July 1977: Bureau of Indian Affairs – An Important Perspective

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At noon Chuck came to our trailer. We were surprised to see him. This was the first time he had come to see us. He’s a friend of ours from Billings. We met him through Susie’s father. Long story. He is an Oneida Indian. The tribe is from New York, but the government moved them to Wisconsin. He was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation. His father worked for the BIA for years. When he was very young, his family moved to Riverside, California where his father was the dean of boys at the Sherman Institute, and Indian Boarding School. Chuck went to a public school in Riverside while his father worked for the BIA. He graduated from high school and went to college at UCLA. He met his wife there. She is white and they have three kids. He is very involved in a prayer group in Billings. Chuck works for the Billings school system and he works with juveniles. He’s done a lot of work in the correctional institutions in California, Washington state and Montana. He is off this summer and was hired by the BIA on a contract to conduct a study for the BIA. His research concerns the jurisdictional problems of juvenile law, the relation between tribal police, tribal judges, the courts and federal jurisdiction over juveniles. We spent the whole afternoon talking about his research, my research and his views on the federal government, the BIA, the American Indian, law, juveniles and tribal police and politics.

Chuck offered us a very interesting perspective about Hays, Ft. Belknap and the Gros Ventre. How people describe their own culture is different from the way it is described by an anthropologist. We are categorizing cultural elements in a way that allows us to compare societies, studying similarities and differences. A person living in a particular society wouldn’t characterize their society as matrilineal or describe avunculocal residence patterns. They would use words from their own language that would characterize relationships between relatives and rules for where a family lives after a couple marries.

Chuck offered us a very interesting in-between perspective. He was Indian but he wasn’t Gros Ventre. His tribe wasn’t a plains tribe, but he grew up on a reservation among the Sioux, a very typical plains Indian tribe. He was working in Billings and was doing research on a contract from the BIA. He knew all the Montana tribes and reservations well. He understood the cultures and societies, and he had been to all these reservations many times. And he knew all of the government players well – the BIA area office people and the superintendents on the reservations. And he was doing his own study, so he had the role of trying to understand a complex and important subject that impacts all these reservations and their people. And he was our friend and was very much open to us learning from each other. It was an unusual and a very important perspective for me while I was doing my work. And Chuck is a really good guy.

Chuck told us that he had a job for the summer and that he was up here on some business.

I got the job in a very unusual way. This boy was busted for the possession of marijuana, and he was in my district, so I was working with him. I got to know his family really well. His father is the assistant to the director of the BIA Area Office in Billings. He’s Cannon’s right-hand man (Cannon is the director). He asked me to work on a project for this summer, and we had a meeting with Cannon. I decided to do it. Besides not having anything to do this summer for two months, I’m getting paid a lot better than I was getting paid in my regular job. I’m going to be studying the relationship between the tribal government – the tribal police and judicial system and the juveniles on the reservation. There’s a real jurisdictional problem. The tribal police have jurisdiction over the adults; the federal system has jurisdiction only where the thirteen major crimes are involved. All other offenses fall under the jurisdiction of the tribal police and judges. For juveniles though, the tribal police and judges have only minor jurisdiction. Most of it falls under federal jurisdiction. And the federal government has very little to do with the juveniles. The county and state have no jurisdiction at all on the reservation.

The kids and the tribal judges are both caught in a bind, and it isn’t their fault. It’s really the fault of the Congress, and the Indian is their lowest priority. Meanwhile, the kids aren’t stupid. They’re running wild and they know they can get away with it. They know that nothing will happen to them even if they get caught.

We’re doing the study on four reservations: Ft. Belknap, Ft. Peck, Rocky Boy and the Northern Cheyenne. I’m going to try to come up with recommendations for the BIA Area Office by the end of the summer. I’ve been studying a thick manual of tribal laws. All the tribes are different, but the differences are minor, and generally, they’re all about the same.

I have an appointment with the superintendent at 1:00. Then I have a meeting with one of the tribal judges. I’ll know a lot more of what’s going on after I talk to him. He’s head of the Tribal Judges Association for all the tribes in the US. I think he’s chairman. I have a connection with him. My dad played football at Haskell (BIA Boarding School in Kansas) and he played with his father or uncle. I’m going to do most of my work through interviews. I want to get together with the tribal police. I also have an interview with the Tribal Chairman. I’d like to come to see you on Thursday and pick your brains. I’d like your views on this matter.

They offered me a job, the tribe. It’s on some intertribal committee. They’re looking for a chairman and they asked me. It sounds like it is someone who can take all the political flack. It was good pay, but I turned it down. It was pretty unusual for the BIA to choose an outsider to do this study. I was surprised that they didn’t get a BIA man to do it. But I do think an outsider can be more objective about it.

I asked Chuck why the BIA didn’t choose Crows for the study. He said that Crow was in political chaos right now.

They impeached their tribal chairman yesterday (oil leases). And now he’s saying that he can’t be removed. It’s Watergate all over again. The Crows really don’t have a tribal council. The whole reservation community makes the decisions. It’s a true democracy. But now it is in complete chaos. So, we decided to stay away from Crow because of the politics there right now.

Chuck had to leave for his meeting, and we made plans to get together in Billings in about a week.

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At noon Chuck came up to the trailer.

We were talking about his research this summer. He said that from talking to the tribal police, judges, some of the tribal councilmen, and some of the people in the communities, and from my own experience and reading I think that jurisdiction is the biggest problem.

The tribal police, courts and judges have very little to no jurisdiction over juveniles when they commit offenses. The jurisdiction falls almost entirely on the federal government and federal officers. And the government can’t handle the juveniles. The federal government doesn’t have a juvenile code. But I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t just look at the reservation alone and say that the government can’t handle the juveniles on the reservation. The federal government has no juvenile code anywhere. You have to look at the reservation situation within the general national trend. But regardless, there is still no juvenile code on the part of the federal government for handling juvenile offenders, and the juveniles fall within the jurisdiction of the federal government. The judges on the reservation are really caught in the middle of it and they don’t have much alternative in their actions.

The tribal police and judges don’t have much jurisdiction in these juvenile offenses, but the judges handle these cases in tribal court anyway. The people don’t know it here, but he’s not supposed to handle these cases. He is supposed to send these cases to the federal court and judges. The only one in Montana is in Billings. But the federal judges don’t have time for these cases and just have time to hear them. So, they end up sending back 90% of the cases anyway. So, the tribal judge is handling these juvenile cases in a lot of instances even though they’re not supposed to. They don’t have the jurisdiction. To make the matter worse, and even more complicated, the tribal judge here doesn’t have much choice if one of these juveniles is convicted. He does give fines of about $30 or $40 which have to be paid or he puts them in jail for a few days or longer. Besides the fact that he doesn’t have the jurisdiction to handle these cases, the punishments aren’t effective. But the judges has neither the facilities nor legal backing to do anything differently. He has to do something though. He has no alternative. If he didn’t, nothing would be done about delinquency or vandalism and as it is the kids are running wild and they know that they can get away with it.

He hates to put these kids in jail because of their condition. The cells are really awful and they’re more of a ‘drunk tank’ or crash pad for drunks. They are filthy. Also, the cells are constructed in such a way that suicides are very possible in one of these cells. And attempts have been made. One of the saddest things is that in Harlem, just three miles from the Agency, they have a new jail, and it is a good facility. But the reservation can’t use it because the town doesn’t get along with the reservation. Things were just starting to improve in the relationship between the town of Harlem and the reservation, and this sharing of facilities would have been possible, but some incidents have occurred and that ended any possibility of it happening. The relations now are pretty bad. It’s usually that way around the reservations. None of these white towns around reservations get along with the Indians. The two incidents involved the Harlem police, and the tribal police had worked out an arrangement that they could cross deputize each other. One night after work, one of the Harlem police was driving home one of the tribal policemen. The tribal policeman stopped the car and returned the Harlem policeman and impounded the police for crossing jurisdictional lines. It took a call to the BIA area director and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington to call them and order the car and the policeman returned. Then about three or four years ago, I couldn’t get a consistent date on when this happened. A girl was picked up in a Harlem bar. She was really drunk, and I think there was a disorderly conduct charge. When they put her in the cell, they didn’t check her close enough and they missed that she had a book of matches. She set the mattress in her cell on fire. There wasn’t adequate ventilation in the cell, and she died from suffocation. She was the daughter of one of the tribal councilmen. That ended and soured any relationship between the Harlem police and the tribal police.

Again, I think this situation concerning the police and correction facilities cannot be seen in isolation off the reservation. This has to be understood within the context of the state of Montana and their facilities and priorities when it comes to the type of incarceration they have in this state. There aren’t really any correctional facilities for juveniles here. They have only a maximum security prison for juveniles that’s pretty bad with bars and all. They don’t have a graded system of facilities like we have in California. There are no work farms or low security facilities in Billings, and this is the big city of Montana. In the cells they’ll sometimes put all the juveniles. There may be seven or eight in one cell. And all that separates them from adults is the bars. In the smaller town situations in prisons it’s even worse for juveniles and the reservations are the worst. But in the whole state, the prison situation is bad for both adults and juveniles, and you have to see the situation in the context of the whole state for the reservation. The mentality out here is different from California and probably different from Ohio.

It would be a good arrangement for the tribe if they could share the facilities with Harlem and it would help to solve part of the problem. But the relations between the town and the reservation are terrible. It’s like that between most reservations and the towns around them. Harlem is a ‘leech community.’ They depend on the reservation for trade and business, but they don’t get along with the people. A lot of these businesses would close without the reservation trade.

I don’t really understand what’s going on with their bank. I was talking to Jack Plumage and Rusty and they were telling me that they had the tribal funds in a bank in Harlem, but the bank closes at 3:00 on Fridays. The tribal and BIA payroll comes out on late Friday afternoon, but the bank is closed. The tribe and BIA have had difficulty with this arrangement and the hours, so they started shifting the tribe’s and BIA money to banks in Havre and Malta. Now I can’t understand how the people who run that bank would let them take all that money instead of just extending the hours on Fridays. I have a pretty good idea what government funding is like to the reservation. With all the BIA and tribal employees and with all of the tribal programs that exist on the reservation, there’s an awful lot of money that must be in that bank from the reservation. It can’t be that the farmers have a lot of money in that bank. They usually don’t. I just don’t understand how the bank could let all this money go.

I asked Chuck if his talk with Jack and the judges and police about the vandalism and delinquency involving juveniles, if anyone ever talked about the need for recreation as part of the solution to the problem. I said, a lot of these kids are bored. Chuck said he was watching the kids play sandlot baseball all morning, and they’re building a swimming pool at the Agency. I told him that Hays doesn’t have recreational facilities and explained about the Chippewa-French and enrollment. Chuck said that Hays was a great place for a kid to grow up.

They didn’t necessarily have to have recreational facilities. Most kids living in the city would love to grow up in a place like this. There’s a swimming place, kids can go hiking in the mountains and it’s a beautiful area. They can hunt and fish, there’s baseball, horseback riding. There’s a lot for the kids to do. They might get bored with it, but they get bored with pin ball machines and swimming pools and any other recreational facilities. I don’t believe that recreational facilities are the answer to juvenile delinquency problems and vandalism. I think the problem lies more in the family and instability in the family. There are a lot of women here, and other places where the mother has no housekeeping skills. It’s hard for me to understand how they can do such beautiful handiwork and beadwork and be such lousy housekeepers. Just because some of these kids or a lot of these kids get bored, it doesn’t justify the delinquency. There are kids who get bored but ‘good kids’ whatever that is – don’t get into trouble when they’re bored. My kids get bored too, all kids do, but they don’t run to trouble to keep themselves occupied. They could find a lot of things to do to keep very well occupied and happy. It is not as much recreation or the lack of it that is the cause of trouble. I really think it’s more the problem with the family. There are some kids here who get no parental guidance at all. Some of it is because the families are split up and a lot of it is because the parents aren’t disciplining the kids. I was talking to one of the social workers at the Agency and she gave me an insight to something that I had never even thought about. It was very interesting, and I think she has something. She works for social services at the Agency. She said that she’s noticed in her work that mothers who don’t have skills in the home, who don’t know or practice basic homemaking, have children who are juvenile delinquents. I think she is right and that the homelife has so much to do with delinquency and vandalism. She was telling me about the Hutterite communities around here on the highline. She was saying how the young girls are excellent homemakers. They teach the girls when they’re young. All these skills can be taught. What is involved is the motivation to do it. When I was talking to a judge, he brought up the Hutterites in Turner, and he compared them to the reservation. Here’s a group that shares the same land as the Indians on the reservation; the differences aren’t geographical. And they’re making it work. The reservation is not working. The Hutterites don’t have to work hard. They take turns working, each four hours on the tractor. You should go up there and see the Hutterite community. You would find it really interesting.

Another problem which exists on the reservation which makes life hard on the kids and families is unemployment. The unemployment situation does make family life difficult here. Most of the men can only work seasonally and the government programs come to an end and then people are out of work again.

I asked him if there was some way the government or BIA could start some industry of some sort that would bring steady and secure employment to most of these people. He said that they could do something like that.

A lot of programs that employ people go through Manpower, but Manpower isn’t under the BIA, and BIA doesn’t run these programs. The BIA did help to start some industries on reservations. A carpet factory was set up on the Crow Reservation, but it didn’t work out and they had to close it down. They had a difficult time getting people to work steadily there.

I told Chuck that the work would have to be meaningful to them. He said that most of the work that people do in this country is not meaningful to them.

Most UAW people don’t find their work meaningful, but they work.

I agreed with him, but I said that most Americans in the dominant society grow up with the work ethic. And they have models of parents, relatives and friends that encourage them to work whether they find it meaningful or not. If they don’t work, they feel guilty. On the reservation, the work ethic may or may not be present, but if it is, it’s weak. People may feel guilty about not working, but the guilt is not very strong. It’s easy to rationalize not working because there are so many people who don’t work. Some don’t even work during the summer months when jobs are most numerous and easiest to find. And there are plenty of models for the kids for unemployment. If some kind of industry is started here, it would have to be something meaningful and interesting if the people are going to work at it steadily; the work ethic isn’t going to get them into work.

Chuck said that the unemployment situation did have a large role in the problems that exist in the family.

The people that don’t work are usually supported on some welfare program. And regardless of why they aren’t working, unemployment destroys the self-esteem and the integrity of the unemployed. It’s a lot like it is with prisoners. When I was interviewing a prisoner a couple of years ago, I asked him what the toughest thing was about a prison sentence. He said that the toughest part of it was what it was doing to his young daughter. Whenever someone asked her what her father did for a living, she either had to lie or tell them that her father was a prisoner. In this country, a child’s status comes a lot from their parents. If the father is a doctor or lawyer, his high status filters down to the children and their status is raised. But for a child whose parent is a prisoner, their status declines, just as his or her father’s does. It is very similar to what happens with unemployment. The parent loses status and therefore the children lose status.

Not only does the integrity and the self-esteem of the parent get bad, but this also happens to the child. The status of the kids is attached to the father’s work. The unemployment situation does hurt the family. And the chances of it improving in the younger generation is uncertain. These kids on the reservation don’t have many good models. Their parents, relatives or friends’ parents don’t have good jobs and so the kids don’t have good models for employment or for education or for good jobs.

I told Chuck that it seemed on this reservation that the women are much better models for the kids than the men when it comes to working and jobs. Most of the men have blue collar jobs and so many of these are seasonal jobs and the men are often unemployed most of the year. Some men are ranchers and farmers, but there aren’t enough of them around to make a good impression on the kids. Only two or three guys are making a successful business out of it. The political positions, ONAP, the council….are filled mostly by men but the attitude toward these positions is ambiguous. These men don’t serve necessarily as good models because the kids aren’t interested in politics. They don’t know anything at all about the tribal council; they don’t even know who the tribal chairman is or what his job is. Also, the kids pick up negative attitudes from their parents about these men in political positions. They hear their parents say that these men are in it for themselves and not for the good of the people. The feeling is that since they don’t get paid well for these positions, they are going to help themselves in other ways. The kids don’t pick up positive attitudes about these positions. So, I don’t think these men serve as good models for the kids.

But there are women here who are good models for the kids. There are three or four women in the PHS hospital that are nurses and nurses’ aides. There are about six women who teach at the public school and graduated from college. There are six tutors, and all of them graduated from college. And there are many other women who work in the tribal positions in HUD, Social Services, etc. There are a lot of women who are good models, more than men. Chuck said that he could explain to me the reason for that.

When the boarding schools were set up for the Indian, their schools were attended by men only. They shipped these boys all over, Sherman, California, Flandreau, Arizona, Oklahoma, Haskell. These schools were segregated by men and women. I don’t blame the school for this though because this was almost how all schools were, even in the dominant society. I think it was about 1916 when they changed the boarding school to co-ed. But till that time, only men went to the boarding school. They went to high school, and the good students went to college. Who did they meet for their spouses, white women. These guys didn’t go back to the reservations. They settled off the reservations with their white wives. And then, as now, there weren’t hardly any jobs on the reservation for a college educated man anyway. Then after the depression came, the BIA gave most of these men jobs. They made them low-level administrators in the organization because the mentality was that an Indian couldn’t handle higher level jobs. At that time, they didn’t have any Indian BIA superintendents. That’s a recent thing. They didn’t have an Indian BIA commissioner either. So, these men got good, secure jobs and the BIA’s secure employment at low-level administrative positions.

They were the cream of the crop from the reservations, and they left the reservation and many married white women that they met in college. And they didn’t go back to the reservation. Well, what does that do to the reservations. It’s the men who are left, the ones who couldn’t make it in school and the guys who couldn’t or didn’t want to make it in the cities at jobs. The reservation is like a ghetto and there’s men who couldn’t make it on the outside. It was different for the women, and that’s why you’ve found that the women are better models for the kids than men. The cream of the crop of the women didn’t leave the reservation. Some of them left, but not so many as the men. Now they’re going to school and getting educations. Many marry Indian men and stay on the reservation and find jobs on the reservation. They’re with the PHS or BIA, social services, HUD and a lot of other positions on the reservation. The men that were college graduates and locked into low-level jobs are moving up in the BIA since the BIA has changed its polities, with self-determination and all that stuff. The Indians are now becoming the BIA superintendents on the reservations.

These models are so important for the kids, they’re crucial. In a lot of ways, what the parents have done in education and work limits what their children will do. I never even thought about it, never gave it any consideration, but I went all the way through college, and I got my master’s degree. I could have gone to professional school, but my father hadn’t gone far enough in school, so I didn’t consider that a possibility. I don’t blame him for that. If a father or mother go to professional schools, it’s a good chance that their children will go. My kids will go to professional schools. Just by what I’ve done in my education and work. I’ve opened up that possibility for them. But what a parent does can also limit the education and work of the child. These models are so important.

In 1968 and 1969 the BIA pushed me pretty hard to go back to school and become a lawyer. They really applied the pressure to me to go to law school and become a lawyer. They would have paid my whole way, tuition, books and all, and they would have supported my whole family for the three years I would have been in school. But I didn’t want to go to law school and besides not wanting to go back to school, I didn’t want to take the BIA’s guilt money. That’s what I call the money they would have given me and my family. These good models are hard to come by on reservations, but they’re sure needed. They are really important.

Chuck said that there are two sets of legal codes, one for whites and one for Indians. “This is a racist policy and situation.” I told Chuck that Father Noel was telling me about what was happening to the Crow Reservation. The Crows are trying to get the federal government to change the laws so that all people on the reservation, Indians and whites, come under the jurisdiction of the tribal law. “Today, I don’t think the whites on the reservation can be tried by tribal law.” Chuck said that this jurisdictional problem exists everywhere. “It’s going to be a difficult task to settle this problem, but now the laws are racist. There should be only one code of laws for everyone.”

Chuck said that he had a good idea why missions and places like this had so many problems.

They start to work with the people on the reservations, and they start to think about all the problems and all of what needs to be done, and they are overwhelmed by the task. It is so large a task that they begin to lose sight of it all instead of picking out a few things to do and aiming and narrowing their efforts to a few things they can handle. They try to attack everything and very little gets accomplished. They should work with only a few people and one of them is going to turn out. Then this person is going to raise a few kids and one or two of them is going to turn out. Then this person is going to raise a few kids …. The problem is that some of these kids end up leaving the reservation. But if the mission could work with like only a small group there would be a chance that they would get something accomplished with a few. They should keep working with a small group, not everyone, they just can’t do it. But the improvements would be cumulative, starting with a small group but it would spread out. The mission could be so much more effective this way and would get so much more done.

Their most important task should be to help make the family strong. So many other problems would be solved or eliminated if the people had strong families. This work takes so much time, and you have to stick with it. I have one friend who worked as a missionary for years on a reservation. His primary concern was to work with families and to help strengthen the families on the reservation. He realized that it takes a long time, and he did work at it for years. He has worked with only small groups, and he has had some successes. I met one of the men who he has been working with. The man was responsible. And he was employed and could hold down a job. He didn’t drink and for an Indian, that is an accomplishment. He had a good family. This missionary has been working on the reservation for 52 years.

Chuck said that the reservations had a certain group of people living on them.

This is certainly a generalization and there are so many exceptions that it is hard to make this statement, but it holds for a lot of cases. During the ‘pushout programs’ that started in the 1950s, the relocation program, a lot of people moved to the cities. But many of these people returned to the reservation for a variety of reasons. Some didn’t like life in the cities or couldn’t make it there. But for most people, they were drawn back by strong family ties. The paradox is that the family members are always fighting with each other. They come back because of their strong family ties but half of the time they don’t get along and fight. I think it’s kind of funny. So, who is left on the reservations – a lot of them are Indians who didn’t make it in the city. Some people left the cities to avoid the hassles. But a lot of people liked what came with it, the shows, museums, and restaurants. But there’s also more job security in the city than there is on the reservation. A lot of renegades came to the reservation to escape trouble. They came to the reservation because they knew it was safe for them here. So, who is left on the reservation – it’s like a ghetto in many ways.

Chuck was looking at my books and found the book by Vine Deloria. He said that he knew Vine from Pine Ridge.

He’s a good man, but he is a bit bitter and does exaggerate but most of what he says is true. His opinions of anthropologists pretty accurately reflect the feeling of Plains Indians. They resent these outside observers coming in to study them. They’re usually comparatively rich and they do more observing than participating. I know an interesting story which explains a lot of what I mean. The Smithsonian wanted to do a study of the Nez Perce. There’s such a big revival of interest in Chief Joseph, so a lot of work is being done with the Nez Perce now, just because of Chief Joseph. Different universities are putting in proposals to get the research funding from the Smithsonian. These universities like to get these grants because it helps them in a variety of ways. The Nez Perce tribe also put in a proposal and said they would study themselves. The Smithsonian wouldn’t give them the grant and said they couldn’t do the study on themselves because they weren’t an academic institution. What sense does that make. The University of Utah was chosen to do the study, but when people went to the reservation, the Nez Perce wouldn’t tell them anything. They wouldn’t even talk to the anthropologists. Finally, the case went to court. This kind of thinking is dangerous. Where they won’t recognize that the people can study themselves.

Chuck said that he noticed that the Gros Ventre here had a lot of freckles for Indians. “I was in the BIA office today and I noticed that the secretary had a lot of freckles.” I told Chuck that I knew her and her brother and kids had a lot more freckles than her.

Chuck said he had a good friend who lived on the reservation. Preston Stiffarm.

He lives up at the Agency. He’d be a good man for you to get to know. He’s a book worm and he reads about everything there is on the Gros Ventre. He could help you out with sources. He really knows the Gros Ventre traditions which is really something since he’s only 26 years old. He’s really delved into the history and traditions of his people. A lot of Indian people do this; it’s the roots mentality. He goes to all the powwows and is involved in a lot of the celebrations here. He’s on the Chief Joseph Memorial Dance Committee and I guess they’re planning a big pow wow for October.

Not only are we frustrated by the slow changes for the Indian, but I’ve heard a lot of people complain about this reservation (Ft. Belknap). But I’ve been to a lot of places, a lot of reservations. I was born on Pine Ridge and have been with the Indian and have been on reservations all my life, and this reservation is a lot better than most of them. The people here are frustrated about the reservation, but they don’t compare their lot to the other Indian reservations. This place isn’t that bad. The chief of police here at Ft. Belknap is pretty good. He’s had the job for about three years and he’s good. He lives in Havre. He’s an Indian. He’s a lot better than what they had before he got the job. He’s a lot better than the last chief of police. He doesn’t get along with the BIA officers on a number of issues. One of the judges was explaining it to me. Not too long ago, there was a tribal policemen who was in a bar with this wife. They got drunk and he got into a fight with her in the bar. Well, they suspended him from the force for a week without pay. The BIA officers thought they should have fired him. The judge said, well, they had no alternative. This action was an improvement over what would have happened before the other chief of police a few years ago. At least they took some kind of disciplinary action against him.

People don’t want to be a policeman here. They have to worry about retaliation. One tribal judge had about 1/3 of his hay crop burned as retaliation for a decision he made in court. And the police aren’t shown much or any respect. They have a difficult time finding tribal police. They can’t easily fire them. The judge said that he’s seen a big improvement in the police force. It’s hard for people not to get frustrated because they think about where things are and where they ought to be. But if they consider where we’ve gone in thirty years it wouldn’t be so bad. And they wouldn’t be so frustrated if they look at how far we’ve gone and how big all the improvements have been.

There are also a lot of complaints about the tribal council, the crookedness, nepotism, self-interest, graft. But I think this is a good council and the chairman seems to have his stuff together. The tribal council is more efficient and responsible than most tribal councils I’ve seen. There is nepotism here. You can see it, but there’s not as much of it as most places either. The nepotism at Ft. Peck is incredible. Whole families are working at certain jobs and offices. Sometimes the only way to get into some departments is through a relative. And other reservations are just as bad or worse. It’s not so bad here at all. The tribal council seems to be effective, and they know what they’re doing. They are comparatively good.

They also talk about the problems between the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre. I’m sure they have their difficulties and that there are hostilities. But at least they’re not on the surface, and it seems like a lot of them do get along. It’s not on the surface, and it is controlled when it exists. And it is certainly a lot better than a lot of reservations. The Crow and Cheyenne hate each other. It’s open and they talk about it and even act on it fairly openly. They have open hostility and they don’t bother to hide it. It’s not so bad between the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre. They seem to get along ok.

I was driving to Lodge Pole and I noticed that the people take care of their homes. The yards were nice and fixed up, and the homes were in good shape. I’m sure there are individual differences, and that some of the insides of the houses are nice, but on the whole, they look pretty good. They’re not disaster areas. The destruction isn’t as bad as it is on a lot of reservations. At Pine Ridge, they have the HUD homes too, and it doesn’t take long before these homes are destroyed, turned into disaster areas. They really tear them up. Here it looks like they take care of the homes.

Chuck said that the group, MOD, bothered him.

This group, Montanans Opposed to Discrimination, has been getting organized and they’ve held meetings in Great Falls and Helena. There are a lot of people in Montana who don’t like Indians. It’s really bad on the highline. They dislike the Indians in this state, and it is really strong. Their complaint is that there is discrimination of hiring practices for government jobs. It boils down to employment.

I asked Chuck if whites were really worried about Indians being employed over whites off the reservations. He said it doesn’t happen now, but they say it could happen and that’s what they’re worried about.

The MOD group could be dangerous. They are strongly anti-Indian. In a lot of cases and ways, this organization is the result of all the dislike toward the Indian in the state. They don’t like Indians at all. There are a lot of people here that don’t understand me. We meet a lot of people in Billings, and they’ll be making comments about the Indian, and then I’ll tell them that I am an Indian. So, they make an exception out of me. They tell me that I’m educated and I’ve made something of myself. Then they tell me that I’m not like other Indians. But I tell them that there are a lot of people like me on the reservations. They just don’t understand at all. And I tell them about the Indians living off the reservations. But they have their minds made up about what an Indian is supposed to be. I’m an enigma to them.

Chuck said that the Montana newspapers were pretty racist.

They report all the bad stories about the Indians and reservations, the crime, the problems in politics. You see very little reporting about the good side of reservation life. What they say is fairly accurate, but their reporting is so subjective and what they chose to report produces such a bad image of the Indian. If you told them this, they would deny it. They’re afraid to go to the pow wows and celebrations. It’s like they think it’s some kind of orgy. By now I’m sure you realize that the Indian people love to get together in large groups. They’ll travel for miles and find little excuse to gather at pow wows and celebrations. They really enjoy the visiting and eating together and sharing, dancing and singing. They enjoy the gathering so much.

Chuck said that he heard about the robbery at the Food Farm.

It’s the third time the store has been robbed. I heard that they got $21,000. Since they got so much money, some people think it was an inside job. I don’t believe they could have gotten that much. That store doesn’t do that kind of business.

Chuck said that its not easy to understand Indian humor.

You have to be around the Indian people for a long time to catch it. A lot of times my wife and I will be around the Indians, and I’ll be laughing at something they did or said, and she won’t grasp what happened and doesn’t understand what was funny. You have to be around the Indians for years to get it. A lot of the humor goes over my wife’s head.

Chuck said that there were more Indian lawyers and doctors than ever before.

There are also special schools that have been established for the training of Indian lawyers and doctors. These schools have all Indian enrollment. It may not seem like there are a lot of doctors and lawyers, but it’s a great improvement. I don’t think that it is so important that these people come back to the reservation to practice. The important thing is that they are getting involved in these professions and are therefore providing models for the kids, letting the kids know that they too can become doctors and lawyers; that it’s not impossible for Indians to achieve this goal. Then after there are more Indian professionals and they have become established in their positions, coming back to the reservations would become important.

The hospitals need doctors who would spend a long time on the reservation and get to know their patients. Also, the reservations could use good Indian lawyers, especially today with the way tribal politics work and with the Indian’s relationship with the government. I know that we tend to get frustrated because we don’t think the changes for the American Indian are moving fast enough. But when you look back and realize what it was like for the Indian thirty years ago, you realize how far the Indian has come. The frustration comes in when you see what it is like today, and think about what our goals were; where we want to be and where we’re going. But there have been tremendous improvements for the American Indian. Especially if compared to where we were thirty years ago. We’ve come a long way. It wasn’t until the 1920s that the American Indian was granted citizenship.

My father played football for the Haskell Indian Boarding School. The team was well known all over the country. They went to the White House and met President Coolidge. They wore their complete outfits. They took a train to New York, but when they got to the Waldorf-Historia Hotel, they were told that Indians couldn’t stay in the hotel. They could go to the Whitehouse and meet the president, but they couldn’t stay in a hotel in New York.

He played football at Haskell during the Jim Thorpe days. He was a big star and was well known all over the country. This football team played Michigan and Notre Dame and a lot of other colleges. They were a high school, but the boys were older. My dad was 24 when he graduated. They played football during the year and in the summer they worked in the fields. They paid him, for all practical purposes, they were a professional team. He was well known all over the country. A cousin of one of the judges played on Haskel with my father. He’s president of the North American Indian Tribal Judges Association. He’s a good man to know, and he has a lot of good information.

I was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation. My father worked for the BIA there. My father is Oneida, a tribe from New York but the government moved them to Wisconsin. My mother is white. He was transferred to a boarding school in Riverside, California. The Sherman Institute, named after General Sherman, of course (sarcastic). He was the dean of boys there and he got along with the kids really well. I didn’t have that much to do with them. I went to a public school in Riverside and with my father as dean it wasn’t conducive to my getting along real well with the kids. The school was co-ed and for a while, and then after WWII it became almost all Navajo. The government was feeling guilty about the treatment of the Navajo, so they started shipping the Navajo kids up there for an education. Then it went back to a co-ed high school after a while. Being with those Navajo kids was really a culture shock to me. They would have to teach the kids what a water faucet was and how to use it. They had to teach them how to flush a toilet and what it was. The kids used to drink the water from the toilets because they thought they were springs with fresh water. I can remember going to the Navajo reservation with my parents in the 1940s. My father and I went to their sacred grounds, but my mother wasn’t allowed to go in. Now anyone can go in there to their sacred grounds. My father met the guy who had his portrait done for the Indian head nickle. When they built the new football stadium at Haskell, my father scored the first touchdown there. They had an honor for him, and this Indian guy was there. My father knew him.

Chuck was looking at some of our beaded necklaces and chokers. He said, I guess you’ve learned by now that you don’t compliment these people on anything, because if you do, they’ll give it to you.

I told Chuck Smith that there was a problem on the reservation over the degree blood required for enrollment. The 1/8s are suing the tribe for enrollment and wanted to be part of the per capita payment. Now only ¼ can be enrolled in the two tribes, Gros Ventre and Assiniboine, and they are the only ones to get the per capita payment.

Chuck said that this is a nationwide problem.

But it’s not so bad here as it is in a lot of places. The Navajo used to have a bigger problem, but it has changed some in recent years. If a full blood Navajo married a full blood from another tribe, the children were not only recognized as half Navajo, but also as half Indian. They didn’t even recognize the other tribe but their own. At least here, a 1/8 Gros Ventre or Assiniboine may not be enrolled but they are recognized as Indian, from another tribe. The Navajo recognized Navajo or nothing. No other tribes were recognized. There are very few full bloods of any tribes in America, and in many tribes, there are no full bloods. Wherever a tribe was in contact with the dominant society there aren’t many full bloods, if any left.

It's kind of funny that it’s become popular to be a Cherokee. Everyone you met was some degree of Cherokee or even a full blood Cherokee. Most of these people were breeds or some not even Indians. I know two full blood Cherokees and I had to look very hard to find them. I don’t know any full bloods among the Oneida, my tribe. There are very few tribes that have any full bloods left at all.

Chuck said that he had breakfast at Wally’s this morning up in Harlem, and one of the judges came in and sat down next to him.

We talked for two hours. We didn’t have an appointment or plan to meet but I got more information than I did from our formal interview. It goes really easy for me talking to Indians. As soon as I establish the fact to them that I’m Indian, they really open up to me. In Billings, some non-Indians will say to me from the school system that they have trouble getting Indians to open up. They’re always complaining about this. I tell them that my problem is that I can’t get them to be quiet or stop talking.

Chuck said that he was impressed that we’ve gotten so close to people as we have. It usually takes years to do as an outsider. But getting invited to a sweat lodge, spirit lodge or peyote meeting, that’s really rare.

I was talking with Chuck about the insecurity here with employment. I asked Chuck why the BIA couldn’t start some kind of industry and set people up with small businesses on the reservation. He said that Manpower and the BIA are separate and don’t have much to do with each other. The BIA does give small business loans. I told Chuck about some of the ideas I’ve heard here. One man told me that a small business could never make it here if it were run and owned by an Indian. People couldn’t stand to see someone doing well for themselves and they would have a tough time getting business. The jealousy would stop people from supporting the business. Then I told Chuck about Allen’s store in Hays. He has a bad problem with credit. So many people owe him money and some of the bills are pretty big. He has so much money owed to him that he has no capital to work with and has very little stock in the store and not much of a selection, which the people here complain about. Then there are some incredible rumors about how he waters down his gas and how he’s making so much from the store and is very rich. There is no truth to it. The kids believe these things and talk about it a lot. The adults believe it too.

Chuck said that he had some books and reports he wanted me to look at and would find when I went to see him at the BIA. He promised to either get me some copies or references. He said he had a copy of a statement made by a federal judge in Billings during a rape case.

It’s a landmark decision on the definition of an Indian. The man charged with rape wouldn’t make it easy for the court and tell if he was Indian or not. He was going to let the court decide. It was important for reasons of jurisdiction and also because there is a different code of laws for Indians and non-Indians. It’s racist, but that’s the way it is. It’s a big problem and so is the definition of an Indian, and it’s tough to come up with a definition. It was judge Jamison in the Billings federal court (the only federal court in Montana). The statement is his speech to the jury giving them guidelines on how to decide whether this man was an Indian or not. I’ll give you a copy of this when you get to Billings. I also have a book that was funded by the BIA and published in 1974. It’s a profile of the Montana Indians. It has a lot of good statistical data. I’ll get this for you also. There’s a resource guide that you should see. It’s a listing of all the publications on Indians that you can get from the government printing office. I think the address is Pueblo, Colorado.

Chuck said that President Carter has no knowledge of the American Indians.

At least during his campaign he admitted that he didn’t know anything about Indians. He had no policy on Indians even now, and he still probably has little knowledge. He just made a good appointment for the BIA Indian Commissioner though. He gave it to Forest Gerard, a Blackfoot. He’s a good man. The last Commissioner caused some problems. He was a Tlingit and was up from Canada. A lot of Indians said that the Commissioner should be from the US and they didn’t like him. It did cause some trouble, and a lot of people didn’t want to listen to him. One of the major problems is that the American Indian is unique among America’s minorities. They are very different from the blacks. A black is a black. But an Indian is also a Blackfoot or Oneida or Navajo or other tribe. They are all different tribes, and they are very different from each other. They disagree with each other on a lot of issues and they don’t all get along very well at all. It’s hard for the Indians to unify as a political force, because of these differences. There’s a quantum difference between the Indian and the other American minorities. I consider myself Oneida first and an Indian second. And it’s far behind my identity as an Oneida. This causes a lot of problems with the Indian people as a whole and especially in politics.

I asked Chuck if he thought that the BIA would be abolished sometime in the near future. He said that he didn’t see an end to the BIA in the near future.

And I have a pretty good idea what’s going on because I’ve been associated with the BIA ever since I was born. My father was in the BIA all his life. The Indians have been talking about the BIA being abolished since 1946, but there’s no end in sight. The BIA was started because of the land. They hold the trust relationship with the Indians because of the land. The Indians are such a special case among the minorities of America because the Indians own this land. The government made its own problems with the Indian. They could have accomplished all that they had wanted if they had asked for unconditional surrenders after the Indian wars. They would have had all the land and pushed the Indian out to assimilate. Which is what they wanted all the time anyway. But they started negotiating treaties, and they let the Indian keep all this land. It was their land, but they could have taken it away. Now the government is stuck negotiating all these treaties. They ought to just pay off this treaty money instead of arguing about paying the 1877 price or the 1977 price for the land. They should just pay today’s price for it and get the whole thing over with. They could just pay it off and end the whole thing for the money it took to drop bombs on Vietnam in one day. But the Congress has dragged this thing out. This self-determination doesn’t mean anything. What they’re talking about is sovereignty and the Indians have always had this. When the government started negotiating these treaties with the Indians 100 years ago, the government defined these tribes as entities. These tribes already have their sovereignty. This is not what the Indian people want. The people don’t know it, but what they really want, what they’re talking about is getting the government out of their hair. The problem is that the Indian has to have the government in its hair. They’re so dependent on the government for everything. They couldn’t make it on their own. They’re not ready to go on their own. The land thing though could have been different if the land wasn’t given to them in these treaties. That was done because those in power, like the Congress, feel guilty about what they’ve done to the American Indian.

The BIA started as this land trust group in the War Department. Most people don’t know that; that the BIA was under the War Department and was only later put under the Department of the Interior. Now the BIA has changed. It started accumulating other responsibilities over the years; jobs, education, health and many others besides land. But now the BIA is changing again. The BIA has started to ask some basic questions about itself. The health responsibilities went into the HEW under the PHS and Indian Health Service under that. So, health isn’t in the BIA. The employment situation and job training programs are falling more and more under the Manpower Office which is outside the BIA. The BLM is trying to take over the land trust relationship with the Indians and take it away from the BIA. The tribal police and courts are talking about pushing to be under the Justice Department. The EPA is concerned with the environment and that includes the air, land and water on the reservations. And it is only a matter of time before education is taken under consideration to be taken over by HEW. It’s a huge spider web, and no one can find the spider. Is the spider in Washington DC, in the area offices, in Congress, on the reservations? No one knows. It’s a giant mess that’s too big for anyone to handle or understand. Some basic questions are now starting to be asked about what’s happening to and in the BIA.

The BIA is a lot like the missions, too. (We had previously talked about the Jesuits at the missions – those who couldn’t make it in the universities, high schools, grade schools, administration positions or city parishes, were placed on Indian Reservations). The BIA has changed some, but it used to be that those who couldn’t make it in other government departments either because they weren’t good or couldn’t get along with their superiors were put into the BIA. The BIA organization was where people got caught. That’s changing now though. More and more Indian people are getting positions in the BIA and a lot of the superintendents on the reservations are Indian. The BIA would be doing the right thing if they got some young Indian people into these positions. They need people who will stay on the reservations for a long time. They have to be there for a long time to be effective. It takes a long time to understand what’s going on in each reservation. So, what if they’re only 25 or 26, as long as they’re good. This way they could be on the reservation for a long time before their 30 years and retirement. BIA retirements are after 30 years.

The BIA is getting some good superintendents now. Rusty, the superintendent here at Ft. Belknap is a good man. So is Lou Brockie. He was just made the superintendent over at Rocky Boy earlier this year. He’s a Gros Ventre from the reservation.

The BIA has changed in recent years. It used to be that the BIA never had BIA commissioners that were Indian in Washington. The only guy was named Parker who was a commissioner in the 1860s. He just kind of fell into the job. He was an Indian and he had an education; he went to college. He just happened to be there. For 100 years, they didn’t have an Indian Commissioner of the BIA. Bob Bennett was the first one, the first Indian Commissioner in 100 years. He was a good friend of my family’s. He was a good guy.

I told Chuck that I’ve heard a lot of people call these Indian superintendents ‘apples.’ Chuck said he’s heard that too – ‘apples’ or ‘coconuts’ depending on the color of the skin.

That comes from the AIM mentality and it’s ignorant. If these Indian superintendents or commissioners are going to be effective, they have to be apples. The only way to be effective in these positions is to know the dominant society and to know the white man’s game. You have to play their game to be able to beat it. Calling these guys apples or coconuts is a cop out. It’s the only way to be effective in fighting the dominant society. I’m glad these Indian superintendents are apples. It’s the only way the Indian people are going to make it in the fight with the dominant society. These guys are in a position to fight the dominant society. And they’re the only ones who could do it.

These jobs provide a lot of security. The BIA is a secure place to work, and you retire after 30 years. At the Billings Area Office there aren’t that many jobs, and there are a lot of guys who are walking around with not that much to do.

I asked Chuck what he thought of the Area Director of the BIA in Billings. Chuck said that he was an efficient bureaucrat and he’s really astute about tribal politics.

He knows what’s going on the reservations. He’s sensitive about Indian problems and he’s sincere about wanting to improve the way of life for the Indian. He does his job well. He’s the kind of man the BIA wants for the job. (He’s white). But he’s not a crusader and I don’t think that’s necessary, but he could probably push things farther if he was a crusader. And he’s not creative, although I have to say that it took guts for him to hire me for this job during the summer. He could have hired someone from inside the BIA, but he hired me, and he’s paying me well. He’s going to have to turn in this budget to Washington and justify why he hired me. He also encouraged me to be critical in my study. He knows I have nothing to lose if I don’t say what the BIA wants to hear. I don’t have an ax to grind with the BIA, but I could say a lot of things that he and the BIA doesn’t want to hear. But he took me. I don’t have anything to lose because I don’t work for the BIA. I have my own job, and it is a good job. I was able to get the job, and it didn’t hurt that I was Indian. When they passed the Indian Preference Act, they decided that an American Indian should be given first choice for all these BIA jobs and tribal jobs. When I went in though, I had to prove that I was an Indian. I had to show them my birth certificate on myself, my mother and my father. And it had to be stamped by a notary. So, through the Indian Preference Act it helped me to get the job.

Chuck said that when Susie and I come to Billings on Friday, he’ll meet us at the BIA office downtown.

I’ll set up an appointment for you with the area director. You’ll be able to meet with him for about a half hour. You won’t be able to get much information from him in half an hour, but you can meet him and he can help you find some sources for your research. Then I’ll take you into the library and help you find some materials that would help you with your research.  

7-22-77 BIA Billings Area Office, Federal Building

Susie and I spent the day at the BIA Area Office in Billings. The office is in the federal building on the fourth floor. We came there on Chuck’s invitation. We met Chuck in his borrowed office in the tribal law and order department. All the BIA departments are on the fourth floor – tribal planning, law and order, roads, etc. Chuck was working on his report concerning jurisdiction over juveniles on the reservation, federal vs tribal. Chuck said that he had just received a final report completed in May 1977. It was from the American Indian Policy Review Commission. Chuck said that the last report had been done in 1939. The director of the commission was Ernest Stevens, an Oneida Indian from Wisconsin. Chuck said with a lot of pride that members of his tribe were involved in these leadership positions. “There have been a lot of Oneida superintendents and commissioners, and the head of the American Indian Lawyers Association.” Chuck said that there was a commission in Washington that handled the juvenile problems.

It was the commission that concerns the whole nation. I want to find out if anyone on the commission is addressing the federal jurisdiction problem on the reservation. If not, I’m going to try to become chairman of this commission. I have a good chance because of my work in the school system and because of my research this summer on this juvenile jurisdiction question. Also, I’m Indian, and that would help. There’s only one problem. If the Indian people find out that I’m Oneida before I get the job, they’ll try to stop my appointment. So many Oneida to get another one. There’s a good example of tribalism that causes so many problems. The Blackfeet are like the Oneida. They are a sharp people, and they also have a lot of people in leadership positions. Their tribal council chairman has held the position for 22 years. He’s been chairman for 22 years. That’s really incredible. He’s really sharp. He’s an old fashioned guy. He goes to Washington and he puts on his buckskin and wears his full Indian outfit. He's a good politician. He knows his politics. And he knows how to work with Washington people.

 Susie and I met with Arne Deyn, an economist with the BIA Planning Support Group from the Billings Area Office. Mr. Cannon, the BIA director in Billings introduced us and we met in Mr. Deyn’s office in the afternoon. We were going through the census data from Ft. Belknap, 1970, the national census. There is a government publication concerning American Indians which reports the national census data on American Indians. But the publication does not report data on reservations that have a population below 2500. Ft. Belknap’s population is below 2500 and is not included in this report. The 1970 statistics from the reservation are available from the government, and Mr. Deyn had the computer print outs with this information. He said that he would send me xeroxed copies of this census data. We turned to the page on personal income. He had computed the percent of people below the poverty level from Ft. Belknap in 1970; it was 65.1 percent of the Ft. Belknap population, that was below the poverty level.

I told Chuck that the people in the community complain that the BIA keeps the Indian people dependent. Chuck said that in some ways, that’s true.

The BIA salaries are incredible. These guys get tremendous pay. The pay scale is really high. But, Sandy, don’t let these Indians fool you. The BIA may keep them dependent, but they like and want this dependency. A lot of them wouldn’t make it without the dependency. So, don’t be fooled. They like it that way. The Indians have a different relationship with the government than any other minority group. The reason for it is the land.

Chuck pointed up to a map on the wall of Montana and Wyoming, the Ft. Peck, Ft. Belknap, Rocky Boy, Flathead, Blackfeet, Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Wind River Reservations take up a lot of space, and these people own this land.

The government could settle the whole problem if they would just pay off this money to the people from the treaty money over this land. They ought to just pay them for the land at today’s prices for the land and get it over with. It would cost them a couple of billion dollars, and make a per capita payment, but in the long run, it would save a lot of money, time and energy. Then the BIA could get together these tribes after all the money was paid off, and say, that’s it, you’re on your own. The result would be that all these reservation people would assimilate. But it can’t happen now because the government feels too guilty about the Indian. The government can’t let the Indian go with a clear conscience. So long as they feel guilty, the government will never let go.

I don’t think that assimilation is a bad thing at all. I don’t think it would be bad if the reservation people assimilated into the dominant society. No one knows the situation better than the guys like my father or the judges who have been around the situation all of their lives. There is no difference between the whites and Indians. I was talking about this with the judge when I was on Ft. Belknap. You read in a lot of articles that when dealing with the Indian people, either in health, law, economics or any other area, these articles say that you have to take a cultural difference into consideration. This is a cop out. It’s just not true. There aren’t any cultural differences between whites and Indians. You can’t say this though, because if you do say there’s no difference, they all scream prejudice or you can’t say it because it’s an unpopular idea today. But saying there are cultural differences is a cop out because there are no differences. Both Indians and whites have the same culture, even on the reservation. Part of the problem is that white people want to believe that there are still Indians, and they won’t let it disappear. Their image doesn’t exist, this image of the Indian because the Indian is just like the white man. But it is also the Indian who does this. You see it all the time at pow wows. The Indian himself has the same romantic image of the noble savage. They’re looking for something at these pow wows that just doesn’t exist anymore and may never have existed. They go to these pow wows looking for the noble savage or trying to be what their image of the Indian is. The result is that you’re called prejudiced or the notion becomes unpopular that there aren’t cultural differences between the Indians and whites. But these differences don’t exist. Assimilation isn’t such a bad idea. But still, the government won’t let this happen because it feels too guilty about the Indian. So, they remain dependent and both the BIA and the reservation Indian likes the dependency.

To give you some idea about what I mean, I was talking to the judge and he told me that in 21 years as a tribal judge in the tribal court, he’s only had to refer or rely on tribal customs only once to make a legal decision in court. A man died. This was a while ago. A man died and his wife wanted him to have a Catholic funeral service and burial, and the man’s family wanted him to have a traditional Indian burial. According to the present legal system, the wife had the right to make the decision. The body belonged to her. But according to the Indian way, the body belonged to the man’s family. The judge took the Indian customs into consideration when he made the decision. He decided to allow a Christian funeral service but worked out a compromise by allowing the body to be buried in the traditional tribal burial grounds instead of in a Christian cemetery. But this is the only time in 21 years that he ever referred to tribal custom to make a decision.

Chuck said that he’d like to get a job and move to Washington DC.

That’s where all the action is and if you want to get anything accomplished for the Indian people, that’s where you have to be. The decisions about policy, all the important decisions, aren’t made in the area offices, and certainly not on the reservations. It is in Washington in the Congress or by the president. If you want to get things done, you have to be in Washington. The Indian people will never be a unified force in politics. There are just too many things that keep Indians divided. On the reservation, people and families are divided. There are differences and even hostilities between the urban Indians and the rural Indians, and there are differences between tribes, and these are the biggest differences. The difference between each tribe is a quantum difference. But even if there were no differences and the Indian people could become a unified political force, they wouldn’t have any impact. There are about one million Indians, less than one percent of the US population. Even if they unified, they’d have no political power.

Chuck said that the Crow and Navajo are the most traditional tribes in America.

The reason they are so traditional is that they have their languages. Most of the Crow and Navajo still speak their languages, even the kids speak their languages. If a group loses their language, they also lose their culture. A language in many ways determines the thought patterns of a people. If a group loses their language, this thought pattern changes, and they most likely adopt the thought patterns of the people whose language they’re using. When a lot of tribes lost their language and took on English as their language, they also adopted the thought patterns of the dominant society. The Navajo and Crow still kept their language so they were able to also to maintain their culture. So much of the language determines thought patterns and therefore the culture.

I told Chuck about the Gros Ventre and the Assiniboine. Only a small number of Gros Ventre still speak their language and most of them are old. Most Gros Ventre don’t know any of their language and the Gros Ventre have lost most of their culture. A Gros Ventre can only be defined by degree blood. There is little that is distinctive about their culture to define them as Gros Ventre. The Assiniboine have much more of their language and also have maintained a great deal more of their culture. Much more than the Gros Ventre.

Chuck said that he was in the educational department this morning and saw an interesting report. I was looking at the reasons the kids are sent to boarding schools and there were four reasons why kids were sent to Indian boarding schools:

1.     An inappropriate school environment for slow learners and kids with other educational problems that would require special attention.

2.     Some kids go to the boarding school because they have an unsuitable home life.

3.     Some kids go because there are too many kids in the family; they take off the pressure of too many kids in the family and perhaps behavioral problems.

4.     Some kids go because of behavioral problems.

Sandy, take a guess why most kids are sent to boarding school; if you guess one, two or three, you are wrong. But if you guessed behavioral problems, you’re right. About 95% of the kids sent to the Indian boarding school are sent because they are behavioral problems for the community and the community can’t control them, and they don’t know what to do with them. What does that make the boarding schools? They’ve become a large system of penal institutions for juveniles.

I’m going to put this in my report about juveniles and try to do something about it. We have a lot of trouble documenting a lot of the problems. For example, when I went to Ft. Belknap some people told me that one of the biggest problems on the reservation was the use of drugs, especially marijuana, by the kids on the reservation. So, I went to the tribal police and court, and looked up the number of drug arrests on the Ft. Belknap Reservation. Do you know that there wasn’t one drug arrest on the reservation in 1976? Not a single drug arrest. Now how can I talk about a drug problem on the reservation? No one will take me seriously. I need the statistical evidence if people are going to believe that there is a drug problem on the Ft. Belknap Reservation. Without a single drug arrest, I can’t make a convincing argument for a drug problem with these kids. I don’t know what the situation is for 1977 because they didn’t have the records compiled yet.

I’m sure there’s a reason why there haven’t been drug arrests in all of 1976, but still there aren’t any on the records and everyone looks at the records. There’s not much I can say without the statistics.

I told Chuck that there are a lot of rumors that the tribal police also smoke dope. Both the kids and adults talk about it, and there could be some truth to that. If it is true, that some of the police smoke, it would help to explain why there weren’t any drug arrests. But I do know that a lot of the kids and some adults smoke marijuana because I’ve seen a lot and heard even more about it. So, there is some problem, and the use is pretty out in the open. If they wanted to make some drug busts, they wouldn’t have to work hard to accomplish it.

Chuck introduced us to the Area Director of the BIA. He had just returned from Washington where he had meetings with other BIA officials. He was very busy and didn’t have much time to talk to us.

He said that the Ft. Belknap communities were divided up in a strange way, with a community in the north and communities in the south and nothing in between but prairie. He said that his assistant director, was on the Blackfeet Reservation today but he wanted me to meet him sometime because he was superintendent at Ft. Belknap for a few years starting in 1968. He was also superintendent there a few times. He was involved with the people from Turtle Mountain. I called them Chippewa French and Jim told me that he never heard them called that before. I’ve heard them called Metis, landless people, Little Shell Band, but never Chippewa French. I got the word Chippewa French from Irma. The Chippewa Cree are the people on Rocky Boy. There were two bands, the Chippewa and the Cree that settled on what became the Rocky Boy Reservation. He said that Ft. Belknap was trying to hire Mr. Farmer. He’s from Rocky Boy and has his PhD in education. They want him to work for the tribe, but they’re waiting to see if the BIA will pay for him. They want us to pay.

He said that he was busy so he introduced us to a man from the Planning Support Group who was able to help us. He said that he does studies on all the reservations and they’d have reports on Ft. Belknap that I would be able to get copies of. He called in the man and introduced us. His name is Arne Dyne. He’s an economist for the Planning Support Group. They do planning studies for all the tribes. We went to his office and on the way we stopped in an office and he got us a map of the Ft. Belknap Reservation and a history map that was compiled by Franke Shane, a BIA employee. Then we went into his office. He said that he was an economist and taught first at the University and then got a job with the BIA. “The Planning Support Group does studies for the tribes and helps them plan for the future policies and decisions.” I asked him how large a territory the Billings Planning Support Group covered. He looked at a map and pointed out an area covering Alaska, the Northwest, plateau, plains and Midwest. It covered everything but the east coast, the southwest and the southeast. He said that he does a lot of traveling. He said that he would give me reports about Ft. Belknap. There was a book that listed reports done by the Planning Support Group. There was also a report about the group itself. There were some other reports on Ft. Belknap that he gave me if he had one extra copy in his file. If there wasn’t an extra copy, he said that he would get it xeroxed and mailed to me this month. He took out a census report on the reservation. It was printed on computer sheets. The census was done as a part of the 1970 national census. There is a book of Indian census statistics for 1970, but Ft. Belknap has a population less than 2,500. It is about 2,000. So, the only population statistics they had on Ft. Belknap came from the original census data. They didn’t have all the Indians from the census material because he said that the BIA didn’t give them enough funds to have all the Indians. So, they were only able to choose some of the national census questions.

I’ve noticed that there is a good deal of depression on Ft. Belknap. It just seems like people there are depressed all the time. I don’t know … you’re studying the people, you tell me. I’m an economist. But they do seem depressed there. There doesn’t seem to be much going on there, not too many business enterprises or projects and this depression might be some explanation for it.

7-22-77 Billings BIA Area Office

While Susie and I were in the Area Office of the BIA in the federal building, we stopped at Senator Metcalf’s office. He was in Washington, but we talked to his secretary. She is the democratic chairman in Billings. I told her what we were doing in Hays and she asked if she could help us get materials. The Senator was on the American Indian Policy Review Commission, and I asked her if she could get the report for me. She called Washington DC and the Senator’s office and asked for copies of the report for me. She was told that only 200 copies were made of the report and that the tribal chairmen on all the reservations didn’t even get one. But she was going to try to get me a copy and send it to Hays. She also told me that if I sent for articles printed by the BIA and Government Printing Office, she would get them for me through their office in Washington. They could get them for me quickly and at no cost. She said that if I sent for them on my own, it would take a long time and there would be a charge for the articles. I told her that I would take her up on that offer. She also said that she would try to get me a copy of the Review Commission Report. She called a BIA employee into the office. We were introduced and he listened to me describe my research. I asked him if there was any way to find out about programs on the reservation. He said that he couldn’t help there. The BIA doesn’t know anything about a lot of these. We have nothing to do with a lot of them. No one really knows about all the programs for American Indians. On some reservations, there are 90 federal programs. The only ones who would know of them are the tribes themselves. There is no group or organization that oversees all the programs, and the BIA doesn’t control or even know about a lot of them. The only way to find out is to ask the tribal chairman or go to the different offices, such as manpower, housing, education, roads, etc. Some of the tribes are going to centralize to get them under one roof to get a grasp on all these federal programs.

Billings in 2017

I took these photographs in Billings in 2017. The Transverse Myelitis Association held an education program and a walk-run-and-roll awareness event at the Billings Clinic. One of the neurologists is an expert in the neuroimmune disorders for which our organization advocates. Pauline and I helped to found the TMA in 1994 shortly after Pauline’s diagnosis with transverse myelitis. After Pauline died (during this trip to Montana in 2017) our board changed the name of the organization to the Siegel Rare Neuroimmune Association. May her memory be a blessing.

https://wearesrna.org/about/our-story/

https://wearesrna.org/the-eclipse-fund/

 Coulson Park

Lake Josephine

Zimmerman Park

One of the families that attended the weekend event was Sioux from Ft. Peck. We first met this family at our Quality of Life Family Camp in Kentucky in 2016. We hold this camp every summer for families who have a child with one of our disorders. On the first evening of camp, I sat down with the father and had the most interesting conversation. He told me they were from Ft. Peck. I described my experience on Ft. Belknap and my time in Hays. After we made a few interesting connections, he told me that Gordon Lodge had lived on Ft. Peck for a little while and that he and his father became close friends.

If you read my blogs, you have a sense about how I categorize all of my worlds and that when these worlds collide, my head blows up. Needless to say, I spent the rest of my time at that camp trying to gather together pieces of my head. Gordon! The dad has since passed away. May his memory be a blessing.