Failure™ Magazine

Indian Summer

The quiet revival of native America.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under History

Who is responsible for the Indian revival? Is there an Indian equivalent of Martin Luther King?
You can point to a lot of different tribal leaders, but one person you have to single out is Vine Deloria, Jr. During the 1960s he was head of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). He brought many new tribes into the NCAI so it became a more powerful and broadly representative agency. He was the author of “Custer Died For Your Sins,” a popular book that galvanized Indians but was also accepted by non-Indians. Through the book people could begin to understand Indian needs and desires and their positive qualities. Vine has been very active right up to the present. He’s gotten into some deep scholarship—history, political science, Indian religion—and also continues to put out popular books.

Was there a single turning point where it was clear that Indians were here to stay?
I don’t think there was a single turning point. It was a series of events between 1968 and 1976. The Self-Determination Act, which was passed in 1975, was a milestone that signaled it was time for the tribes to begin self-government. But if you had to pick a single dramatic moment it would be the treaty fishing cases in the Northwest [in the early 1970s] where Indians were out on the rivers fishing and exercising their treaty rights. In those civil rights days it had the feel of a demonstration. In 1974 Judge George Boldt ruled [in United States v. Washington] that their treaties were valid, they had a right to fish and that they had a right to manage the fisheries as sovereigns. That was a pivotal moment.

Most of the general public assumes that Indians are doing as poorly as ever because press coverage highlights diabetes, alcoholism, suicide, and reservation violence. Why isn’t the Indian revival being talked about?
One particular reason is economics. Indians have made progress, having brought unemployment down from fifty, sixty or seventy percent down to 22 percent in the most recent census. That’s still way too high but an impressive drop over a couple of generations. But it’s still among the highest unemployment in the nation. So when people go out into Indian country they can see the poverty and it doesn’t look like progress. But if you took a snapshot of that same place in 1965 and laid it beside a snapshot in 2005 you’d see a profound difference.

As for alcoholism, the rates are still high but they are definitely coming down because every tribe has an alcoholism program. Also, there is increasingly a greater sense of confidence and community on the reservations and that helps bring it down. But alcohol is a foreign substance to them and it’s a terribly hard thing to defeat. A couple of years back I wrote a book about the Colorado Plateau [“Fire On The Plateau”], of which Utah is a part. I realized over a period of three or four years that the only times I was going to events that were alcohol free were either Indian or Mormon receptions [laughs]. We just take it for granted there is going to be alcohol but most Indian receptions don’t have it.

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