS IN THE

AMERICAN POLITICAL AND CULTURAL IMAGINATION

CULTURES AND HISTORIES

As borders of nations and empires around the globe have crumbled or been

toppled in recent years, cultural formations have become both more fluid and more

potent--frequently grounded in sociopolitical and historical struggles which have

defined a group's sense of difference and distinctiveness, yet linked inextricably to

reconfigurations of personal identity politics and shifting pragmatic allegiances. The

language of naming and defining cultural groups, as well as attributing cultural

identities, has become increasingly problematic both theoretically and politically.

Structuralist and empiricist practices of sorting and labeling, of assigning and

categorizing--understood more recently as exercises of symbolic subjugation--are in

some contexts gradually being replaced with a realization of the empowering aspects

of cultural self-definition as well as political self-determination.1

However, post-structuralist scholarship has pointed out the need to understand

the mechanisms by which identity is and has been discursively constructed and

ascribed, and the powerful cultural politics which have surrounded struggles for

control of representation. Henri Giroux has recently claimed that "challenges raised by

feminism, postmodernism and postcolonialism have contributed to a redefinition of

cultural politics that addresses representational practices in terms that analyze not

only their discursive power to construct common-sense, textual authority, and



34

particular social and racial formations," but also, quoting Tony Bennett, the

"’institutional conditions which regulate different fields of culture'."2

This chapter investigates the representational practices of the American mass

media of the 1950s, particularly the new medium of nonfiction television, in their

attempts to articulate the cultural politics of Native America and its relationship to the

cultural, political and economic hegemony of American society. These media

discourses frequently problematized the construction of "American Indian" as a

sociopolitical category, and sometimes explicitly (though more often implicitly)

situated the cultural politics of Native America in the context of broader issues of race,

ethnicity, nationalism and empire. Even at their most progressive, these dominant

media representations offer a conflicted and ideologically contradictory portrayal of

Native American issues, a tormented and schizophrenic conjuncture of discourses

which tell us as much or more about the cultural anxieties of a white, masculinist,

bourgeois colonial culture nearing the end of its comfortable regime than they provide

deep cultural verities about Native American life. Yet these representations also

provide us with insights into the confluence of counterhegemonic forces which were

working to deepen cracks in the dominant regime, particularly with regard to strategies

for gaining increments of control over media representations. An examination of the

issues which crystallized around the production and reception of nonfictional media

representations of indigenous Americans can provide contemporary scholars of

media and culture with new insights into the media's role in the social construction of

"difference," variously articulated in terms of race, ethnicity, nationhood, class or

gender.



35

Conceptualizing Native Americans as a sociopolitical category in American

society is no less a difficult and daunting task today, primarily because of the multiple

axes of difference which discourses about Native America invoke. These different

ways of thinking about how Native Americans are “different” from mainstream America

correspond closely to the three major twentieth-century “paradigms of race” that

Michael Omi and Howard Winant have conceptualized in their work on

African-American racial theory.3 They explain that each paradigm--formulated around

conceptions of ethnicity, class and nation, respectively--has its own particular core

assumptions and highlights particular key variables which serve as guides both for

research and for policy formulation and political action. These theorists explain that, in

the case of African Americans, essentialist notions of racial difference which

dominated social and scientific thinking in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

were replaced (at least in public discourses) by a paradigm which conceptualized

racial difference as equivalent to ethnic or cultural difference. However, the concept of

a biologically-based racial distinctiveness with regard to Native Americans is still a

central factor in discourses of legal identity: questions of "blood" quantum have been

used at both federal and tribal levels to determine legal membership and eligibility for

federal Indian services and benefits--a mechanism for policing political borders based

upon physiological criteria. Ethnicity has been more difficult to legislate, and

sociologists Joane Nagel and Matthew Snipp attribute the staying power of American

Indian communities, in the face of three centuries of cultural genocide and forced

assimilation, to adaptive strategies of cultural survival--"ethnic reorganization"--which

have resulted in a dynamic definition of ethnicity as emergent, situational, volitional,



36

and interactively negotiated. It has also resulted in the redefinition of what Nagel and

Snipp call "a multi-tiered American Indian ethnic mosaic": kinship or band affiliations,

tribal identities, and a supratribal (regional or national pan-Indian) identity which

became politically effective in the decades following World War II.4 The class-based

paradigm has existed in tandem with that of ethnicity, and as I shall discuss more fully,

was a dominant factor in the conceptualization of Native America during the 1950s.

Omi and Winant historicize their third paradigm, that of nation, as developing

during the 1960s with the insurgence of power movements which ideologically

challenged the underlying assimilationist assumptions of the “melting pot” approach to

the dominant ethnicity paradigm, and through which Black, Latino and Native

American radicals attempted to establish their bases of social/cultural “difference” as

distinct from the ethnic differences of European immigrants. This paradigm dominates

Native American scholarship today. Today, Native American scholars and activists

increasingly frame their political struggle as one prioritizing nationhood over issues

related to oppression by virtue of class, race or ethnicity. For example, Ward Churchill

has declared:

The liberation struggle we wage is not extended against thediscrimination and class exploitation visited by a dominant society andits bourgeoisie upon ethnic and racial minorities within the UnitedStates, although we staunchly oppose these conditions and fully supportthose who actively resist them. Rather, as colonized nations we arepursuing strategies and courses of action designed to lead todecolonization within the mother country. . . . This goal of creatinggovernment-to-government relations is pursued with utmostseriousness because, in the end, it is through recognition of themselvesas fully sovereign entities within the international arena that indigenouspeople in the Americas perceive the sole possibilities of a just andpermanent resolution of the difficulties that they now confront.5



37

The insights of contemporary Native American scholars, cultural critics and historians

intersect in pointing to a model of American internal colonialism as a way to elucidate

the complex legal relationship between Native America and the U.S. government--and

to a partial degree, the cultural relationship between Native Americans and "white"

(non-Indian, Euroamerican) America.

The first section of this chapter examines the cultural politics and history of the

relationship between the United States government and Native American tribes and

people, in legal terms, as well as the historical relationship of cultural and political

imperialism by non-Indian American people as well as their government. This account

draws primarily upon secondary sources, but attempts to provide multiple voices and

views regarding how those histories have been constructed.

There are many difficulties inherent in writing this kind of “straight” historical

account. Although it appears at first to be a rather simple task of distilling and

selecting, and reconstructing for my own purposes, an historical narrative from the

existing literature already written on the history of what is known as “U.S.-Indian

Affairs,” the task is made more complex by my commitment to a post-structuralist

historical approach. Summarizing the existing literature implies accepting the

perspectives which undergird each of those existing accounts, and in most cases that

is not acceptable, since, as Deloria and Lytle have pointed out, Native American

history "has been written largely from the non-Indian point-of-view by advocates of

that position, . . . [which] has rarely coincided with the view from the reservation."6

Many academic historical accounts on Native American history and politics, even



38

those of the last 20 years, accept archival or empirical evidence as objective fact, and

take as their task the compilation of those “facts,” with some interpretation, into an (at

best) compelling narrative about a particular topic. The writers' own perspectives and

ideological positionings, which have structured the entire historiographical

undertaking, are generally implicit, with a few notable exceptions. The mask of

neutrality and objectivity works to deny the importance of this positioning to the final

authority of the historical account. According to Geoff Eley, "History in the sense of the

(mostly unreflected) practice of many or most historians does tend to a definite

epistemology, which usually amounts to some brand of empiricism--that is, the belief

in a knowable past, whose structures and processes are able to be distinguished from

the forms of documentary representation, conceptual and political appropriations, and

historiographical discourses that construct them."7

In That Noble Dream, his controversial critique of the ideological underpinnings

of the American historical profession, historian Peter Novick exposes the norm of

historical objectivity by which “Truth was [considered] one, the same for all peoples. It

was, in principle, accessible to all and addressed to all. Particularist

commitments--national, regional, ethnic, religious, ideological--were seen as the

enemies of objective truth.”8 He provides an account of the new particularist--and in

some cases, separatist--consciousness expressed by black, feminist and “public”

historians which challenged universalist norms of historiography (and discourses of

objectivity) during the 1960s and 1970s. Since the 1970s, the humanities and social

sciences have experienced what Eley calls "a general epistemological uncertainty"

which has decentered the authoritative voice and the master narrative of the



39

academic-as-expert. Just as a generation of reflexive anthropologists began to

question the bases upon which their ethnographic authority traditionally rested, so too

has the encounter between post-structuralism and the endeavor of historical writing

been put into crisis.9 Not only have crises of representation occurred within

established academic disciplines, but the boundaries between disciplines have

become more permeable--as Eley describes changes in the discipline of history

around 1980, "The discourse of social historians was beginning to disobey,

outgrowing the present disciplinary containers, and spilling across the boundaries its

practitioners had thought secure."10 This has lead to a reconceptualization in the

carving out both of research topics and methodological approaches, with an

intellectual merging, to some degree, of concerns from social history, anthropology,

women's and ethnic studies, sociology and media studies (though at the same time

maintaining a distinct space on the margins of each discipline).

A post-structuralist theoretical approach informs this new multidisciplinary

endeavor, and it is changing our very notion of what constitutes a "historical account,"

for example, by foregrounding the contradictory ways that power structures have

privileged and legitimated certain constructions of culture or history while denying or

omitting others. This new awareness of the political implications of writing

culture/history has led to work in several areas: (1) an attempt to uncover and validate

histories which provide alternate or oppositional perspectives to those which have

been officially sanctioned (e.g., women's history, working class history, popular

memory, etc.), (2) a supplementation of histories of officialdom ("top down"

approaches) with a new emphasis on the culture(s) and politics of everyday life (a



40

"bottom up" approach), focusing upon the interface between the official and popular

cultures from the perspective of the popular, (3) a focus, following the work of Michel

Foucault, on the interrelationship between power and knowledge: in the way that

certain forms of knowledge become institutionalized to support certain structures of

power, and the correspondence between particular discourses and different social

groups with differential access to power.

My strategy, then, in approaching the task of providing a historical background

overview regarding the longstanding legal, cultural and political encounters between

Native American peoples and the state apparatus of the U.S. government, is to

proceed with caution. I treat any secondary source not as "true" and unproblematically

factual but rather as an account written from a particular perspective to serve some

particular interest. Some of these perspectives and interests are easier to ascertain

than others: for example, many of the more recent interpretations of Native American

political history are overtly and explicitly positioned as radical counterhistories and

cultural critiques, written by both academic and nonacademic writers who identify their

tribal affiliations or alliances with Native activist groups (for example, the work of Ward

Churchill). Other works can be positioned by their rhetoric, their use of

culturally-contested language, and the degree to which they defend, rationalize or

denounce certain political practices by the United States government and its agents.

It is also important to continually distinguish between at least four levels of

social attribution; however, this distinction is made more difficult by our limited choices

in language. In this dissertation, for example, I will at various times discuss (1) people

at the level of individuals, be they historical or social subjects or social actors, and as



41

they are recognized as individuals by legal systems (citizens, individuals of

Native/Indian identity or descent, tribal members, etc.); (2) groups of people who

share certain attributes, values, practices and/or cultural identities, who may or may

not interact socially or as part of a community, but who would identify themselves as

belonging to a certain category (Americans, Native Americans, American Indians); (3)

interest groups or organizations which form for social or political reasons, have a

defined membership and stated principles (the National Congress of American

Indians, the American Indian Movement, and so on), and (4) official legal,

administrative or governing bodies (the Blackfeet Tribe, the State of Montana, the

U.S. government and its agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Congress,

its legislative body) and their official representatives, administrators or agents (tribal

leaders, officials, bureaucratic agents, etc). The frequent collapse of (or indeterminacy

in the use of) the distinctions between these various types of attributions (by talking

about “Indians” versus “the government,” for example) blocks an understanding of the

specific social, political and legal relations which may be involved. To speak of the

attitudes of “Indians” might mean the collective perspectives of all those people in the

United States who consider themselves to be of Native American descent, or those

individuals who are legal members of federally-recognized tribes, or it could mean the

views set forth in tribal resolutions, or those of a national body such as the National

Congress of American Indians. My point is that these are very different samples of

data upon which one might form interpretations--and the risk of overgeneralizing with

respect to subcultural groups is already an inherent problem in American social life. In

fact, there has often been a range of conflicting positions regarding Native American



42

issues within what is considered “the government”: the policies voted upon by

Congress may establish a legal position, yet those who are involved in implementing

such policies in federal agencies, as well as those in state and local agencies, may

have strong dissenting opinions at a personal level which affects the way they carry

out their professional responsibilities. Therefore, just as there is no singular “white”

position on political, philosophical or legal issues, neither is there a univocal Native

American perspective.

THE “INDIAN PROBLEM”: NATIVE AMERICANS AND THE UNITED STATES

GOVERNMENT

American Indians have occupied a special and often confusing status as an

indigenous peoples within a larger and more powerful nation. As Ward Churchill and

others have pointed out, what we call "Native America" actually consists of hundreds

of sovereign indigenous nations whose lands were occupied and colonized by the

encroaching settlement of the United States, which has maintained a relationship of

internal imperialism. During several hundred years of colonization, the United States

government signed treaties with tribal groups, dispossessed them of their lands,

waged wars against them, committed human rights violations through the

implementation of policies guaranteed to physically, economically and culturally

debilitate the colonized, and then implemented paternalistic structures of social,

economic and political control to attempt to forcibly assimilate native individuals into a

mythicized "mainstream" culture. In spite of these colonizing efforts, "Native America"

today remains a somewhat unified coalition and cultural force struggling to maintain



43

cultural distinctiveness and to legally regain human and tribal rights. Most recently, the

legal status of American Indians (as individuals) has been related to their relationship

with the federal government, the states in which they reside, and the tribes of which

they are members. The historical record of United States policy decisions and

practices regarding American Indians is a frequently-recounted narrative, so I will

merely touch upon the themes here relevant to subsequent discussion regarding

constructions of race, ethnicity and nation by the media.

The policy of the United States towards indigenous peoples during the first

century of the federal government was committed to "civilizing" yet segregating native

populations. The basis of federal regulatory policy during this 19th century period was

the concept of "Indian country," or the setting aside of territory exclusively for Indian

occupancy, within which they were not to be "molested or disturbed." The Constitution

provided for Indian rights in two ways: that "Indians not taxed" should not be included

in population counts upon which representatives were apportioned, and that

Congress had the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the

several states, and with the Indian tribes." During its first century as a nation, the

United States government signed treaties with tribes as sovereign nations, and set

aside an area of segregated and protected Indian country, administered under the

Department of War.11

However, as Stephen Cornell points out, "Struggles between sovereign powers

were replaced by rigid patterns of dominance and subordination."12 Rebecca Robbins

asserts that the "unilateral assertion of U.S. ‘plenary power' over Indian affairs” has

been a doctrine which has subordinated indigenous governments to that of federal



44

government.13 After a period of dispossession, relocation and removal of indigenous

peoples beyond the ever-expanding frontier borders, reservations were established in

the mid-1800s, and federal jurisdiction over Indian Affairs was shifted from the War

Department to the Department of the Interior. This established a new relationship

between tribes and the federal government. Vine Deloria, Jr. and Clifford Lytle point

out that "sustenance on the reservation was almost wholly dependent upon some kind

of annuity assistance from the federal government. Christian missionaries and

teachers flooded the reservations in an attempt to ‘civilize' and assimilate the

Indians."14 U.S. policy had ironically turned many tribes from productive, self-sufficient

and self-governing social groups into a defeated people who were now wholly

economically dependent upon their federal "guardians."

The growing assimilationist sentiment became further institutionalized in the

1880s, with U.S. policy set to "absorb" Indians into the mainstream of "civilized"

American life. The Indian Bureau's overt agenda was to break down tribal relations

within Indian communities, since "so long as tribal relations are maintained so will

individual responsibilities and welfare be swallowed up in that of the whole," stressing

that the Indians must "give up their savage customs."15 Though

assimilation-framed-as-integration may have appeared a progressive humanitarian

concern, it was closely connected to the perception that the huge western land

holdings of the various Indian tribes "unnecessarily impeded the orderly [white]

settlement of the western states."16

During this period, the Congressional passage of the General Allotment

(Dawes) Act in 1887 began a process of alienation of land away from the tribes, a



45

policy period which lasted half a century and which reduced the tribal land base by

nearly 91,000,000 acres, by one account.17 “Allotment of land in severalty” was a legal

practice designed to “individualize” Indians and break up tribalism through the

dissolution of tribal property holdings. This involved the allocation of previously

communal lands to individual tribal members, who would then have free and clear title

(patent-in-fee) to this private property which had no restrictions about sales as did

property in federal trust. The ideology of private property as the key to responsible

citizenship was reflected in the “reward” of granting of U.S. citizenship rights to any

private landowner and taxpayer. That the tribal practice of communal land was not

conducive to "civilizing" the Indian (what a federal employee called "lifting [the Indian]

up out of his barbarism into self-supporting Christian citizenship") was a major

consideration.18 This ideological rhetoric emphasized the desire for both cultural and

economic hegemony over the lifestyle of Native Americans. Deloria comments on this

ideological strategy and its effects:

Economic integration, through the vesting of a portion of the tribal landestate in individual tribal members, was believed to be the key inbringing Indians within the social and cultural embrace of Americansociety. . . . Much of the present configuration of Indian country is aproduct of this ideology.19

The result of the allocation period was a 65% reduction in Indian land holdings

between 1887 and 1934, which included the elimination of tribal cultural and economic

bases as well as most of the arable land formerly held by the Indians.

"Civilize or die" became the moral imperative which drove the political engine of

United States Indian affairs policies as well as the altruistic drive of Christian

philanthropists and missionaries. As Brian Dippie characterizes the sentiment: "For a



46

nation under God there could be no choice. The Indians must be civilized. The tribes

would have to perish so that the individual Indian might survive."20 Paternalism

became the guiding paradigm of federal relations with both tribes and individual

Indians--a fatherly (gentle, though patriarchal) authority tempered with justice became

inscribed into a rhetoric of the government as "wise and firm disciplinarian." The Great

White Father constructed a controlled environment to transform the “savage” with a

system that rewarded those who stayed on their reservations and labored for

self-improvement with annuities and services; transgressors were often punished by

the U.S. military. During this period of intense assimilation efforts, Congress in 1924

passed the Indian Citizenship Act, which granted 14th Amendment rights of United

States and state citizenship to all individual Indians. This was also the period in which

the federal government initiated a major drive to establish Indian education programs,

primarily through off-reservation boarding schools, to acculturate young Indians into

dominant society. As Robert White has described the process, “The tactics of

assimilation assumed an Orwellian countenance. Indian children were rounded up by

federal officials and delivered to boarding schools far from their homes and families,

where faculties composed primarily of Christian zealots made every attempt to beat

their cultures out of them and the work ethic into them.”21

Roosevelt's New Deal brought promises of radical reform to the Indian situation

with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934. Progressive Indian

Affairs Commissioner John Collier invited all major tribes to participate in a series of

Indian congresses to develop the foundations of this legislation, although subsequent

amendments prior to passage weakened it. The IRA formally ended the allotment



47

policy, prevented the transfer of Indian trust land outside of the tribe, established a

credit fund for economic development by tribes, and promised to minimize and

decentralize the power exercised by the BIA and invest more authority in tribal

self-government. In spite of it progressiveness, however, the IRA has also been

criticized as another means of imposing white institutions on tribes, and as being too

late to revitalize tribal traditions of self-government which had been crippled during the

traumatic cultural interventions of the past century. Several hundered tribal

governments were reorganized through the establishment of constitutions and bylaws

which followed the Anglo-American system of community organization rather than

Indian traditions. According to Deloria and Lytle, "Familiar cultural groupings and

methods of choosing leadership gave way to the more abstract principles of American

democracy, which viewed people as interchangeable and communities as geographic

marks on a map."22 The provisions of the IRA were negotiated, accepted or rejected

by each tribe on an individual basis.

The progressive New Deal period of Indian administration was short-lived,

however, as it was interrupted by World War II and its accompanying shift in economic

priorities. Several major congressional actions in the postwar years brought a reversal

in Indian policy aimed at trying to cut federal payrolls and expenditures, yet these

actions were framed in the ideological rhetoric of altruistically desiring to "free" the

Indians from federal control to enable them to become just like other American

citizens. A number of reports and hearings in the late 1940s, from a coalition of both

conservative and liberal forces, recommended the unilateral termination of federal

assistance to Indians, though for different reasons. The Indian Claims Commission



48

Act was approved in 1946 to settle once and for all Indian claims (primarily land

claims) against the federal government, which according to the Meriam Report (1928),

stood in the way of "the benevolent desire of the United States government to educate

and civilize the Indians." Such claims settlements only dealt with tangible grievances

such as property claims, however, and were unable to address inequities of a social or

cultural nature.23 In 1947 and 1948, Congress requested that Acting Indian Affairs

Commissioner William Zimmerman, Jr. prepare a “formula” for the eventual discharge

of “the Federal government’s obligation, legal, moral or otherwise, and the

discontinuance of Federal supervision and control at the earliest possible date,” to

determine which tribes were “ready” for termination, and to design a comprehensive

withdrawal program. The Hoover Commission issued its report in 1949

recommending the complete assimilation of the Indians into the mainstream as “the

best solution of ‘The Indian Problem’, and advocated the transfer of existing social

programs for Indians to state governments to substantially reduce Federal

expenditures.24

In 1950, Dillon S. Myer was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and

under his leadership the federal agency moved actively towards termination efforts.

Myer was the former Director of the War Relocation Authority responsible for the

internment of the Japanese during World War II. Myer strongly advocated the

government's withdrawal from its Indian programs in order, supposedly, to "lend every

encouragement to Indian initiative and leadership," even though, he continued, "I

realize that it will not be possible always to obtain Indian cooperation."25 According to

Frederick Stefon, “Myer, ignorant of history, stereotyped the Indian reservations as



49

concentration camps and believed it was his primary task to ‘relocate the Indians out

of them.’”26 He also pursued a course of "development of the latent physical resources

of the Indians throughout the country . . . through industrial and agricultural

development of their resources." Myer championed the Relocation Program for

individual Indians to attain permanent off-reservation employment in urban areas,

which has been considered by many as the principal detribalization factor during the

postwar period, and reversed earlier policy which had restricted mortgages on land

held in trust, opening possibilities of further land alienation.27 After Eisenhower's

election in 1952, more drastic reforms in federal policy were forthcoming.

At mid-century, white America was still plagued by the recurring "Indian

problem": how to understand "them", what to do with "them," how to justify or

recompense for past treatment of "them," and how to conceptualize Native Americans

economically, politically, socially and culturally. Contemporary cultural critics such as

Toni Morrison and Jimmie Durham have recently noted that racial/ethnic/class

"difference" in American culture, though traditionally constructed by whites as

extra-normative, needs to be understood as an important constitutive element in the

construction of 18th-20th century American "national identity"--and ultimately, in the

construction of “whiteness.” This is particularly true in the case of the tribal peoples of

indigenous America, whose presence both literally and in the American mythic

imagination has consequentially shaped America's master narrative about itself as a

nation.28



50

The media discourses of the post-World War II era represent a crucial turning

point in the relationship between the United States government and indigenous

American peoples. They mark an increasing reflectiveness, and public expression of

guilt, among white Americans about their responsibilities to America's indigenous

peoples, and a growing politicization among the American Indian population. As Oliver

LaFarge, a writer, anthropologist and leading pro-Indian activist, expressed in 1954:

Year by year, the Indians are making more use of the vote, and havebecome a ponderable factor in several Western states. Parallel with this,the American conscience has become noticeably tenderer; majordevelopments in Indian affairs [now] get liberal treatment in the nationalpress and produce floods of letters to Congress.29

This dual politicization--of tribal peoples and of the mainstream "public"-- was

manifested by an increasing awareness by tribal peoples of how to "use the master's

tools" to counter political hegemony and work toward autonomy and

self-determination. Two of the most powerful tools appropriated by Native Americans,

and their white allies, were the American legal system--through which they fought for

treaty-based tribal justice on legal grounds--and the mainstream journalistic media.

In the postwar years, there was an increasing public awareness of the

problems engendered by the "special" (i.e. colonial) relationship between American

Indians and the U.S. nation. As the nation's primary internally colonized cultural group,

Indians were acknowledged as occupying a status which was distinct, both historically

and contemporaneously, from other racial and ethnic minorities. The ambivalent and

contradictory frames of both perception and action (theory and praxis) toward

American Indians were rooted in the multiple differences that "Indianness" presented

to white America: differences rooted in race, in culture/ethnicity, in tenacious



51

resistance to assimilation at both corporate/tribal levels and individual ones, and

especially in the ongoing problematic of dual citizenship (i.e., how indigenous

governments or nations could coexist within the structure of local, state and federal

governing bodies). This paradox is what some Native American scholars claim to be at

the philosophical heart of the post-colonial relationship: "the collision between the

political dilemma of nationhood and the adoption of self-government within the

existing [U.S.] federal structure."30 The construction of, and intersection of, many of

these axes of sociopolitical difference--race, ethnicity, gender, class and

nationality--can best be understood within a framework of cultural, economic and

political imperialism.

Historian Amy Kaplan has recently advocated the reinsertion of a model of

American imperialism into American historiography, citing an ongoing paradigm of

denial of the political practice of empire in U.S. history and in the academic study of

American cultures. Kaplan argues for a connection of categories of gender, race and

ethnicity to "the global dynamics of empire- building," calling for investigation into

. . . how such diverse identities cohere, fragment and change in relationto one another and to ideologies of nationhood through the crucible ofinternational power relations, and how, conversely, imperialism as apolitical or economic process . . . is inseparable from the social relations and cultural discourses of race, gender, ethnicity and class at home. 31

Kaplan's colleague, Donald Pease, notes:

Although the United States' imperial nationalism was predicated on thesuperiority of military and political organization as well as economicwealth, it depended for its efficacy on a range of cultural technologies,among which colonialist policies (exercised both internally and abroad)of conquest and domination figured prominently. [In] the invasivesettlement of the Americas, . . . imperialism understood itself primarily asa cultural project involved in naming, classifying, textualizing,



52

appropriating, exterminating, demarcating, and governing a newregime."32

In an intriguing claim, Pease describes America as "the theater for colonial

encounters" which "spawned the utterly new sociopolitical categories of nationality,

race, geography, history, ethnicity and gender. . . ."33 As Native American scholar

Rebecca Robbins explains,

American Indian nations within the geography presently claimed by theUnited States exist in a condition of ‘internal colonization.' That is, theirrights to self-government have been usurped by a foreign power, in thiscase one that claims their very homelands as its own, in order for thatpower to benefit from the resources these lands provide. Any seriouseffort on the part of Native Americans to change their circumstances willtherefore necessarily assume the form of decolonization efforts.34

The "Indian problem" has been rooted in multiple and complex ideological

differences between colonizing and colonized cultures, at the center of which is land

ownership. "Land," Churchill writes, "is the absolutely essential issue defining viable

conceptions of Native America, whether in the past, present or future":

A deeply held sense of unity with particular geographical contexts hasprovided, and continues to afford, the spiritual cement allowing culturalcohesion across the entire spectrum of indigenous American societies.Contests for control of territory have been the fundamental basis ofIndian/non-Indian interactions since the moment of first contact, andunderlie the virtually uninterrupted (and ongoing) pattern of genocidesuffered by American Indians. . . ."35

The communal tribalism of native cultures was considered in direct conflict with the

assertion of individual freedoms upon which American democracy was based. Also,

communal tribalism, particularly the joint ownership of land by a tribe, was seen as

antithetical to the ideological principles of private property and individual ownership.

Thus, tribal assertions of nationalism and sovereignty entered into direct competition



53

with the American cultural construction of the "individual citizen," and the argument

that Indians needed to assimilate (i.e. foreswear their tribal rights) before they could

become citizens was institutionalized in 19th century policies rewarding individual

land ownership with U.S. citizenship. Communal tribalism, particularly the joint

ownership of land, was seen as antithetical to the ideological principles of private

property and individual ownership, and was also considered as potentially

"anti-American" during the Cold War. The solution to the "Indian problem" had been

based for nearly a century upon a proposition of assimilation, and federal policies and

practices had been directed to that end.

The relationship between Native Americans and the colonizing society was

shaped, according to Cornell, by the intersection of the inverse and conflicting

agendas held by each side. The long-term goals and desires of many Indian tribes

and their members were in direct contrast to the assimilationist agenda represented

by federal policies (as well as the general social trend to publicly deny “difference” in

the interest of democratic and universalist philosophies). According to Cornell, the

agenda of “Native America” (a manufactured conceptual consolidation of more than

500 distinct tribal and ethnic groups unified after World War II for political purposes to

counter the forces of white capitalist hegemony) was, first and foremost, tribal survival

and the maintenance of distinct cultural and political autonomy in the face of political

and cultural imperialism.36 Blending into the melting pot of the American mainstream

may have been a goal for many people of Indian descent who had left reservations,

distancing themselves from their tribal affiliations; however, this assimilationist



54

concept was at odds with the efforts of most tribes and that of the NCAI during the

postwar decades.

The decades following World War II proved to be a period of increasing

dissatisfaction (on both sides) with the colonial relationship between the U. S.

government and Native America. All parties acknowledged, in particular, the shortfalls

of the bureaucratic colonial administration, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was

operated as an arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and considered by many to

be one of the most inept, expensive and ineffective of federal bureaucracies. At the

same time, pressure upon Congress was mounting, from both liberals and

conservatives in the political arena, to dismantle the deteriorating federal system of

administration over reservations. On the left, a growing sense of white guilt over

historical practices of brutal imperialism, and the disgraceful socioeconomic

conditions on many Indian reservations, intersected with economic pressures on the

right to "get the United States out of the Indian business." Some of the most powerful

pressure came from non-Indian Western corporations (and their conservative political

allies) desiring to gain access to land and resources held in federal trust as Indian

land.

Though there was widespread agreement that a problem existed with the

existing system, which was serving well neither the needs of the government nor

those of Native Americans, there were sharply divergent views as to what should

replace the century-old colonial structures upon which both sides had become

accustomed. Although many Indians considered the federal trusteeship system to be

paternalistic, robbing them of dignity, respect and control over their own affairs, they



55

realized the system minimally provided them with a delineated land base which they

could occupy but not necessarily manage as they desired. Many Congressional

leaders considered the colonial system an expensive, cumbersome bureaucracy, and

realized that the federal lands reserved for Indian use were potential sources of

lucrative natural resources.

At first, the solutions offered by both liberal and conservative whites appeared

similar on the surface, and this period of "termination" was one of extreme

ambivalence among whites about how to end the corrupt and paternalistic colonial

administration as well as the powerless and substandard status of Native Americans

in relation to the rest of American society. Truman's 1950 appointment of Myer as

Indian Affairs Commissioner underscored the imperialist nature of the Bureau's

mission. Conservatives, building upon a century of assimilation efforts within the

structures of empire, now called for full and immediate assimilation of Native

Americans through the legal removal of institutionalized rights, privileges and service

to Indians. A number of reports and hearings in the late 1940s, from a coalition of both

conservative and liberal forces, recommended the unilateral termination of federal

assistance to Indians, though for different reasons. However, as legislation

developed, it became increasingly clear to liberal "Friends of the Indians" that

government interests would be served over those of tribes, and many liberals who

originally supported early "termination" talk backed off when the implications became

clearer in the mid-1950s.

In 1953, the major legislative action toward termination, House Concurrent

Resolution 108, was passed with no opposition; this resolution called for the “freeing”



56

of Indians from federal supervision and control. The text of this resolution, framed as if

serving the interests of the Indians rather than the economic interests of the federal

government, begins:

It is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to make the Indianswithin the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same lawsand entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicableto other citizens of the United States, to end their status as wards of theUnited States, and to grant them all of the rights and prerogativespertaining to American citizenship . . . [to] assume their fullresponsibilities as American citizens.

The bill named the Flathead Indians of Montana, the Klamath Tribe of Oregon, the

Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, the Potowatamie Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, the

Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa of North Dakota, and all the Indian tribes and

peoples within the States of California, Florida, New York and Texas, to be freed from

supervision and control. The Klamath and Menominee were considered two "of the

most economically and socially advanced Indian tribes in the country," each with

timber assets worth many millions of dollars. After releasing such tribes and

individuals from their "disabilities and limitations," the the new laws suspended all

federal services to terminated tribes and reservations (thereby eliminating expenses

of all BIA branch offices and personnel) and handed civil and criminal jurisdiction on

Indian reservations to the states.37 BIA Commissioner Glenn Emmons defensively

noted that "there is nothing here to suggest that Congress is engaged, as some have

contended, in a massive drive to break up the tribal estates and destroy the

foundations of Indian tribal life." Yet historian Donald Fixico claims that "anger at . . .

H.C.R. 108 was prevalent throughout Indian country." There was little to no media

coverage of the quiet passage of this measure.38



57

Concurrent with these legislations was the implementation of a federal

relocation program, which "assisted" individual Indians with economic incentives to

relocate from the reservations to urban areas. This program provided, for some

Indians, one-way transportation costs and short-term temporary subsistence, as well

as assistance in securing permanent employment, according to a report by Emmons

in 1954.39 However, both the concept and the logistical practices of relocation

presented ethical problems to many who were sympathetic to the struggle of tribes to

remain demographically and geographically intact. The program was also seen by its

detractors as one which deprived individual Indian people of their emotional and

cultural support systems. As one Friend of the Indian, an Episcopal priest who worked

with urban Indians in Chicago, explained, “It is the Indians who have sold their lands

on the reservation and are on relocation who are morally hard hit. It seems they have

no one to turn to, or no place to go. . . .”40 In a 1955 letter to President Eisenhower,

Chairman of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Robert Burnette, described relocation as a

program “to take Indian people into cities and there left to what we call ‘root, hog or

die’”:

There is not any follow-up with the Indian people that will teach them thecity way of life. If they are successful in getting a job that will at least feedand clothe them and they stay, the first thought they get is, “I think I willsell my land as I will never use it again.” But some day these Indianpeople are going to return to the reservation and find that they do nothave a place to live. We believe that if this relocation money wasproperly utilized in training the Indian family in a vocation . . . they wouldbe 100 per cent more able to compete in this cold-blooded world. 41

During this period, relocation--the dispersal of tribal members away from the

reservations and into the cities--was seen as one of the ultimate goals of termination.



58

The economic advantages of termination included ridding the federal

government of its bureaucratic payroll expenses in maintaining civil and criminal

jurisdiction over Indian trust lands, with a shift of such responsibilities to states and the

dispersal of communal tribal lands to individuals. The breaking up of tribal land

holdings pressured individuals to sell their land and its valuable natural resources to

commercial interests. In addition to fracturing the tribal land base to which numerous

native cultures were economically and spiritually connected, thereby undermining the

cultural fabric of tribal communities, this strategy attempted to strip individual Indians

of their tribal culture and force them to embrace "American" and "democratic" values

of private ownership and the capitalist work ethic. More often than not, such efforts

resulted in the desperate sale of land, their only asset, by hopeless Indian families in

need of basic subsistence.

During the 1954 Congressional session, according to Deloria and Lytle, "a fire

storm of activity arose." The Senate and House Indian Subcommittees of the Interior

and Insular Affairs Committees began meeting in joint sessions, "an unprecedented

change in procedures." (These committees consisted almost exclusively of Senators

and Representatives from Western states who were often closely affiliated with

business interests in those areas.) During this time, several additional termination bills

were introduced. The leading proponent of termination in Congress, Chairman of the

Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, was conservative Republican Senator Arthur

V. Watkins of Utah, who, according to Deloria and Lytle, "was firmly convinced that if

the Indians were freed from federal restrictions they would soon prosper by learning in

the school of life those lessons that a cynical federal bureaucracy had not been able to



59

instill in them."42 Echoing the discourses of his fellow Senator, George Malone of

Nevada, who in 1951 had called upon Congress to “abolish the Indian Bureau now

[and] make the Indians people,” Watkins used a rhetoric of democracy and liberation

to justify the legislations, appealing to "ideal or universal truth[s]" of freedom and

"complete" citizenship:

[We] endorse the principle that "as rapidly as possible" we should endthe status of Indians as wards of the government and grant them all ofthe rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship. With theaim of "equality before the law" in mind our course should rightly be noother. . . . Following in the footsteps of the Emancipation Proclamation ofninety-four years ago, I see the following words emblazoned in letters offire above the heads of the Indians--THESE PEOPLE SHALL BEFREE!43

Termination was viewed as the "natural ultimate goal" for Indian people.44 That this

"liberation" from their cultural tradition was not necessarily desired was not considered

by the paternalistic lawmakers and bureaucrats.

The new bills included legislation specifically terminating the Klamath tribe of

Oregon and the Menominee of Wisconsin, whose land holdings, not coincidently,

contained some of the largest and most sought-after timber stands in the country.

According to one source, the value of the Klamath timber was appraised at $121

million dollars:

Congressional mandate requires that each Indian electing to claim hisshare of wealth to be obtained by the sale of tribal lands be given it, withthe prospective result that one of the largest scientifically managedforests will be broken up and sold in small parcels, from which buyerscan recover the costs only by slashing all of the timber. But even moreserious than ruin of land and dissipation of a great natural resource isthe demoralization which will overtake a group of people who lackeducation and all preparation for managing sudden wealth.45



60

The majority of Indians given voice in hearings opposed termination "on the sound

ground that they would be unable to hold their land against white aggressors." 46

According to Deloria and Lytle, "The impact of termination upon those tribes affected

was unmistakable and significant. If the policy did not completely destroy Indian

culture, it encroached substantially upon Indian attempts to remain Indian." Wilkinson

and Biggs summarize some of the consequences of termination to include

fundamental changes in land ownership, the removal of land from federal trust status,

the imposition of state legislative and judicial authority and taxation, the

discontinuance of special federal programs to tribes and to individual Indians, and the

effective termination of tribal sovereignty.47 The burden of taxation on Indian lands

resulted in land sales by bid to capitalist corporate interests, such as lumber, paper

and power companies, with the proceeds distributed to individual Indians per capita.

Another alternative was the sale of lands released from tribal trust by tribal members

desperate for cash to pay basic subsistence expenses ("selling land for food"). This

failed to provide long-term security since, according to Zimmerman, “Generally, such

sales provided money for living expenses for a period of months, perhaps years; after

it has spent this money the family goes on some sort of relief, or leaves the

reservation.”48 In general, this percentage in dollar terms of the tribe's assets, which

was quickly eaten up in taxes and living expenses, was little recompense for the

social, cultural and symbolic unity that the tribe and its land had represented. The

poverty and landless destitution that this created put an additional financial burden on

tribes, which felt obligated to provide for their own members.49



61

Also in 1953, Congress passed Public Law 280, which further diminished tribal

authority by turning over civil and criminal jurisdiction over Indian reservations to the

states, although states were not given authority to tax Indian land or property. The

1950s also brought legislation regarding Indian education as part of federal education

programs, and the transfer of the Indian Health Service to the jurisdiction of the U.S.

Public Health Service. By August of 1954, Stefon notes, five termination bills had been

passed by Congress and nearly 8,000 Indians “released” from federal supervision.

Stefon quotes former New Deal Indian Affairs Commissioner John Collier as noting

that “with extreme rapidity, through bills rushed to enactment with virtually no

discussion, two of the principal Indian reservations [the Menominee of Wisconsin and

the Klamath of Oregon] were smashed to bits.”50

The mass media, particularly local newspapers and the new medium of

television, played a crucial role in shaping the terms of this conflict as legitimate

political debate, and informing the (white) public about previously little-known issues,

which in turn directed the shape of cultural policies. The media also provided

opportunities for Native American tribes and organizations to present their cases to

the American public. The incipient awareness by tribal leaders in the 1950s of the

power of the media to garner the support of the American people prefigured the

powerful staging of media events, such as the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969, the

takeover of Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters (the "Trail of Broken Treaties") in

1972, and the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973, by American Indian activists of the

next two decades.



62

MEDIA CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATIVE AMERICANS IN THE 1950'S

"Friends of the Indians" Interest Groups and the Media

During the postwar years, and through the early 1950s, national media

coverage of issues relating to the crisis in Native America was scant. What little

journalistic attention was given to American Indian cultural and political disruptions

resulted from campaigns by pro-Indian groups and influential individuals to get these

issues out from the ghettoized corridors of Congress, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and

tribal councils, and into the public arena. There is evidence of localized attention to

tribal issues by particular newspapers and radio stations in markets which served a

significant Native American population, especially those with editors or general

managers who were sympathetic to Indian issues; however, the national public was ill-

informed of the changing tide in federal attitudes and policies regarding Native

American status and rights. Until pro-Indian interest groups began concerted media

campaigns in 1953 and 1954, most of white America was unaware that a new battle

was brewing on the reservations and in the House and Senate chambers.

All of the media coverage, with the exception of Native American publications

for a local audience, positioned the reader/viewer as white or non-Indian in their mode

of address. In addition, most of the media constructions which were engineered by

interest groups were reflective about the contradictions which their portrayals would

provide to viewers whose primary "knowledge" of American Indians came from the

images created by Hollywood westerns--the dual 19th-century romanticized (and

masculinist) stereotypes of the noble red man and his vanishing race, or of the

savage, scalping warrior. The infrequent media reports in the early 1950s which



63

reported on tribes concerned with such modern issues as land claims, oil wells, and

uranium mining, and facing federal government pressures to abandon traditional

lifestyles and assimilate into ‘mainstream' American society, presented a jolting

cognitive dissonance. As Indian historian Vine Deloria, Jr, comments, it was difficult

for most non-Indian Americans "to connect the[se multiple] perceptions of Indians in

any single and comprehensible reality."51 As a result, some interest groups sought to

strategically intervene in prevalent media images of Indians, acknowledging and

critiquing the powerful influence of Hollywood representations on the national

imagination.52

The most influential of these interest groups media-wise was the Association

on American Indian Affairs (AAIA), a New York-based, predominately white, "Friends

of the Indians" organization headed as president by the politically outspoken

anthropologist-activist, Oliver LaFarge. Another powerful interest group, and the only

one whose membership was limited to American Indians and affiliated with tribal

representatives, was the Washington, D.C.-based National Congress of American

Indians (NCAI), which was run during most of this period by Executive Director Helen

Peterson. This group represented most tribes, and Native America as a body of

associated tribes, at the national level. Two other (primarily white) organizations which

were politically influential in Indian legal advocacy, though on more of a regional basis

than the AAIA and NCAI, were the Philadelphia-based Indian Rights Association and

the American Friends Service Committee, both of which were affiliated to some

degree with the Society of Friends (Quakers). The efforts of these interest groups

were occasionally augmented by special projects of the American Civil Liberties Union



64

(ACLU). All of these groups had a national network of financial supporters and

members upon whose resources they could draw for contributions, political

letter-writing, and local public relations and community activism.53

The three non-Indian-managed groups were organized on a mission of

altruistic liberal activism, a type of cultural imperialism perceived by its agents as

serving the interests of Native Americans (albeit primarily as defined by white

intellectuals) through advocacy, protection, and limited empowerment. Since many

tribal peoples worked in cooperation with these groups, these cultural agents

perceived themselves as allies of indigenous peoples rather than agents of cultural or

religious hegemony. As a 1958 brochure for the IRA explains the organization's

purpose:

The Indian Rights Association . . . seeks to promote the spiritual, moraland material welfare of the Indians and to protect their rights; Maintainsclose contact with Indians and reservation conditions; Keeps in closetouch with Governmental Indian Affairs; Conducts field studies to getfacts for presentation to the public, to Congress and to the IndianBureau [BIA]; Cooperates with Church Boards, Educational and WelfareAgencies doing work with Indians; Helps to arouse and form public opinion in support of justice for Indian people through its bulletin,INDIAN TRUTH, and other publications, by public addresses, and by the volunteer work of Board members . [italics added] 54

Like the IRA and AFSC, the AAIA was supported by a large membership of liberal

white intellectuals, and it published a monthly membership newsletter, which focused

on timely political action issues, as well as a journal, The American Indian, which dealt

with more general social and cultural topics:

This magazine is devoted to the interests of the Indians of NorthAmerica. Its primary purposes are to increase its readers' knowledge ofthose Indians, to defend their rights from attack, and to increase thedesire of American citizens to better their condition. . . . Despite our



65

country's past recognition of its responsibilities toward the people whoinhabited this land before it was invaded by the white man, Americansperiodically attempt to evade those responsibilities. We have learned to

expect that there will be efforts from time to time to deprive the Indian ofhis rights or of his possessions or of both. Against such efforts thismagazine will set itself with all earnestness.55

These organizations, informed by the ideologies of Christian charity and progressive

political reform, sought to improve the conditions of Native American life. As one

contributor to The American Indian, wrote in 1944:

All people who are genuinely interested in Indian welfare see it as part ofthe welfare of America, and want the Indian to assume economic, socialand political parity with other Americans . . . . Ten years of progresscannot completely undo 400 years of aggression, of misunderstanding,and of pauperization.56

Most of the interest groups published membership newsletters, sent out press

releases to the news media, and worked through informal channels to publicize the

issues with which they were concerned. For example, the NCAI published The NCAI

Bulletin, The Sentinel, The Washington Bulletin, Legislative Report and occasional

"Information Letters." The interest groups worked in close cooperation with the liberal

religious press, and liberal religious publications such as Christian Century and

America were one of the major sites of politicized media advocacy about American

Indian politics in the 1950s.57 Throughout the fifties, the AAIA staff boasted an

Information/Public Education Director and various supporting committees, whose

responsibilities were to publicize Native American political and social issues: a 1959

document charges the AAIA's Public Education Committee with "development of a

committee of Letterwriters to 1) write to editors on Indian issues; 2) to police TV, radio

and motion picture portrayal of Indians; 3) to urge local libraries to carry and promote

books which serve Indian interests; as well as initiation of TV and radio programs."



66

The AAIA frequently pitched President LaFarge himself as a spokesperson on behalf

of Indian rights, and he appeared occasionally on national radio in the early Fifties,

speaking, for example, on "The Forgotten Indian" and "The New American Indian" on

NBC Radio's Public Affairs program. These interest groups, particularly the outspoken

AAIA, contributed a great deal to shaping and defining the media discourses about

American Indian politics in the early 1950s.58

In defining media discourses, it is crucial to consider the diversity of

media--ranging from formal to informal, from official to popular, from national to

local--which informed various publics and influenced political opinions and actions.

Most of the interest groups made use of as wide a variety of media as possible,

casting their nets to catch a diverse public audience in terms of region, class and

degree of political awareness. For example, the NCAI, in particular, established

long-term relationships with prominent local newspaper publishers, whose influence

they could count on for publicizing their interests and for extending their media

contacts. Also, all of the interest groups--the national groups listed above as well as

countless regional and local groups--used their membership or mailing lists as a base

of support; mass-distributed mimeographed newsletters were frequent tools for the

rapid dissemination of policy information or calls for action. It is important to realize to

what degree these printed discourses circulated, and private correspondence

between activists and public figures was frequently reproduced (often retyped) and

mass-distributed, as were copies of speeches, press releases, transcripts (and

occasional recordings such as kinescopes) of radio and television shows, and so on.



67

All of these avenues of media distribution served as a vital part of the economy of

political action in the 1950s.

Withdrawal Policies and Early Press Campaigns

Much of the very early media coverage of the impending termination (then

called "withdrawal") policies minimized their potentially disruptive impact, and

ideologically naturalized federal withdrawal as an "inevitable" stage in the maturation

and development of Native Americans in modernity. A Western local newspaper

editorial in November, 1952, commented that:

There is much talk these days among the people interested in theAmerican Indian about the current administration's so-called"withdrawal" program. . . . We have read through the controversialdirective [from BIA Commissioner Dillon Myer] and can honestly reportthat we see nothing in it to cause alarm on the part of any real friend ofthe Indian. Withdrawal . . . is in the making whether all will agree to theidea or not. It is a necessary step. It is the only way the Indian will mergeinto the American economy.59

A great deal of the media coverage of Indian issues in the early Fifties came as

a result of press coverage of conferences or conventions, or from the impetus of single

editorials or articles picked up by a wire service and distributed throughout the nation.

One of the earliest is a series of late 1952 editorials covering the Western Governors'

Conference in Phoenix, upon which occasion the governors expressed heated

concerns to Truman's Commissioner of Indian Affairs Dillon Myer about the timing

(though not the concept) of federal withdrawal. One Western newspaper reported that

the twelve governors had asked Congress to liquidate the BIA, an action "indicative of

the trend away from federal aggrandizement of power within the last decade, which is



68

probably stronger in the West than elsewhere because [of] our water projects,

[federal] land holdings, and Indian population. . . ." The national Christian Science

Monitor reported:

Both the governors and Mr. Myer felt the time is approaching whenIndians can be given freedom, assuming they want this. . . . The Indianproblem has been a 100-year problem, always difficult, not alwayshandled circumspectly in the past, one of immense concern to the Westand of virtually no concern to the East. It involves every sort of socialproblem. . . . It is a problem on which Indians are divided, especiallybetween the older and younger generations. . . .

There is a strong current running in some western states to cutloose from the Indian problem as quickly as possible, a current that findssome expression among the Indians themselves. That is the course ofIndian affairs. No one really knows how long it would take for the Indiansto be assimilated.60

The tone of ambivalence and resignation about the seemingly predestined course of

history was common during this early period, and reflects the dissatisfaction with the

corrupt colonial administrative regime by both liberal and conservatives as well as by

most Native Americans themselves. Yet the media discourses exhibit a confusion

among whites about how to conceptualize Native America as a political and social

category and Native Americans as individuals "between two worlds." Most chose the

latter route, and talked of "the Indian" as an individual social subject in need of

protection or needing to take responsibility for "him"self.

At this point, as the title of a 1953 pro-termination newspaper editorial noted

("When to Free the Indians"), the question became one of when and how, rather than

if, termination would take place. Many non-Indians expressed concern over the

"incompetency" of Indians to handle their own business affairs, an infantilization of

Native Americans which had been reinforced during a century of paternalistic colonial



69

administration, and a justification for continued imperialism ("wardship"). The

paternalism of the Indian Bureau, which constructed a model of the Indians as

incompetents and childlike, is epitomized in the remarks attributed to Commissioner

Emmons in 1953 by LaFarge regarding the impending termination policies:

He remarked that when a young man gets to be twenty one years of age,if his father told him that now he was of age and therefore from now onhe was completely on his own and should not look to his father foranything, that young man would feel lonely and abandoned. A similarprinciple applies to the relationship of Indians to the federal government.61

Media discourses frequently cited the need to protect the "childlike" Indian from the

"hands of unscrupulous white men." Even members of the pro-Indian interest groups

took this stance, as reported in a letter to the Wall Street Journal by the President of

the Indian Rights Association:

It has always been the attitude of this Association that the Indiansshould have full control of all of their affairs just as soon as they are ableto handle them properly. The difficulty comes in deciding just when thatcan be done. . . . It is difficult to see, therefore, how by the liquidation ofthe Trusteeship of Indians they "will finally come to full citizenship" asyour editorial suggests. (italics mine) 62

Many politicians and members of the press were casting the withdrawal issue

in terms of liberation, framing termination as a just strategy to more fully incorporate

individual American Indians into the American democratic system. Using inflammatory

metaphors which linked the Native American situation to that of African Americans

engaged in a struggle for civil rights (framed in terms of social integration and

improvement of conditions of poverty), one Nebraska newspaper editor also

compared Indians to Russian peasants, enslaved to the land:



70

The New York Times . . . suggests that "the sooner the FederalGovernment gets out of Indian affairs the better," . . . [and] adds,somewhat quaintly, "However, it is still a little early to leave all Indians at

the mercy of the competitive system. Many still need protection againstunscrupulous members of the white race."We don't think it's a bit too early to leave the Indians to the mercy

of the competitive system. The Federal Government has beenpromising to relinquish its control over the Indians since 1937. . . .TheIndian Bureau . . . has done very little to integrate the Indians with therest of American society. . . .

The law protects the rights of minorities in this country. Everyminority, that is, except the American Indian. The law makes him apermanent relief and social service client, makes him a second-classcitizen. The policy that keeps him tied to the land--mostly poor land--whether or not he wants to be tied to it, is as barbarous as Russianserfdom.63

An occasional local newspaper editor committed to his or her political beliefs

regarding the Indian question did challenge and interrogate the assumptions

underlying the political discourses on termination. These local editorials reflected

upon the impact of federal policies on some aspect of local culture, business or

economy. Such articles were scattered through early-to-mid 1953. One Montana

newspaper editor devoted two columns to these issues, expressing the ambivalence

of public opinion about the "Indian problem." The first connects to assimilationist

discourses of racism and discrimination, a discussion by a white journalist to a white

readership about the appropriate place of minorities in American society. Announcing

an upcoming gathering of Plains Indian tribes in Wyoming, "All American Indian Day"

(an event planned as a "good will council between whites and Indians"), this journalist

articulated some opinions usually left unspoken:

But the truth is--and we might as well realize it--that there will be hate forthe white men in the hearts of perhaps 98 percent of the Indians. Thishate is understandable . . . It goes back to the broken promises of thegreat white father in Washington. This hate continues today because of



71

the indifference of many whites to the problems of the Indians, and hisreadiness to take his lands, using a pen instead of a Winchester as hisweapon.

But there is another side, too. Unlike the Negro, far too fewIndians have done much to help themselves. Instead of working toimprove their own lot, they recall the broken promises of early days, anddevote their time to attempts at getting new concessions and moneyfrom Washington. Indians curse their reservations, yet they stay onthem. . . Indians, instead of bunching up, should get off theirreservations and out into the white man's world, taking advantage of themany opportunities which are theirs "outside."

The editorial continued with reference to other ethnic groups:

When the Japs bunched up on the Pacific Coast, they were hated by thewhites, and discriminated against. Negroes, flocking together in the bigcities, are resented by whites and have been "up against it" in manyways. And the same may be said of other races "when they flocktogether." But when they fan out, a few to each community, they aregenerally treated with respect, and the job and other opportunities for abetter life are increased. The Indians, too, can learn from this lesson.64

The second column by the same editor attempted to express the views of local and

regional tribes, and its support of termination is tempered by the influence of

indigenous opinion. This lengthy editorial reports on an intertribal assembly which had

convened in Wyoming to discuss the prospects of termination. When asked if the

government ought to withdraw from the supervision of Indian affairs,

The only answer came from a woman who declared ‘We're not ready.'What the Indians want, those delegates said, is more voice in themanagement of tribal matters, more freedom to act as other citizens,and a slow withdrawal of the Indian Bureau at a tempo adjusted to theincreasing ability of individual Indians to wisely manage their owninterests. Surely the course of wisdom lies in that direction. . . ."65

Very few of the local newspapers covered the tribal response to the proposed federal

policy changes. A notable exception was a feature article by Jim Hayes in the Phoenix

Gazette in May of 1953, which reported "mounting Indian opposition" to announced



72

plans to shift control over Indian affairs from the federal to the state level. Hayes

reported on tribal sentiment on the San Carols Apache, Gila River, and Navajo

reservations, based upon interviews with tribal council members and straw votes by

reservation residents. This article, unlike most others, portrayed Native American

communities as politically "competent" and involved in managing their own tribal

affairs, with strong concerns and opinions about federal and state machinations

concerning their futures. The tribal leaders Hayes interviewed expressed a desire to

make a gradual transition of administrative responsibility from federal to tribal control,

without mediation by the state; Hayes commented that much of their complaint was

directed toward Senator Barry Goldwater and "other spokesmen for ‘states rights' in

the Indian field." The AAIA also gathered comments from tribal councils on the

proposed "federal withdrawal program" through questionnaires sent to all tribes in

1953. Yet the diminishment of tribal authority was hastened when the termination bill

(House Concurrent Resolution 108) and the bill to turn civil and criminal jurisdiction

over Indian reservations to the States (Public Law 280) were quietly passed that

summer by Congress, outside of the glare of the media.

In August of 1953, leading newspapers reported on the first speech of

Eisenhower's new Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Orme Lewis, to an intertribal

gathering in Gallup, New Mexico. Acknowledging "an unusually complex set of

relationships," Lewis advocated "full freedom and independence for Indians" as

rapidly as possible. "There is a growing recognition," Lewis reportedly said, "among

both Indians and non-Indians that the . . . administration should work toward the

elimination of special relationships between the Federal Government and the Indian



73

people," adding that "we must not postpone the day . . . because some individual

members are not ready to assume the responsibilities that necessarily go with the new

status."66

Anti-Termination Media Campaigns (1953-1955)

The first wave of termination-related media coverage swept the nation's

newspapers in the fall of 1953, starting with a wire service editorial which prickled the

sensibilities of the "Friends of the Indians." This widely- published editorial opened

with the statement, "It is the apparent intention of the administration in Washington to

put the American Indian on his own, and stop baby-sitting for the 400,000 members of

the various tribes." AAIA Executive Director Alexander Lesser sent letters to all of the

newspapers which had picked up this editorial, calling the editorial a "complete

misunderstanding of what is really going on in Indian Affairs today," and positioning

the AAIA as the source for "truthful" political information:

I feel sure that you will want to reconsider the kind of comment that waspublished in that editorial, and I am, therefore, sending you a copy of theAssociation's statement on the present "Crisis in Indian Affairs." . . . Isincerely hope that you will give thought to the content of the enclosedNewsletter of [our Association]. Public confusion and misunderstandingis widespread in this field. It is most essential in the public interest thatthe truth be made known.67

The AAIA jumped to counter these editorials by sounding the termination alarm,

blanketing newspaper editors nationwide with its own series of press releases. In

these, LaFarge charged Congress with producing "a crisis more acute than any that

has faced the Indian in our time." Editorials reported that:



74

American Indian tribes are in a period of jeopardy that started August 15when President Eisenhower signed the bill giving states the right to takecivil and criminal jurisdiction over the tribes without their consent. . . .

Here is a crisis in Indian affairs that, once understood by the Americanpeople, should not be disregarded by any responsible citizen. Let it notbe said that the federal government is again . . . breaking solemncovenants with defenseless Indians.68

Through this campaign, the Association also gained self-promotion for

LaFarge, as well as for its own involvement in the liberal reform of the "Indian

problem." With their interest awakened by AAIA literature, newspaper correspondents

researched in-depth feature stories on the crisis in Indian politics. LaFarge himself

authored several lengthy press releases, and several detailed editorials under his

byline appeared in a number of newspapers. The reputations of LaFarge and John

Collier (famed as the progressive BIA Commissioner under Franklin Roosevelt's

Indian New Deal) provided these two anthropologists with the clout to have news

stories revolve around their political stances.69 A feature article in The Minneapolis

Star focused on LaFarge, "Pulitzer prize winning author," who was reportedly "doing a

fast boil over what [he and the AAIA] consider a rush act by the federal government to

get out of Indian affairs." The article listed the laws and pending bills to which the AAIA

was objecting. This writer, however, noted the controversy even within the ranks of

"Friends of the Indians" about the withdrawal bills:

The Association says Indians need "a federal program that keeps faithwith the nation's commitments, that promotes rehabilitation group-by-group, of those we have so poorly served, that gives the Indiansthemselves authority, step by step, as they ask it. . . . It is possible toagree with LaFarge on specific points . . .and yet disagree with theover-all tenor of his broadside.

Many students of Indian questions are convinced the government should get out of the Indian business as quickly as possible . . . . Indianproblems are exceedingly complex. There is no panacea for them.



75

However, a start must be made to putting Indians on their own as fulland equal members of modern American society. It should be done nowrather than on some vague tomorrow. [italics indicate bolded text in

original]

70

This AAIA-produced publicity in the Fall of 1953, aimed at newspaper editors around

the nation, seems to have been the first major anti-termination public relations

campaign to hit the news media. Its effectiveness in stirring up public opinion, and in

establishing relationships with sympathetic media contacts, proved encouragement

and added fuel to the AAIA's efforts to use the media as a tool to gain public support.

A number of editorials in the following months commented upon the "gathering

storm" and the "chorus of outrage" over the Eisenhower administration's emerging

Indian affairs policies, which were being outlined at addresses to Western politicians

and businessmen by newly-appointed Interior Secretary Douglas McKay and BIA

Commissioner Emmons. Those editors who supported the interests of Western

industry advocated "completely independent status" for the Indian, in a characteristic

masculinist discourse which underscored the gender politics of Fifties media

discourses on Native Americans. This was a representational system in which women

worked behind the scenes, and were frequently portrayed as silent victims, yet men

were highlighted and given voice in the public arena. In these discourses, as in the

Hollywood stereotypes, "the Indian" was defined as a masculine subjectivity:

We believe the policy evolving in the Department of the Interior iseminently right. We believe the American Indian is a man of inherentintelligence and strength of character and that the only thing he needs toassume complete citizenship is a decent chance to do so. 71

Editorials more sympathetic to the Indian constructed "him" as a tragic figure, and

argued for the public to hear "his" side of the story:



76

If the American Indian ever is to become a first class citizen, he will haveto have help to achieve it. It does not follow that Congress knows bestwhat is good for the American Indian. He might have a few good ideas of

his own. And it might be a pious idea to let him express himself fully,without fear of retaliatory measures. After all, this was his land--until wetook it away from him.72

In December, the NCAI got involved in the public relations machinery, with a

distribution to the press of the 19 resolutions passed at their 1953 annual convention

of tribal delegates in Phoenix. Picked up by the United Press wire, a news story

reported that the NCAI had "voiced strong opposition to proposed withdrawal of

federal services for Indians. . . ," and had urged no passage of legislation affecting

Indians "without full consultation and discussion with tribes and states involved." Other

topics included the desire of tribes to have access to tribal funds controlled by the BIA,

issues of tribal mineral rights on federally reclaimed land, and the request for the

formation of a national advisory committee on Indian affairs.73

Secretary of the Interior McKay responded to the growing controversy with an

article published in Nation's Business magazine in January of 1954, constructing the

termination policies as part of efforts by the administration to "weld a working

partnership with the people" regarding access to the nation's natural resources:

The Department is making an intensive study to restore to the AmericanIndian his rights and privileges as a first-class citizen. . . to participate inthe management of his own affairs. . . .

President Eisenhower directed [new Indian Commissioner]Glenn Emmons to go out to the Indian country and consult with theIndian tribal leaders, along with businessmen and others. CommissionerEmmons is now back in Washington, after traveling thousands of miletalking to hundreds of Indians. I might say that, for the first time in itshistory, the Department has a comprehensive idea of what the AmericanIndian expects from his government. We know also how responsibilitycan be transferred without impairing the Indians' basic rights. . . .74



77

However, the local newspaper serving the Oglala Sioux reservation in Pine Ridge,

South Dakota, announcing the impending visit by Emmons and the staff of the Senate

Investigation Committee, quoted Oglala Tribal Council President Charles Under

Baggage's plea to the tribe: "We are in a critical condition. Hardship is facing us. If we

are to stand our grounds, we must all take a firm grip and all together Fight For Our

Rights. We are being pressed from all sides. Our determination to Save Our

Reservation For Indians Has Now Arrived." The newspaper's publisher, William G.

Pugh, "The Voice of the Sioux People," stated that:

1. The majority of adult Oglala Sioux people . . . oppose and will resentany legislation or policies prescribed by the national, state or countypolitical groups which will remove the powers, privileges and restrictionsnow given the Indian people in the matter of governing and operatingtheir own Reservation affairs.

2. We oppose any legislation, policies or programs in which ourReservation will be placed under the administration of the State, to begoverned by state political bosses.

3. We oppose the assimmilation [sic] program now being studied byexperts in their line of thought, but ignorant as far as the line of Indianthought is concerned. If by Assimilation you mean the Opening of IndianReservations, the complete integration of the American Indian into theremaining American population, the loss of Indian identity and Indiantraditions. Then we are further opposed. . . .

We wish to be placed in the same condition and recognition thatyour honorable body has found Koreans, Germans, Japanese, Italians,Greeks and other hard-pressed nations who are enjoying the privilege ofrehabilitating with much-needed American dollars. Our possessions areoffered as ample security and you will not have to declare war on us toget it back. . . .

In an interesting reference to Cold War politics, Pugh remarked:

If the "seeds" of communism are exploitation, monopoly, discrimination,favoritism, greed and graft, . . . we hope these "seeds" will be sifted from



78

the "chaf" [sic] and our Reservation will continue to be a healthyseed-bed for True Americanism. 75

Other reservation-area newspapers carried stories covering Emmons' visit locally,

reprinting parts of his standard speech which included a long greeting from

Eisenhower to the Indian people. Some articles were humorous: "The new man in

charge of the welfare of America's half million Indians has a new theory about them. .

. . Emmons, Gallup banker, figures Indians are about like other people. ‘I don't think

they all want to stay on the reservation and weave blankets. . ,' Emmons said." 76

In an address before the Indian Rights Association that same month, BIA

Commissioner Emmons reported upon his insights culled from the two months he

spent in the field, meeting with more than 150 different tribal groups. "It seems clear,"

Emmons said, "that we can anticipate in 1954 and the years that lie ahead a steady

reduction of federal participation in Indian affairs. . . the central theme of the

Congressional policy embodied in H.C.R. 108." As to how he proposed to bring these

changes about, Emmons denied that he believed that the whole structure "should be

wiped out with a single stroke of the legislative pen," but that the government should

seek to achieve the goal of "greater freedom and responsibility for the Indian people";

he advocated the handling of this plan on a case-by-case basis, outlining several

possible approaches. The first "avenue of approach" would involve following the

mandates of H.C.R. 108 to bring about complete termination in "selected tribal

jurisdictions," particularly those groups which have reached "such a level of

competence in property management that there is clearly no justification for a further

continuation of the Federal trusteeship." A second approach, Emmons advocated,



79

would be transferring provision of services (education, health, law, road maintenance,

etc.) to state, county or local agencies of government in a move toward

decentralization. A third approach Emmons identified as problematic:

. . . involves the termination of Federal responsibilities for individualIndians rather than for whole tribal groups. Unquestionably, there aremany thousands of Indians among those for whom the Bureau has aresponsibility who are perfectly capable of managing their own affairswithout benefit of trusteeship or special services. . . . But the problem ofdetermining equitably and fairly who these Indians are is a tremendouslycomplex and difficult matter. In many cases, they are intermingled in thesame tribal groups with other members who much more obviously needthe benefit of continued Federal protection. And in many cases, we findthat the property of the competent individual Indians is involved incomplicated heirship tangles. . . .

Finally, Emmons advocated the Bureau's program for relocation and resettlement for

"Indians who voluntarily want to leave the reservation permanently but need special

help and encouragement," as well as the development of greater economic

opportunities in and around reservation areas.77

In late winter, delegates representing 43 tribes, bands and groups from 21

states and the Territory of Alaska, representing 183,000 tribal members, were

convened in Washington for an Emergency Conference of American Indians on

Legislation, sponsored by the NCAI. As a result, NCAI President Joseph Garry sent a

letter and a Declaration of Indian Rights to President Eisenhower, asking him to join

native peoples in opposing "what they believe to be a hasty and ill-considered

termination of Federal responsibility to Indians. . . legislation which would violate their

sacred treaties with the federal government." The Declaration of Indian Rights, drafted

and approved at the conference, emphasized that:



80

The government of the United States first dealt with our tribalgovernments as sovereign equals. In exchange for federal protectionand the promise of certain benefits our ancestors gave forever to the

people of the United States title to the very soil of our beloved country.We have never asked anything except that this protection be continuedand these benefits be provided in good faith.

Today the Federal Government is threatening to withdraw thisprotection and these benefits. We believe that the American people will not permit our government to act in this way if they know that these proposals do not have Indian consent ; that these proposals, if adopted,will tend to destroy our tribal governments, that they may well leave ourolder people destitute; and that the effect of many of these proposals willbe to force our people into a way of life that some of them are not willingor are not ready to adopt. [italics added]78

A sympathetic article covering the results of the Emergency Conference

appeared in The New Leader magazine, written by W.V. Eckardt. Eckardt introduced

the concept of "’Terminating' the Indians," and reported on the emergency conference

of tribal delegates convened by the NCAI to "organize their defense against what

some of them call the ‘worst Indian betrayal in a hundred years,'" charging that

proposed federal legislation would "’quickly result in the end of our last holdings on

this continent and destroy our dignity and distinction as the first inhabitants of this rich

land.'" The article also commented, self-reflexively, on the way the press covered the

conference:

Unfortunately, the Indian "braves," as the newspapers called them, hadlittle success in attracting public attention to their cause. The localnewspapers, of course, duly printed the pictures of some of them. Theaccompanying stories made much of the missing war bonnet, hatchet orpeace pipe, but paid scant attention to the plight of America's mostdowntrodden minority. Hard as it is for American Indians to dodge thecliches which tend to depict them as romantic or comic historical figures,it is even harder for them to arouse the public conscience.



81

Eckardt criticized the pro-termination legislators for constructing their offensive in the

name of "freeing" the Indians, a tact which he claimed was designed to assuage the

public conscience and hide the fact that "practically every one of the . . . pending bills

are, in one way or another, concerned with securing some profitable piece of real

estate for non-Indian interests." A staged photograph of Eisenhower with Navajo tribal

leaders is captioned: "Liberation or Exploitation?" Contrary to the rhetoric of

"emancipating" the Indians, Eckardt argued, America's 450,000 Indian citizens were

already in possession of every legal freedom, and the pending legislation threatened

to remove the "right to live as Indians if they choose to stay with their tribes." He

pointed out that this is both a moral and legal right, "guaranteed by solemn treaties,

agreements and statutes . . . which were signed by the United States and the once

sovereign and equal tribal governments." This article exposed the recent history of

bureaucratic snafus and corruption by the Department of the Interior and its agents

(often, he charged, "ex-FBI men and former prison wardens"), as well as pending

Congressional legislation such as the "competency bill":

It provides that any Indian who is given a "degree of competency"--andall Indians are born into competency once the bill is passed--shall berelieved of his tribal obligations, as well as the right to use tribal facilities,such as Indian schools and hospitals. The real gimmick of this bill is theprovision allowing any "competent" Indian to request that his land besold for benefit. If he owns land jointly with other members of the tribe,as he usually does, he can still get the Secretary of the Interior to sell outthe joint holdings for his share. He can do this even if the land is held by,say, 36 members of his family, and 35 of them. . . prefer to remain"incompetent" and keep their land in trust. The stated purpose of this bill,H.R. 4985, is to "free" the Indian--without his consent.

Eckardt quoted Diego Abeita, representing the Jicarillo Apache tribe and theAll-Pueblo Council:



82

"In order to get our lands," he cried, "they are going to declare uscompetent. How do we know the Secretary of the Interior is competentto declare us competent? . . . First they try to get us by administrative

actions and then by legislation. They're trying to hang us and then makeit legal!"

This piece provided one of the strongest anti-termination rationales available in the

mass media--one that reflected the discourses which were circulating within Native

America and the pro-Indian organizations, but which were rarely expressed so

candidly to the public.79

The media campaign by pro-Indian interest groups continued throughout 1954.

AAIA correspondence indicates a constant monitoring of the press with regard to

Indian issues, and a lack of hesitation about trying to influence the contents of such

articles. For example, LaFarge obtained a draft of an article by Keith Monroe, to be

published in the conservative Saturday Evening Post, and took it upon himself to write

Monroe requesting that he make changes in his article:

Your article reads as though you yourself despised the Indians, and youwished to convey to the general public that no matter how they mayhave been wronged or how pitiable they may be, they are also ashiftless, quaint, irresponsible collection of drunks. As it stands, yourarticle is bound to produce loud outcries from the Indians themselves. . ..

The impression of a contemptuous attitude is supported by minortricks of language, which I am sure you have used in completeinnocence. You speak of "bucks," "braves," and "squaws"--never of menand women. If you were writing about Negroes, would you refer to themas "coons" and "niggers"? It is almost equally offensive, and encouragesthe average, ignorant white man in his tendency to think of Indians assubhuman.

In his correspondence with AAIA Information Director Harold Mantell about Monroe's

article, LaFarge plotted a contingency strategy:

If the article goes in as it is, I think we should try to exploit it as anopportunity. I think we ought to line up some Indians, and have them all



83

set to write to the Post. . . . We might even be able to stir the editors upinto running a piece with a different slant.80

The media strategy metaphorically became one of battle, as AAIA's new Executive

Director, LaVerne Madigan, wrote to a member in late 1954:

We have launched a planned assault on the religious publications byasking ten of the leading ones to run an Indian article before January.The response has been quicker than we expected. Dr. Russell is doing a"termination" piece for THE CHURCHMAN; we are tapping otherpotential authors on the shoulder.81

A column by Walter Davenport in Collier's magazine "about the shoeless and

otherwise needy Blackfeet Indian children" inspired letters from many readers wanting

to send clothing. Davenport forwarded these letters to Sister Providencia in Great

Falls. In a letter of response, she asked Davenport to follow up on his first article, and

her plea articulates the tension between the two types of public responses, the

humanitarian and the political:

Could you come here to see the scope of Hill 57? It extends from GreatFalls to the Indian colony in the Havre dumps, to the tent that Mrs. TwoTeeth lives in year round three miles from our state capitol, to Texas,and to the Caucus Room on Capitol Hill. You may win your readers tothe greater good of justice before charity. Come soon.

One of the letters from a magazine reader compares the poverty of Southern blacks to

that of Reservation Indians, particularly in terms of Christian discourses of charitable

giving to the poor:

My brother and I have been collecting old clothes and have beensending them to the "Holy Child Jesus Mission" in Canton, Mississippi.We found out about these colored poor people through a young ladywho use to work for those missions. . . . We have quite a bit of clothesnow. . . . Please let me know what you can use. 82



84

Emmons became an increasingly controversial figure due to the contradiction

between his rhetoric and the policies which were enacted under his leadership and

influence. In a confidential memo to some AAIA Board members after a contrived

"accidental" meeting with Emmons in Santa Fe, LaFarge attacked Emmons as

"profoundly pleased with himself" and "fatuous," and, noting his evasion of discussion

of legislative matters, said that "the whole tenor of his remarks contrasted so violently

with the Utah bill that I made two pretty blunt attempts to get him to face up to it and

discuss it, and each time he evaded me [shamelessly]":

Before leaving him I told him as clearly as was decent that we continuedto like the broad policies that he expresses in every public statement,and that if he would ever make up his mind to stand up against thecontrary things that are being pressed in Congress, he would besurprised at the amount of support he [would get]. . . . I conclude that heis dangerously self-satisfied and has been able to rationalize the conflictbetween his ideas and what is happening in a dangerous manner. 83

Emmons remarked in his missive to the NCAI Annual Convention that the year 1954

had seen "probably more widespread public discussion of Indian legislative items than

at any previous time in our recent history." He noted that during the Congressional

year six of the bills providing for termination of particular tribes had been enacted into

law: the Menominee of Wisconsin, a group of small bands in Western Oregon and

another group of bands in Utah, the Alabama and Coushatta tribes of Texas, the

Klamath of Oregon, and the Uintah-Ouray tribes of Utah. Also during 1954, Emmons

noted, he had reorganized the administrative structure of the Indian Bureau, resulting

in a reduction in Area offices and a "tightening up of our land operations," resulting in a

more "effective and responsive" agency. Finally, Emmons had harsh words for critics

of the termination movement:



85

If we are to be realistic, all of us must recognize, I believe, that there isinevitably a certain degree of impatience in Congress about Indianaffairs. There is also the tendency on the part of some members to write

the whole problem off as insoluble and to liquidate it in one sweepingpiece of legislation. Nobody, I assure you, is more deeply concernedthan I am about the prospect of such legislation or more keenly aware ofthe tragic disaster it would almost certainly bring to the lives ofthousands of Indian people. I will, I promise you, oppose any such billwith all the strength and all the resourcefulness I have.

But I believe there is a wrong way and a right way to head offsuch hasty and ill-considered legislation. The wrong way, as I see it, is tosit tight, agitate endlessly against terminal legislation, and insist on anindefinite continuation of the status quo. To speak bluntly, I can think ofnothing that would be more likely to bring about just the kind oflegislation we are trying to avoid.84

NCAI President Joseph Garry reported in a newsletter article to NCAI members

of a "major change in policy" involving land ownership which was quietly distributed as

a memorandum in May, 1955, from Emmons to the BIA Area Directors and which

"further accelerated the loss of Indian lands and rendered other Indian-held land of

less value" by providing patents-in-fee to "competent" Indians for allotments which

were under lease, timber or grazing permit. Garry angrily clarified the ideological

conflict at the heart of such a policy:

This is the latest in a long chain of arrogant and aggressive acts on thepart of the U.S. Government--and an arm of that governmentsupposedly devoted to their protection--to push the Indian people tofurther degradation, poverty and destruction. The vicious thing about allthis is that the choice need not be "individual's rights" vs. "tribalinterests." Of course, everybody believes in individual rights! BUTTHERE ARE WAYS TO MAKE THIS POSSIBLE without destroyingtribes . . . and that is to get through legislation that does not leave Indians, the Bureau and the general public with the unhappy choice of individual Indian rights versus tribal interests . . . [italics in original].



86

Instead, Garry advocated that the government provide the tribes with funds and the

authority to purchase any individual tracts of lands that individual Indians desire to

sell, "for the protection and good of the whole tribe ."85

During an apparent drought in press coverage, in June, 1955, AAIA Director

Madigan circulated an internal memo calling, tongue-in-cheek, for more media

attention: “Can't we make some news? Have we testified for or against, questioned,

hailed, condemned, denounced, exposed, contested, litigated, or even just declared

anything lately? We haven't had a news release [in two months]. . . . Anybody have

any ideas?”86

Early Uses of Television and Radio (1952-1955)

On April 17, 1952, an Ames, Iowa, television station (WOI-TV) broadcast to a

local audience an unusual and remarkable public affairs program, The Whole Town's

Talking. This episode, part of an eight-week series on the problems facing Iowa

communities, focused on the community of Tama, Iowa, specifically "the Tama Indian

settlement," home of the Sac and Fox (Mesquakie) Indians. (The Sac and Fox were to

be one of the ten groups of Indians named in termination proceedings in 1953-54.) 87

Norm Birnhauer, the series host, introduced the show:

To these Americans, to this community with a problem, comestelevision, to catch the face and the voice of America itself. Here inTama, Iowa, representative Americans of the Tama Indian reservationdiscuss a problem vital to the very existence of their way of life. . . .These are people who do not find talking easy, especially in public andbefore a television camera. But they are determined to face theirproblems and find solutions for them. To do this they need not so muchour help as they do our understanding. . . . Tonight before the eyes of the



87

TV cameras and the entire quarter million viewing audience of WOI-TV,representative members have come to talk over a serious problem. 88

A live broadcast, the program was structured as a "you are there" visit to the

reservation, with camera shots through car windows of homes and children playing in

yards as the car drives through the community. The voiceover narration emphasized

the distinctive and ancient tradition of the Sac and Fox, as well as their commonalities

with all Americans: "Today they are citizens: they hold responsible jobs, they own the

land they live on, they pay taxes, and they have problems." Birnhauer mentioned that

although some older people spoke no English, the younger generation was learning to

live with the world outside, "and face the problems of a minority group." The

inevitability of assimilation was never questioned.

The remainder of the show consisted of live coverage of a tribal council

meeting, led by Chairman George Young Bear, who set the agenda by stating that,

"Our tribe, our own people, are confronted with problems that we must think over, and

we must formulate plans that will eventually mean progress for our people." A Mr.

Mitchell turned to address the television audience directly with words of welcome: “My

dear friends, this is indeed an honor and a pleasure to appear before you this evening,

because this is the first time we have appeared before you, in public.” Issues

discussed included the future of the reservation schools, which had formerly been

federally operated but the responsibility for which was being shifted to the state, and

for which the future was unclear. Someone noted that the current teachers had

received end-of-year transfers; one woman remarked that it was essential for the

children of the tribe to have teachers who understood their culture.



88

Also discussed was the ambiguous status of Indian citizenship in spite of being

"wards of the government." One tribal council member asked, rhetorically, "In ten

years, what will we do? The government makes promises that are never fulfilled. . . .

Congress gives out foreign aid, but none to us. As citizens, we do not have full rights."

The most common theme was the failure of the government to honor treaties and

promises. Those treaties "must have ripped somewhere along the line," one tribal

elder said, since "if the government had done what they started out to do, today's

Indians under sixty years of age would be self-supporting." One elder, Peter Morgan,

gave a long and impassioned speech in the Mesquakie language. Of special concern

were issues of land ownership, taxation and productive use--especially the problems

that the special status of the Tama reservation land, which the tribe had purchased

from white settlers, presented to the federal government in terms of defining its role in

relation to this unusual tribe. The program ended with a brief remark by the narrator

that the roots of democracy and representative government can be found in the Indian

tribal council, "probably the oldest form of pure democracy."

This local broadcast was remarkable in several ways. It was an extremely early

television documentary to address the complexities and contradictions of Native

American communities facing the threats of termination of federal services. It did so by

turning its microphones over to tribal leaders, with no substantial explanation,

summary or closure enforced by an authoritative white narrator or host. The

community meeting, and the indigenous sentiments expressed, were allowed to stand

on their own, unremarked upon. The Native voice was provided access to the

technological apparatus of dominant society, and invited to express itself. However,



89

the audience was limited to that of an Iowa locality, and there is no indication that the

broadcast had any political effectivity. In its framing and in its rhetoric, the broadcast

both validated the indigenous culture and emphasized the perceived inevitability of

assimilation and termination.

As the new medium of television became more widespread after the FCC's

1952 lifting of the four-year television freeze, the pro-Indian interest groups soon

turned their promotional attentions to the national networks. In the Fall of 1953, the

all-Indian NCAI began a series of negotiations with Fred Friendly, producer of CBS

television's See It Now, to try to arrange a report by Edward R. Murrow from the

national NCAI convention, with interviews of tribal leaders about the controversies in

Indian affairs. Because of the magnitude of such a public relations effort, the NCAI

decided to ask the more media-savvy AAIA to help with the project.89 Apparently

initially interested in some type of socioeconomic focus for a Navajo story,

correspondence indicates that Friendly was annoyed by the aggressive efforts of

AAIA's staff, especially Harold Mantell (AAIA Information Director), to refocus the

proposed broadcast. After a meeting with Friendly, AAIA Executive Director

Alexander Lesser wrote LaFarge that Friendly seemed to be wary that "he was

dealing with a ‘public relations outfit'. . . and I did the best I could to make him

understand that we felt that the 30 years of organized effort of the Association in the

field of Indians gave us the right to try to provide him with whatever information and

insight we might have into the Indian problem of the present."

We tried to show Friendly that the economic, social, educational andhealth problems of the Navajos are not "the" problem of today; that it israther the Federal renunciation of responsibilities to tackle these



90

concrete problems which constitutes the overriding threat to the Indians.. . . It is not a question of schools or hospitals, etc; it is a question of theexistence of Indian tribal communities, the overall Federal guarantee of

their rights to exist, and . . . federal responsibility to see that thebackwardness, educationally and economically, is overcome.

Acknowledging that the negotiations failed, Lesser noted that "LaVerne [Madigan] and

I . . . both agree that the idea of a timely show on . . . the united fight of Indians against

the new Federal policy is a top idea. If CBS does not use it, and prefers the Navajo

theme, we think someone ought to use it."90

Local tribal communities and activists began to discover community radio as a

tool for the dissemination of news and editorials about Indian affairs. KMON radio in

Great Falls, Montana began a series called Indian Information in late 1953, organized

by radio announcer Stan Deck. A mimeographed newsletter distributed by the Great

Falls, Montana-based "Friends of Hill 57," a local grassroots group working to improve

living conditions in the urban Indian ghetto as well as to influence legislative issues,

announced that Deck had offered his services to tribes wishing to prepare five-minute

talks about the termination situation to be broadcast on KMON "every day if desired

between now and the end of this Congressional session":

Interviews with tribal officials and friendly non-Indians could follow anopening with Indian drums and the announcement: "Indian tribes mustnot be terminated. Citizens! Know your neighbors' problems. They areyours, too." . . . Then plug for the Write-a-Letter-to-Mamie campaign withthis for an ending: "Do a citizen's duty and write a letter to Mamie andsay, ‘Please tell Ike that the Federal government must mind its ownIndian business.'"91

A 1955 report on Radio KMON reported on a speech made by a Montana Indian, Mrs.

J. B. Koliha, to a meeting of church women, quoting her comments on the local effects



91

of termination. Other Great Falls area radio stations occasionally featured guest

editorials dealing with Indian issues, particularly those of the "landless Indians":

Recent federal policy has encouraged and even forced Indian families toleave their reservations in search of a livelihood. These people havecome to Great Falls, Havre, Helena and many other Montana cities.Many of them have been poorly prepared to compete in the urban labormarket. . . The result is that the Indian colonies on the outskirts ofMontana towns and cities are centers of poverty and misery. . . . Theresident of Cascade County is being asked to foot the bill for a messcreated by the federal government. Many persons ask why Uncle Samshould forget his treaty obligations to these Indian people, just becausethey have been forced to leave their reservations.92

Montana's Robert Yellowtail, Crow tribal leader and legal expert, frequently

editorialized over Sheridan, Wyoming's KWYO radio and Billings, Montana's KBMY.

His articulate and astute observations pointed out the irony of America's role as

champion of human rights in the face of her violations of sacred trust with regard to

indigenous peoples. Yellowtail clearly expressed issues of sovereignty and legal

rights, challenging the integrity of the U.S. government, and calling for public action

against the BIA. Other tribal leaders, such as Walt McDonald of the Confederated

Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana, indicated that they had appeared on local

radio shows to discuss Indian affairs.93

The AAIA also took advantage of local, listener-sponsored community radio: in

July of 1954, KPFA of Berkeley, California reported a long discussion program on

Indian issues, featuring scholars LaFarge, Vern Ray of Yale, Nancy Lurie of Harvard,

and William Holenthal of San Francisco State Universities. After the successful

response to this broadcast, AAIA's new Executive Director LaVerne Madigan wrote to

LaFarge suggesting a way to disseminate their message across the nation fairly



92

inexpensively: she asked him if he would prepare a speech on tape "on the great

betrayal which is in progress," exclaiming that "there are numerous sections where

television has not yet replaced radio altogether, and we should take advantage of the

condition while it still exists." Perhaps later, she offered, "we could follow a similar

procedure with a film recording," which could be used "not only on television but by

schools and clubs." Thinking of the visual possibilities that film and television might

offer, Madigan added, "Perhaps part of the film could show you talking to a long-haired

Indian who talks in the grand style."94

Television coverage of American Indian issues in the years between 1954-

1956 seems to have been limited and irregular, in spite of sporadic efforts by interest

groups to acquire public affairs time on the two major networks (NBC and CBS) for

serious discussion of the political and cultural issues which were being hotly debated

in the halls of Congress and on Indian reservations across the nation. 95 In April of

1954, the Dumont Television network televised a debate between leading termination

advocate Senator Arthur Watkins and termination opponent Senator George

Smathers, entitled "Should the American Indian Be Given Full Citizenship

Responsibility?"96 The following month, a CBS program, Longines Chronoscope, was

devoted to a discussion of Indian affairs. One viewer, Mrs. Doris Redfield, wrote to

LaFarge and the AAIA that she had heard on the program "of bills pending to deprive

the Indian of his Federal protection," and offered to arrange publicity of these matters

through the several Midwestern newspapers with which she was affiliated, "to arouse

public opinion to prevent further exploitation of Indians and their land." The AAIA sent

her a packet of legislative information and encouraged her to pursue the publicity.97



93

In the Fall of 1955, NBC television asked the AAIA for help with contacts for a

short documentary film that Joe Michaels would be producing on problems among the

Sioux. Madigan sent letters of introduction to Moses Two Bulls, Tribal Chairman of

South Dakota's Oglala Sioux tribe, and to Dr. Ben Reifel, a Native American who was

Superintendent of the Aberdeen (South Dakota) Area Office of the BIA, requesting

their cooperation with the NBC broadcast. A month later, Madigan reported to an AAIA

Board member that Joe Michaels of NBC had just returned from his shoot among the

Oglala Sioux: "He photographed everybody and everything and really did a research

job." Though the film was not yet edited, "he assures me that he will show the public

the unspeakable wretchedness of the Sioux and say that much remains to be done."

She also commented on the potential of such television coverage for reaching a wide

audience: "This program--Today--is very important. It is Dave Garroway's early

morning show, which everybody on earth seems to see, and it goes out all over the

country."98

That same month, the AAIA apparently pursued CBS television to develop

some projects based upon the Indian issues, sending a large packet of background

material, newsletters, and legislative material. Edward Saxe, CBS Vice-President and

Assistant to the President, responded to Madigan:

I was somewhat overwhelmed by the bulk and by the complexity of theissues represented in the material you forwarded. I have sent it to FredFriendly [producer of See It Now]. . . . I prefer this approach toattempting to get television news pickup which, at best, would becursory. Have you approached the Fund for the Republic regarding yourprogram? Civil liberties as applied to the American Indian might makefor an interesting research project, the results of which might then be communicated to the American public by television or other media.99



94

Shortly thereafter, Madigan received a letter from Barbara Sapinsley, producer of the

network's Let's Take A Trip children's show. On January 15, Sapinsley wrote, Sonny,

Pud and Ginger, the show's principals, would be visiting a Seminole village in Miami,

to "learn who the Seminoles are" and to "talk to the Indians." She asked if AAIA would

publicize this show among its members. In a response letter (marked "NOT SENT")

Madigan asked for the inclusion of some political issues into the content of the

program if it were to be publicized through the Association's newsletter.100

Determined to pursue CBS to treat the Native American issues with more gravity,

Madigan wrote to Eric Sevareid of CBS-TV's Washington News Bureau. She

suggested that LaFarge, who would be coming East in April, would be available for a

public affairs interview or talk show:

We know of no one who can more effectively present the Indians' caseto the public . . . . We wonder whether you could connect us with any ofthe really good public affairs programs on TV. We think Mr. LaFarge'sappearance on one could do much to focus public attention on theproblems with which we are concerned. Thank you--even if you find thisrequest out of order and cannot do what we ask.

Sevareid responded quickly and courteously, suggesting that if she would contact him

closer to the date of LaFarge's visit, "maybe I can think of one or two people in network

public affairs who might be interested." Madigan did follow up on the Spring, but there

is no indication of any appearances by LaFarge on CBS. However, a memo from

Madigan to AAIA members in April announced the upcoming broadcast on NBC's

Outlook of "an important film about the Indian Bureau's Relocation program." 101

A Swell in Public Debate (1956-1958)



95

1956 was a fairly quiet media year in Indian affairs, with the exception of a few

feature articles in widely-read highbrow magazines which were highly critical of the

termination movement. Articles appeared in both Harper's and Atlantic Monthly in

March, and became the topic of intertextual debate. A response to the articles from an

M.C. Thornhill appeared in the Letters to the Editor of The Washington Post, calling for

a repeal of H.C.R. 108. The Post printed Emmons' response to the Thornhill letter, in

which the BIA Commissioner denied "as emphatically as I can" the major implications

of both magazine articles. Shortly thereafter, an article in Christian Century also noted

an increasing interest in "the situation of Indian Americans" among Protestant church

groups, as reported by a surge in orders for maps, pamphlets and books from

publishers ranging from religious presses to the Bureau of Indian Affairs: "orders for

several months averaged 800 per day" from the BIA's office of Visual Aids and

Publications.102

However, national public interest in American Indian issues increased greatly

during 1957, with another swell of media coverage and attention. An in-depth report in

the mainstream press from this period was an extensive story in the Atlantic Monthly in

1957 by Edith Mirrielees, an English professor at Stanford University who researched

the contemporary politics surrounding the Bureau of Indian Affairs and its

administration of Indian programs, along with recent legislation affecting Indian status

and its long- term implications. Her story brought many of these issues to the public's

attention for the first time, and the magazine received a number of letters in response

to the story, all sympathetic to the "plight" of the Indian, including two from readers

who identified themselves as Indian and one from the former Commissioner of Indian



96

Affairs during the Roosevelt era, John Collier, who agreed with Mirrielees but criticized

her for being too "charitable" to the government in her article.103

In February, The Minneapolis Tribune ran a controversial series of feature

articles, "The First Are Last," on socioeconomic conditions in a variety of urban

Midwestern Indian communities, written by staff writer Carl Rowan, an African

American. NCAI Director Helen Peterson commented on Rowan's articles in a letter to

E. Palmer Hoyt (publisher of The Denver Post):

A fine Negro reporter did a series of articles in the Minneapolis Tribuneand, while he did a good job of pointing out conditions of poverty,breakdown in culture, and sordid conditions among Indians relocated inMinneapolis, he--like most others interested in race relations or civilrights--apparently hasn't a glimmer of the basic land issue, theFederal-Indian relationship, the proper role of a national trustee, orwhere the cure for is for ill health, ignorance, and poverty. A series thatclearly explains this is much-needed...."

Time magazine picked up the scent of this unusual controversy--a black man writingaboutAmerican Indian issues--and ran a story in "The Press" section:

A Negro who has won four national awards for stories that have takenhim from the Deep South to the Far East, Carl Rowan . . . brought to his15- part Tribune series a mixture of shrewd news sense and a personalkinship with the Indian--the other "American who is not quite anAmerican.". . .

"When local [Minnesota] whites criticize the South for racialsegregation," asks Rowan, "is it a case of the pot calling the kettleblack?" Rowan says he found "almost no citizen who will say directlythat he considers the Indian racially inferior, or inherently a loafer or adrunkard." Yet [a Minnesota hospital director] told him: "The feeling ofsome communities is that the only good Indians are dead Indians."

The article reports a huge public response to the series, which was bluntly critical of

federal, state and local bureaucracies and their inability to provide adequate and

timely social services.104



97

The stirrings of American Indian activism received some anxious commentary,

and attacks, in the popular press from the conservative right in 1957 and 1958. In a

patronizing vein, the Saturday Evening Post in 1957 celebrated the government's

relocation of individual Indians from "bleak and dreary" reservations ("concentration

camps") to the "delights and opportunities" of urban areas ("civilization"), since in their

new situation "they save their money, go to church, and maintain decorum regularly."

One Reader's Digest story celebrated the "enlightened policies" of Glenn Emmons, a

"warmhearted country banker," who it claimed was "for the first time [offering] Indians

a future"; another paternalistically chided the Indians for their lack of appreciation of all

that "we" Americans had done for them, trivializing the process of Indian land claims

and reinforcing a perceived distinction between "Indians" and "Americans" by

constructing the Indians yet again as thieves and villains:

The Indians are on the warpath--not for scalps but for money; in theplace of tomahawks they are using law books. The white man took theirlands without just compensation, they say. Now they intend to get paidfor it. . . . Ridiculous, you think? . . . Until [action is taken to stop this], theIndians and their lawyers will continue to collect big wampum from theAmerican taxpayer.105

The tone and racism of these articles enraged Native Americans and pro-

Indian interest groups, arousing many of them to prepare public responses. NCAI

Director Peterson wrote to her friend Palmer Hoyt, Publisher of the Denver Post,

asking him if he could pull some strings to get Reader's Digest to republish D'Arcy

McNickle's Christian Century article, "It's Almost Never Too Late," to counter Daniel's

article. The following year, when the Digest article on Indian land claims came out,

pro-Indian interest groups claimed to be deluged with requests about how to respond



98

to its charges. "To arm [them] with the facts," the NCAI sent a mailing to all Indian

tribes, as well as its individual members:

The Reader's Digest is read each month by more than eleven millionpeople. Therefore, we should all do what we can to correct themisinformation and erroneous impressions that have been created bythe article. . . . You and others in your tribe should try to get thisinformation to the local newspapers, radio and TV stations so they willknow what the facts are.106

The information packet included a Congressional Record reprint of remarks made by

Rep. Ed Edmondson of Oklahoma about the article, as well as reprinted editorials

from newspapers and magazines. "Make sure your tribal council has this information,"

they emphasized.

Not all of the television coverage in the 1950s was serious journalism-- the

producers of a television game show, Stand Up and Be Counted, contacted the AAIA

early that year to get "an Indian" as a contestant on the show, the premise of which

was that the contestant tells of his ambition and gets responses from the studio

audience. Also, the AAIA apparently cooperated to get some Native American

contestants on I've Got A Secret.107 The AAIA’s Madigan was willing to try any angle

to get Indian issues before the American public. In March, she sent a letter to a major

New York City radio station announcing that a number of tribal officials would be

visiting the area, and wondering if the public affairs director had a need to interview

"intelligent, young adult leaders of their people, articulate, and working hard to

develop their tribal communities."108

The first major national broadcast coverage of Native American issues was

achieved with the impressive May 26, 1957, episode of NBC's showy 90- minute



99

reality series Wide Wide World, "The American Indian: Between Two Worlds." The

premise of the series, hosted by the Today show's Dave Garroway, was based on

exploiting the use of live broadcast technology simultaneously from a number of

diverse locations, linking the country--and the world-- through television, and forging

an "imaginary community," in Benedict Anderson's terms. In this episode, television

crews were stationed in Tulsa and Anadarko, Oklahoma; in Zuni Pueblo and Los

Alamos, New Mexico; at two locations on Arizona's Pima Reservation; and at

Chicago's Kenmore Center. These locations were connected by an elaborate

technical linkage using AT&T switching facilities and cables, and coordinated through

a switcher in the New York NBC studio. At station breaks, the producers also cut to

other locations for live commercials. The entire show was carefully scripted, including

interview responses, and participants had taken part in a dress rehearsal earlier in the

day.109

The rhetoric of the program emphasized the social and cultural disjunction of

the dual cultures which Native Americans faced, portraying them as liminal figures,

"between two worlds": "One, the modern world of twentieth century America; the

other, the timeless world of tradition and proud heritage." Opening on the Zuni Pueblo,

"a way of life as old as history . . . the old world," the producers juxtaposed traditional

Zuni life against "the new world"--a laboratory of the Los Alamos Atomic Energy

Commission. On the Pueblo, they examined the "ancient rhythms" of the Zuni, and

probed for the secrets of Zuni religion with a prayer from a Sun Priest, a performance

of the Rainbow Dance (with 100-150 Zuni spectators in festive traditional dress), an

interview with Calvin Eustace, governor of the Pueblo, and with silversmith Fred



100

Bowani. After a commercial for General Motors, Wide Wide World switched to the

Atomic City of Los Alamos: "a different kind of reservation--a white man's reservation.

. . not far from the Zuni Pueblo but centuries apart in time." After lauding the

magnificent advances of science, technology and community planning which had

converged at this site, viewers were treated to the first television views of the "secret"

laboratories of the Health Research Laboratory where workers are engaged in

"weapons development work" and nuclear research. There, Garroway interviewed

Petasha Vigil, a Pueblo Indian--whose attention to detail gained from traditional

silversmith skills served him well in his work with radioactive plutonium particles--and

his wife Lila, a technician for the radioactivity-measuring "Human Counter." Her boss

pointed just out how little radioactivity would actually be absorbed by the body in

atomic fallout: "Less than you'd get from the dial of this ordinary wristwatch!"

Act II took the viewer to Tulsa for interviews with Thomas Gilcrease (Creek), oil

millionaire and collector of frontier art, artist Dick West (Cheyenne), who (backed by

still-in-motion visuals followed by footage of a Cheyenne War Dance) gave an account

of the traditional Plains Indian way of life, and Acee Blue Eagle (Pawnee), who

likewise shared the Woodland Indian traditions of the Pawnees (ending with a Wichita

Turkey Dance). Next, the producers staged a frontier-era reenactment of an

Oklahoma Land Rush, which marked "the beginning of the end of Indian Territory."

Then, back in Tulsa, a discussion of the "Arrows to Atoms" Celebration of the state's

50th anniversary made note of some of Oklahoma's favorite sons: Creek Indian Allie

Reynolds (former Yankees pitcher) and Will Rogers, of Cherokee descent.



101

"Oklahoma! In fifty years from teepees to towers, a chapter in American history that

began in tears and ends in triumph!" Garroway concluded.

Act III addressed the issue of relocation and urban Indian culture, though from

a cultural rather than a political perspective: “What happens when an Indian cuts

himself off from these values? . . . To go from tribal tradition to atomic age, the Indian

must leap across the centuries. And sometimes the transition is so bewildering that it

ends in disaster.” Garroway recounted the tragic story of World War II veteran and

Pima Indian Ira Hayes, switching to Bapchule, Arizona to show where he was raised:

The land is parched and barren. Hard to find roots here after seeing thewide world. A tough place to come home to after the war. He tried to getaway [switch in visuals to Chicago street scene] to find a better life. Itdidn't work . . . too much self-rejection . . . too many drinks. He was lost,away from home, in the new world he couldn't join.

This section repeatedly emphasized the trope of the American Indian trapped

"between two worlds." Back in Arizona, the cameras visited the Pima Tribal Council,

who were considering sending a delegation to Chicago to investigate the welfare of

tribal members who had relocated. Garroway interviewed Jay Morago, Jr. as an

example of a young person who chose to stay on the reservation and became Tribal

Chairman: "When we lose our young people, we lose the ones who are the future

hope of the tribe."

Back in Chicago, reporter Jack Chancellor visited a neighborhood center run

by white church workers, and interviewed one of the center directors, Mrs. Norman

Attrell, who explained that the center served all newcomers to the neighborhood:

Indians, Puerto Ricans and Southern whites. She reported that one of the services

offered to Indian women was a Charm Course, since "after they've been here awhile



102

[and] get television sets, many of them come to us asking for advice on what to wear

and how to cut their hair. . . ." The camera focused on contrasting before-and-after

images of an Indian woman "right off the reservation" and a "pretty, modern-looking

Indian matron." This provided a segue to a visit and interview with glamorous ballet

dancer Maria Tallchief. Viewers, along with a group of urban Indian children brought

from the Kenmore community center, watched her dancing a pas de deux from Swan

Lake Ballet. In the interview, Tallchief told about growing up "well off" in Oklahoma of

Osage ancestry. Then she demonstrated some dance steps to one of the young

Indian girls; camera directions indicate: "Takes most attractive child; runs; they do a

leap; she lets child go and does antic ballet step; cut to Maria in mirror dancing; cut to

children smiling; cut to chaperone beaming."

Wide Wide World repeatedly constructed Native American culture as an

ancient, historical artifact--outside of time, in fact--and in conflict with the temporal

modern world. Its discourses problematized the need for individual Indians to join the

modern world "on their own terms," to "make the leap" across the centuries. These

discourses emphasized that these adjustments would impose "great personal,

psychological and emotional" stress on individuals, yet, through its highlighted

selection of successfully assimilated personalities (and its profile of the tragic figure of

Ira Hayes), indicated that the benefits of "adjustment" were worthy and admirable

goals. The show ended with an enigmatic question regarding the tribal children of

Native America: “All of them, growing up with the language of two worlds. Which will

they choose? Or must they choose? Is America big enough to let them move at their

own pace to accept the best of our world while retaining the best of their own?” The



103

documentary remained firmly apolitical, never mentioning or even implying the

existence of controversial termination policies, nor dealing with concrete social and

policy issues such as education or health. In its attention to life on a number of

reservations, the program assiduously failed to mention the existence of the Bureau of

Indian Affairs, or the relationship between the federal government and the Native

American people. Rather, it was a documentary of celebration, applauding the Atomic

age as the pinnacle of human progress, and constructing ideal America as a melting

pot into which Native Americans were adding their own distinct flavor.

Although it denied, through omission, the contemporary political problems

facing Native Americans, the Wide Wide World documentary was praised by some for

its positive portrayal of Indian individuals. Madigan wrote a letter to NBC on behalf of

the AAIA Board of Directors to commend the NBC network and sponsor General

Motors "for combining great showmanship with serious, thoughtful, dignified treatment

of a difficult and misunderstood American problem--the American Indian,"

commenting that the production made "crystal clear the difficulties of the present

position of the Indians. . . . This is the sort of thing television is for."110

Interest groups such as the AAIA continued to try to arrange for appearances

on network public affairs programs, and coverage of Indian issues in the media

increased greatly during 1958. One plea from the AAIA to CBS pointed out the "quiet

taking-over of Indian heritage by land-hungry non- Indian neighbors or outsiders," and

emphasized that the public was largely unaware of these tribal land sales, drawing

upon Cold War fears to underscore that "Communist countries are aware of this" and

would use it as anti-American propaganda. To educate the American public, the AAIA



104

proposed a televised debate between LaFarge and Secretary of the Interior Fred

Seaton. Later that month, NBC's Today show reported that LaFarge had charged "that

the government's current handling of the American Indian resembles the program that

Bolshevik Russia enforced against the Kulaks a few decades ago." Through arranged

sales of Indian land by the BIA to benefit white cattle ranchers, LaFarge claimed, "the

uneducated, inarticulate peoples of the Plains states are being steadily

impoverished." A representative of the Kiowa/Comanche and Apache tribes wrote to

LaFarge in response:

This morning on NBC TODAY I saw you and heard your speech on theproblems of American Indians. All that I can say is May God Richly BlessYou and all of the members of the Association on American IndianAffairs. Everything you said is true[;] conditions among our Indians isbad . . . worse than it ever has been in the history of the past years. . . .The Indian Bureau is paid to help our Indians, yet they fight us all thetime. I wonder who they are working for.

Indian rights advocates and interest groups even took advantage of religious

programming to get their message across. In the summer of 1958, CBS's Sunday

morning Lamp Unto My Feet featured Dr. Harold Fey, Editor of The Christian Century,

and NCAI Director Helen Peterson discussing the field of Indian affairs. Board

members of the Indian Rights Association also arranged a number of interviews and

guest editorials on Philadelphia-area radio stations. However, with the exception of

Peterson, all of these appearances on behalf of Indian rights were by non-Indians. 111

During that summer of 1958, however, an NBC journalist by the name of Robert

McCormick was at work on a project which would radically alter the norms of

representation of American Indians in the media. This television documentary

broadcast, The American Stranger, would bring the political issues facing American



105

Indian tribes to the full attention of the American public in a way that no others

previously had been able to, and in the process would provide opportunities for some

tribal leaders to voice their own concerns--and their own truths-- on national television.

IMPERIALIST PRACTICES AND JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSES

This chapter has examined the various discourses which publicly defined the

cultural politics of Native America in the 1950s, during a period of crisis and transition

in the colonial relationship between the U.S. government and the various Indian tribes.

Throughout the 1950s, the mechanisms of imperialism operated at many different

levels with regard to America's indigenous tribal peoples. At least three distinct types

of imperialist practice are represented in the various discourses which intersected in

journalistic media coverage of Native American political and cultural issues during this

period: (1) a political and economic imperialism, carried out through military and/or

bureaucratic regime, as well as economic dependency in a capitalist system, (2) a

sociocultural imperialism based upon an altruistic mission to "help" the Indians, rooted

in social hierarchy and Judeo-Christian charitable and evangelistic impulses, and (3)

symbolic imperialism, which involves discursive control over the very definition of

native identity and the construction, by the dominant, of official representations,

histories and accounts which silence or disallow indigenous voices and

self-representations. It is difficult to say which, if any of these imperialist practices, has

exerted more in the way of oppressive power over indigenous cultural, social and

political life. The tools have been different, though they have served similar

hegemonic ends.



106

Legal or political imperialism, the classic scenario of conquest, is based upon

institutionalized power and domination by one group over another, often by virtue of

military strength. Since, in this case, the empire was vested in a white, patriarchal and

bourgeois ruling bloc, its very institutional structure has inscribed and defined gender,

class, ethnic and racial difference. Political imperialist practices define the "official"

hegemony, and dominate the political, economic and military domains. To justify its

practices, it constructs the role of empire as protective and benevolent, perceiving its

colonial subjects as childlike, incompetent, and in need of direction, guidance or

discipline--that is, unable to handle their own affairs. These "paternalistic" discourses

have been evident throughout the history of Indian colonization, operationalized in

terms such as "trusteeship" and "wards."

Economically, the philosophy of such an imperialism is one of exploitation, and

in the case of Native America, the object of such exploitation has been and continues

to be the land and natural resources. Spurr identifies appropriation as a major trope of

colonial discourse, yet notes that the colonial proprietary vision "effaces its own mark

of appropriation by transforming it into the response to a putative appeal on the part of

the colonized land and people." As Spurr explains, "The colonizing imagination takes

for granted that the land and its resources belong to those who are best able to exploit

them according to the values of a Western commercial and industrial system."112

For example, the very placement of Indian Affairs under the bureaucratic

mantle of the U.S. Department of the Interior (transferred from the War Department in

1849) reinforced the primary mandate in the colonial relationship as one of

appropriation of land and resources; the problematic of how to dispose of the humans



107

occupying that land was temporarily solved by subsuming them to the

land--incorporating Indian administration into the scheme of natural resource

management. The 1959 Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, entitled

Resources for a Growing Population, outlined four "broad fields of endeavor in

undertaking to protect and develop our natural resources," including research,

management of renewable resources to insure full and efficient use, new techniques

to insure full utilization of mineral and water resources, and the preservation and

enhancement of scenic, wildlife and recreational resources "which, once destroyed,

can never be replaced." Farther along in the essay, after a discussion of coal

utilization, falls the category "Human Resources," which emphasized the increasing

population pressure on the physical and natural resources of Indian reservations.

Interestingly, the section of the report on the BIA implicitly provides an explanation for

the shrinking resource base--noting that, in fiscal year 1959, as a result of federal

allotment policies, 547,763 acres of trust or restricted land were sold by their Indian

owners (far outweighing the 121,356 acres brought into tribal or individual Indian

ownership). The federal report naturalized the "movement of the Indian people away

from dependency on the land into other fields of human activity" as a justification for

the federal Relocation program. Included in the report on Indians as human resources

are notes on relocation, education, land and water resources, forests, and minerals

and fuels. Throughout the report on the Bureau of Indian Affairs, much more emphasis

was proudly placed on the development and exploitation of resources on Indian

reservations than on the social, cultural or political aspects of administering services

to the communities.113



108

In his study of the relationship between popular attitudes toward "the Indian"

and the formulation of 18th to 20th century federal Indian policy, Dippie traces the

development of the cultural myth of the Indian as "Vanishing American" as a

self-perpetuating justification for national policies which aligned Indians with the

wilderness, on the one hand, and the idyllic or virtuous past, on the other--both of

which 19th century America struggled to vanquish, to conquer and rise beyond in its

pursuit of progress:

No idea was more uniformly acceptable to Americans of the nineteenthcentury than universal human progress. It was the rule of life, andWestern civilization was its agent. Thus the position of the Indian, ascivilization's antithesis, the embodiment of savagery, was fatallycompromised. . . . Both the Indian and the wilderness would have to be‘subdued' and made ‘fruitful.'. . . The issue was simple. To establishcivilization, the forests which sustained savagery had to be clearedaway.114

Justification for the expropriation of Indian land was easily found in the philosophy of

19th century thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and Nathan Hale. These men saw

the "abridgement of Indian territory" as one cause of the demise of native populations,

along with alcohol, disease and war. Dippie explains that the denial of the role of

Euro-American intervention as a malevolent one was justified by "higher" laws: "the

superior claims of civilization, the Biblical injunction to till the earth and the theory of

the Indians' improper usage of the lands they occupied." This philosophy viewed the

indigenous style of life as inferior and indolent, and their coming "extinction" as being

natural rather than violent or externally-imposed. This resulted in the perception that

"the abridgement of tribal territory was [perceived as] an effect, not a cause, of the

Indians' downfall."115



109

A second type of imperialist practice, interpenetrating with the first, appearing

more beneficent but also more cunning in its mode of ideological imposition, is what

we might call altruistic imperialism. Generally cloaked in either humanitarian Christian

rhetoric or in the social action mode of liberal humanism, these imperialist practices

have operated according to a trope of sympathetic nurturance rather than physical

discipline (as I discuss further in Chapter Five). Such imperialist practices easily

disguise themselves in the culture of charity/altruism in American society: the "helping

hand" syndrome. This model can best be understood through the Gramscian model of

hegemony, gaining consent of the dominated for their own domination, and

naturalizing that domination as inevitable and for their own good. According to Spurr,

"The ultimate aim of colonial discourse . . . [is] to dominate by inclusion and

domestication rather than by a confrontation which recognizes the independent

identity of the Other. Hence the impulse . . . to see colonized peoples as ultimately

sympathetic to the colonizing mission and to see that mission itself as bringing

together the peoples of the world in the name of a common humanity."116

The agents of these imperialist practices were both male and female, yet the

discourses of altruistic imperialism have generally been less masculinist than those of

political empire-building. Institutionally, these practices have been represented by the

Church (I use the term in an institutional and nondenominational way, and inclusive of

both Catholic and Protestant organized agencies, missions, and publications) and

liberal white "Friends of the Indians" organizations. Many of these agents of empire

have generally been caught in a paradoxical bind in relation to Native America--the

more politicized of these groups have served as the most effective advocates for



110

Indian rights, mediating between tribes and the mainstream legal and judicial

systems, yet cultural biases have still frequently crept into their discourses to maintain

the hierarchy of perceived difference.

Altruistic discourses and practices have been represented by a continuum of

"do-gooders" ranging from proselytizing Christian missionary organizations to more

politicized, activist movements working within the American political system to effect

policy changes regarding Native American land and treaty rights as well as to provide

humanitarian relief. Although the latter are often positioned to the left politically

(usually associated with the Democratic party), their discourses often constructed a

hierarchy of condescension in which Indians were shaped as victims, in need of help

and protection. Agents of altruism generally work in conjunction with a paternalistic or

patriarchal legal structure, though more liberal agents often voice opposition to it.

However, most altruistic practices have not radically challenged the structure of

patriarchal imperialism, but have attempted to merely soften its effect. As Spurr writes:

Colonization is a form of self-inscription onto the lives of the people whoare conceived as an extension of the landscape. For the colonizer as forthe writer, it becomes a question of establishing authority through thedemarcation of identity and difference. Members of a colonizing classwill insist on their radical difference from the colonized as a way oflegitimizing their own position in the colonial community. But at the sametime they will insist, paradoxically, on the colonized people's essentialidentity with them--both as preparation for the domestication of thecolonized and as a moral and philosophical precondition for the civilizingmission.117

As to the implicit dangers of the ambivalence of such an agency, M. Annette Jaimes

states, "A great deal of damage can be carried out under the cloak of benevolence.



111

‘Friends of the Indian' have furthered the control of American Indians by whites. . . .

Racism also hides beneath benevolence."118

A third type of imperial practice is symbolic colonization or imperialism--what

Churchill calls "the redefinition of indigenous culture," adding that "mere [political]

conquest is never the course of empire." We might define this, in Spurr's terms, as

"the entire system by which one culture comes to interpret, to represent, and finally to

dominate another."119 Three major issues which are intimately involved in symbolic, or

cultural, colonization and which have been and continue to be of concern in the

relationship between Native America and hegemonic white society are: (1) the

validation and invalidation of various versions of history, which involves controlling

and defining the society's official master historical narrative, (2) colonizing the secret,

spiritual life of a culture, and (3) control of literary and media discourses and

representations.

A recent (1990's) example of discursive struggle over the definition of history

has been the Native American involvement in the revision of America's founding myth

of Columbus. Churchill sees literary efforts of "historical recounting" to justify the

"historical inevitability and moral correctness of colonial growth and perpetuation":

The construction of the U.S. national heritage in terms of historytherefore necessarily entailed the reconstruction of American Indianhistory and reality to conform to the desired image. . . . In this way, . . .the indigenous reality . . . is thereby hopelessly trapped within thedefinitional power of the oppressor . . . [and] the national identity of thecolonizer is created and maintained through the usurpation of thenational identity of the colonized.120

The issue of non-Indians attempting to colonize the secrets and appropriate the

lifeways of native spirituality is one of the most incendiary topics in Native America



112

today.121 Churchill also criticizes members of the dominant culture who "are unable to

retain their sense of distance and separation from that which they dominate," and

claims that, contrary to "helping" the Indians, the common expropriation of aspects of

indigenous culture is a form of negation, disrespect, and ultimately, genocide.122

Chief Leonard George, a native Canadian tribal leader, was recently quoted as

claiming: "In hindsight, we can easily say that the native people of North America were

oppressed by three major forces. These were the government, religion and Hollywood

. . . ."123 I would extend the concept of Hollywood, and its fictionalized media

representations, to also include the journalistic constructions of Native Americans

such as those elaborated above. This symbolic colonization has been operationalized

through a long history of representations and misrepresentations of American Indian

culture, primarily through stereotyping, in classical and popular literature, academic

scholarship, and the mass media. Many writers have charted the place of Native

Americans historically in the American popular imagination, in literature and films and

fictional television programs.124 Nonfictional media representations and discourses,

like those outlined in this chapter, also constitute a significant part of these discursive

traditions. The interpenetration of fictional and nonfictional representations and

discourses in mass mediated society is considerable.

In conclusion, I would like to interrogate the political effectivity of 1950s media

discourses towards empowering Native Americans. Spurr reflects on the nature of

colonial discourses "not only as an epistemic violence and a colonizing order, but also,

to cite Michel Foucault, as that which opens up ‘a whole field of responses, reaction,

results and possible inventions,' including the subversion of its own order."125 Spurr



113

conceptualizes colonial discourse as crisis-ridden, unstable and fragmented; in spite

of its obvious ideological function of "serving the forces of order," he suggests that

such discourse actually reflects "stress fractures under the burden of colonial

authority": “Colonial discourse does not simply reproduce an ideology . . . .It is a way

of creating and responding to reality that is infinitely adaptable in its function of

preserving the basic structures of power.”126 Throughout the media discourses of the

1950s, such ambiguities, ambivalences and contradictions are evident with regard to

defining the complex meanings of "American Indian" as variously a racial, ethnic,

social or political construct, as well as the problem of confronting the historical

specificities of genocide and imperialism with regard to several hundred distinct tribal

and cultural bodies. The crisis in hegemony which was augmented by these

discourses of late colonialism, I suggest, created cracks and fissures in the structures

of power, and through these provided for occasional, though irregular and

inconsistent, spaces for Native Americans to gain access to the eyes and ears (and

hearts and minds) of a national audience, if not to the control of the apparatus of

mainstream media itself. The case of The American Stranger, set forth in the following

chapters, provides historically-grounded evidence of these late-colonial ambivalences

as they were encoded into the rhetoric of a journalistic television text and as they

circulated in an intercultural, inter-class and inter-regional political, social and cultural

dialogue in 1958 and 1959.



114

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO



115



116



117



118



119



120



121



122



123



124





126

11. Brian Dippie emphasizes that a secondary purpose of these Acts was "thepromotion of civilization and education among the Indians," fostering values of a

Christian democratic society, particularly the ethos of private property ownership:"The seeming contradiction between method and putative goal--segregation in thepresent, assimilation in the future--was satisfactorily resolved by the theory of theVanishing American." The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. IndianPolicy (Lawrence, KS: UP of Kansas, 1982) 51.

12. Stephen Cornell, The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence(NY: Oxford UP, 1988) 5.

13. Rebecca L. Robbins, "Self-Determination and Subordination: The Past, Presentand Future of American Indian Governance," in The State of Native America, ed.M.Annette Jaimes (Boston: South End Press, 1992) 90.

14. Vine Deloria, Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle, American Indians, American Justice (Austin:U Texas P, 1983) 7.

15. Deloria and Lytle (1983) 8; Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,1887, quoted in Federal Indian Legislation and Policies, 1956 Workshop on IndianAffairs, University of Chicago Department of Anthropology. A copy is in theMcCormick Papers.

16. Deloria and Lytle (1983) 9.

17. Theodore H. Haas, “The Legal Aspects of Indian Affairs from 1887 to 1957,”Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (May, 1957) 15.

18. Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, 1886, quoted in FederalIndian Legislation and Policies (1956). See also Francis Paul Prucha, The GreatFather: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln: UNebraska P, 1986) 224-241.

19. Vine Deloria, Jr., "Introduction," in American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century(Norman: U Oklahoma P, 1985) 5.

20. Dippie, 97.

21. Robert H. White, Tribal Assets: The Rebirth of Native America (New York: HenryHolt and Company) 3.

22. Deloria and Lytle (1983) 15.

23. Nancy O. Lurie, "The Indian Claims Commission Act," Annals of the AmericanAcademy of Political and Social Sciences (May 1957) 56-70.



127

24. Frederick Stefon, “The Irony of Termination,” The Indian Historian 11/3 (Summer1978) 6. The Hoover Report is also known as The Commission on Organization of the

Executive Branch of the Government, A Report to the Congress on Social Security,Education and Indian Affairs (March 1949) 63-65.

25. House Report 2503, quoted in Deloria and Lytle (1983) 17.

26. Stefon, 8.

27. William Zimmerman, Jr., "The Role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Since 1933,"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 311 (May 1957)35-36.

28. In such a context, "master narrative" takes on a multiplicity of connotations--a

narrative both dominant and dominating. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark:Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage, 1993); Jimmie Durham,"Cowboys and . . .: Notes on Art, Literature, and American Indians in the ModernAmerican Mind," in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization andResistance, ed. M. Annette Jaimes (Boston: South End Press, 1992) 423-438. Seealso Robert Berkhofer, The White Man's Indian (NY: Knopf, 1978) and Brian Dippie,The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Lawrence, KS: U ofKansas P, 1982).

29. Oliver LaFarge, "American Indians Feel Ambushed With Words," ...Eagle [titleobscured] (10 January 1954). Newspaper clipping in Association on American Indian

Affairs (AAIA) Papers, Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Box 14.

30. Vine Deloria, Jr, and Clifford Lytle, The Nations Within: The Past and Future ofAmerican Indian Sovereignty (NY: Pantheon, 1984) 13.

31. Amy Kaplan, "’Left Alone With America': The Absence of Empire in the Study ofAmerican Culture," in Cultures of United States Imperialism, eds. A. Kaplan and D.Pease (Durham, Duke UP, 1993) 16.

32. Donald Pease, "New Perspectives on U.S. Culture and Imperialism," in Kaplanand Pease, 22.

33. Pease, 23.

34. Robbins, 90. Churchill presents a model of American internal colonialism inrelation to the oppression of Native America, while noting the difficulty such a notionpresents to the traditional historiographical narrative of America's heritage inFantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of AmericanIndians (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1992) 131-132.



128

35. Churchill, Fantasies, 131-132.

36. Cornell, 7.

37. "House Concurrent Resolution 108," 83rd Congress, 1st Session, in the Senate ofthe United States, passed 1 August 1953. Copy in McCormick Papers. Also printed inDocuments of U.S. Indian Policy, ed. Francis P. Prucha (Lincoln: U Nebraska P, 1990)233.

38. Address by Emmons to the NCAI Annual Convention, Omaha, Nebraska,November 19, 1954 (NCAI Papers). Donald Fixico, Termination and Relocation:Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960 (Albuquerque: U New Mexico P, 1986) 93-100.

39. See "Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1954," excerpted inDocuments of U.S. Indian Policy , ed. Francis P. Prucha (Lincoln: U Nebraska P,1990) 237-238 and Edith R. Mirrielees, "The Cloud of Mistrust," Atlantic Monthly 199(February 1957) 55-59.

40. Speech by the Rev. John Powell before the Institute on Indian Affairs, Missoula,Montana, April 1958, quoted by Walter McDonald in Char-Koosta (publication of theConfederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana), April 1958, 2.

41. Letter to President Dwight Eisenhower dated 27 December 1955 from RobertBurnette, Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council, South Dakota. AAIA Papers.

42. Vine Deloria, Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle, American Indians, American Justice (Austin:U Texas P, 1983) 18.

43. Arthur V. Watkins, "Termination of Federal Supervision: The Removal ofRestrictions Over Indian Property and Person," Annals of the American Academy ofPolitical and Social Sciences 311 (May 1957) 47-55. Malone statement inCongressional Record, September 22 and October 20, 1951.

44. The "natural" quote from Commissioner Glenn Emmons in letter dated 8 October1957 from Emmons to Max Gubatayao. Sister Providencia Papers (Cheney CowlesMuseum, Spokane, Washington) 5/7.

45. "Hold Up Sales of Indian Lands" (Editorial), The Christian Century 75 (18 June1958) 710.

46. Lawrence E. Lindley, "Why Indians Need Land," The Christian Century 74 (6November 1957) 1317.

47. Deloria and Lytle, American Indians, American Justice, 20; Charles F. Wilkinson



129

and Eric R. Biggs, "The Evolution of the Termination Policy," American Indian LawReview 139 (1977): 92-93.

48. William Zimmerman, Jr., "The Role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Since 1933,"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 311 (May 1957) 39.

49. See Iliff McKay, "A Tribal Councilman Comments on ‘Today and Tomorrow',"November 1959, Iliff McKay Papers; and letter from Richard A. Charles of Great Falls,Montana to Robert McCormick, dated 9 February 1959: "Several Indian Bureauofficials have made statements over the past three years indicating that the Indiansare trading land for food. In January 1958, on the Blackfeet reservation, I was told byseveral tribal members that they were selling land because they're hungry."McCormick Papers.

50. Stefon, 8. Quotation is from John Collier, From Every Zenith (Denver: Sage Press,1963) 300.

51. Vine Deloria, Jr., "Introduction," American Indians, American Justice, ix.

52. The AAIA started a Film Committee in 1949 to monitor Hollywood's fictionalrepresentations of American Indians, to educate the public about the stereotypicalnature of these images, and an advisory team to counsel Hollywood producers aboutways to construct more "authentic" and less stereotypical representations onscreen.This committee worked to establish formal relations with the Motion Picture

Association of America (Eric Johnston Office) and the Society of IndependentProducers. See Harold Mantell, "Counteracting the Stereotype," The American Indian5/4 (Fall 1950) 16-20, as well as primary documents in AAIA Papers.

53. In Chapter 13, "The New Christian Reformers," Francis Paul Prucha provides ahistory of the origins of the "Friends of the Indians" organizations as late 19th centuryhumanitarian, Christian voluntary associations whose enthusiastic mission was toAmericanize the Indians as the final answer to the "Indian problem." Prucha, TheGreat Father: The U.S. Government and the American Indians (Lincoln: U NebraskaP, 1986).

54. McCormick Papers.

55. Carl Carmer, "Editorial," The American Indian 1/1 (November 1943) 3.

56. Charles Russell, "They Are Still Fighting the Indians," The American Indian ½(Winter 1944) 3-5.

57. Christian Century, an interdenominational Christian magazine edited by HaroldFey, published many extensive pro-Indian, anti-government articles and took a strong



130

editorial position against termination and Indian land sales. America, a nationalCatholic weekly review, also served as a forum on Indian issues, with pro-Indian

editorials and letters which were a bit less critical of the government but whichsupported major revisions in policy that would provide more services to address theconditions of poverty on many reservations. See D'Arcy McNickle, "It's Almost NeverToo Late," Christian Century 74 (20 February 1957) 227-229; "Not Quite Too Late"(Letters), Christian Century 74 (3 April 1957) 426; Lawrence E. Lindley, "Why IndiansNeed Land," Christian Century 74 (6 November 1957) 1316-1318; "Land and IndianPolicy" (Letters), Christian Century 75 (8 January 1958( 52-53; "Hold Up Sales ofIndian Land" (Editorial), Christian Century 75 (18 June 1958) 710; "To Save WhoseWilderness?" (Editorial), Christian Century 75 (23 July 1958) 846; "Indians Still LosingTheir Land" (Editorial), Christian Century 75 (1 October 1958) 1102; "The RelocatedIndian" (Editorial), America 96 (12 January 1957) 404; "Indian Relocation Policy"(Letters), America 96 (23 March 1957) 689; Dana Ann Rush, "Our Debt to theAmerican Indian," America 98 (1 February 1958) 510; "Robbing the American Indian"(Letters), America 99 (10 May 1958) 183. See also another religious publication:"Point Four for Americans" (Editorial), Commonweal 66 (31 May 1957) 222.

58. AAIA Public Education Committee Report, 1959. Letters between the AAIA andMargaret Cuthbert of NBC's Public Affairs Division indicate that LaFarge appeared onthe NBC broadcast on June 9, 1951 and May 31, 1952. AAIA Papers.

59. "Keep the Indians in Salt?" (Editorial) Albuquerque (New Mexico) Journal (17November 1952), with indication that it was reprinted from the Gallup (New Mexico)Independent. AAIA Papers.

60. "State Control Issues" (Editorial), Albuquerque (New Mexico) Journal (13December 1952); Roland Sawyer, "Western Governors Parley Debates Freedom forIndians," The Christian Science Monitor (10 December 1952). Also, "Hope for theIndians" (Editorial), Lewiston (Montana) News (2 December 1952); "Time It WasAbolished" (Editorial) Visalia (California) Times-Delta (6 December 1952); "U.S. StillHas a Big Indian Problem" (Editorial) Willmar (Minnesota) Tribune (15 December1952). AAIA Papers.

61. Letter dated 3 November 1953 from Oliver LaFarge to members of the AAIAExecutive Committee. AAIA Papers.

62. The writer points out that "All Indians were belatedly made citizens of the UnitedStates by an Act of Congress in 1924. They can now vote in every State in theUnion--except Maine. . . ." Jonathan Steere, "Indian Rights," Wall Street Journal (3August 1953): in response to "Lo, the Poor Indian" (Editorial), Wall Street Journal (21July 1953). AAIA Papers.

63. "When to Free the Indians" (Editorial) Omaha Evening World-Herald (1 June



131

1953).

64. "There is Hate in Their Hearts" (Editorial) Lewiston (Montana) Democrat-News (1July 1953).

65. "Are the Indians Ready to Go It Alone?" (Editorial), Lewiston (Montana) Tribune (3August 1953); see also "Indians Better Off Under U.S. Control" (Editorial), FlagstaffSun (12 May 1953).

66. "U.S. is Said to Speed Self-Rule By Indians," New York Times (14 August 1953);"U.S. to Get Out of Indian Affairs," New York Herald-Tribune (14 August 1953).

67. Letter from Lesser to the Bluefield (West Virginia) Telegraph, the Middletown (New

York) Times-Herald, the Torrington (Connecticut) Register, and the Niles (Michigan)Star, dated 10 November, 1953. AAIA Papers.

68. "U.S. Produces Crisis for Indians--LaFarge," Albuquerque Tribune (20 October1953); "Indians in Jeopardy" (Editorial), Santa Fe New Mexican (20 October 1953);"Betraying the Indians" (Editorial), Providence Rhode Island) Journal (24 October1953). Also see "Indian Crisis Charge: LaFarge Asserts U.S. Policies RemoveNeeded Protection," The New York Times (20 October 1953) and "U.S. AbandonsAmerican Indian" (Editorial) The Daily Pantograph (Bloomington, Illinois) (6 November1953). One editorial noted that The New York Times, the AAIA, the Institute of EthnicAffairs and the American Civil Liberties Union had all urged the President to veto the

bill for state control.

69. Dorothy Pillsbury, "Critical Time for U.S. Indians?" Christian Science Monitor (28December 1953); Oliver LaFarge, "American Indians Feel Ambushed With Words,"...Eagle (title obscured) (10 January 1954); LaFarge, "Indians Lose By New Law,"Portland Oregon Journal (26 December 1953); "Plot on U.S. Indians Charged byCollier," The New York Times (30 December 1953). Clippings in AAIA Papers.

70. Jay Edgerton, "’Freeing' Indians is a Complex Task," Minneapolis Star (22October 1953) 8. Also see "’Freeing' or ‘Abandoning' Indians?" Great Falls (Montana)Tribune (29 October 1953).

71. "Indians Are Citizens Too" (Editorial) Salt Lake City Desert News Telegram (14November 1953).

72. "Lo, the Poor Indian, Indeed!" (Editorial) Troy (New York) Morning Herald (16November 1953).

73. "Indians Rap Proposed End of U.S. Aid" (UP Wire, Phoenix) Dallas Times-Herald(11 December 1953).



132

74. Douglas McKay, "Resources Return to the People," Nation's Business (January1954).

75. The Shannon County News 16/2, Pine Ridge, South Dakota (1 October 1953).

76. "Emmons Says Indians Like Other People," Albuquerque Journal (8 September1953). See also "Commissioner Glenn M. Emmons Outlines Government's ProposedNew Indian Policy," The Glacier (Montana) Reporter (13 November 1953), "BureauChieftain Discusses Tour," The Billings Gazette (21 October 1953). A clipping from anunidentified Montana newspaper says that Emmons was adopted into the BlackfeetTribe and made an honorary chieftain, known as "Chief Whitecalf," as well as "ChiefStanding" among the Osage and "Chief High Sitting" among the Chippewa. AAIAPapers.

77. "’Future Prospects in Indian Affairs': An Address By Commissioner of IndianAffairs Glenn L. Emmons Before the Annual Meeting of the Indian Rights Association,Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 21, 1954. For release 8 p.m. January 24, 1954."Emmons also addressed the AAIA Annual Meeting on May 5, 1954 in New York Cityand prepared a speech, which was delivered by Robert Bennett, for the AnnualConvention of the NCAI on November 19, 1954 in Omaha, Nebraska. Copies of allspeeches in NCAI Papers.

78. "A Declaration of Indian Rights," attached to letter from NCAI President Garry tothe White House, dated 10 March 1954. NCAI Papers.

79. W.V. Eckardt, "’Terminating' the Indians: Congress threatens to strip America'sfirst inhabitants of their rights and wealth under the guise of emancipating them andmaking them ‘first-class citizens'," The New Leader (26 April 1954). AAIA Papers.

80. Letter from LaFarge dated 29 January 1954 to Keith Monroe of Santa Monica,California. Also, letter the same date from LaFarge to AAIA's Harold Mantell. AAIAPapers.

81. Letter from Madigan dated 25 October 1954 to Mrs. Robert (Betty) Rosenthal.AAIA Papers.

82. Letter to Davenport dated 7 July 1954 from Sister Providencia; letter to SisterProvidencia dated 25 August 1954 from Mrs. Anna Allen of Bridgeport, Connecticut.Sister Providencia Papers (Cheney Cowles Museum) 11/4 and 2/6.

83. Letter from LaFarge marked "Confidential Memorandum" dated 6 August 1954 toMrs. Joseph Lindon Smith, Dr. Philleo Nash, Mr. Alden Stevens, Dr. AlexanderLesser, and Mr. William Zimmerman. AAIA Papers.



133

84. "Address By Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn L. Emmons Before the AnnualConvention of the National Congress of American Indians, Omaha, Nebraska,

November 19, 1954, to be read by Superintendent Robert L. Bennett. . . ." NCAIPapers.

85. Joseph Garry, "Who is Running the Indian Bureau?" NCAI Bulletin II/3 (July 1955).NCAI Papers.

86. Letter (memorandum) dated 14 June 1955 from Madigan to LaFarge, WilliamZimmerman and counsels Arthur Lazarus and Richard Schifter. AAIA Papers.

87. A 1953 correspondence to the AAIA explains: "Recently, when the terminationprogram was being developed, the end of the federal relationship to this Iowa group

was planned. [Sol] Tax and [Fred] Gearing [anthropologists from the University ofChicago] reported that in the summer of 1953 when Bureau and state officialsgathered to tell the Mesquakie about the scheduled change, the tribe--unanimous to aman--rejected the proposal in a very fiery meeting. Apparently, their attitude is nowbeing supported by strongly mobilized sentiment in the state." An attached editorialdated 20 September 1953 from the Des Moines Register ("Hope For the Mesquakie")compares the survival of the Mesquakie culture to the survival of the world's Jews indiasporic exile. AAIA Papers.

88. The kinescope of this live broadcast is housed in the Human Studies FilmArchives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Credits indicate that the program

was "A production for the Fund for Adult Education established by the FordFoundation," produced and directed by Charles Guggenheim in association with MayoSimon and Dick Hartzell. (Hartzell was also the producer of a 1959 documentary forNET, The Search for America: The Navajo.) This is the earliest televisiondocumentary addressing American Indian political and social issues I have been ableto locate.

89. Correspondence between Helen Peterson, Ruth Bronson, Yeffe Kimball, andD'Arcy McNickle, November 1953. NCAI Papers.

90. Correspondence between Mantell, LaFarge and Lesser, December 1953. AAIA

Papers.91. "Termination News, July 10, 1954." Sister Providencia Papers (Cheney Cowles)11/1.

92. "Farmers Union Information Service, KMON, February 11, 1957." See also "RadioTalk on Rural Farm Labor, KXLK, July 24, 1955." Sister Providencia Papers (CheneyCowles) 11/1 and 10/67.



134

93. Robert Yellowtail, Radio Address dated 16 January 1956 over KWYO, Sheridan,Wyoming; Radio address (undated) over KBMY, Billings, Montana, entitled

"Construing and Interpreting the Meaning of Laws." Letter to Sister Providencia dated5 April 1958 from Walt McDonald (Chairman, Confederated Salish and KootenaiTribes) regarding appearance on KGVO's evening news. Sister Providencia Papers(Cheney Cowles) 11/37 and 4/17.

94. Letter to Madigan dated 15 July 1954 from Wallace Hamilton, Public Affairs forKPFA; letter to LaFarge dated 15 August 1954 from Madigan. AAIA Papers.

95. The majority of the information on television coverage has been pieced togetherfrom a variety of sources and references--in correspondence, memos, programlistings, scripts, transcripts, and so on. The difficulty of reconstructing television

coverage from this period is extenuated by the fact that most television programmingwas live, and very few programs were kinescoped so as to remain for archival study.

96. Fixico reports upon finding a record of this broadcast (22 April 1954, DumontTelevision Network, Washington, DC) in Box 49416, Pierre Indian AgencyCorrespondence, Federal Archives and Records Center, Kansas City. Fixico, 226.

97. Letter to LaFarge dated 11 May 1954 from Mrs. Doris Redfield of North Hollywood,California; also letters dated 14 May, 18 May and 21 May from CBS Public Affairs,LaFarge and AAIA Executive Director LaVerne Madigan to Redfield. AAIA Papers.

98. Letters dated 29 September 1955 to Moses Two Bulls, Chairman of Oglala SiouxTribal Council, Pine Ridge, South Dakota and to Dr. Ben Reifel, Superintendent,Aberdeen Area Office, U.S. Indian Service, Aberdeen, South Dakota. Also, letter fromMadigan dated 2 November 1955 to Bill Zimmerman (AAIA Board member and formerAssistant Commissioner of the BIA). AAIA Papers. A 16mm print of this film is alsowith the AAIA Papers.

99. Letter to Madigan dated 16 November 1955 from Edward Saxe of CBS, New York.AAIA Papers.

100. Letter to Madigan dated 13 December 1955 from Barbara Sapinsley of CBS,New York. AAIA Papers.

101. Letter dated 8 December 1955 to Eric Sevareid, CBS, Washington, DC fromMadigan of AAIA; letter dated 21 December 1955 from Sevareid to Madigan; letterdated 2 March 1956 from Madigan to Sevareid; letter dated 7 March 1955 fromSevareid. Letter dated 11April 1956 announcing upcoming broadcast on 15 April1956. AAIA Papers.

102. Dorothy Van de Mark, "The Raid on the Reservations," Harper's Magazine



135

(March 1956) 48-53; Ruth Mulvey Harmer, "Uprooting the Indians," Atlantic Monthly(March 1956) 54-57. Letters, The Washington Post and Times Herald (14 March 1956

and 29 March 1956), NCAI Papers, Box 68. "Record Interest in American Indians,"Christian Century (23 May 1956) 637; also see "Consultation or Consent?" ChristianCentury (25 January 1956) 103-4.

103. Edith R. Mirrielees, "The Cloud of Mistrust," Atlantic Monthly 199 (February 1957)55-59; "The Cloud of Mistrust" (Letters), Atlantic Monthly 199 (April 1957) 30-31;"Mistreatment of Indians" (Letters), Atlantic Monthly 199 (May 1957) 25-26.

104. Letter dated 7 June 1957, NCAI Papers. Carl Rowan articles in MinneapolisTribune include "Indian Is Outcast in ‘City of Hope'" (19 February 1957), "Sufferingand Death are Indian's Lot as Disease Thrives" (24 February 1957), and "Pity the Poor

Indian But Don't Spend Any Money to Help Him" (24 February 1957). "Broken Arrow,"Time (4 March 1957) 48-49.

105. "Indian Reservations May Some Day Run Out of Indians," Saturday EveningPost 230 (23 November 1957) 10. James Daniel, "He's [BIA Commissioner GlennEmmons] Giving the Indians a Chance," Reader's Digest (March 1957) 70:164-167;Blake Clark, "Must We Buy America From the Indians All Over Again?" Reader'sDigest (March 1958) 72:45.

106. Letter dated 12 March 1957 to Palmer Hoyt from Peterson. D'Arcy McNickle, "It'sAlmost Never Too Late," Christian Century 74 (20 February 1957) 227-229. NCAI

Information Letter (10 May 1958). NCAI Papers.

107. The AAIA contacted George Gill, Jr. of the Winnebago Reservation (Nebraska) ina letter dated 15 February 1957. However, there is no indication as to whether Gillactually appeared on the show. Letter dated 6 October 1958 to Helen Meyers of AAIAfrom Kay Lloyd of Goodson-Todman Productions thanked Meyers for help on a recentWestern-themed show, tracking down contestants (e.g., a Mrs. La Pointe of RapidCity) and assisting them during their stay in New York City. AAIA Papers.

108. Letter dated 27 March 1957 to Marvin Camp, Director of Special Features, WORRadio, New York from Madigan of AAIA. AAIA Papers. The tribal leaders included

Alfred Gilpin (Omaha), Robert Burnette (Rosebud Sioux) and (Mrs.) Alfreda Janis(Oglala Sioux).

109. Script for Wide Wide World, broadcast 26 May 1957, NBC Papers 217/10. BarryWood was Executive Producer, and Producers were John Goetz and Garry Simpson.The script was written by Jesse Sandler.

110. Letter dated 29 May 1957 to NBC, New York, from Madigan. AAIA Papers.



136

111. Letter from AAIA dated 3 April 1958 to Nancy Hanschman of CBS, Washington,DC (AAIA Papers). Script of Today broadcast dated 23 April 1958, NBC Papers

548/10. Letter dated 23 April 1958 to LaFarge from Robert Goomb (?) of MountainView, Oklahoma; AAIA Papers. CBS broadcast dated 10 August 1958, according toan announcement dated 31 July 1958 from the NCAI; Indian Rights AssociationPapers (microfilm), Correspondence files, Reel 67. IRA Papers indicate the followingradio broadcasts: 22 July 1958, Lawrence Lindley and Lloyd Partain appeared onWFLN; 21 August 1958, Lindley on WCAU (Ralph Collier's "Wonderful Town"program); 12 November 1958, Theodore Hetzel was scheduled to be interviewed byBob Bruegger on "Town Talk" over WFLN; Dr. Hetzel spoke 28 November 1958 on theFrank Ford program on WPEN; IRA Papers, Reel 101.

112. Spurr, 28, 31. Spurr identifies "naturalization" as another trope of colonialdiscourse: i.e. identifying a colonized or primitive people as part of the natural world:"the concept of nature and its relation to less developed peoples is so deeplyembedded in our language that it transcends ideology and is so pervasive in thesystem of representation by which we know the world that it tends to disappear everytime we try to locate it." Spurr, 156-157.

113. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton, 1959 Annual Report for Fiscal YearEnding June 30, 1959: "Resources For A Growing Population". U.S. GovernmentDocument. Library, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

114. Dippie, 29-30.

115. Dippie, 41-42.

116. Spurr, 32.

117. Spurr, 7.

118. M. Annette Jaimes, "Introduction," in Churchill, Fantasies, 3.

119. Spurr, 4.

120. Ward Churchill, "Literature as a Weapon in the Colonization of the American

Indian," in Fantasies, 17-41.

121. Wendy Rose provides an excellent overview of literature on this topic in "TheGreat Pretenders: Further Reflections on White Shamanism," in Jaimes, The State ofNative America, 403-421.

122. Churchill, Fantasies, 142.



137

123. Quoted in Doreen Jensen and Cheryl Brooks, eds, In Celebration of OurSurvival: The First Nations of British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1991) 165. I

am grateful to Mary Jane Miller for this quote.124. See Robert Berkhofer, The White Man's Indian (NY: Knopf, 1978); GretchenBataille and Charles Silet, eds. The Pretend Indians: Images of Native Americans inthe Movies (Ames: Iowa State UP, 1980); Dippie; Durham; J. Fred McDonald, WhoShot the Sheriff: The Rise and Fall of the Television Western (NY: Prager, 1987).

125. Spurr, 3. The Foucault quote is from Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism andHermeneutics, ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Chicago: U Chicago P, 1983)20.

126. Spurr 7, 11.