Red Man's Burden

Page 2

200 T H E N E W R E P U B L IC January 16, ig2j. even in Oklahoma being a mere handful-in a state of economic peonage. And the most intelligent representatives of the race at t i e conference cer­tainly knew, as well as the bishops and the scientists, that with this went a. curious moral situation, in which the potential powers and ancestral gifts of the race were receiving no outlet or development. If an Indian wishes to become an American citizen he can do so, if he is pronounced? duly competent after years and formalities, but only if he accepts allotment of his share of die tribal land or sunders all the natural ties of race and tribe. Meanwhile we are sheltering him in a fashion to destroy his faith in his tribal past, witiiout really preparing .him to meet the sharp conditions of die whitcman's competitive world, and witiiout giving him the sense of "belonging," as an insider, on this mod­ern continent which he has so anciendy inhabited' Every American with a sense of human and national dignity who has had much to do witi Indians has suffered in his self-esteem in.seeing die anomalous and powerless condition to which we have reduced tiiis proud and independent race: first by the mili­taristic suppression and concentration of die tribes, tiien by the tutelary and assimilative policy now in vogue. Assimilation as at present practised is not work­ing: that is the simple truth. Fee simple allotment has been a disastrous failure on almost all die reservations, for the reason that the Indian is not as yet educated to individualism. • How should he leap in one or two generations the many centuries that have carried the rest of us forward from tribalism? . History shows that deprived of his natural communal ties, taught to despise his very father and mother, yet instinctively thinking and feeling according to the psychology of a group, he turns'>for support to any grafting protector, to any miserable community cluster on his pati. Therefore to grant die ballot immediately to all Indians, to parcel their estate, and turn them loose in the American competitive jungle, as Congress­man Clyde Kelly and others have advised, would not solve the situation. The debate on citizenship tended at the Washington Conference to a dead­lock between those who asked universal emancipa­tion and tiose who advocated swaddling cioti.es. But it revealed very clearly the need of a third condition midway between the two, some sort of restricted citizenship or guardianship which, while protecting the Indian's property, would neverthe­less give him personal dignity, enable him to use his spiritual and material estate to advantage, and make his own choices. So long as we continue to talk of him, as Secretary Work himself did, as "less fortunate," as an object of our altruistic con­cern instead of at least as much of a man, widi at least as many natural and racial ties with his past as the immigrant who enters our ports-so long we shall keep him an "inferior." Surelv the Indian has the right to make, as slowly or as quickly as he likes, his own adaptations to our civilization; to. practice his own religion in his own way, to dance as heart and tradition enjoin and create his own clubs, fraternities and other forms of social activity independently of pap-fed Y. M. C. A.'s, and bureaucratic or militaristic superintendents. Boti Will Irwin and Oswald Villard pointed out t i a t not an argument against Indian citizenship but was used against the emancipation of women and Negroes. Yet this committee would not even vote a resolution asking the Indian Bureau to endeavor to terminate its guardianship within twenty years. One remembers die consternation that fell on a banquet of settlement workers some., fifteen years ago when Jane Addams said that the aim of social settlements should be to make themselves unnecessary. Certainly, unless the Ind­ians are to be kept away from all white contacts -and no one seriously suggests that this is pos­sible- tie aim of the Indian Bureau should be to abolish itself as soon as may be. The aim, yes. But what of t i e method of bridging die gap which exists between two cultures? The Indian tribes themselves are as varied as dispeoples of Europe That is undoubtedly the crux of the whole problem, and one to which Americans of distinguished intel­ligence have failed to give sufficient attention. I have before me a document which might well have been-read at t i e conference, or transmitted to the Secretary of the Interior witii the various schemes of Bureau reorganization proposed by General Scott and others. It was framed by two really crea­tive thinkers on Indian affairs, now unfortunately dead, Natalie Curtis and Robert Valentine, die lat­ter Indian Commissioner under Taft, and suggests that as the work of the government for die Indian is above all a work of social service and as the gov­ernment is limited by suci facts as an inadequate and confused body of Indian law, a chaotic public opinion, an unwieldy bureaucratic system, there should be organized in supplement an Indian Social Service Association. This association should have time and facilities for developing a long dis­tance social program, enforced by informed pubbc opinion and followed by congressional action. It should become a sort of training school for die government Indian service of superior men and women,-at superior pay, and should be closely aided by such highly equipped agencies of Indian knowl­edge as the Smithsonian' Institution. As it Is, the Indian Bureau'appears to exist to pull down what the Smithsonian is laboriously building up. Natalie Curtis's view was that all Indian teachers should go tirough a course of training at this Institution before being sent into the field, as candidates for the English consular service are trained in -anthro­pology at the British Museum, and that die radaUT vital arts and crafts and music, the racially vita industrial and social gifts of the Indian should he