VII.

Native Americans Today

At the turn of the 20th century, many people believed that Native Americans would assimilate into mainstream society and disappear as unique peoples. But native communities in both the United States and Canada survived disastrous assimilation efforts. Instead of disappearing, they revitalized tribal governments, created modern economies, attained legal rights, and revived cultural traditions and ceremonies that had nearly died out. They combined aspects of their traditional cultures with contemporary life without sacrificing the core of their identity.

Despite their resiliency, however, Native Americans faced serious economic, health, and educational problems at the beginning of the 21st century. Many U.S. and Canadian indigenous peoples lived in poverty. Unemployment and school dropout rates were high, and rates of alcoholism and suicide for Native Americans were far above those for the general population in both countries. But as a testament to the cultural and economic renewal taking place, many indigenous peoples were leaving cities and returning to their homelands. They went back for jobs, to attend tribal colleges, or to participate in long-dormant ceremonies.

A.

Population

A.1.

Introduction

A.1.a.

United States

Getting an accurate count of the number of Native Americans in the United States can be difficult. In both the United States and Canada, many Native Americans mistrust federal government representatives and withhold information or refuse to fill out census forms. With the 2000 census, the U.S. Census Bureau made efforts to do a better job of counting Native Americans than it did in the 1990 census. In that census, Native Americans were undercounted by as much as 12.5 percent, the highest of any ethnic group. Besides working with tribal governments, the Census Bureau developed culturally specific television and newspaper advertisements and posters to encourage Native Americans to take part in the 2000 census.

The 2000 census was the first in which Americans could select more than one race and ethnic identity. This was an important change for Native Americans because they have mixed intertribally for thousands of years and interracially for the last 500 years. On the 2000 census form, Native Americans could select “American Indian and Alaska Native only” or “American Indian and Alaska Native” and at least one other race. They were also given a space for tribal affiliation.

According to the 2000 census, about 2.5 million people in the United States reported they were Native Americans. Some 1.5 million others reported they were Native American plus another race, typically white. The two figures together represented a 26 percent increase over the 1990 census figures. Overall, Native American people accounted for about 1 percent of the total U.S. population.

At the time of the census, California had the largest concentration of Native Americans (314,000), followed by Oklahoma (263,000), Arizona (261,000), New Mexico (166,000), Washington State (105,000), and Alaska (101,352). Nearly 50 percent of Native Americans lived in the West, 29 percent in the South, 17 percent in the Midwest, and 6 percent in the Northeast. The Native American population was a young and growing population: Thirty-nine percent of its population was under 20 years of age, compared with 29 percent of the nation’s total population.

A.1.b.

Canada

Since 1982 the Canadian census has categorized aboriginal people as North American Indian, Métis (people of mixed European and aboriginal ancestry), and Inuit. The census also asks every Canadian, including aboriginal people, to which ethnic or cultural group a person’s ancestors belonged. In 1996 Statistics Canada, the national agency that takes the census, included an additional question for aboriginal people: “Is this person an aboriginal person, that is, North American Indian, Métis, or Inuit?”That is, does this individual identify as an aboriginal person?

The 1996 census reported there were 1,170,190 people with aboriginal ancestry in Canada, making up about 3 percent of Canada’s inhabitants. Some 867,225 reported North American Indian ancestry; 220,740 reported Métis; and 49,845 Inuit. Counts based on identity went down from the overall number: 554,000 identified as North American Indian, 210,000 as Métis, and 41,000 as Inuit. About 6,400 people were counted more than once because they claimed to be members of more than one aboriginal group. But Statistics Canada admitted its census did not catch everyone; forms were not completed on more than 75 Indian reserves.

In 1996 aboriginal people lived across Canada in every province and territory. More than four out of every five aboriginal people lived west of Québec. About 63 percent of all aboriginal people lived in the four western provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Ontario had 18 percent of Canada’s aboriginal people and more North American Indians than any other province. Almost two-thirds of Canada’s total Métis population lived in the three Prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, with Alberta having the largest Métis population. In 1996 Northwest Territories had the largest Inuit population.

In Canada the federal government officially determines who is an Indian for its purposes through the Indian Act, a law first passed in 1876 and amended several times since. The act defines who is an Indian and determines who can be registered in the Indian Register maintained by Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), also called Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). For the federal government to grant Indian status, a person generally has to be a member of an aboriginal band that was granted a reserve or government funds or negotiated a treaty with the government. These people are referred to as Status Indians, and the Indian Act applies only to them. Status Indians are eligible for federal benefits. The Indian Act does not cover Inuit, Métis, and non-Status Indians, people with Indian ancestry who are not on the official register.

A.2.

Tribes and Bands

A.2.a.

United States

Tribes in the United States set up their own membership criteria. A person is permitted membership in only one tribe, and becoming a member of a particular tribe requires complying with its membership rules. Most tribes rely in part on blood quantum, or how much Native American blood a person has, for membership. The amount of blood quantum required varies. At one end of the spectrum is the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, which accepts anyone who can trace his or her ancestry back to the Dawes Commission of Final Rolls, a government document that compiled the names of tribal members between 1899 and 1906. At the other end is the Ute of Utah, who require five-eighths minimum blood quantum for membership. Generally, tribes require one-fourth minimum blood quantum for enrollment.

The whole notion of blood quantum is controversial within the Native American community. Many children and grandchildren of tribal citizens do not have the required amount of blood quantum to qualify for enrollment because their parents or earlier ancestors married outside their tribe. There are also Indians whose families have been part of Indian communities for generations but do not have the official records required for tribal membership.

Tribes fall into one of two categories: federally or state recognized. Federally recognized tribes are nations that have a special, legal relationship with the U.S. government. This relationship recognizes that tribes have certain rights of self-government and are entitled to participate in specific federal Indian programs. The federal government has the right to determine tribal membership for federal purposes, such as who can receive federal funds.

Most Native Americans in the United States belong to federally recognized tribes. There are more than 550 such tribes, including more than 220 village groups in Alaska. The tribes vary enormously in size. At the time of the 2000 census, the only tribes with more than 100,000 people were the Cherokee, Navajo (Diné), Sioux, and Chippewa. Most tribes had populations of less than 10,000, and several California tribal bands had only two to three members.

Tribes that want to be recognized by the federal government go through an administrative process prescribed by the Branch of Acknowledgment and Research (BAR) of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), an agency of the U.S. government that is part of the Department of the Interior. The BAR requires petitioners, or entities, to meet seven mandatory criteria for federal recognition. Entities must (1) prove they have been identified by reliable external sources on a continuous basis since 1900; (2) prove continuous community; (3) prove continuous political authority from historical times to the present day; (4) submit membership criteria; (5) prove that current members descend from historic tribes; (6) prove members are not members of another federally recognized tribe; and (7) prove Congress did not terminate its relationship with the tribe. Once an Indian tribe receives federal acknowledgment, it is eligible to receive BIA services.

Approximately 30 U.S. Indian tribes and groups without federal recognition are state recognized. This means the states administer programs for tribes such as the Paucatuck Eastern Pequot of Connecticut and the Shinnecock of New York. State-recognized tribes do not have relations with the BIA or participate in the programs it operates.

A.2.b.

Canada

According to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), there are about 600 bands in Canada. (In Canada, the term band generally corresponds to the term tribe in the United States.) A band is made up of Indian people who are registered as members of that group. Many bands prefer to be known as First Nations.

Before the Canadian Parliament amended the Indian Act in 1985, the federal government controlled the membership lists of bands. When it granted Indian status to a person, it would also add that person to a First Nation’s membership list. The 1985 amendment gave First Nations the option of defining their own membership. About 250 First Nations have opted to control their own memberships; Indian people seeking to join those First Nations must apply directly to them for membership. First Nations that control their membership can grant it to both Status and non-Status Indians. About 40 percent of the aboriginal population in Canada belongs to First Nations.

According to DIAND, the largest First Nations bands in 2001 were the Mohawk of Akwesasne in Ontario (9,500), the Blood of Alberta (9,051), the Mohawk of Kahnawake in Québec (8,888), and the Saddle Lake in Alberta (7,648). Only 10 percent of the bands had a population of 2,000 people or more, and 6 percent had populations of less than 100.

Because First Nations are legal-administrative bodies recognized by the Canadian government, they are eligible for funding from DIAND. DIAND distributes monies to First Nations for social services such as housing, postsecondary education, community economic development, business enterprises, health care, and youth programs. Inuit living in recognized Inuit communities may also be eligible for some federal benefits.

A.3.

Native Americans on Reservations and Reserves

A.3.a.

United States

In the United States, an Indian reservation generally refers to land that the U.S. government set aside for a tribe after the tribe relinquished its other land areas to the United States through treaties. Congressional acts, executive orders, and administrative acts have also created reservations. The federal government holds the reservation lands in trust, and the lands are reserved for Native American use. As trustee, the government is supposed to ensure that the land is properly managed and is not lost to its Native American owners. In California and Nevada, Indian reservations are often referred to as rancherias or colonies. Indian lands also take other forms, including pueblos, Indian trust land outside of a reservation, and Alaska Native villages.

In the United States, approximately 275 Indian land areas are administered as federal Indian reservations. The largest is the Navajo Reservation, which has about 6.5 million hectares (16 million acres) of land in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Many of the smaller reservations have less than 400 hectares (1,000 acres), and some California rancherias have less than one acre. In 1990 less than half of the Native American population lived on Indian lands, most of which are west of the Mississippi River. But many people who do not live on reservations return to them often to participate in family and tribal life; some Native Americans go back to reservations to retire. Indeed, in the 1990s, many Native Americans went back to reservations to stay. The overall Indian population has been growing on or near reservations in North and South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, and Kansas.

Native Americans who live on reservations benefit from federal programs that provide housing, health care, education, and funds for economic development. But these programs are inadequate. In 1990 half of all Native Americans on reservations were living below the poverty level. Faced with substandard education, joblessness, poor health care, and houses without plumbing, electricity, or telephones, many Native Americans have been forced to leave reservations in search of jobs in the surrounding areas or in cities.

A.3.b.

Canada

In Canada, reserves are lands set aside by the Canadian government for First Nations. Beginning in the 1870s the Canadian government negotiated treaties and agreements with First Nations that took away most of the Indians’ lands in exchange for reserves, compensation, and promises of future assistance. Today, these reserves are where First Nations communities try to keep alive kinship ties, Indian languages, and shared values, beliefs, and rituals.

According to DIAND, Canada has approximately 2,670 reserves. Usually bands are identified with a specific reserve, but many bands have rights to more than one reserve within a province or territory. There are reserves in every province and territory; more than half are located in British Columbia.

Some reserves cover several thousand acres, but numerous reserves are small, both in land area and population. Many are located in rural or remote areas, and some are accessible only by air. Several reserves, however, are located in or adjacent to Canadian cities. Some examples are the Musqueam Reserve in Vancouver, British Columbia; the Membertou Reserve in Sydney, Nova Scotia; and Kahnawake Reserve near Montréal, Québec. The three largest reserves are the Blood and Siksika Indian Reserves in Alberta and the Moosomin Reserve in Saskatchewan.

According to DIAND, 58 percent of Status Indians lived on a reserve in 2000. Any Status Indian who is also a band member may live on a reserve. Some bands also allow band members who are non-Status Indians to live on their reserves. First Nations may enact residency bylaws that regulate who can live on reserves. Under certain conditions, they may allow other people to live on the reserves. These include people who lease land from a band, common-law spouses of Indians who have homes on reserves, and clergy serving reserve residents.

The residents of reserves have specific privileges, including the right to vote in most band elections. Indians registered with the band do not pay federal or provincial sales taxes on personal and real property on a reserve. If a First Nation receives money from a land claims settlement or from royalties for natural resources, reserve residents may have a right to a share of that money. About 100 First Nations have rich natural resources such as timber, oil, and gas.

Canadian reserve conditions resemble those of the United States. Poverty, unemployment, substandard housing, poor health care, and family breakdown have driven people from reserves to urban centers where they have better opportunities to find jobs.

A.4.

Native Americans in Urban Areas

A.4.a.

United States

During World War II (1939-1945), some Indians left reservations and headed to cities, where they worked in defense-related factories. After the war, however, many Indians returned to reservations and surrounding rural areas, where they faced hard times because there were few jobs. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) took notice of the lack of opportunities on reservations, and it sought to break up reservation life. In the early 1950s it launched a massive program to relocate reservation Indians to urban centers. The BIA’s Employment Assistance Program (also known as the Voluntary Relocation Program) promoted the idea that reservations had too many people. The program offered one-way bus tickets, temporary low-cost housing, and new clothes to Indians who agreed to leave the reservations and resettle in urban areas.

Many Indians went to cities and stayed, and more continued to migrate despite the end of the relocation policy in 1960. Soon, Indian populations in cities exceeded those of some reservations. According to the 1990 census, more than half of all Native Americans lived in cities. Large urban areas such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, California; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Chicago, Illinois; and Seattle, Washington, have become home to great numbers of Indians from many different tribes.

Once in urban areas, Native Americans more commonly married people from other tribes, and the children from these unions sometimes did not qualify for enrollment in either tribe. For some people, this led to the decline of their tribal cultures and identities. However, urban Indian groups soon developed communities with their own history, culture, and concerns, and these communities replaced individual tribal identities for some people.

Urban Indian communities organized Indian centers in dozens of cities. These organizations helped all Indian people, whether or not they were enrolled in a tribe or federally recognized. They focused on their Indian, rather than tribal, identities. Today, Indian centers sponsor powwows and other events that provide opportunities to perpetuate traditional Native American music, dance, and other cultural activities for their multitribal populations. Centers also find jobs for people and run health clinics, daycare programs, soup kitchens, gift shops, and art galleries.

During the 1990s Indian people in cities began to reconnect with their tribes, and as a result urban Indian communities have experienced a renewed focus on tribes. Because the majority of Indian people now live in cities, tribal governments have been forced to become more sensitive to their urban membership. Wisconsin’s Ho-Chunk Nation (formerly known as the Winnebago) opened offices in Chicago, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s Oneida Indian Nation opened an office in Milwaukee as well.

In most cases, tribal members must return to the reservation to register their votes in reservation elections. But recently, a number of tribes developed absentee ballots so city dwellers can vote. Some tribal members running for office have begun to campaign in cities as well as on the reservations. Some tribes have also given support to urban Indian communities. The Oneida Indian Nation gave grants to Chicago Indian organizations. Several rural southern California tribes helped sponsor an intertribal music festival organized by an Indian center in Los Angeles County.

A.4.b.

Canada

Since the 1970s Canada’s aboriginal population has become increasingly urbanized. People have moved away from reserves because of substandard housing or lack of housing, as well as the need for more jobs and better educational opportunities and health care. About half of Canadians with aboriginal ancestry now live in cities. Urbanization of the Indian population is especially apparent in Canada’s major Western cities.

The 1996 census showed that one out of five aboriginals lived in seven of the country’s 25 census metropolitan areas, six of which are in western Canada. Winnipeg, Manitoba, had the most aboriginal people followed by Edmonton, Alberta; Vancouver, British Columbia; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Toronto, Ontario; Calgary, Alberta; and Regina, Saskatchewan.

Once in cities, aboriginal people face many challenges. They must adjust to an environment dominated by nonaboriginal cultures and unfamiliar practices. Maintaining their specific identities is difficult. People lose touch with their relatives, languages, and homelands. City school curriculums largely ignore aboriginal cultures and languages. Some indigenous peoples assimilate and blend into cities, getting decent educations and higher-paying jobs and living longer. But others who do not become part of the urban middle class suffer from poverty, routine violence, and substance abuse.

Canadian government policy has paid little attention to urban aboriginal peoples. Up until 1982, when the Constitution of Canada was amended to define “Aboriginal Peoples of Canada” as Indian, Inuit, and Métis people, the Métis, who are largely urban, were not even included in federal policy. However, the federal government does provide some support for the Office of the Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, a division of the federal government, and for Friendship Centers, which provide a variety of programs for urban Indians. Provincial and municipal governments treat aboriginal people in urban areas as part of the general population.

Aboriginal people have tried to remedy their problems in cities across Canada. With inadequate or no funding, they are managing and staffing housing projects, childcare agencies, educational institutions, and street patrols. Friendship Centers located in cities across Canada aim to improve the quality of life for aboriginal people living in or passing through urban areas. They provide a range of services and programs including housing, education, employment, recreation, training, and cultural programs. The Ontario-based National Association of Friendship Centers, which does advocacy and lobbying work, focuses on urban youth issues such as suicide, homelessness, education, and jobs.

B.

Government and Political Activism

B.1.

Native American Governments

B.1.a.

United States

Long before Europeans came to North America, Native Americans were independent and self-governing. They had their own political and legal systems, which varied greatly from group to group. After tribes became subject to U.S. authority, they lost much of their political power. Many tribes entered into treaties with the federal government that acknowledged the right of the tribe to retain self-government while placing it under the “protection” of the United States. Today, Native American tribes are considered “domestic dependent” nations with limited sovereignty under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government. The government has a “trust responsibility” to Native Americans—that is, a legal obligation to protect Indian land, resources, and rights of self-government. Native Americans born in the United States are full citizens of the United States.

Two federal agencies, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Indian Health Service (IHS), administer programs primarily for members of federally recognized tribes who live on or near reservations. Members of federally recognized tribes who do not live on reservations have limited relations with the BIA and the IHS.

On reservations, the tribal government serves as the local governing authority. Tribes are free to choose and operate their own forms of government. They decide what kind of government best fits their needs depending on their cultural, historical, and religious traditions. Most tribal governments are elected. Some tribes opt for written tribal constitutions patterned after the U.S. Constitution as the foundation for their governments; others have rejected written constitutions.

Governing bodies are generally referred to as tribal councils. The presiding officer is often called the chairman or chairwoman, although some tribes use other titles, such as principal chief, president, or governor. Tribal councils have the power to represent the tribe in negotiations with the federal, state, and local governments. Tribal governments determine tribal membership for activities such as voting, and they make laws to regulate aspects of everyday life such as marriage, divorce, and child adoptions. They also levy taxes, pass tribal ordinances, regulate property under tribal jurisdiction, maintain law and order among their members, and punish and jail lawbreakers.

Tribally operated courts vary from highly formalized ones modeled after U.S. courts to less formal bodies designed for the informal resolution of disputes. In some New Mexico pueblos, the tribal council serves as the tribal court, and in other tribes the tribal council serves as the tribal court of appeals. Court proceedings may occasionally take place in a Native American language. Tribal courts largely deal with divorce, child custody problems, civil disputes between Native American citizens, and minor crimes such as violations of fishing regulations.

Although states have the right to regulate all persons and activities within their borders, Indian reservations are a major exception. As a result, relations between states and tribes are often strained. Indian lands are immune from town and county taxes and state property taxes. States resent the fact that reservation Indians are not subject to state taxes and regulation. Tribes resent state attempts to tax and regulate them and actively guard their sovereignty against state encroachments. Nevertheless, some state governments and tribes have taken positive steps to deal with issues of joint concern.

B.1.b.

Canada

At the time of the Confederation of Canada, the Constitution Act of 1867 gave the federal government legislative authority over “Indians and lands reserved for Indians.” The federal government carried out its broad mandate over Indians and their lands through the Indian Act of 1876 and its amendments, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Act of 1967, and numerous other statutes and legal obligations arising from the Constitution Act. Native people born in Canada are full citizens of Canada.

The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), also called Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), has primary responsibility for meeting the federal government’s constitutional, treaty, political, and legal responsibilities to First Nations and Inuit. Many of DIAND’s programs and services—including housing, education, and economic and social development—are targeted at Status Indians who live on reserves. The vast majority of programs and services are delivered in partnership with First Nations, who directly administer roughly 85 percent of the funds. For the most part, DIAND programs do not cover Métis and non-Status Indians who do not live on reserves. These peoples receive minimal monies for their political organizations and few programs to address their special needs.

First Nations in Canada have their own governing band councils, usually consisting of one or more chiefs and several councilors. With few exceptions, band members elect the chief and councilors. However, some band councils have rejected the elective system because it conflicts with the traditional Indian hereditary system of governing.

While the federal government allowed for the creation of First Nation governments to manage federal funds and the bands’ land, First Nations have pressured the government for more self-government. Under a federal policy developed in 1995, aboriginal groups began to have the right to negotiate for self-government in areas such as government structure, land management, health care, child welfare, education, housing, and economic development. Negotiations take place between the aboriginal groups, the federal government, and, in areas affecting its jurisdiction and interests, the relevant provincial or territorial government.

The federal government considers aboriginal peoples who do not live on reserves the responsibility of the provincial and territorial governments. While provinces and territories have, for the most part, accepted this responsibility, it took time for them to contribute funding to meet the immense needs of aboriginal peoples.

In 1993 Inuit leaders reached a land claim agreement with the Canadian government to provide a separate territory for the Inuit people. This agreement split off the eastern part of the Northwest Territories into the Territory of Nunavut in 1999. This territory, which is equal to about a fifth of Canada, became the first large political unit in North America with an indigenous majority. Nunavut’s nonpartisan government is open to every resident. However, because the Inuit make up 85 percent of the population, they essentially govern the territory.

The Métis struggle for the right of self-government. Two-thirds of self-identified Métis live in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The Métis generally remain under provincial jurisdiction except for eight Métis communities in Alberta that are somewhat like Indian reserves and are governed by elected councils. Pursuing their goals in part through the courts and federal negotiations, the Métis seek to increase their land base, establish local government on this land base, and have the right to self-government off the land base.

B.2.

Political Activism and Organizations

B.2.a.

United States

During the 20th and 21st centuries Native Americans in the United States have promoted their interests and resisted oppressive federal polices by becoming politically active. In the 1960s and 1970s the Red Power movement swept through reservations and cities where Native Americans lived. This movement emphasized fighting for Native American rights, developing pride in one’s Indian heritage, and sustaining traditional Native American cultures and lands. Indian activists used direct-action techniques, such as protests, occupations, mass demonstrations, and marches, to fight discrimination and political oppression and to demand their lawful rights. Native Americans also worked to increase their sovereignty. They wanted the right to use and preserve sacred lands and sites, to control the education of their children, to develop their own natural resources, and to establish an economic base.

Since the 1970s Indian tribes and hundreds of lawyers have also fought legal battles in courts and legislatures. They have worked to protect what is left of their lands, or to reclaim land previously lost, and to practice their religions without intrusive regulation by government agencies.

Since the late 1980s some tribes have profited from gaming operations, which have allowed them to make big financial contributions to political campaigns at state and national levels. Congress and state legislatures now hear Native American concerns. Tribes have hired high-priced lobbyists and public relations firms to win influence and to try to defeat political candidates who do not support Native American issues. Tribes are also becoming players in national and state politics. American Indians represent significant swing votes in states with concentrated Indian populations, such as Arizona, California, Nevada, Oklahoma, and North Carolina.

Today, there are many Native American organizations that work to influence policymakers at all levels of government. Some organizations are national and broad, while others focus on particular issues, such as health care, education, or the arts. Founded in 1944, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is the oldest and largest tribal government organization in the United States. More than 250 tribal governments from every region in the country belong to NCAI. The organization educates tribes, lawmakers, and the public about legislative threats to Indian sovereignty and keeps its members informed about congressional actions that could prove potentially damaging to tribes.

In 1970 the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) was founded. This nonprofit Indian law firm provides legal representation and technical assistance to Indian tribes, organizations, and individuals nationwide. NARF aims to preserve tribal existence and protect tribal natural resources such as land, water, minerals, and wild game. It also promotes human rights and educates the public about Indian rights, laws, and issues.

Founded in 1977, the Seventh Generation Fund (SGF) supports native community-based projects with small grants, advocacy, leadership training, technical assistance, and financial management. SGF work focuses on traditional economies, alternative energy, and the preservation of sacred sites and traditional spiritual practices. United South and Eastern Tribes, Inc. (USET), a regional organization with more than 20 member tribes, is dedicated to improving the capabilities of tribal governments and assisting member tribes in dealing with public-policy issues.

Native Americans have increasingly become a presence in national politics and events. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Republican from Colorado and a chief of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, was a United States senator from 1993 to 2005. He was the main champion for the Omnibus Indian Advancement Act (2000), a compilation of various pieces of legislation relating to Native Americans, including laws to grant recognition to several tribes and to compensate tribes for land loss.

Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe from Montana, has dedicated herself to encouraging Native Americans to achieve economic self-sufficiency. She helped the Blackfeet National Bank gets its charter in the late 1980s after the only local bank in Browning, Montana, the reservation capital, failed. She also helped start the Native American Bancorporation Co., the first nationwide American Indian bank. In 1996 she filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of Native Americans accusing the U.S. government of longtime mismanagement of individual Indian trust funds. A U.S. district court ruled that the government breached its trust duties, and a federal appeals court upheld the ruling.

John Eagleshield, a member of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, became director of the Native American Rights Fund in 1977. A leading force in Indian law and policy, Eagleshield has been called upon to serve on special commissions and committees that are assigned to develop state, regional, and national Indian policy. Winona LaDuke, a member of the White Earth Chippewa of Minnesota, is a nationally and internationally acclaimed activist and environmentalist who twice ran as vice president of the United States with Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. She also began the White Earth Land Recovery Project, a reservation-based nonprofit organization that works to recover Indian land.

Wilma Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma from 1985 until 1995, is renowned for serving her tribe and fighting to protect the rights of all Native Americans. She revitalized her tribe by reducing Cherokee infant mortality, improving health and education, and promoting Cherokee business interests. For her achievements as chief, in 1998 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.

B.2.b.

Canada

Canadian aboriginal political activism changed dramatically during the 20th century. Until 1953 it was illegal for Status Indians to raise funds to form political organizations. In 1969 the Canadian government proposed abolishing special rights for Indians in a document known as the White Paper on Indian Policy. The paper also called for phasing out treaties and eliminating DIAND. Indians across Canada protested and formed organizations at the provincial, territorial, and national levels to oppose the White Paper policy. These new organizations then began the struggle for Indian land rights.

Aboriginal people in Canada are represented by four political organizations of general scope, each of which represents a distinct community. In addition to these national organizations, there are dozens of provincial and territorial associations.

The main organization representing almost all Status Indians in Canada is the Assembly of First Nations. It was formed in 1982 as a national lobbying organization for more than 600 First Nations. The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP), formed in 1971, represents the interests nationally of off-reserve Indian and Métis people, regardless of status under the Indian Act. The Métis National Council (MNC), established in 1983, is the national representative of the Métis peoples. The MNC seeks the right to establish self-government on a Métis land base as well as the right to self-governing institutions off a land base. The Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, established in 1971, represents the Inuit throughout Canada. As the national voice for Inuit people, it aims to enable Inuit to fully exercise their rights within Canadian society, including their right for greater self-government.

For decades, numerous aboriginal people have influenced Canadian policies and politics. One of the most influential is John Amagoalik, a major champion and leading voice for Inuit political rights. He spent 25 years negotiating the formation of Nunavut. In the 1980s he was president of Inuit Tapirisat Canada, which honored him in 1994 for his notable contribution to Inuit political rights.

In the 1990s Matthew Coon Come, grand chief of the Council of Cree of Northern Québec, was the principal leader of the successful effort by the Cree to stop development of a hydroelectric project in northern Québec. Coon Come put together a strong coalition of environmental, human rights, and indigenous organizations to oppose the project, and Hydro-Québec was forced to scale back the project in 1994. In 2000 Coon Come was elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

George Erasmus has been a central figure in aboriginal politics since the 1970s. He was elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in 1985 and cochaired the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples from 1991 to 1996. That commission issued a report detailing the conditions of aboriginal peoples. The report prompted an apology by the government of Canada and led to a new federal action plan to change how the government deals with Canada’s aboriginal peoples.

Ojibwa-Cree Elijah Harper, Manitoba’s lone Indian legislator, made history in 1990 when he blocked passage in the Manitoba legislature of the long-debated Meech Lake Accord, a constitutional agreement that would have given the largely French province of Québec special status as a “distinct society.” To Harper, the accord was “the ultimate racist act” because it recognized only two founding nations in Canada, English and French, and two official languages, and ignored aboriginal people. Harper successfully stalled the accord, which required passage by all ten provincial legislatures.

B.3.

Land Claims

B.3.a.

United States

In 1946 the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Claims Commission Act (ICC). The act created a judicial body expressly to resolve the more than 600 Indian land claims that had accumulated over the previous 150 years. Prior to the ICC, Congress prohibited Indians from making land or monetary claims against the federal government, unless it passed special acts to allow them. Early on, the ICC commissioners determined that they would only make monetary awards to Indian claimants and would not return the title to the land. They made awards worth the market value of the land on the date the United States acquired it. Once Indian tribes accepted money for the land, they had to forgo forever any further claims to land. While most Indians accepted their monetary awards, a small number did not. The Sioux tribes in South Dakota, who won a claims suit over the Black Hills, refused to accept the $105 million awarded them in 1974 and continued to demand the return of federal lands. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the suit in 1980, and the award, in a government account, has continued to earn interest since that time.

The ICC took years to resolve claims; appeals to the Supreme Court tacked on more time. Because investigating and ruling on claims was a slow and tedious process, Congress repeatedly extended the ICC’s tenure. It finally expired in 1978. The ICC did not decide in favor of all land claims. It ruled 342 as valid and dismissed at least 200.

Despite the ICC’s insistence on awarding monetary claims only, a few tribes have been successful in having land restored to them through congressional legislation. These claims hinged on the use of land for traditional religious activities. In 1970 Congress restored the Blue Lake (19,425 hectares/48,000 acres) in New Mexico to Taos Pueblo. In 1972 it returned a 8,000-hectare (21,000-acre) parcel of Mount Adams in Washington to the Yakama, and in 1984 it restored the sacred area of Kolhu/wala:wa (4,000 hectares/10,000 acres) in Arizona to Zuni Pueblo. In 2000 Congress returned to the Santo Domingo Pueblo of New Mexico an area of 1,900 hectares (4,600 acres) that included shrines and other religious sites considered sacred by the Pueblo.

In the late 20th century Native Americans turned to courts to reclaim lost land. Tribes also tried to regain homelands through other means, including working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to return federal lands to tribal trust (land held in trust by the federal government that is reserved for Indian use), and buying land with revenue from tribal enterprises, including gaming. They have also tried to negotiate with landowners on reservation borders to will or deed land back to the tribe and to find sponsors to purchase land and give it back to the tribe.

Tribes stand to gain a great deal if they can reclaim their lands. Lands are immune from town and county taxes as well as state property taxes. When lands fall under tribal governments’ civil and criminal jurisdiction, tribes can levy their own taxes on nontribal businesses and enforce land-use regulations, building codes, and criminal statutes. Tribes can also gain approval to establish casinos on the land.

B.3.b.

Canada

In Canada, aboriginal people pursue land claims that the government recognizes in two broad classes: comprehensive and specific. A comprehensive land claim is based on the recognition that there are continuing aboriginal rights to lands and natural resources. This kind of claim comes up in parts of Canada where Indians have not previously signed a treaty with the government. Comprehensive land claims can include land title, fishing and trapping rights, and financial compensation. Provinces and territories participate in these land claim negotiations because the land and most resources are under provincial and territorial control. Specific land claims deal with specific grievances that First Nations may have regarding the fulfillment of existing treaties. Specific claims also cover grievances relating to administration of First Nations lands and assets under the Indian Act.

In settling land claims, Indians can receive the right to self-government, large cash payments, and control over their natural resources. They also can win the right to preserve traditional activities such as hunting and fishing and to gain compensation from agreements in which the government grants mining or timber rights to companies. At the same time, the government may ask them to obey national laws, including strict environmental regulations. They also forfeit any rights to future land claims and may no longer be exempt from paying Canadian taxes.

In British Columbia, there are more outstanding comprehensive claims by First Nations than in the rest of Canada combined. More than 40 Indian bands in British Columbia have made land claims that, if granted in their entirety, would cover most of the province, including the city of Vancouver. One First Nation, the Nisga’a of British Columbia, successfully negotiated a comprehensive treaty with the federal and provincial governments. In 2000 the Nisga’a gained title to an area more than half the size of Rhode Island as well as the right to govern themselves.

Until the late 1960s the use of courts was a comparatively new thing for aboriginal people in Canada. Unlike the United States, which had built up a huge body of Native American case law, Canadian aboriginals did not use the courts very much. But since the late 1960s, they have forced the Canadian courts to recognize a wide range of aboriginal rights pertaining to land they have occupied since long before Europeans ever set foot on the continent.

In the early 1970s the Québec government decided to build a huge hydroelectric project, known as the James Bay Project, on traditional Cree hunting grounds. The Cree went to Québec Superior Court in 1972 seeking an injunction to halt construction. In a landmark decision, the Court found in favor of the Cree, ordering work on the project to be stopped and Québec to cease trespassing on Cree lands. Although a higher court overturned the judgment, all sides determined that negotiation was better than more litigation. The result, the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement of 1975, was an elaborate agreement. In return for large financial compensation and the right of self-government, the Cree and Inuit surrendered their claims to the territory. They received lands for their exclusive use and other lands with exclusive hunting, fishing, and trapping rights.

C.

Economic Issues

C.1.

United States

By any statistical standard, Native Americans living on reservations in the United States occupy the lowest rung on the economic ladder. According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), at least half of the reservation population lives below the poverty line, surviving on welfare checks, food stamps, and Medicaid. On reservations across the United States, Native Americans live in rundown and overcrowded trailers and shacks. For many, central heating, piped water, and indoor toilets are luxuries. In 1990 the Indian Health Service (IHS) reported that 43 percent of Indian children younger than five years old lived in poverty. In 1995 more than 20 percent of Native American reservation households had annual incomes below $5,000, compared with 6 percent for the overall U.S. population. Only 8 percent of reservation households had annual incomes greater than $35,000, compared with 18 percent for the overall U.S. population. Nearly a decade later, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income for Native Americans was $32,866, compared with a median household income of $43,318 for the overall U.S. population.

People living on reservations have the highest rates of unemployment in the United States—up to 70 percent or more on some reservations. On South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Lakota peoples, unemployment rates hovered around 80 percent in 2006. Some of the most commonly cited reasons for high unemployment among Native Americans are lack of education, discrimination, and the scarcity of jobs and industry on and near reservations. Non-Indian businesses are reluctant to locate on reservations because of misperceptions about tribal governments, cultural factors, and a lack of infrastructure such as roads, sewage systems, and industrial parks. Tribal councils may also lack the business experience necessary to oversee business operations.

Many Indians move to cities in search of better schooling, improved housing, and higher-paying jobs. For Indians with job skills or a good education, urban areas offer more opportunities. Native Americans in cities have lower unemployment rates than those who live on reservations. While urban areas provide better opportunities for some, moving to these locations often entails other costs. Native Americans in cities do not always improve their standard of living because housing, food, clothing, and health care are more expensive in urban areas.

Native Americans on reservations depend heavily on federal and tribal governments for jobs. The BIA and IHS employ workers in law enforcement, road construction, logging, and health care. Tribal governments create jobs in tourist enterprises and manufacturing plants. But many tribal leaders say more jobs are needed to solve the severe problems of unemployment and poverty.

Many Indians see self-employment as a viable way to increase employment opportunities, and the number of Indian-owned, reservation-based businesses increased during the late 20th century. Native Americans own everything from construction companies, food stores, and manufacturing plants to printing presses, restaurants, and trucking companies.

Native Americans have also tried to reach out to other businesses in the United States. The Native American Business Alliance, founded by Native Americans, has fostered relationships leading to contracts between companies owned by Indians and corporations such as Toyota Motor Corporation, Honda Motor Co., Ltd., and The Walt Disney Company. There are also numerous regional and state American Indian chambers of commerce that cultivate economic opportunities among industry, corporations, tribes, and Indian-owned businesses.

Since the mid-1960s the U.S. government has tried to revitalize reservation economies. Although the government helped fund or build roads, sewage systems, and industrial parks to attract new businesses to reservations, relatively few industries have located permanently on them. Since 1965 the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) has provided more than $1 billion in financial assistance to Indian tribes and organizations for economic and community development. Other federal programs that assist Native American economic development include the Small Business Administration’s Office of Native American Affairs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Program, and the Rural Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community Program.

Across the country reservations with few other economic opportunities have turned to gaming operations such as casinos as a means to economic independence. In 1988 Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which allowed Native American tribes to negotiate with states for gaming compacts. By 2006 tribal nations with gaming compacts were earning about $22 billion in revenues from the gaming industry. Tribal gaming operations are regulated at four levels: by the tribal government, by the state government, by the National Indian Gaming Commission, and by federal government agencies such as the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

In 2001 about one-third of federally recognized tribes owned a total of about 300 casinos in 29 states. Of these, only a few Native American communities have reaped large profits. Highly publicized tribal casinos such as the Mashantucket Pequots Tribal Nation’s Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s Mystic Lake Casino in Minnesota have created the impression that all Indian casinos are wildly successful. The Florida Seminole buttressed that impression in 2006 when they announced the purchase of the Hard Rock Café business for $965 million. The purchase resulted from their successful operation of seven casinos in Florida. But not all Indian casinos are successful. Many casinos are marginal operations. In truth, the majority of American Indians have benefited little from the explosion of Indian gaming. Only an estimated 25 percent of the jobs from the gaming industry are held by Native Americans.

Native Americans who have benefited from gaming operations have the capital to provide childcare programs, housing, roads, scholarships, health clinics, and water systems for their people. Revenues also fund tribal law enforcement and fire fighting and other services. New jobs have lured Native Americans back to their reservations, but many people work for low wages as cashiers, waitresses, and hotel workers. In actuality, casinos have just scratched the surface of the economic problems confronting reservations.

Some tribes have turned to cultural tourism to generate revenues and diversify their economies. According to the Western American Indian Chamber of Commerce in Denver, Colorado, as many as 75 percent of federally recognized tribes are involved in tourism or are making plans to be. Many tribes have built tourist attractions such as shops on their reservations. They have also started touring companies and marketed their attractions at tourist trade shows internationally. The intertribal Arizona American Indian Tourism Association, created in 1994 to promote tourism among the state’s tribes, is one of several state organizations working to increase tourism. Powwows and festivals, most of which are west of the Mississippi, have drawn increasing numbers of visitors in recent years.

Many tribes and individual Native Americans possess land with natural resources such as water, timber, oil, gas, coal, and other minerals. If these resources were developed, they would provide a significant source of wealth. The Department of the Interior holds these natural resources in trust, and the BIA and other federal agencies collect fees from those who use them on behalf of tribes and individual Native Americans. In the 1990s there were disclosures that the federal government had mismanaged some of these natural resources, such as agreeing to substandard leasing deals for Native American timber, oil, natural gas, and minerals. Often, Native Americans were never informed who had leased their land, for what purpose, how much the lease was for, or how long the lease was to run. In addition, individual Indians did not receive what was owed them.

In recent years tribes have recognized the need to manage their own resources. Unshackling themselves from layers of federal bureaucracy, they are developing, or choosing not to develop, their lands. Great debates take place among Native Americans over whether and how to develop natural resources. Those tribes planning to develop natural resource have endorsed intensive use that can net millions of dollars for tribes and individuals. They have renegotiated coal leases, made oil and gas agreements joint ventures, and included provisions for tribal employment, training, and scholarships. Other tribes who have resisted developing the land argue that commercial exploitation of resources clashes with their environmental concerns.

C.2.

Canada

Aboriginal people in Canada, on and off reserves, also occupy the lowest rung on the economic ladder. Their income, unemployment rates, education levels, and skills remain below that of the general population. Problems are especially acute on reserves, most of which are far from population or industrial centers. Opportunities for commercial or industrial employment are rare. On many reserves, chronic unemployment rates can run to 75 percent or higher.

Double-digit jobless rates—combined with hunger, poverty, and inadequate housing—force people to move to cities where more jobs are available. But the low education levels of aboriginal peoples and discrimination against them combine to limit job opportunities. Unemployment rates for urban aboriginal people are double that of nonaboriginals.

Aboriginal businesses have been emerging across Canada. In a 1996 government survey, 20,000 aboriginal people said they owned a business, 70 percent of which were full-time operations. Almost 60 percent of them are located on or near reserves. Businesses tend to be small with one employee besides the owner. Operations range from video stores and gas stations to commercial fishing ventures, publishing companies, and radio stations. Some indigenous peoples have also formed cooperatives where they sell artwork, carvings, and other crafts.

A growing interest in aboriginal peoples has encouraged First Nations, like U.S. tribes, to develop business and job opportunities in tourism. Indeed, tourism has become one of the major tools in economic development. It brings money into communities and is generally environmentally friendly. Cree and Inuit community-based tours have brought tourists from all over the world to see their landscapes and experience their ways of life. However, small entrepreneurs still face many challenges setting up tourist businesses. Getting a business started is expensive, and it takes time to develop a clientele. Also they often do not have enough money to advertise. In fact, First Nations are now turning to the Internet to promote their businesses.

The federal and provincial governments have tried to address some aboriginal economic problems. They grant subsidies, which provide something of a cushion, preventing total economic collapse among Indians on reserves and in cities. Subsidies include welfare, pensions, unemployment insurance, and family allowances. A Canadian government agency, Aboriginal Business Canada, has provided financial and other support to more than 5,000 aboriginal-owned firms. Provinces such as Saskatchewan and Alberta have also developed plans to assist urban aboriginal people to find jobs and childcare, and individual bands help members start businesses. National organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples all try to help develop economic opportunities as well.

Settling land claims is a necessary step toward economic independence for First Nations because it gives them a secure and stable land base and greater control over natural resources. If bands can manage their natural resources, they will have a more equitable share in the wealth of their lands. They can also help their communities become more economically self-sufficient. Without control over natural resources, aboriginal people are locked out of economic activities taking place in their own backyard.

D.

Social Issues

D.1.

Education

D.1.a.

United States

For generations, federal and state governments have controlled the formal education of Native American children nationwide. Of the 600,000 Native American elementary and secondary schoolchildren in the United States, about 75 percent attend public schools, even on Indian reservations. Less than 10 percent of the student population attends BIA-operated elementary and secondary schools. Private, parochial, and tribally run schools serve the remaining Native American students.

In general, federal and state control of education has been disastrous for American Indian students in the United States. For the most part, public schools have been unable to address the needs of Indian communities because Indian educational programs are chronically underfunded. There are few Native American teachers, little parental involvement, and the curriculum lacks a Native American viewpoint. In the public schools, Native American students have the highest dropout rate of any racial or ethnic group—36 percent in 1990.

College graduation rates for Native Americans are also low. In 1995 Native American students accounted for less than 1 percent of all students in higher education. The majority of these students attended two-year institutions rather than four-year schools. Also that year, the graduation rate for Native Americans at a group of more than 300 colleges and universities was only 37 percent, the lowest among major ethnic minority groups. In addition to educational and economic hurdles, many social barriers have prevented Native American students from attending college. Cultural and language differences as well as the geographic isolation of most reservations have often inhibited student access to or persistence in mainstream colleges.

After a history of compulsory Western methods of learning, attempts to eradicate tribal cultures, and high dropout rates for Native Americans, Indian educational leaders wanted to rethink Native American education. They built on the success of the self-determination movement of the 1960s to explore other ways of educating Native Americans. Since that time Indian communities have had a growing voice in and control over the education of their children. In 1966 the Navajo Nation created Rough Rock Demonstration School, a highly successful Indian-controlled elementary school located on the reservation. It has an all-Indian school board, classes in Navajo and English, and a community-developed curriculum. By the 2000 school year, 65 percent of BIA-funded schools were controlled by tribes or tribal organizations in the United States.

Native American educators have also recognized the importance of postsecondary education and its ability to strengthen reservations and tribal cultures. Federal legislation in the 1970s provided funds to help develop postsecondary educational institutions for Native Americans. In 1968 the Navajo Nation created the first tribally controlled college, now called Diné College. Other tribal colleges quickly developed. Most are located on remote reservations and have a relatively small, predominantly Native American student population. All began as two-year institutions and have open admissions policies. In 2001 most tribal colleges were fully accredited.

D.1.b.

Canada

For more than 300 years, the dominant Euro-Canadian society educated aboriginal peoples in Canada. However, a new era in education began in 1972, when the National Indian Brotherhood published a policy paper entitled “Indian Control of Indian Education.” This paper led aboriginal people to take greater control of their children’s schooling. Since then, Indian-controlled education has played a major role in revitalizing Indian cultures. It ensures that Indian values, identity, languages, and traditions are passed to younger generations.

Education is a provincial and territorial responsibility. The federal government also provides funds for schools in the territories and on Indian reserves. Status Indians on reserves may attend elementary and secondary schools operated by First Nations or federal schools operated by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND). Status Indians off reserves can attend provincially administered schools. Territorial governments provide educational services for Status Indians and Inuit in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. DIAND also provides financial assistance, through First Nations councils and other authorities, to eligible Status Indian students enrolled in, or accepted to, eligible postsecondary educational programs.

During the 1999-2000 school year, there were more than 480 reserve-controlled schools, up from 53 in 1975. That same school year, 60 percent of Indians who lived on reserves attended elementary and secondary schools run by bands, 37 percent attended provincial schools, 2 percent attended private schools, and 1 percent attended schools run by the federal government. The Nisga’a Indians of British Columbia were one of the first bands, in 1974, to take charge of a separate Indian school district that emphasized a bicultural, bilingual curriculum. In 1975 the James Bay Cree assumed control of schools on their reserve. A Cree school board controls a substantial budget and provides services to the students. It has implemented a Cree-oriented curriculum and in-service training for Cree teachers.

The new era in Indian education has also led to an increase in Indian curricular materials in the public schools. Federal and provincial governments have financed curriculum development, special education programs for indigenous peoples, and teacher training in Indian languages. Increasingly, many of the country’s public schools have added learning materials written from an Indian perspective to the curriculum. In some provinces, teachers can take courses in aboriginal studies at the university level; these courses count as credit for subjects they can later teach.

The new emphasis on Indian education at elementary and high school levels has been matched at the postsecondary level. Enrollment by Status Indians and Inuit at universities and colleges has dramatically increased from 60 students in 1960 to an estimated 27,000 in 2000-2001. According to DIAND, the rate of graduation is 13 percent. In 1976 a First Nations-controlled university-college, the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, opened. Its mission has been to “preserve, protect, and interpret the history, language, culture, and artistic heritage of First Nations.” Nicola Valley Institute of Technology in British Columbia and the Six Nations Polytechnic in Ontario also provide culturally relevant educations for Canada’s aboriginal population.

Despite these successes, much remains to be done. In a 2001 report on the education of Indian children on reserves, a federal auditor gave DIAND a failing grade. Only 37 percent of aboriginal students graduated from high school in 1996. More aboriginal teachers are also needed in the classrooms. In provincial public schools, only about 1 percent of the educators are aboriginal. Almost three-quarters of these teachers are in special education programs where aboriginal students are overrepresented.

D.2.

Physical and Mental Health

D.2.a.

United States

Over the past century the general health condition of Native Americans in the United States has undergone great changes. In the early and mid-1900s they were struck by repeated and severe epidemics of measles, influenza, whooping cough, and diphtheria. Tuberculosis became the greatest killer of all. Otitis media, an infection of the inner ear often causing hearing loss, was especially prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s.

By the late 20th century these infectious diseases were brought under control by a combination of immunizations, new medications, and a better standard of living. However, Native Americans developed other problems that evolved in response to the effects of rapid cultural change. Mental disorders, alcoholism, and domestic violence became widespread in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1988, according to the Indian Health Service (IHS), Native American deaths due to alcoholism were more than four times greater than those reported for the general population. Suicide rates among American Indians were 77 percent higher than the national average in 1998, and suicides are generally clustered among youth ages 15 to 34. Diabetes, a growing epidemic, occurs at significantly higher rates in the Indian community than in the non-Indian community. In 1996 Native Americans were 2.8 times as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as whites of similar age. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have become a growing threat to Native Americans, who comprise 6 percent of all new HIV infections in the United States, although they only represent about 1 percent of the U.S. population. The five-year survival rate for Native Americans with all cancers is the poorest for all ethnic groups.

The delivery of health services to Native Americans is unique. The Indian Health Service (IHS), an agency of the Public Health Service within the Department of Health and Human Services, has administered the principal federal health programs to Native Americans since 1955. The IHS has 12 area offices throughout the United States. These offices serve either regional areas or states with large Indian populations such as California and Oklahoma. The IHS provides direct health-care services through IHS facilities such as hospitals and clinics. For services that an IHS facility cannot provide, such as organ transplants or open-heart surgery, the IHS contracts with a non-IHS facility.

Any member of a federally recognized tribe may obtain care at an IHS hospital or clinic. For contract care, a member of a federally recognized tribe can receive services within certain geographical boundaries, which map to the IHS area offices. For example, Indians who live in California can receive contract care from facilities in California that have a contract with the IHS but not from contract facilities in Arizona. Due to a limited budget, IHS facilities do not meet all the health-care needs of Native Americans. Not all reservations or communities have medical clinics or hospitals, and those that do often have small and outdated facilities.

In urban areas, Native Americans have limited access to the IHS system because there are few IHS facilities there. Although more than half of all Native Americans live in cities, only a small portion of the IHS budget is used to fund urban health-care centers. Since Congress passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act in 1976, urban health-care services have been expanded to include direct medical, alcohol, mental health, and HIV/AIDS services as well as disease prevention services. However, urban health centers still do not have sufficient funding to address all the health-care needs of urban Native Americans.

Today, some tribes have begun to operate their own health-care facilities with funding from the IHS. When tribes handle their own health programs, they can limit the use of their facilities to only their tribal members if they choose. Tribes usually welcome members who live in cities but transportation to reservations can be an obstacle. As tribes gain more federal funding, urban areas have received even less funding.

Because of a lack of money to pay good salaries, doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are leaving clinics on Indian reservations in droves. Job vacancies, low pay, and a high rate of worker turnover in Indian health-care facilities have eroded the quality of health care. In 1998 there were 74 doctors for every 100,000 Native Americans in the United States, compared to 242 per 100,000 in the general population.

Long-term continuity in health care is rare in the Indian community. Doctors who come to reservations usually do not stay for more than two or three years, and Native Americans rarely see Indian doctors. Many elderly Indian people delay or avoid seeking IHS medical help because of language and cultural barriers. Few health-care professionals speak Native American languages.

There is a vital need for Native Americans in the health and medical fields. Recently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has partnered with some tribal colleges to recruit, train, and retain Native Americans in the public health and medical professions.

D.2.b.

Canada

By any measure, health issues are one of the most pressing concerns in aboriginal communities in Canada. The prevalence of diabetes among First Nations is at epidemic levels, at least three times greater than the national average, with high rates occurring in all age groups. The rates of diabetes are higher on-reserve than off-reserve. An aboriginal peoples survey showed that Métis also have diabetes at rates above nonaboriginal people. They also have less access to health services compared to the general population. Diabetes rates are also increasing among Inuit, who have the lowest access to health-care services. This increase is due to the rise of risk factors such as obesity and physical inactivity in some Inuit communities.

Statistics show that AIDS cases among aboriginal people in Canada rose steadily from 1984 to 1996, when aboriginal people constituted 5.6 percent of all AIDS cases for which the ethnicity of the patient was known. A higher proportion of aboriginal people are diagnosed with AIDS at less than 30 years of age than nonaboriginal people. Aboriginal people who travel between cities and rural reserve communities are a factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Tuberculosis (TB) still strikes aboriginal people in Canada. A combination of malnutrition, confinement on crowded reservations with poor sanitation, and lack of immunity to the TB bacterium create conditions for the epidemic. Incidences of TB leveled off in the 1980s, but aboriginal Canadians living on reserves were still ten times more likely to have TB than nonaboriginal Canadians in 1990.

No national studies provide information about the prevalence or incidence of family domestic violence in aboriginal communities. However, several provincial and regional studies have grim findings. One 1997 Health Canada study of some northern aboriginal communities reported that between 75 percent and 90 percent of women were battered. The study found that 40 percent of children in these communities had been physically abused by a family member. A 1991 study by Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada found alcohol and substance abuse and economic problems are factors in much of the family violence.

Other physical health issues that affect aboriginal peoples in Canada are poverty and suicide. According to a report by First Nations leader Matthew Coon Come, six out of every ten aboriginal preschoolers live in dire poverty. Aboriginal babies are more than twice as likely to die at birth than nonaboriginal babies. Grinding poverty, hopelessness, and despair have led some Indian youths to commit suicide at higher rates than the overall Canadian population.

Health services for First Nations are the responsibility of provincial, territorial, and federal governments. The provinces and territories provide or pay for physician and hospital services that are covered under their health insurance plans. The federal government provides treatment and public health services to First Nations that are not included under provincial and territorial plans, such as prescription drugs, dental services, eyeglasses, and medical transportation in remote areas.

In 1979 Canada’s new Indian Health Policy recognized the need for increased involvement of aboriginal people in the health-care system. Indeed, the federal government supports the transfer of control of health programs to First Nations and Inuit organizations. It funds services through contract arrangements. Community-centered health-care systems such as the Cree Regional Board of Health, Labrador Inuit Health Commission, and Blood Tribe Department of Health service the special needs of their communities. Aboriginal organizations such as the Assembly of First Nations have worked with Health Canada on strategies for eliminating TB on reserves. Inuit Tapirisat Canada has initiatives concerning HIV/AIDS and mental health as well as a cancer information project.

Despite aboriginal involvement, major challenges still exist to solving the aboriginal health crisis in Canada. Federal funding does not come close to addressing aboriginal physical and mental health needs. Thousands of aboriginal health-care workers need to be trained, and doctors who set up practices in remote regions need to be retained.

E.

Arts and Culture

In the United States and Canada, Native American cultures are reaffirming their identities by combining aspects of their ancient traditional ways with 21st-century mainstream culture. Native Americans, like any other peoples, live in apartment buildings, shop at malls, and surf the Internet. They also dress in traditional clothes, speak their own languages, and practice their own religions. Native ceremonial practices such as Haida potlatches, Lakota Sun Dances, and Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) thanksgiving rites coexist with satellite dishes and cell phones.

E.1.

Religion

Despite a long history of persecution and suppression by the U.S. and Canadian governments, hundreds of indigenous religious traditions have endured in North America. Ancient traditional religions of the Pueblo and Iroquois (Haudenosaunee), for example, survive and remain strong, while other Native Americans practice Christianity exclusively. Some Native Americans pray in church and attend Indian healing ceremonies, finding that both traditions offer comfort. Still others follow the Peyote religion, which attracts followers from many U.S. tribes.

Native Americans in both the United States and Canada have a long tradition of transmitting religious ceremonies and ideas through traditional stories. There is no written sacred book like the Bible, although some North American Indians keep records with sacred symbols written on wooden sticks or woven into wampum belts. Native North American storytellers have kept alive spiritual and cultural traditions by telling stories that pass on a wide range of teachings about a people’s creation, moral behavior, laws, and survival skills.

Tribes have also worked to protect important religious items. In the United States, tribes have been outraged by the desecration and looting of Indian graves. They have demanded the return of skeletal remains, burial goods, and other sacred objects taken from them. For many years, Native Americans fought to reclaim ancestral remains and sacred objects despite tremendous opposition by some museum directors and curators, state historical societies, physical anthropologists, archaeologists, and National Park Service officials who wanted to study them. Native American protest efforts paid off in 1990 when the U.S. government enacted the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). NAGPRA protects Indian gravesites from looting and sets up legal procedures for Indians to reclaim artifacts of religious or ceremonial importance. Reclaiming skeletal bones, totem poles, masks, wampum belts, medicine bundles (collections of objects believed to heal disease and ward off ghosts), and other objects from museums has inspired tribes to revive old ceremonies and tribal traditions. In Canada, the Cultural Property Export and Import Act, a federal law passed in 1977, protects aboriginal cultural property, including sacred objects and human remains.

E.2.

Language

In the past, a community’s elders passed on Native American languages to the young. As Native American communities have become more dispersed, however, this natural process has been disrupted, and hundreds of spoken languages have died out. Of the more than 300 original languages in North America, only 150 are still spoken, and less than 50 are widely spoken. Some of the most widely spoken languages include Yupik and Inuit-Inupiaq (Eskimo), Navajo, Ojibwa (Chippewa), O’Odham (Papago and Pima), Cherokee, and Choctaw. A 1990 Canadian House of Commons report stated that 43 of Canada’s 53 indigenous languages were on the verge of extinction. Only three languages—Cree, Ojibway, and Inuktitut—were believed to be strong enough to survive.

Many Native American communities in the United States and Canada have sought to revitalize their languages before elderly speakers die. Without languages, ceremonies cannot continue, children cannot communicate with their grandparents, and adults cannot voice prayers. On many reservations and reserves, Native Americans are preserving and revitalizing languages through classroom and online instruction and radio shows broadcasting in languages such as Inuktitut, Lakota, Mi’kmaq (Micmac), and Navajo.

E.3.

Arts

Native North Americans have long defined and shaped their own art forms. Today, Native American artists create with clay, animal hides, and grasses as well as with computers, camcorders, and welding equipment. They produce quillwork, ceramics, baskets, jewelry, and other traditional art forms as well as contemporary beaded baseball hats and steel sculptures. Many Native American artists produce work that has a clear connection to their forebears but incorporates Western techniques and styles. Other artists create works that reflect upheavals that have decimated Native American societies.

In the United States, there are countless Native American artists. A few prominent artists during the second half of the 20th century included Arthur D. Amiotte (Oglala Lakota), who was influenced by the traditional artistic legacy of the Lakota, and Harry Fonseca (Maidu), who created a series of works placing coyote figures in contemporary settings. Peter Jemison (Cattaraugus Seneca) used mixed media in his work, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish/Cree/Shoshone) created abstract landscapes using ancient pictographs as inspiration. Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee/Winnebago) often painted two sections—a landscape and an abstract image—in one work, while Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo) used large canvases to explore nature. Important sculptors included Allan Houser (Apache), who produced sculpture in stone, wood, and bronze, and Truman Lowe (Winnebago) who sculpted out of natural materials such as wood and leather.

Canada also had many noteworthy aboriginal artists in the second half of the 20th century. Carl Beam (Ojibwa) juxtaposed images from Western and Native American history in his art. Robert Davidson and Dorothy Grant, both Haida, worked together; he created designs for her clothing. Faye Heavyshield (Blood), a sculptor, combined elements from her Blood and boarding school upbringing. Alex Janvier (Dene) blended stylized abstract renderings of natural forms with traditional Plains arts, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (Cowichan-Okanagan) used his work to address his Indian heritage along with a broader range of concerns such as controversial political issues.

Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a steady increase in contemporary Native American music. Native American musicians combined their ancient chants and instruments with folk, rock, reggae, country, New Age, or rap to convey their messages. Saxophonist Jim Pepper (Creek/Kaw) developed a unique mix of jazz and tribal music, while members of the Canadian band Kashtin (“tornado” in the Innu language) blended folk-rock and Cajun. Singers such as Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree) protested against government mistreatment of indigenous peoples. Harold Littlebird (Pueblo), Joanne Shenandoah (Oneida), and John Trudell (Santee Dakota) became important U.S. recording artists in the 1980s and 1990s.

Native North Americans have a rich history of expressing cultural heritage through performance. In traditional societies, most celebrations, whether sacred or social, involved music and dance. Native Americans have continued to express themselves through traditional music and dance performances. They also have adopted Western forms of performance including ballet and modern dance. Renowned troupes such as the Native American Dance Theater in the United States and the Chinook Winds Aboriginal Dance Program in Canada stage dramatic dance performances.

When Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969 for his novel House Made of Dawn (1968), the acclaim he received helped draw attention to Native American literature. Since that time, scores of Native North American people have published works. Drawing much of their power from the oral tradition, many Native American writers use their own tribal worldviews as the vehicle to present modern themes about Native American cultural experiences and struggles. Writers in the United States such as Linda Hogan (Chickasaw), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), and James Welch (Blackfeet/Gros Ventre) explored the power of traditional beliefs and the despair of living in two worlds. They and others wrote about Native Americans struggling with alcoholism, dams that flood traditional fishing grounds, and tourists who invade sacred sites. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), one of the works by world-renowned poet and novelist Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene), formed the basis of his screenplay for Smoke Signals (1998), a movie he also produced. Native Americans such as Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa/Delaware) also used plays to delve into indigenous issues.

In Canada, Jeannette Armstrong (Okanagan) explored the social obstacles and racial stigmas that indigenous peoples in Canada face in Slash (1985). Thomas King (Cherokee) wrote works that combined humor with commentary about the stereotypes indigenous peoples fight against. Alootook Ipellie was the first Inuit writer to have his collection of short stories, Arctic Dreams and Nightmares (1993), published. Lee Maracle (Métis) presented strong perspectives on cultural autonomy. Playwrights such as Tomson Highway (Cree) produced works that also explored indigenous issues.

Although a handful of Indian filmmakers were already making documentaries in the United States and Canada, in the 1970s hundreds of Native Americans began producing, directing, and acting in independent film and video. Since 1991, festivals organized by Native Americans have resulted in wider opportunities for Native American film and video artists. These artists include Victor Masayesva, Jr. (Hopi), Sandra Osawa (Makah), and Beverly Singer (Tewa-Navajo) in the United States, and Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki) and David Poisey (Inuit) in Canada.

F.

Outlook

Hundreds of Native North American peoples have survived an onslaught of government policies and wars dedicated to destroying them. What sustained them were traditional family and clan relationships, kinship with homelands, religious ceremonies, ancient stories connecting older and younger generations, and shared traditions that maintained each tribe’s uniqueness.

Native Americans have also revived some cultural practices that were at risk of disappearing. In a revival of a Northwest Coast Indian tradition, totem poles are again being raised in Haida villages on Canada’s Queen Charlotte Islands as well as at Alaska’s Metlakatla reservation, home to the Tsimshian. The Intertribal Bison Cooperative, an association of more than 40 tribes, has restored bison to Indian lands. The Wampanoag of Aquinnah, Massachusetts, are working with linguists to restore their Algonquian language. Across North America, giveaways and potlatches, once forbidden, are again taking place. Modern powwows exemplify active Native American resistance to cultural annihilation. They are not so much a performance for an audience as they are a way of sharing, reinforcing, and expressing heritage.

Despite efforts to stamp out Native American cultures, many have survived and even been revived. Although they still face many economic and social challenges, Native Americans continue to survive and flourish by maintaining their distinct cultures.

Arlene Hirschfelder contributed the Introduction and Native Americans Today section of this article.