Native American Rights - Research Paper Example

Native American Rights The civil rights movements during the 1960s through the 1970s have much to do with the emergence of the Native American civil rights activism. During these times, “race occupied the center stage of American politics in a manner unprecedented since the Civil War era a century earlier. Civil rights struggles and ghetto revolts, as well as controversies over state policies of reform and repression, highlighted a period of intense conflict.” (Marubbio 2006, p. 144) The peaceful protests in 1960 and the movement for black voter registration all over the United States paved the way for a nationwide mobilization against racial inequality. These movements helped transform the American polity. In regard to the American Indians, the civil rights movement launched the Native American Movement and the American Indian Movement (AIM) alongside the Black, the Chicano and the movements of other minorities. By the late 1980s and 1990s, AIM activists were still setting the model for other human rights advocates throughout the Indian country. Presently, American Indian rights advocates continue to promote American Indian culture, welfare, and civil rights. Most of these groups that espouses Indian activism aims to achieve the political rebirth of almost six hundred American Indian nations; the organizational growth of a broad spectrum of American Indian social institutions and groups; a growing sophistication about land claims and resource rights, among others. (Zisson, Zacher and Cayton 2007, p. 1659) The Native American Rights Fund, organized in the early seventies in Boulder, Colorado, has established itself as an all-purpose organization to defend Indian rights. Its long-standing director, John Echohawk, certainly can lay claim to the title of most stable Indian organizational executive. (Deloria 1988, xii) Then, there is the Indian Law Resource Center who takes the cause of traditional Indians and raised questions about long-standing practices in the field of Indian affairs which needed to be questioned. The Indian Law Resource Center, meanwhile, represents the best mixture of intellectual achievement and application of legal theory that we have yet seen enlisted in the cause of the American Indian. Interlinked with the protests and the Indian civil rights activism were attempts to regain Indian control of cultural identity, and to challenge a range of American mythologies and stereotypes. A sense of cultural revival also underwrote the development of the Red Road or the “Indian Way”, an approach applied to various social problems. This process reaffirmed Indian identity and offers an important counter to assimilation and the encroachment of dominant Euroamerican values on Indian communities. An important point to make is that Native American political struggles differ markedly from civil rights, although the surface aspects of particular conflicts may not reveal this difference. Controversies about the use of Native American images for sports mascots, for example, appear as a conventional dispute about equality and respect for ethnic difference. The Use of Indian Symbols Since the 1970s a substantial number of Native Americans have argued that the use of native names, images and symbols as sports team mascots is a virulently racist practice. Sponsor of Bill 2115, banning the use of names such as Braves, Chiefs, Apaches, Redskins, Indians, and Warriors for teams or mascots in elementary, middle, and high schools, Goldberf protested that "Public schools Indian-themed names and mascots offend Californias Indian groups, members of which are both embarrassed and angered by the use of such mascots at pep rallies and sports contests." (Rosier, 2) In response, professional team owners like Ted Turner announced that "they mean not to insult but to honor native people." (Churchill) Other television networks and major newspapers reacted to the Native American discomfort with "no big deal." Republican Dennis Mountjoy even contended that "Indians are outraged at being systematically degraded creates a serious barrier to the sort of inter-group communication so necessary in a multicultural society such as ours and AB 2115 infringed on local communities right to make decisions." (Rosier, 2) Some supporters of Indian mascots contended that fighting over trivial issues such as mascots is like ‘fighting invisible dragons in the face of stark reality.’ (Rosier, 16) However, if general people don’t attempt to understand the basic issue of human dignity, they won’t even pay attention to more substantive issues like sovereignty, treaty rights, or water rights. Therefore, I think the Indian mascot issues can be a place to begin to bring understanding to the many issues that face Native people. There are several reasons why using the Indian mascot should be reconsidered. First, Native Americans’ perpetuated images represented in sporting events are savage, conquered, violent, and ignorant. Sporting events in American is a public thing. They attract millions of spectators each year, and sporting events are the main source from which they develop their impressions of who Native Americans are. Therefore, American children of all races and ethnicities, including Indian children themselves, were literally growing up with distorted and stereotyped image of Native American portrayed at pep rallies and sporting events. The inappropriate and insensitive use of American Indian names and images violates the culture and traditions of American Indians and may prevent Native American children from developing a strong positive self-image. Second, 81 percent of Native American leaders indicated that ‘use of American Indian names, symbols and mascots are predominantly offensive and deeply disparaging to Native Americans.’ (Rosier, 17) They don’t even represent authentic Indian traditions or rituals. For example, frequently used eagle feather is actually used only in the highly regulated ceremonies and to the audiences. Also, most of the dances and clothing of sports mascots have nothing to do with the Native Americans of that particular region. Mascot’s appropriate images to use in their culture’s game rather than mere recreation of Native American ceremonies and traditions can be the means to honor Native American culture and educate general Americans about American Indians. If schools use mascots and symbols in an authentic manner and got the permission in the use of the symbols of tribes involved, then it wouldn’t create a hostile environment to Native Americans. Third, as a result of mascots mocking Native American sacred practices, distorting cultural realities, and denigrating hundreds of indigenous tribes to generic cartoons, American Indian Mental Health Association of Minnesota concluded that “the use of Indian-related mascots and images damaged the self-identity, self-concept, and self-esteem of Native Americans.” (Rosier, 17) Economic Issues All in all, the state of the Indian affairs today is not good. However, there are certain strengths, which suggest a better future for the people. The poverty programs during the 1960s and the 1970s brought rapid cultural disintegration to the reservations. Vine Deloria outlined some specific developments: Housing programs broke up the old living and settlement patterns which had sustained ceremonial life for a century. Educational programs focused the attentions of the younger generation on life beyond the reservation borders, and many talented young Indians left their homes to pursue success in the white world. Tribal governments, attempting to serve the remnant of the tribe on the reservations, have had to devote an increasing percentage of the tribe’s natural resources to creating an income for social service programs, thereby turning some reservations into an economic resource rather than a homeland. (p. xii) To cite an example, the American Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) in 1988 confirmed a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that “to provide a statutory basis for the operation of gaming by Indian tribes as a means of promoting tribal economic development, self-sufficiency and strong tribal governments.” (Hoxie, Mancall and Merrell, 468) Money allows people to survive. If the people of a nation cannot survive, they cannot be sovereign, for sovereignty demands a continuity for a people. In this aspect, money can be considered as a solution to the basic condition for sovereignty. However, a 1997 report by the organization Native Americans in Philanthropy demonstrated that unlike the primary intention of U.S. Supreme Court, casino gambling didn’t help to promote the sovereignty of American Indians, “Gaming revenues had not lowered poverty levels among American Indians, but that despite the gambling boom 51 percent of Indians residing on reservations still lived below the poverty line, which represented an increase from the 45 percent of 1980.” (Rosier, 130) Casino gambling hasn’t produced real social progress for most Native Americans. I want to comment four reasons of why casino gambling doesn’t contribute to the achievement of American Indian sovereignty. First, American Indians are not ready to govern and manage huge amount of money from casino gambling. Many tribal voters do not have mechanisms to handle and govern expenditure and policies. Due to this, legitimate gambling operations have been infiltrated by organized crime figures who understand not only the mechanics of gambling, but also how the industry works. Second, Casino gambling can divide communities, reorient community values, and prompt political dissension and corruption. With their restaurant and activities, Casinos have become a central meeting space, which means that Native Americans became to spend more time with these activities than with traditional activities including religious observances and gathering of family. Family life, the core of Native Americans society, is, therefore, adversely affected by the lure of the casino. In addition, with so much money and political power at stake, Indian communities are beset by political infighting that has damaged tribal unity. Third, actual meaning of sovereignty is “the right to determine what human activities occur in their environment.” (Erikson, Vecsey and Venables, 81) Along with the “traditionalists,” those Native Americans who continue to follow cultural traditions and resist the forces of assimilation and feel threatened by the changes that casinos can bring to formerly isolated and insular communities, in 1994 and again in 1997, the Navajo, the country’s largest Indian nation rejected casino gambling in a tribal referendum. Last but not least, American Indians are now unfairly and inaccurately stereotyped as both rich and receiving federal aid. Therefore, casino gambling can prompt negative impact on other Native American issues like land claims, treaty rights, and the campaign to ban Indian sports mascots and images. Deeper Claim to Rights Beyond the surface, there are deeper issues of Native Americans in American politics that go beyond a concern for equal treatment and respect for difference as illustrated by the use of Indian symbols as mascots or the granting of economic rights in line with their right to their homeland. The deepest, most pervasive, and clearly persistent issues that concern the Native American rights movement involve land and group rights – territorial integrity and self-determination of and by Native American societies. We can see these in the way statutes were formulated to outline how the Native Americans exercise their freedom and their claims to the rights such as in voting, their local laws and policies, among many other variables. Jeffrey Schultz et al., (2000) observed: Native American issues involve the assertion of sovereignty – a challenge to the jurisdiction of state. And federal governments intended to preserve or extend an arena of self-determination as separate peoples. Native Americans asserting sovereignty are not seeking a “fair share” in American society, but are declaring the existence of separate domain… Self-government is thus the primary factor that distinguishes Native Americans from other minorities and, indeed, from all other persons in American politics. Today, although slowly, there is an emerging sector in the Indian society that advocates tribal renewal. These cadres – the new generation - become catalysts that empower spiritual, cultural, economic and political forces that create a vision for the Native American Indians’ future. In a way, they are more active in pursuing their rights than the elders that have contented themselves with seclusion and passivity when it comes to asserting their rights. Good education and assimilation to mainstream American society have given the Indians a new perspective on how to advance their claims more effectively. Statistics are pointing to the thriving Native American population. The population has risen up from around 300,000 at the turn of the century to about 1,500,000 presently. (Spindler 1990, p. 16) This development entails a stronger voice in the American society and its polity as the political landscape becomes more accommodating to addressing inequality and the unique requirements of the Native Americans’ rights. Bibliography Churchill Wayward. “Crimes Against Humanity.” American Indian Movement. 14 Nov 2008 < http://www.americanindianmovement.org/txaim/crimes.html> Deloria, Vine. Custer Died for your Sins. University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. Erikson, Kai, Vecsey, Christopher and Venables, Robert. American Indian Environments: Ecological Issues in Native American History. Syracuse University Press, 1980. Hoxie, Frederick, Mancall, Peter and Merrell, James Hart. American Nations: Encounters in Indian Country, 1850 to the Present. Routledge, 2001. Marubbio, Elise. Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film. University Press of Kentucky, 2006. Rosier, Paul. Native American Issues. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003. Sisson, Richard, Zacher, Christian and Cayton, Andrew Robert. The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia. Indiana University Press, 2007. Schultz, Jeffrey, Haynie, Kerry, Aoki, Andrew and McCulloch, Anne. Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000. Read More