PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2008 WESTERN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION MEETING,
AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES SECTION

Power and Sovereignty: The Changing Realities of American Indian Nations

Stephen M. Sachs, IUPUI

Introduction: The Nature of Power and the Context of American Indian Politics

Power, in Laswell and Morganthau’s sense,1 is many faceted, complex and ever changing, involving many interrelated factors in broad time-place contexts, and in specific circumstances. It involves not only an entity’s own capabilities and actions, but also the relationship of actors to others, including the extent that action or inaction is collaborative, competitive or detached. As complexity theory and chaos theory suggest2, meaningful and quite useful, general power analysis of large scale human affairs is possible. But especially given the impact of the changing consciousness of the actors, causing the Heisenberg effect to be many orders of magnitude greater than for physical phenomena, such analysis is by its nature less than complete, and only partly predictive. Moreover, chaos and complexity theory remind us of the ancient wisdom that very small actions may have very large, transforming effects, and that large results are produced by dynamic patterns of minute events. When the configuration of forces and events reaches a critical point, or leverage moment, a small action may have a great impact. Understanding of this can itself be an important source of power, as is illustrated in the brief discussion of Indian leadership, below.

The complex, and ever shifting, interactive reality of power is to be seen in the changing situation of United States American Indian Nations from before European contact to the present, with consideration of the future, with more focus on the last 60 years, looking at a wide number of factors that have interacted in the general development, with some reference to variations and exceptions in specific instances. Surveying the changing power relationships between Indian tribes, individually and collectively, and, at first, Europeans and later Euro-Americans, and their governmental entities, from first contact through various periods to the present, it is clear that at different times and in different circumstances, the aspects of power differently involve a wide variety of factors, composed of innumerable sub-factors, in such areas as politics (organization, process, cohesion, leadership,…), diplomacy, economics, technology, military capability, geography,…and a range of cultural/ideational aspects. A notable finding in considering power in traditional Native American, as opposed to European, terms is an emphasis on power as a resource, rather than control, and on participatory collaboration in which there is a balanced emphasis on the individual and the whole, in contrast to hierarchical control emphasizing competition. A recent return to equivalents of tribal ways in the modern world, as in team process in organizations, shows there is great power and efficiency in attaining goals through collaborative action founded upon commitment based in participation, which by building unity, founded upon diversity, through finding consensus, increases organization/group knowledge, improves communication and greatly reduces the need for internal control, increasing organizational effectiveness by every measure.3

This paper is a first, brief introduction to the vast topic of power in the American Indian experience, that would take many large volumes to explore with modest thoroughness. Thus many general statements here are over simplifications, hinting at the larger complexity and range of specific variations and exceptions. The reality of power and other concrete relationships is to be found in the story of unfolding events and non-events (i.e., what did not occur, as well as what took place). It is only possible, here, to set forth a limited number of impressions about what the story is, supported by some analysis, focusing in different time periods primarily on what, I believe, are the more important aspects of the power complex in that time frame, for the purpose of this discussion. Thus before Columbus, the main theme is about empowerment and the internal strengths of indigenous communities, with the closing concern of the paper the problem of re-empowering communities and their members in returning to wholeness in the unfolding of the Twenty-first Century. In the early post contact period, the concern is more upon the relations among tribes and European countries, though the internal dynamics of each nation clearly interacts with the external dynamics, and actions amongst nations always take place amongst people (as individuals, members of groups, or representatives of national entities) and not by nations as whole entities.

In the bulk of the paper, dealing with the more recent periods during which Indian nations have become primarily domestic sovereigns within the United States, the power relations of Indian Nations and the U.S. are viewed largely in the frame of Indian nations, organizations and people interacting within the U.S. political system. Since the U.S. political system is one of divided government with separate, though independent, branches (each with their own sub divisions and changing internal dynamics), and federal, state and local levels, so that each branch at each level is both an actor (with its own internal actors) and an arena in the interplay of power and policy, the discussion centers alternately in different arenas. Then it delves further into the increase of Indian political power with the rise of more favorable public opinion, growing Native economic development, and expanded indigenous political activity, to give a rough general estimate of the current political situation of American Indians in their struggle for renewal. In the end, however, remembering that power is only a resource: a means for achieving desired ends, the question of the purposes for which power is being used in Indian country is raised, in bringing to the fore the problem of returning Native American communities to sovereignty, self-sufficiency and harmony, as partners in American federalism.

From Contact to Termination

At the time of European contact4 more than 500 independent Native Nations, some in federations, functioned and interacted in what is now the United States. An analysis of their power relations is beyond the scope of this study, except to note the empowering aspects of their social structure and functioning. While each indigenous North American society was unique, there were a set of core values and principles that in varying degrees, and in differing forms, underlay the spectrum of their ways of living.5

Generally speaking, American Indian tribes and bands functioned as inclusive participatory societies in which everyone had a place, political, economic and social power was widely dispersed, and in which there was significant mutual support. Much of the strength of these societies lay in a balance of very strong individualism and very strong collectivism: a unity through diversity based upon mutual respect. It was appreciated that all individuals were unique, with their own qualities, skills and ways of seeing, which were honored and drawn upon for the general good, both in decision making and in the fabric of social action. This led to nations of people with strong character and sense of self, able to be flexible in action; who were deeply devoted to each other and appreciative of their interrelations. An important aspect of personal and social power was a strong spirituality that gave strength to individuals and supported community values. Moreover, leaders, who were primarily facilitators and respected providers of guidance, were chosen because they were viewed as having the best qualities for their positions. Because they lived close to nature, considering themselves part of it, Native people knew the countryside well, and were engaged in physical activity that made them physically tough. Particularly for men, this was often enhanced by challenging ceremonies (as for example the Sun Dance of Plains tribes) that the U.S. Army and government later banned, in order not to be faced with strong warriors.6

Traditional Native American societies focused upon the substantial work of building, maintaining and reestablishing harmony, through numerous processes, including dealing with the equivalents of torts and crimes.7 Thus they worked to keep all tribal members as contributors to the community, in effect a family of caring relatives, while minimizing disharmony, to realize a high level of social power. As Ella DeLoria said of the Dakota, this was a system that worked.8

Kinship was the all-important matter. Its demands and dictates for all phases of social life were relentless and exact; but on the other hand, its privileges and honorings and rewarding prestige were not only tolerable but downright pleasant for all who conformed. By kinship all Dakota people were held together in a great relationship that was theoretically all-inclusive and co-extensive with the Dakota Domain. Everyone who was born a Dakota belonged in it; nobody need be left outside. [And since being Dakota, as with Indian societies generally, was more a matter of participation in the community than blood, kinship included all who effectively joined the community, whether they married in or were adopted, a common practice throughout traditional Native America].

. . . . . . .

...I can safely say that the ultimate aim of Dakota life, stripped of accessories, was quite simple: One must obey kinship rules: One must be a good relative. No Dakota who has participated in that life will dispute that. In the last analysis every other consideration was secondary-property, personal ambition, glory, good times, life itself. Without that aim and the constant struggle to attain it, the people would no longer be Dakota in truth. They would no longer be even human. To be a good Dakota then was to be humanized, civilized. And to be civilized was to keep the rules imposed by kinship for achieving civility, good manners, and a sense of responsibility toward every individual dealt with. Thus only was it possible to live communally with success; that is to say, with a minimum of friction and a maximum of good will.

Deloria goes on to point out that kinship, like all the other principles we have been discussing, while not functioning perfectly, worked quite well in Indian society,9

What I have given here is, of course, an ideal picture. But I can honestly say that hardly one in a hundred dared to be thought of as deviating from its rule, although there were always a few naturally heedless persons who persistently or occasionally disregarded it. But that at once classified them as with the witko-the naughty, irresponsible child, the outlaw adult, the mentally foolish, the drunk. No adult in his right mind cared to be so classed,

Overall, Indian nations functioned as extremely strong participatory societies, that greatly impressed Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the development of his political and social philosophy, as seen in the Social Contract, A Discourse on the Origins of Inequality and A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.10 In effect, North American Indigenous nations constituted what Benjamin Barber calls strong democray.11

In the earliest days of contact, the power situation was mixed, and, as always, what occurred was not only a matter of power, even broadly construed - to encompass all of capability, potential and realized, including willingness to apply that capability (such as in cultural restraints and incentives), but also a question of intention, purpose or policy. When Europeans first arrived in the 1490s, their numbers were few, but when they came with a military force and conquest intention, they had somewhat superior weaponry in many situations. That, alone, did not give them superior power, but after diseases they brought had wiped out large numbers of the indigenous populations and disrupted their social organization, and when, as in what is now Mexico, the Spanish played off tribes against each other, and the leader of the Aztec Empire long refrained from asserting military power, and indeed welcomed the Spanish, the Europeans were able to conquer.12 By contrast, the Pilgrims arriving at Plymouth Rock, were ill supplied and knew little of how to live where they landed, and might not have survived had it not been for the generosity of the Wampamoags.13 Indeed, had they arrived earlier, they might not have been allowed to encamp at all on the crowded Northern Atlantic coast, and at most would have been permitted a short stay. But the Pilgrims appeared following a plague, which had killed 90% of the Wampamoags. Thus their leader, Massasoit (likely after appropriate tribal consultation), faced with potential encroachment by neighboring federations unaffected by the pandemic, decided that developing friendly relations with the British, and allowing them to settle was diplomatically useful.

Later, as more Europeans came with relative immunity to diseases they carried, to which Indian populations were mortally vulnerable, the Europeans began to become more equal in population to the Native peoples they were directly in contact with. Unknowing at first, and then often unintentionally, but some times quite purposely, Europeans spread diseases that disseminated many tribal peoples,14 greatly reducing their power.

At first England, and later the United States, were engaged in competition for land, trade and influence in North America, and their growing populations were not so great, and their advantage in certain technologies, but not others,15 did not give them overpowering predominance over Indian nations. Thus, while the situation varied for different native peoples, in general European nations treated them as sovereign nations. While some Native nations were, temporarily, too distant to be directly involved or affected, and others were conquered or colonized by European countries, many tribal nations were treated respectfully by European nations, who often sought them as allies, or encouraged their neutrality.16

Even in this period, and to a grater extent later, interaction with Europeans affected power balances and relations among Indian Nations. Trading and alliance patterns were shifted, and the outcome of conflicts was affected, as for example the long term rather balanced warfare between the Wendat (Huron) and the Seneca, and their allies, was transformed into a Seneca victory by the English giving the Senecas more guns than the French provided for the Wendat.17 Thus the introduction of goods, and the horse, by Europeans, itself, shifted power and brought other changes in Indian lives and relations. When those introductions were combined with directly and indirectly caused displacements of tribes, usually westward, the impact was substantially sharpened, including increasing and creating new intertribal conflicts and warfare. This included a number of nations being pushed out of old territories and being drawn onto the plains by the mobility provided by the horse, enhancing economic power in much more prosperous buffalo hunting, and military power through increased mobility, contributing to new and increased warfare amid conflict for the newly regularly lived in (rather than visited) territory.

The spread of European made goods also created a dependence on European (including United States) suppliers that limited the independence of many tribes, in numerous instances preventing, or making less likely, their resisting, or joining in resisting European/U.S. expansion and colonialism. It was one of the factors that made it more difficult for Indian nations to unite against the U.S., which was able to play off one or a group of tribes against each other, and to deal with tribes singly and in small groups. Thus the independence of tribes and bands, that increased their power in some important regards, reduced their collective power, especially given historical inter tribal conflicts, and the lack of prior relations of Native nations distant from one another.

The United States was born into the European powers contending for position and territory. Until the United States obtained hegemony amongst them in North America, it often joined in the competition to gain Indian nations as allies. At the same time, it sought to keep formerly tribal lands, and gain new territories from Indian nations. At least in theory, and, for a while, sometimes in fact, the relationship of the United States to tribes was one of sovereign to sovereign. It was based upon treaties, agreements binding both parties. This provided a legal and U.S. public opinion potential source of power for Indian nations and people in relation to the United States, which remains to this day, though with great variation in the extent to which it has been realized in different times and situations. This is the basis of the federal trust responsibility to federally recognized Indian tribes of contemporary times. While the changing interpretation of its meaning and the extent of its implementation has been the result interplays of power and philosophy, its legal existence has also impacted power and public philosophy.18

As increasingly the United States became the stronger party, growing in population, productivity, technical development and land base, Indian nations declined in relative power and were treated by it as protectorates.19 This meant that as the United States population spread out from the 1830's to the 1850's, the emphasis was on removing Indians, generally westward, to take their lands, and with U.S. expansion across the continent completed, placing Indian nations on reservations. While the U.S. government, on general analysis, was in a greatly superior power position, especially in relation to individual and small groups of tribes, the application of U.S. power was not always easy or consistent. First, the workings of U.S. politics, in the context of developing events, both in terms of competing policy and allocation of resource concerns, and pro and anti Indian political forces, varied the direction and focus of U.S. action. It is important to note, however, that until late in the Nineteenth Century Indians, had no regular direct voice within U.S. politics, and until well into the Twentieth Century, most "pro-Indian" U.S. groups and spokespersons did not represent the perspective, and interests of Indians, and could not really be considered their allies.20

Second, given large expanses of territory, and the inner strength of Indian societies with tough worriers, and independent bands, discussed above, seeming U.S. military advantage often could not bring rapid Indian compliance or direct defeat through battles. Tribal bands often evaded U.S. forces for extended periods, on numerous occasions fought them to a standstill, and occasionally inflicted defeats on the U.S. army. In the longer term, however, the United States could starve out Native peoples (though this was not always effective21), ultimately placing them under administrative constraint (though with resistance, never full control) of the Bureau of Indian Affairs: the BIA, sometimes tribally referred to as Boss Indians Around.

Faced with enormous power, making unacceptable demands, Indian nations and people were often faced with terrible choices that created new factions in, and between, indigenous communities. Had they had sufficient respite from the continuing assaults on their way of being, Native people likely would have been able to return to community harmony, through the traditional healing and harmonizing social processes referred to above. The U.S. government, however, worked to undermine traditional ways, disrupting many of the harmonizing measures, weakening Indian societies and their members, and this remains a problem for Native nations to this day.

Beginning in the 1870's the U.S. began a policy of assimilating Indians into U.S. society. This was carried out under the domination of the BIA. This policy, became full blown with the Dawes Allotment Act, in 1887, which began the allotting of 160 acre parcels of reservation land to individual Indians, and the sale of the remainder of the reservation land to settlers (and in some cases, as in Oklahoma, with the termination of reservations).22 This not only involved taking land, and economic power from Native people, but weakened tribal communication, social organization and culture by scattering tribal members across separated parcels of land. Lack of significant economic opportunity and racism, however, undermined the BIA policy, and reinforced cooperative Indian relations, which continued to be necessary for survival.

Under the BIA, Indian nations and people maneuvered as best they could against its totalitarian control.

The Indian is never alone. The life he leads is not his to control. Every aspect of his being is affected and defined by his relationship to the federal government-and primarily to one agency of the federal government: the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Even when exercised illegally, the total power of the Bureau is virtually unchallengeable and unreviewable. Where the normal citizen has three avenues of redress political, judicial, administrative-the Indian has none.

Through the perverseness of the Bureau's role, the exercise of power and administration of programs by the BIA have come to ensure that every effort by the Indian to achieve self-realization is frustrated and penalized; that the Indian is kept in a state of permanent dependency as his price for survival; and that alienation from his people and past is rewarded and encouraged for the Indian.23

Thus the Bureau remained a major constraint on Indian power, until its monopoly in Indian affairs was broken by the institution of programs in the War on Poverty, in the 1960s, and indeed it continued to exert a significant, though declining curb until at least well into the 1980s, as its bureaucracy remained resistant to reform, despite considerable efforts to accomplish that, beginning with the New Deal in the 1930s.24

As part of the process of assimilation, Indian children were forced to go to boarding schools to learn Euro-American ways and trades. These schools, which were often brutal in the treatment of their students, were destructive of Indian culture, and failed to integrate Indian young people into Euro-American society and economy. The result was that many native young people were left alienated from both their own cultures and the wider society.25 This further fractured and weakened Native societies and cultures, directly, and also secondarily undermining the sense of self and tribal value in many Indians, and also imparting, directly, and secondarily as a result of alienation, a range of behaviors that are abusive to oneself, an/or others - from physical abuse to substance abuse - which remain serious problems today.26

By the late Nineteenth Century, however, Indians did begin to increase their political power, although their general situation continued to decline. In boarding schools, Native people of different tribes got to know each other and build some common bonds and inter tribal communications. Very important was the gaining of western education, and some mainstream prominence by a number of native people. Some like Zitkala-Sa and Charles Eastman were writers, who carefully worked to move U.S. public opinion to be more favorable to Indians. Eastman's work included not only his own writings and lectures, but getting the Boy Scouts to include a significant amount of Native American lore and crafts in their materials and activities. Others, like Sarah Winnemuca, also a writer, were more directly activisits.27 In 1911, an articulate group of well educated Indian People came together to form the Society of American Indians, that included Gertrude Bonnin, Heny Roe Cloud, Charles Eastman, Carlos Montezuma and Thomas Sloan.28

Meanwhile, toward the end of the Nineteenth Century and into the Twentieth, as the potentially more favorable progressive movement was developing, a number of organizations became active that supported Indians on some issues, and included some Native participation, though all, but the National Indian Defense Association, which enjoyed only a short life, favored assimilation of Indians into mainstream American society, which was a widely held view among non-Indians.29 By the early Twentieth Century tourists beginning to visit the South West, helping bring a more favorable public view of Native people, at least in that region. Some noteworthy Non-Indians came to the area as well, including Mabel Dodge, who moved to Taos, and married a Taos Puebloan. She brought John Collier there in 1919.30 His experience there changed his view to supporting the rights of Indians to preserve their own cultures, and led to his taking a major role in supporting Indian rights, and organizing the American Indian Defense Association in 1923.

By that time, the First World War had occurred, with many Indians fighting for their country. This had two power related impacts. First, it increased Native interaction and solidarity across tribes. Second, it increased favorable public opinion concerning Indians, leading to the Congress making all Indians U.S. Citizens (whether they wanted that or not) in 1924, though many states did not allow Indians to vote until well after World War II.31 The combined result was that a newly formed Pueblo Council was able to garner enough interest group and public support, in its energetic campaign against the Bursum Bill, in 1922, to defeat it in the U.S. House of Representatives.32 The legislation would have settled land disputes involving the Pueblos and those who had squatted on their land in New Mexico by giving title to non-Indian claimants, if they could prove possession by June 10, 1910, with the U.S. government either paying the Pueblos for the land, or providing them with equivalent acreage without water rights. The Pueblo success came in the face an administration and Secretary of the Interior strongly in favor of the non-Indian interests, as were the New Mexico Senators.

In addition, the public and interest group concern for Indians was sufficient, following exposes about improper handling of oil leases and other scandals, that in 1926, the next secretary of the Interior requested the Brookings Institution to make a thorough examination of economic and social conditions on reservations and make proposals for their improvement.33 The result was the 1928 the Meriam Report, which made clear that assimilation had not been achieved and that U.S. Policy had left Indian people in dire economic need to the point of starvation, with poor housing, ill health, declining population, and justifiable discontent.34 Indian people and leaders had long complained about their treatment, but as they were only a small portion of the U.S population, generally did not have the vote35 did not gain a full knowledge of how the American political system functioned until World War II,36 they had had little power to change their situation, and were subjected to long term misdirected, incompetent, and often corrupt, administration of their affairs. The publishing of the Meriam Report added to the momentum to change Indian policy, so that beginning in 1928 shifts began to be made in Indian education.37

Events often play an important role in shifting public and elite opinion. Such was the case in 1932, when the inefficacy in meeting the Great Depression of the Republican, Hoover Administration, perhaps aided by revelations of public corruption and corporate excess, and other factors, brought Democrat Franklin Roosevelt to the Presidency, in a landslide election, along with a Democratic Congress. Roosevelt, who early in the depression had criticized President Hoover for spending too much money, shifted his thinking, bringing in progressive social reformers, to meet the seriousness of the economic collapse by launching the New Deal, involving huge government investment in a wide range of social and economic programs. The Indians would have been included in the New deal, in any case. But because of his strong support for the Roosevelt program, in general, which he continued once in office in the Interior Department, as well as his advocacy of reform of Indian policy, consistent with the thrust of the New Deal, John Collier was appointed by Roosevelt to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and given Considerable support for his Indian reforms, in part because of his support for the President's programs that extended well beyond the work of the Department of Interior.38

Thus, as will be seen repeatedly, in later events, an important part of the structure of power often is the position (in a power, and not a formal sense, though formal position often is a source of at least some power) of key persons. Though such persons may play an important role, because of the power (or lack of it) they bring to their position, their ability (and/or inability) to wield, focus or catalyze power, they can only apply power to the extent that the interacting forces, including the impact of their own acts, symbolic or concrete, to transform the system of interaction, allow. Thus Collier was able to make critical changes in Indian policy, but was also constrained in doing so, both by his own limitations, and those imposed by outside forces and conditions.

Therefore, Collier and his supporters were able to initiate a policy of Indian self-government, as part of the Roosevelt Administrations general policy of national recovery, accompanied by the renewal of government-to-government relations between the federal government and Indian tribes, who were now considered quasi-sovereigns. With John Collier leading the Bureau of Indian Affairs, some significant steps were taken toward returning Indians to self-governance and improved living conditions.39 In practice, these actions were limited and developed very slowly, for several reasons. The first was political limitations and pressures on Collier’s efforts. Indians and their supporters had little political power and were opposed by contrary interests. Around reservations, opposing interests competing with Indians for resources usually had more influence with members of Congress and state governments than did Native people. Both in Congress and on the part of the general public, there was little support for going beyond the prior mistreatment of Indians in what was still seen as a program of assimilation in melting pot America. Multiculturalism, with crucial roots in the civil rights movement in the ‘60s, did not become a major perspective among Americans until the 1970’s. Moreover, vested interests amongst religious groups and others involved in the old BIA policies, opposed changing Indian policy, while a variety of economic interests from ranchers neighboring reservations to mineral extracting companies seeking cheap leases and other advantages opposed movement toward more indigenous autonomy. Second, whether as a result of political constraints, limitation in Collier’s vision, or problems in administration, including an overly top down approach to policy development and implementation by Collier, the form of self-government forced upon most Indian tribes ran counter to their cultures, often making it difficult to reach decisions, while contributing greatly to community fracturing.40 As a result, Indian nations were limited in their ability to participate in tribal-federal relations. Third, was the problem of overcoming the entrenched bureaucracy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.41

The initiatives launched by Collier included giving greater cultural autonomy and decision making authority to the tribes and contracting out services that previously had been run directly by the BIA, in the hope that the Bureau would shift from a supervisory to an advisory role.42 Some devolution of authority did occur with these measures, but to a large extent, the Bureau frustrated the intent of the reforms by manipulating the processes under the guise of providing expert assistance to the tribes, a tactic which the BIA continued to employ well into the 1970’s to slow the impact of more recent reforms in the name of carrying out its trust responsibilities.43 Finally, Indian country itself was divided on many issues, with Native people having become assimilated or maintaining traditional outlooks to various degrees. In addition, some of Colliers conservation policies, following the general outlook of the New Deal, however scientifically well founded, caused hardship for many Native people, generating opposition both to the specific policies and Colliers program, as a whole.44

Collier's efforts at reform of the BIA did make slow progress so long as he, and his political allies (including the tribes and Native American organizations) were able to place consistent pressure on BIA personnel for change. The entrance of the United States into World War II substantially reduced those efforts, as fighting the war became the prime concern of the government and the country. This also provided space for opponents of Collier's policies to build a counter proposal with broad rhetorical appeal (and clearly, rhetoric is an element of power). In the midst of a Republican led reaction to the New Deal, this brought the federal government to shift policy toward terminating its relationships with the tribes in the name of acculturation (which was disastrous for Native Americans) in 1950, effectively halting reform at the Bureau for a decade.45

World War II, as had World War I, increased intertribal communication and support, as the many Native people serving in the armed forces interacted. The military experience of many Indians in World War II, and education under the G.I Bill of Rights, produced a new group of Indian leaders, more knowledgeable of American politics, and the founding of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), which quickly became, and remains, a leading Native organization. Some of these leaders, and a younger cadre whom they helped inspire, become galvanized in opposing the federal policy of termination of Indian tribes in the 1950s, which they played a major role in stopping by the decade’s end.46 A National Congress of American Indians conference of over 500 Native Americans from 67 tribes, held at the University of Chicago in 1961, generated a new burst of political activism and a greater spirit of unity that impacted on the Johnson and Nixon administrations.47

Indian Renewal Renewed: The 1960’s to the Present, I, In Relation to the Federal Government

As we have already seen, the power of American Indians within the American political system, is very greatly related to the dynamics of ideas and power of the U.S. political system as a whole. The possibilities for Native American impact in the political arena, vary in part with which parties, with which ideas, are in power; the abilities and focus of key actors with a concern about Indian affairs; the state and direction of public opinion and political movements; the extent to which Indian interests are supported, opposed, and/or neglected by other interest groups, and other factors. Within the larger dynamic, the strength and unity of political, and related, efforts by Indians and their allies is a critical factor in the development of Indian policy,

The 1960s brought an increase of political organization and intertribal communication by indigenous Americans and their leaders, as virtually all Indians gained the vote, amidst a surging civil rights movement that inspired, and easily supported, movement for Indian rights, contributing to an increase in favorable public opinion about Indian advancement. In addition, the election of Democratic presidents Kennedy and Johnson, favorable to increasing the status of the disadvantaged, including Indians, along with several pro-Indian senators, set the stage for a shift to far more favorable federal policy for Indians.

Relatively little developed in Indian affairs in the short Kennedy Administration, beyond expanding public support for civil rights, including for Native Americans, and an Interior Department Task Force on Indian Affairs Report recommending. "a shift in program emphasis away from termination of federal trust relationships and toward greater development of human and natural resources on Indian resevations,"48 Kennedy's assassination, however, made him a martyr for civil rights, that President Johnson, used to launch a powerful civil rights program and anti-poverty policy. Johnson, an effective mover of Congress - as proven by his tenure as Senate Majority Leader - strengthened by his landslide victory over conservative Republican Barry Goldwater, in the 1964 Presidential election, accompanied by increases in Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, launched the extensive War on Poverty, which included specific Indian provisions., as had the New Deal.49

The War on Poverty involved the creation of new, decentralized federal programs, whose tribal variants were carried out at the local level directly by tribally run organizations, under a grant administration process with the relevant federal agency. This was overseen by the newly created National Indian Opportunity Council, while for the first time an Indian was appointed to head the BIA. Johnson’s breaking of the BIA monopoly on Indian administration brought with it considerable "nation building" for the tribes through providing hands on administrative experience to a new generation of tribal leaders. This development was extremely important, for it is only with such experience that people who have been kept dependent can develop the capability to be partners in government-to-government relationships. Paternalistic bureaucratic rule from afar is doubly destructive, for it not only leads to bad decisions that are in themselves harmful to those so governed, but it denies the people concerned the opportunity to learn from their own mistakes and to gain confidence from their successes, allowing them a vehicle to break out of the dysfunctionality that accompanies dependency, and renew their personal and tribal power, in both the sense of self (and nation) and in actual capability. The extensive record of tribal successes since the late '60s clearly shows that Indian nations have regained considerable capability at self-governance, and in being effective partners in intergovernmental relationships.50 This needs to be further enhanced through continued empowering development, as will be discussed below.

Although, since the beginning of the Twentieth Century, American Indians have had greater success in advancing most of their issues with Democratic Presidents and Congressional majorities, they were fortunate in having the momentum on Native American issues of Johnson's War on Poverty continued in the Nixon Administration, in part because of Nixon's own views about Native people, and in part because of the climate of public opinion and Indian political activity in lobbying and impacting public opinion. This was undertaken both by more traditional organizations, and by newer more radical ones, such as the American Indian Movement (AIM). While the more mainstream and more confrontational indigenous organizations and leaders often disagreed with each other on methods, in fact, they assisted each other. During the period when radical activism of civil rights movements could be effective, AIM and similar activists, were able to use demonstrations and takeovers to gain public support that the more established Indian leaders could use to further Indian agendas. Examples of such events are the occupations of Alcatraz Island, the BIA building in Washington, DC, and the Wounded Knee memorial on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota,51

Among the results of this activity were three major developments, the return by the federal government to Taos Pueblo of its sacred site of Blue Lake, the restoration of the Menominee Tribe (terminated by the federal government during the 1950' and ‘60s) and the passage by Congress of the Alaska Claims Settlement Act, recognizing Alaska Native land ownership and compensating them for the taking of their land.52 While the latter act, as well as others favored by Indians which passed Congress during the self determination period, did not include all that Indians wanted, there was significant Native input in their drafting, and the measures contained a great deal that Indians had lobbied for. These successes, fortified by increased Indian activism and more favorable public opinion, energized friendly members of Congress on Indian issues, including Senators Fred Harris, James Abourezk, and Robert Kennedy, leading to a number of pieces of Indian reform legislation and the formation of the Indian Policy Review Commission. Its report helped publicize the need for further reforms, favored by many Native Americans.

By the mid-1970s, the new energy had led to the rise of a host of new Indian organizations.53 This has provided an essential vehicle for carrying Native American concerns among Indians and their actual and potential allies; to government at various levels and to the public (even though those organizations have been limited in their actual and potential funding, given the relatively small and still generally financially poor population that they represent - though significant economic advances have been made by some tribes and people in recent years, as is discussed below).

This brought with it some new opportunities for access and influence, that are common among the wealthy and politically powerful. For example, Vine Deloria, former President of the National Congress of the American Indians, reported that there were a few occasions on which he could suggest to a member of Congress, and get put into a bill, as high paid lobbyists are often able to do, a small change, such as adding "and Indian Tribes" after, "authorizing States", when there was no opposition to the proposal.54 DeLoria was successful, in part, because of his traditional understanding, similar to that of contemporary complexity theory, that the world is complex, with many uncertainties, while small appropriate actions at leveraged moments can initiate major changes. Thus, he stated that it was not a bad thing being a ‘token Indian,’ if one remembered who one was. As the sole Native on the board of what later became the National Museum of the American Indian, Deloria saw that a leverage moment existed in a board meeting just before a press conference launching an important exhibit opening. This enabled him to force the appointment of more Indians to the board, under threat of his embarrassing the board with a statement at the Press conference, with other Native leaders prepared to publicly support his statement. That began the turnover of board members that soon brought Native people into the majority, setting the stage for the eventual development of the National Museum.

Similarly, LaDonna Harris, a founder and first President of Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, in 1965, and of Americans for Indian Opportunity in 1970, as wife and political ally of Democratic Senator from Oklahoma, Fred Harris, was in a position to facilitate amongst and for Indians on many issues in the federal government. As with Deloria, position merely provided the potential for opportunity. Personal stature and ability transformed that potential into success. Harris, acting with traditional Indian inclusiveness, was able to bring all but the most extreme people together on indigenous issues, to develop mutual understanding and find common ground. She understood the traditional view, that in a complex and changing world, it is important to keep good relations with as many people as possible, who may be valuable allies or resource persons at some time in the future. For about a decade, she and a few other Natives, mostly women, were the prime catalysts in gaining Indian advances in Congress and the national executive branch, so that in 1979 the Ladies Home Journal declared her the Woman of the Year and the Decade.55

Deloria and Harris are among an increasing number of Native leaders who have been effective, in part, because they, following traditional Native values, have been holistically sensing and considering, while far seeing with a sense of timing, and creative in finding ways to deal with difficult situations.56 This illustrates the teaching of chaos and complexity theory, that power is not merely a matter of potentials, but involves how those potentials are, or are not, brought to bear (physically or virtually) in particular moments, and that consciousness, including understanding and willingness to act according to that understanding, with a sense of timeliness, are crucial aspects of political and social power. As traditional Indigenous Americans saw, the understanding needed to act effectively with power includes a perception of the long range impact of actions and developments, so that one acts tactically for long run strategic benefit, and does not take actions that become counterproductive of long term goals, however, successful they may be in the short run. It may be argued that lack of a broad, long term understanding, caused the George W. Bush administration to achieve short run successes, that eventually brought about its party’s massive defeat in the 2006 Congressional elections, and the unraveling of the Bush policies and position.

In addition, the shift in federal Indian policy toward developing self-determination brought with it a number of pieces of legislation (including the Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act of January, 1975) which increased the autonomy of tribes to make decisions, as well as expanding the number of relationships between tribal authorities and federal agencies other than the BIA.57 This growth of relationships has been further enhanced by the creation of additional federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA) which deal directly with tribes. Meanwhile, the BIA continued to play a major role in Native American affairs, again diluting the impact of 1970s and some of the later reforms, as it did in the 1930s.58 More recently, reform of the Bureau and reacculturation of its staff has finally brought it very close to catching up with current policy. It is now only one of a number of federal agencies dealing with the tribes and its role continues to be reduced.59 As a result of all these efforts, by fiscal year 1987, the Office of Management and Budget reported that the $3.1 billion in federal funding for Native American programs was administered through 12 federal departments and agencies, involving some 73 programs.60

This dispersion of federal relationships with the tribes raised a new set of problems (while some of the older difficulties remained) in developing a government-to-government partnership between federal agencies and Indian nations. Overcoming them has required significant effort that has had both institutional (or structural) and cultural aspects. The fundamental difficulty relates to the fact that knowledge and the availability and quality of channels of communication, as well as the quality of the relationships between speakers and listeners, are major aspects of power. In the 1960s and '70s, and to a large extent to this day, most federal agency personnel who dealt with Indians, and with Indian tribes, had little, if any, knowledge of them, and failed to pay attention to Native Americans and their specific concerns, as they were but one of numerous constituencies affected by the policies of the agency.

On the institutional/structural side, this problem has manifested itself in the lack of clear channels through which Indian concerns and interests can be expressed to administrative policy makers. On the cultural side, the difficulty lay in a lack of cultural awareness (and hence a considerable amount of misperception and miscommunication) on the part of administrators in dealing with those in a milieu outside their experience (a problem not only for Indians). Recognition of these problems has been acknowledged from time to time by members of the federal administration as part of the continuing effort to overcome them. In a draft statement on "Government-Wide Responsibility to Native Americans: An Implementation Strategy," the Intra-Departmental Council on Indian Affairs, Administration for Native Americans, Office of Human Developmental Services, wrote in 1989.61

The self-sufficiency of Indian people has been hampered and inhibited by a lack of implementation policy by the very Federal agencies charged with working with tribes on a government-to-government basis. Rather than working together to enrich scarce resources, it can be said that currently, federal agencies operate alone, in a narrow categorical fashion, entirely lacking in a "futuristic world view," and an overall complementary approach that should dovetail and enhance the mission of sister agencies.

It is well documented that Federal implementation policies, by and large, have inhibited the political and economic development of tribes. The absence of mechanisms permitting agencies to share or exchange basic demographic social, economic and tribal governance information, has caused the further implementation or interpretation of program goals in an unnecessarily restrictive or exclusionary fashion.

The lack of a Federal focal point at the highest policy levels results in excessive regulation and self-perpetuating bureaucracies that stifle local decision making, thwart Indian control of Indian resources, and promote dependence rather than self-sufficiency.

As a corollary to Federal agencies' categorical approach, those which lack an explicit legislative mandate to serve Native Americans tend to ignore their responsibilities to them entirely, viewing services, resources and opportunities to this population as the purview only of the Indian "Programs."

To meet these and related problems, Indian organization, leaders and people, and their allies have engaged in a series of continuing efforts to change the structure of communications between Indian tribes, organization and people and the federal government and its various agencies, and to educate federal personnel about Native Americans, tribes, and tribal governments. These efforts have made headway, or lost ground, according to the openness of Presidents and other personnel to them, and the extent to which they have focused on them, because of their own concerns or in the context of related, opposing or distracting pressures or events, all of which shape the flow and impact of power.62 It should be noted that what is involved here is simply providing what all citizens should have in a democracy, government agencies knowledgeable about them and their needs acting in real consultation with those affected by government policies. The less the independent power of a group, the more difficult it is for it to receive appropriate attention, and the more easily agencies, administrators and legislators are distracted from dealing with its concerns.

During the Johnson Administration a beginning was made at making the two levels of structural reform necessary to solve the problem. The first involves providing a means to insure that individual federal agencies act knowledgeably on issues of Indian policy with appropriate consultation with Indian people. The second concerns providing a means to coordinate Indian policy and communication within the executive branch as a whole, insuring that individual agencies are properly handling such issues and dealing with Indian tribes on a government-to-government basis. At the agency level, the Johnson Administration, at the initiation of the National Council for Indian Opportunity, set in motion the establishment of what were in essence a series of advisory committees in various federal agencies dealing with tribes.63 Additional bodies of this kind, with various titles and status, have since been created and a number are still in existence. While these entities produced positive improvements in the making and carrying out of Indian policy, they were not sufficient. In the first place, they were not always properly constituted. In the second place, they were only advisory bodies, and as is often the case with such entities, there was no assurance that they would be paid serious attention by policy makers and administrators. Even if they were, such attention was often temporary as new administrators might not be interested in them and might not even reconstitute them. Moreover, where such groups technically were "advisory committees", their duration was legally limited to a few years. Such groups did, and can continue, to play an important role, but they are generally insufficient unless connected to permanent and more authoritative vehicles within agencies, as have been developed more recently.

President Johnson, in March of 1968, took an initial appropriate step to provide federal government wide coordination of Indian policy, with Indian input, by establishing the National Council on Indian Opportunity, chaired by the Vice President, to "bring the problems of the Indians to the highest level of government."64 The Council was also composed of six cabinet members, the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, and six Native Americans. But Johnson was distracted by the Vietnam War, which ultimately caused him to decide not to run for reelection, and the Council did not meet for close to two years after its inception, and as it was established by presidential order, and not statute, it was not long-lasting. 65

The Nixon Administration, which undertook a strong Indian policy of "self-determination without termination," including the right of American Indians to operate and control Federal Programs,66 initiated "Indian Desks...in each of the human resource departments of the Federal Government to help coordinate and accelerate Indian programs."67 (Nixon also proposed, and President Carter established, by executive order, elevating the head of the B.I.A. from Commissioner of Indian Affairs, reporting to the Secretary of the Interior through the Assistant Secretary for Public Land Management, to Assistant Secretary for Indian and Territorial Affairs, reporting directly to the Secretary of the Interior). Nixon also proposed an independent Indian Trust Counsel Authority "to assure independent legal representation for the Indian's natural resource rights with a presidentially appointed membership of three, two of whom must be Indians. However, Congress was slow to act on it, and it was ultimately lost amidst the throes of Watergate).68

While some of the people appointed to the new Indian desks were extremely active and made great strides toward fulfilling their intended functions,69 Nixon's Indian desks suffered from several inadequacies. As part time positions, without adequate staffing, held by busy people with other primary responsibilities, the Indian desk people often could not fulfill the function, even if they were concerned and knowledgeable about Native Americans, which was not always the case. Moreover, as the assignments were made to individuals, on an ad hoc basis, and were not permanent positions, the Indian desks often disappeared when their holders left, or new agency heads did not continue them.

As for coordination, Nixon and the next several presidents worked with Indian policy entirely informally, relying on particular advisors, as seemed convenient, at the moment, so that no institutionalized structure developed until the Clinton Administration. However, some departments with a number of Indian programs, in several agencies, did develop formally established department wide coordination bodies, notably Health and Human Services70 and Agriculture.71

Meanwhile, a number of federal agencies, began improving their communication with Indian nations, involving them in policy making. The most notable was the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which began increasing government-to-government contacts with tribes late in the Carter administration. Beginning in 1983 EPA, initially through its Indian Work Group and several of EPA's regions and program offices, entered, first, into a discussion, and then, a series of collaborations with the tribes and with Native American organizations (including Americans for Indian Opportunity) to develop an environmental policy and its administration for Native American lands which would: "...ensure that our programs to protect the environment and human health operate as effectively on Indian reservations as they do elsewhere [and] ...incorporate Tribal governments into the operation and management of the Agency's programs".72 EPA began making competent tribal governments the lead in environmental policy development on their own reservations, and assisting tribes in gaining competence. To enhance collaboration began training its personnel in Indian affairs and hired a number of Native Americans, experienced in environmental management, in policy management decisions. In addition, the agency set up the American Indian Environmental Office, whose Administrative Director reports directly to the Administrator of EPA.73 The Office was established to coordinate all EPA Indian programs, and cooperate with other agencies involved with tribal environmental programs, and oversight of EPA personnel training on trust responsibilities, and related environmental concerns, culture and legal issues. In 1994, these efforts were augmented by the establishment of the EPA Office of Tribal Operations, to address critical gaps in environmental protection and improve EPA’s government-to-government relationship with tribal governments.74 The office’s first director had previously been the Executive Director of the Tulalip Tribe’s Fisheries and Natural Resources. Then, having gained authorization from Congress, in the Water Quality Act of 1987 (P.L. 100-4, ß131.7), tribes to treat qualifying tribes as if they were states for the purpose of setting water quality standards, EPA began certifying tribes to set water quality standards for their reservation, including regulating discharges upstream, off reservation, to realize those standards,75 By mid-1996 approximately 100 tribes had received EPA approval to administer 150 surface water, drinking water and solid waste programs as if they were states, while some 20 tribes operated pesticide programs under cooperative agreements with EPA.76 Some of this expansion was initiated by regional managers who were American Indians, an indicator of the importance of who is making decisions, as a factor in power. EPA extended treating federally recognized tribes as if they are states to air quality programs in late 1994.77 65
Another example, is DOE's nuclear waste division, which has been regularly dialoguing closely with tribes and tribal organizations, such as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), on policy and implementation questions. Under a collaborative agreement between DOE and NCAI, The NCAI Nuclear Waste Program has been monitoring commercial spent fuel activities and potential programmatic impacts in Indian country since 1983.78 The project is assisting tribal governments to develop their own programs to monitor the passage of nuclear waste through their lands. The program acts as a vehicle for DOE to provide legally required training to any tribe through which radioactive waste may pass, at least three years prior to the first trans-shipment.

Some of this agency tribal-federal collaboration, during the Reagan Administration, was encouraged by the President's recognition of tribal sovereignty and emphasis on transferring carrying out of governmental functions downward to state, local and tribal governments.79 However, as will be discussed below, the severe cuts in tribal budgets, as part of overall cuts in domestic spending, by the Reagan administration reduced tribal governmental capability, and hence power, as well as creating individual hardship.

The election of President Clinton, with his pro-Indian views, and much Indian support, brought about considerable increases in Indian input in government. With encouragement from the Clinton Administration, the Justice Department established an office to deal directly with the tribal governments, and the DOJ instituted a number of partnership programs with tribes to improve their justice systems. Moreover, U.S. Attorney's Offices with significant Indian country jurisdiction worked with tribal, federal and state agencies to develop memoranda of understanding to address problems of overlapping jurisdiction.80

Meanwhile, HUD decentralized all tribal housing programs to tribally run authorities through direct block grants under the United States Housing Act of 1996,81 with each tribe receiving, directly, one block grant to its "Tribally Designated Housing Entity" (TDHE) to be used for development, rehabilitation, acquisitions, housing support and management services, crime prevention and safety activities, and for initiation of model housing programs. The act allows tribes a great deal of flexibility within the bounds of accountability and frees them from previously inappropriate housing program design created for urban areas. The act eliminated the need for Indian nations to apply for a myriad of separate grants, empowering them to create strategies appropriate for development in their own communities. Experience has shown this can often be undertaken much more cheaply (at San Juan Pueblo at one-third the cost)82 than was normal for HUD's one approach for the whole nation-type programs. The bill also made it easier for tribes to attract private financing of mortgages by extending the maximum lease-hold provision from 20 to 40 years. In addition, the bill allowed tribal housing authorities to borrow or issue debt equal to five years worth of their allotment, payable over 20 years with the full backing of the U.S. Treasury. In recognition by HUD of the government-to-government relationship, in December 1996, the agency brought tribal housing leaders from around the U.S. to a meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona to begin the writing of compliance regulations for the new housing program, and tribal participation has been included in the process of revising regulations.

The Republican Congress, however, initiated a decentralization of federal programs. generally, which has had mixed results for tribes. In enacting welfare reform under P.L. 104-193 in 1996,83 which moved welfare financing and administration to provide direct block grants to the states, Congress provided that, in many instances, tribes can take over programs, receiving federal funding directly (though this often leads to a reduction in program funding to the tribe), and has included some incentives for states to make compacts with tribes to provide programs to the tribes, most likely at the same level, or close to the same level, as is provided to the rest of the state. Generally, the impact of welfare reform was to reduce assistance to low income persons. In some cases the reductions in the act fell more lightly upon some tribes, but, generally, the impact was heavier for Indian nations. Welfare reform for the tribes was exceedingly complex, but some general conclusions can be stated:84 While tribes can run their own welfare programs, only a few have chosen to do so because: 1) this frequently leads to lower benefits, as tribes receive only the federal portion of the funding, and do not receive, and usually do not have, the tax or financial basis to provide, the equivalent of the state’s share of the benefits (provided in state programs by state matching funds); 2) tribes often do not have the training or administrative staffs to run welfare programs and the federal government provides no funding or other resources (including training) for doing so, a common problem with devolution of federal programs, as will be discussed below. Welfare reform did include some incentives for state (and sometimes local) governments to communicate and collaborate with tribal governments to insure that tribal members are well, and fairly, served by welfare programs. While there are some excellent examples of such collaboration, the incentives have not always been sufficient to insure well working collaboration and equity. To insure equity and well working government-to-government relations, the federal government must include adequate incentives to the states to collaborate with tribal governments as partners in the programs, with appropriate procedures to resolve disputes (as EPA has provided in some environmental programs).

In considering federal block grants to tribes, parallel to those to state and local governments, as a method of realizing government-to-government relationships, it is important to note that they can only work effectively to the extent that the on site administrative authority has the competence to appropriately and properly carry out the program. Experience with HUD programs indicates that this has been a problem, on occasion, with local programs under the block grant system initiated under Nixon (and given increased local administrative autonomy under Reagan) as well as in tribal programs. Although many local governments have functioned extremely well, given autonomy, because of incompetence there are numerous instances of inappropriate projects carried out by municipalities under HUD programs, some of which made conditions worse, that the projects were intended to meet.85

Similarly, a combination of investigative reporting in 1996 and subsequent review by HUD of tribal housing programs showed that, while many housing programs ran very well, there were numerous instances of mismanagement, abuse and fraud in some reservation programs (which had the effect of lowering the quality of the program as a whole).86 The HUD experience makes clear that the federal government and the agency involved have the duty to provide adequate and appropriate empowerment to the tribe (or other local entity), and to insure that there are proper procedures for carrying out the programs with appropriate oversight. EPA's developmental approach is one example of a method for doing this. Clearly the involvement of tribal housing officers in writing the regulations of the new housing program is an important aspect of carrying out this responsibility on a government-to-government basis.

The Clinton administration, itself, attempted to carry decentralization of federal programs to the tribes, to the greatest degree possible, under "The Tribal Shares Process."87 The Bureau of Indian Affairs, acting under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act and Fiscal Year 1997 Appropriations Language for the Department of the Interior, worked with every federal agency to develop a list of: 1) those functions in Indian programs that are inherently federal (IFF), and can only be carried out by the federal government, and those functions that are non-inherently federal and can be carried out by tribes directly, or if the tribes are unable or unwilling to carry them out themselves, can be contracted out by the tribes. The preliminary list published in May 1997 was circulated for comment. In addition, top BIA personnel met with tribal leaders around the U.S. to discuss the list. The final product is a list of functions remaining with the federal government, and the "tribal shares" to be carried out, or contracted out, by the tribes, with the federal budget showing the specific monies which are "the share" of each tribe. Since 1997, there has been little increase in the number of Indian nations running their own programs. The problem, as was the case with welfare reform, is that many tribal governments do not have the funding, experience or trained personnel to run federal programs that they legally could take over, and for the most part, the federal government does not provide the training, or the resources for training and starting up a program, or for its administration. This failure, even at the end of the Clinton Administration, was continuing to be a major constraint on the realization of fully developed tribal government empowerment and tribal-federal government partnership. As of May 2005, 232 nations - about 40 percent of all federally recognized tribes - operated one or more programs that had been previously administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The other tribes fell into one of two categories: "638 contracts" or "direct service." Tribes with contracts still report to an officer in the BIA. Direct service tribes continue to rely on the bureau to manage their programs.88 Lack of adequate resources is also a serious limitation on Indian community and personal development.

One important aspect of devolution of federal programs and decision making relating to tribal governments to the states is the extent to which this constitutes "forced federalism" for indigenous nations: that is, to what extent are tribal governments forced into unwanted decisions by the parameters that the federal government puts into the devolution. What is the balance of bargaining power between tribes and states or local governments created by the structure created and/or encompassed by the devolving legislation? This has already been briefly discussed in terms of welfare reform. A second area of importance has been the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (discussed more fully below) that requires tribes to negotiate a compact with the state they are located in order to build gaming facilities. While there are significant economic incentives for states to sign such agreements, and some checks, particularly the requirement for approval by the Secretary of the Interior, the question has been raised as to whether the legislation gives undo leverage to states, at least in some conditions, as compacts have required tribes to share with states as much as 25% of casino income.89

In terms of federal government coordination of Indian policy, the Clinton Administration, beginning in 1994, established what appears to have a fairly adequate and appropriate set of mechanisms for coordination and mutual communication of concerns. This began with what is believed to be the first meeting in which all federally recognized tribes were invited to the White House for discussion of Indian affairs.90 The meeting was regularized as an annual event, forming a useful vehicle for enhancing government-to-government relations. Going beyond that, by using it as a means for focusing upon the field of Indian affairs as a whole, it would be useful to include representatives of "urban Indians," since more than 60% of Native Americans now live off reservation, mostly in cities (while most federal agencies and programs are primarily focused upon reservations).

The first White House conference was followed up by the National Indian Listening Conference, jointly sponsored by the Departments of Interior and Justice with participation from Housing and Urban Development, with the heads of all three departments in attendance.91 This meeting with tribal leaders led directly to a series of reforms both within departments (e.g. the creation of the Office of Tribal Justice in the Justice Department) and at the top of the administration that have institutionalized Indian relations.

The most important of these initiatives was the establishment of The Working Group on American Indian and Alaska Natives as part of the Domestic Policy Council. The Council (as of January 1997) was composed of 20 high ranking members of executive departments (such as the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development, the Chief of Staff of the Department of Commerce, and the Principle Deputy Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs of the Department of Energy) and other agencies (such as the Office of Management and Budget), plus designated staff in each agency, and was chaired by the Secretary of the Interior.

There was, however, one major problem with the organization of the Working Group as it was constituted at the end of the Clinton Administration. Its being headed by the Secretary of the Interior presented the Secretary with a conflict of interest between his responsibilities to his department and the requirements for coordinating Indian policy as a whole. He had pressures from a number of constituencies in his department, along with concerns for maintaining his power and authority to function effectively as department head. Moreover, the Secretary of the Interior as an equal with other department heads, had to work cautiously and diplomatically with other departments. As a result of this dual difficulty, energy was drawn away from the Secretary's insuring that the BIA and other Interior agencies dealt adequately with current major issues, while communicating well with the tribes. As a result, the Working Group was unable to move swiftly or effectively to solve major problems that crossed departmental and agency jurisdictional boundaries in such crucial fields as gaming and the handling of toxic wastes.

Moreover, little was done to improve the extremely varied quality of tribal communications infrastructure, so that all tribal governments and their members could receive up to date information from, and provide timely input to, all federal agencies (as could be achieved by developing adequate internet linkages). What needed to be done was to move the coordination (and chairing) of the Indian Working Group entirely into the White House as part of the Intergovernmental Working Group, with equal status for tribal governments with state and other governmental entities. There it would be able to operate from above the level of the departments with a clear institutional interest in, and the full authority to, effectively coordinate Indian policy and its implementation in dialogue with the tribes.

As it was, the Working Group was the initiator, after appropriate consultation, of a number of reforms and took enumerable steps to see that government-to-government relations were operating on a regular and proper basis throughout the executive branch. These steps included the establishment of permanent Indian desks or offices in all agencies that regularly dealt with, or have an impact upon, Native Americans, and the drafting of several presidential memoranda for the heads of agencies and departments, first, "directing them to engage in continuing government-to-government relations with federally recognized tribal governments," and then requesting the departments and agencies to report what government-to-government procedures they had instituted, as a step in "insuring that the President's directive is properly implemented."92

This initiative continued to encourage expansion of agency consideration of Indian interests,93 and consultation with tribal governments in the early months of the Bush Administration. However, while there were many fine examples of real dialoguing between federal agencies and their personnel and tribal governments and officials, there were, and continue to be, numerous complaints from tribal officials that federal agency staff often claim to "consult,” when they are merely lecturing. This complaint is also voiced by state and local government staff.94

The Working Group issued annual reports of developments since the first White House Conference. Among the developments reported in August of 199695 were the continuing increase of the share of the BIA's budget (then over 50%) for Tribal Priority Allocation (TPA). This allowed tribes to prioritize programs and shape them according to their unique needs. The BIA had been involved in about 1500 self-determination contracts, totaling some $650 million. It was an indication of the increasing level of freedom for tribes to run or contract out their own programs in virtually every area even prior to the implementation of the Tribal Shares Process.

Similarly, the number of self governance annual funding agreements had extended to 180, or about one-third, of recognized tribes while rules for administering the self-governance program were being developed by a joint federal and tribal negotiating team including DOI, HHS and tribal representatives. Thus it would appear that the transformation of the BIA had become considerably advanced, as the entire executive branch appeared to be attaining a high level of government-to-government interaction with the tribes. The process is not yet complete, for while the official rhetoric throughout the executive branch at the end of the Clinton administration was consistent with the philosophy of government-to-government relationships, and the higher levels of the administration, departments and agencies, generally, were acting in a collaborative manner, providing leadership to carry that thinking and behavior to all levels of the federal bureaucracy, the extent to which the government-to-government way of proceeding in Indian affairs has been acculturated by personnel varies from agency to agency, and even in the same agency, among different regions, offices or working groups.

Some indication of this variation in acculturation of BIA personnel to shifting from decision making to facilitation roles emerged in discussions with officials of two Southwest tribes by one of the authors (Stephen Sachs) in July of 1997. Two officials at Southern Ute commented that their tribe's relations with the BIA were vastly improved, with one of them stating, "Things turned around about five years ago. The BIA works for us now." By contrast, tribal officials at the Navajo Nation said that, while BIA personnel currently worked more collaboratively with their tribe than had been the case in the past, they still experienced bureaucratic difficulties in trying to work with the BIA.96

When George W. Bush, Jr. assumed the office of presidency, in January 2001, he largely neglected Indian policy, which was consistent with his previously voiced lack of concern for the needs of Indians and Indian nations needing federal action, and the fact that most of the Indian presidential vote went to his Democratic opponent. Since President Clinton's coordinating measures had been created by presidential order or practice, and had no basis in Congressional legislation, the Bush White House simply ignored them, leaving most of Indian policy to the agencies that carried it out, with some coordinating function exercised by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.97 Under the New Strategic Plan developed by the BIA there are directives to determine what agencies and bureaus might be involved in delivering particular services to Native Americans. The plan states that, if there are multiple agencies or bureaus involved, cross cutting relationships should be established. However, within the strategic plan there is no discussion or example of how, in practice, these crosscutting relationships will be established and maintained.98 The most significant actions of the Bush Administration have been proposing drastic cuts in much of the Indian program budgets, along with attempts to cut domestic spending as a whole. Many of these proposed cuts have been reversed or reduced by Congress, in part because the Indian vote, though small, is now important in several western states, some of whose representatives and senators hold key committee positions on Indian affairs, as ill be discussed below. In the absence of broad White House initiative in Indian Policy, agency consultation with tribal governments has generally continued, and in some cases expanded, as indicated by the Department of Defense being engaged in 2001 in a new study of the possible impact of the operation of military bases upon Indian tribes.99.

Indian Renewal Renewed: The 1960’s to the Present, II, In Relation to the States

As Indian Power has generally increased in relation to the federal government, with some ups and downs, since 1960, so has it increased in relation to the states.100 The historical record shows a close relationship between the growth of Indian self-governance and economic and other development. Indeed, studies of economic development on reservations show that imposed programs have largely failed, while those that have been successful have almost always been undertaken by Indian people themselves or in full partnership with others.101 As tribal self-determination has expanded, since the 1960s, Indian nations have taken over more of their own economic decisions, with a resulting expansion of economic development by many, though certainly not all, federally recognized tribes. Today, with the economic advancement that has occurred as self-determination has been growing, many Indian nations are experiencing an economic (and more general) resurgence, while their rural neighbors have been undergoing a decline. Indian people and reservation economic activity now play a significant role in many state economies in producing considerable income, tax revenues and jobs, while Indian people pay more in state taxes than they receive in state benefits.102

Appreciation of this growing interrelationship is contributing toward the rise in government-to-government relations between tribal, state and local governments, though in most instances state and local governments do not yet see tribal governments as equal partners. Instances of tribal government-state and local government cooperation are numerous and cover many fields, with mutual benefits for all the involved parties.103

Collaboration between tribal, state and local governments is a relatively new development. While occurring more frequently, it is not yet the norm. Initially, the national government maintained an almost exclusive relationship with Indian nations.104 Indeed, a condition of becoming a state for eleven western states was to include a clause in their constitutions renouncing all jurisdiction and taxing authority over Indians and Indian lands.105 Prior to Congress adopting a policy of attempting to assimilate Indians into mainstream U.S. society, in the mid to late Nineteenth Century, most of the few instances of tribal-state relations stemmed from agreements that some of the 13 original states had made with Indigenous nations prior to the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Especially after the passage of the Dawes Act in 1887, as Indians accepted allotments of land, as individuals, they came under state jurisdiction when off reservation, and some reservations were terminated, particularly in Oklahoma. The federal government, however, through the administration of the BIA, continued to be responsible for governance of reservations and for providing services to Indians, including education. 106

Beginning in the late Nineteenth Century, the BIA contracted with individual school boards for some Indian education in public schools, and in the 1930’s began contracting for this with individual states, which Congress authorized in the Johnson O’Mally Act of1934.107As Indian tribes and people had no formal say (and almost no informal influence) over how this education was carried out, it was most often culturally inappropriate, sometimes racist, and largely ineffective, contributing directly to the high dropout rates and low average levels of achievement that Indian people continue to suffer, in part because, often, they still have little say over the education of Indian young people in public schools.108 Recently, however, there are an increasing number of cases of collaboration in education between tribal governments and local and state governments, in part because of the general increase in respect for tribal governments, as governments, as tribal - state and local governmental cooperation has grown. Though in a least one case, it may be that the opening of a tribal school, influenced the local school board to begin regular meetings with the tribal council, from fear of losing Indian students, and thus Johnson O'Malley funding.109

With Congress providing limited tribal self-government with some contracting authority, subject to BIA approval, in the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act and related legislation, some modest instances of tribal state relations occurred.110 However, the small amount of tribal government authority in practice precluded the development of significant tribal-state government relations at the time.

A major entrance of states into Indian relations was precipitated by Congress, without direct tribal participation, with the policy of moving to terminate Indian tribes and end the federal trust responsibility in the 1950s. 111 For example, during the termination period a series of transfers of responsibility for maintaining reservation roads was made by the BIA to counties, so that in 1972 42% of roads on Indian lands were maintained by counties. Similarly, during the 1950's the BIA contracted most Indian agricultural extension work to the states, that carry out federal extension programs. In addition, beginning in the 1950's, and to a greater extent in the following decade, the BIA emphasized state and local government collaboration with tribal governments in economic development. Of particular importance, in 1953 congress passed Public Law 280, permitting 5 states (California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon and Wisconsin) to have criminal and civil judicial authority over Indians.112 However, budget considerations restrained these states from fully exercising this authority, and more recent Congressional action prevents these states from newly exerting authority in this area without the permission of tribal governments. Moreover, in most of these states, tribal pressure combined with budgetary concern has led state legislatures to return P.L. 280 powers to tribal governments.

The Congressionally initiated movement toward termination was accompanied by an increase in state government interest in Indian affairs, for which the states would have had a major responsibility if termination had been fully carried out. An aspect of this was a first movement toward tribal-state government dialogue.113 in 1950 Governor Luther Youngdahl of Minnesota put on conference to develop a long term program on Indian affairs with top officials, including four Governors, from 15 states, Indian leaders and BIA officials. This resulted in the formation of the Governor's Interstate Indian Council (GIIC) with state executive and Indian members. Several states subsequently formed Indian commissions. GIIC remained an active forum at least until 1970, but faded in importance as the self-determination era developed, while the original state Indian commissions, though undertaking some significant projects, have never been consistently effective. Thus, the ending of the termination era, with Congressional launching of a policy of Indian self-determination, found only a modest increase in tribal-state and local government relations, but an expanded state and local concern acting in Indian affairs.

Despite the initial efforts of the 1930's, when tribal governments first began to gain some autonomy from federal domination, they received little respect from most state and local governments. Unfortunately, extremely costly jurisdictional confusion, lack of adequate understanding and communication, and competition and conflict, have long been major features of many of the relations between tribal and state and local governmental entities. In too many instances, perceived social, political and economic inequalities among neighbors, fueled by racism and competition for valuable resources, have turned in a vicious cycle with hazy areas of responsibility, mistrust and misunderstanding between jurisdictions that continues to block cooperation for mutual advancement.

This situation has been changing in recent years, in large part as a result of the rise of government-to-government relations between tribal governments and the federal government. This is especially the case now that, increasingly, though unevenly, federal agencies, including a much transformed and still developing BIA, have begun to deal with Indian nations as governments, giving them a high level of autonomy in running their own programs and including Indian input into federal agency decision making, and at times encouraging tribal-state and local government collaboration. As Indian tribal governments have expanded in their activity and gained experience, state and local authorities have increasingly come to see that tribal governments can be capable partners in collaborative activity.

In addition, there is some indication that the combination of the change in general public perception of Native Americans, increased Indian political power, the increased use of collaborative as opposed to competitive ways of approaching issues in the U.S.,114 and the rising understanding that tribes contribute significantly to area and state economies, and thus share common interests with the rest of the population, are having some impact in increasing cooperation between state and local governments and tribes. For example, it appears that the New Mexico and Arizona studies have facilitated expanded tribal and state government cooperation in the field of tourism. In May 1992, representatives of tribes, neighboring communities, state and federal officials and entrepreneurs came together in a Southwest American Indian Tourism Conference to collaborate in developing "strategies for environmentally and culturally appropriate, economically sustainable tourism" relating to the tribes in the Southwest.115

Similarly, in South Dakota, Bill Janklow had quite acrimonious relations with the tribes during his first terms as Governor. After his return to the Governorship, in July 1995, he brought the tribes together for a very collaborative discussion which tribal leaders found a most pleasant surprise. At the open ended session, which allowed anyone to raise issues for discussion, Janklow stated, "We can work together. If it's on the reservation it’s yours. If it's off the reservation, its ours. If it's in the checkerboard areas, we have trouble. Let's forget the past and work on the future."116

The extent to which state and local governments and tribes cooperate depends upon a number of factors beyond those already mentioned. Where decision making is rational (rather than based upon habit, prejudice or emotional reaction), the choice to cooperate or compete generally, will be based upon estimations of the short and long term costs and benefits of cooperating versus competing. This includes both political considerations of the probable reactions of the public (and/or governmental bodies) to whom the actors are directly or indirectly responsible, and the policy and/or financial results that are likely to accrue from taking either course (or using a mixed approach). The extent of information available about the other party’s situation, decision making authority and process, and record of past actions is an important determinant of how to proceed. The lack of this information, particularly about tribal governments, has often been a deterrence to collaboration. A related factor in making estimations of likely outcomes is the trust one has in the intentions (and/or ability to make good on and continue to keep agreements) and/or competence of the other party. Since, to a considerable extent, trust is based upon prior experience (as well as the general climate and the specific immediate factors in the circumstances at hand), trust tends to be built or undermined by ongoing behavior.

The impact of these factors can be seen by looking at some experiences in the field of law enforcement. A major problem in state and local-tribal government relations concerning law enforcement is confusion over jurisdiction, which often involves considerable complexity.117 Tribal police (and courts, in criminal cases) only have authority on reservations, and only in cases in which the suspect is a Native American. (Even then, tribal courts can only try misdemeanors, with major crimes being tried in federal court, and the FBI having jurisdiction to investigate and arrest). Except in the few instances where state and local police have limited authority on reservations (generally under the limited continuation of P. L. 280), they can not make an arrest on a reservation unless both the victim and the suspect are non-Indian.

This already confusing situation is compounded by the fact that many reservations are checkerboards of Native American and non-Native American owned and rented property. This not only creates serious difficulties in carrying out investigations and making arrests, it also prevents the giving of timely assistance when a crime or dangerous situation is in progress. In a threatening circumstance the nearest police authorities may have no jurisdiction and those that do may be a considerable distance away, while citizens wishing to summon assistance may not know whom to call. Moreover, since jurisdiction in part depends on who the suspect is, while that may not be determinable in the midst of an on-going situation, even a well informed citizen or officer may not know how to proceed.

Given these circumstances, in situations in which state and local authorities had little trust in tribal members or the competence of tribal police, state and local authorities have often attempted to gain as much jurisdiction as possible at the expense of the tribes. In turn, having had bad experience with state and local justice in particular, and decision making in general, tribes have fought to keep and extend as much "sovereignty" as possible, including in the field of law enforcement. With some important exceptions, this competitive approach to jurisdictional questions has been the historical norm. With neither side being able to eliminate the jurisdiction of the other, the relatively small gains achieved through the competitive approach, with the accompanying problems of continuing complexity, seemed to be preferable to attempts by either side at more cooperation than absolutely necessary.

The state and local governments would not trust the tribes with jurisdiction, and the tribes saw cooperation as giving away sovereignty. Indeed, in the past, when tribal members were isolated from the surrounding communities, had little relevant technical expertise and few financial, political or other resources available to help them deal with outside jurisdictions, the relative inequalities between the parties often turned even genuinely intended cooperation into co-option by the outside authority.

Building enough trust to develop a cooperative approach to jurisdictional problems through collaboration has often been difficult and slow. However, some successes in this area that have been consistently carried out over time provide precedents, giving openings for trust building by other sets of parties. For example, a number of Indian nations, including the Southern Utes in Colorado, the Miccosukees in Florida, the Blackfeet and the Flatheads in Montana, the Yakimas in Washington, and the Wind River Reservation Arapaho and Shoshone Tribes in Wyoming, have found effective solutions to these difficulties by coming together with neighboring local and state police to cross deputize each other's officers (so that they have authority in each other's jurisdictions) and to engage in close communication and collaboration. The Porch Band of Creeks in Mississippi not only have cross deputizing arrangements with neighboring police, but provide fire and emergency services to nearby areas. Meanwhile, the police of the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico and the adjacent Pueblos have arranged that when members of those pueblos are arrested for misdemeanors in the city, the police will turn them over to the authorities of their Pueblo for trial.118

The result of agreements to take such cooperative approaches depends upon how the relationships among the individuals participating in the new arrangements are initiated and fostered, as has been shown by extensive experience with developing team work in workplaces.119 Collaboration involves an ongoing relationship, and the quality of the interaction in any such relationship follows from the attitudes and skills of the participants in working together. Having a common goal, such as effective and fair law enforcement, is an important element in launching successful cooperation, but it is not sufficient to make a cooperative effort successful.

At the outset, sufficient mutual trust to communicate freely and work together, along with enough understanding of each other (which is especially important to take into account in developing cross cultural collaboration) and sufficiently developed collaborative attitudes and skills must already exist or be created by education and/or team building exercises to enable the participants to work together effectively and cordially so that the experience of collaborating is a positive one. More care needs to be taken to insure that participants are able to collaborate well when they work closely together on an ongoing basis, as with employees on the same production team, rather than in cases, such as that of cross-deputized police officers, who only occasionally work directly together.

Never-the-less, the ability to communicate and collaborate with each other easily is still important, though this will be easier to attain where participants, though from different cultural backgrounds, have similar professional and other education. With tribal members, especially those likely to serve in skilled professional roles, such as tribal police officers, increasingly receiving higher levels of formal education, building good quality collaboration is becoming easier to achieve. Indeed, there are now a considerable number of tribal members with college and professional education, and the number of highly skilled professionals, such as lawyers and professors, is significant and growing. Recent increases in training of tribal police, and expansion of their numbers, begun by the Justice Department under Janet Reno during the Clinton Administration, have enhanced the ability of tribal officers and police departments to work with neighboring law enforcement agencies.

Normally, if the beginning is good, positive relations will tend to build. But often good facilitation and trouble shooting (either by the participants themselves, if they have sufficient skill and willingness to do so, or by joint or outside facilitators) are necessary, especially in the early stages, to overcome difficulties that are likely to arise in human interaction. As successful collaboration is built in one area, such as law enforcement, sufficient trust tends to build between the parties to encourage collaboration in other areas. Conversely, failure at, or difficulty in, cooperation tends to build distrust.

Several current trends are increasing the likelihood that collaborative initiatives will be more successful. These include increasing knowledge in the U.S. in how to collaborate and make collaboration effective. This follows from broader use of collaboration, especially in workplaces, together with and increases in the level of education technical training among Native Americans.

Given the history of lack of collaboration between state and local governments and tribes, however, developing cooperation is often difficult. In many cases institutionalized mechanisms to begin joint efforts must be discovered or created. A recent example in the field of law enforcement is illustrative of the problem and the making of such a beginning. The State of New Mexico became concerned that the existence of separate jurisdictions that did not share records meant that the state was limited in acting against drunk driving because it had no information concerning drunk driving arrests on the considerable extent of reservation land within New Mexico. Not knowing how to initiate collaboration with the several tribes in the state, New Mexico officials contacted the University of New Mexico Institute of Law and Policy. The Institute did not know how to go about initiating such arrangements, either, but it was aware of Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) in Bernalillo, NM, whose work includes improvement of both tribal governance and government-to-government relations. AIO was then able to facilitate bringing state and tribal officials together to develop means for sharing records and assisting each other with enforcement.120 Now that the point has been reached where there is increasing interest in developing tribal-state and local collaboration, it is essential that appropriate mechanisms be established for doing so, as will be discussed below.

Developments similar to those in law enforcement are taking place in other areas involving jurisdictional confusion both in the fields of regulation and service delivery. Although the difficulties are often less complex than in law enforcement, in some cases they arise over determining who has authority to regulate or who is eligible to receive which services from whom. Often the tribes understand their jurisdictional authority, but other governments do not. And sometimes, because of the negative history, tribes have trouble trusting that collaborating with neighboring governments will strengthen rather than weaken their sovereign authority. In the area of environmental protection, for example, there are frequently questions as to who has jurisdiction to regulate and to take preventive or restorative action. When state and tribal authorities argue over the authority to act in a particular situation, there are long and expensive delays in redressing pollution problems which continue to expand. Where tribal, state and local (and sometimes Federal) authorities can negotiate a joint approach, the jurisdictional questions become moot, and vitally needed action can be taken expeditiously.

Such was the case in New York, where the state realized it had an ally in the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe in obtaining a cleanup of toxic waste at the General Motors Superfund site on the St. Lawrence River and in limiting pollution of the river by nearby Alcoa and Reynolds Aluminum operations.121 The State of New York entered into a cooperative agreement with the Mohawks (who have a similar agreement with EPA) to act to protect the fishery which is an important resource of both the tribe and the state.

Environmental protection has been a particularly strong area of cooperation because the tribes have begun receiving training and other support from the federal government (particularly under the 1986 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act, the 1977 amendments to the Clean Water Act and amendments to the Super Fund statute) that empowers federally recognized Indian nations to undertake environmental planning and regulation.122 Often the surrounding counties do not have the necessary resources to plan and regulate on their own, which encourages them to join with the tribes to plan and act together to enhance the quality of a jointly shared environment, for pollution does not stop at jurisdictional boundaries.

In other areas where the tribes do not have the resources to participate, and federal sources of assistance are not available, pressure for movement on environmental issues on all concerned governments, together with the growth of more favorable perceptions of tribes by the wider public, have at times brought state and local governments to perceive that it is to their advantage to assist the tribes in upgrading their ability to act, in order to develop a strong partnership in which, in general terms, every one wins, no one looses.

In other instances there are questions as to how regulation can be best undertaken or services delivered. The case of the San Carlos Apache high school students in Arizona is a good example of the latter.123 In the 1970s the dropout rate among San Carlos students attending high school in Globe, Arizona was 50%. The reasons for this were complex, but appeared to be related to the fact that the Globe high school program did not relate well to the cultural background of the Apache students who had previously attended grade school on the reservation. To increase the effectiveness of education for those students, in 1977 the Globe school district and the San Carlos Apache Council agreed to open an alternative high school on the reservation to provide a more appropriate educational program, including the teaching of useful skills for employment in tribal enterprises. Vocational classes are taught on a cooperative basis with students enabled to earn money in related apprentice programs as they complete their education. The tribe provides the school facilities, most of the teachers and staff, farm land for agricultural education, equipment and supplies. The Globe school district provides supplies, a counselor and an agricultural and a diversified occupation teacher.

Similar mutual benefits can be achieved through tribal-state collaboration, as will likely become increasingly necessary as federal programs devolve. The Northern Ute Indian Tribe and the State of Utah, for example, both have a concern about the welfare of children living on the Unitah and Ouray Indian Reservation.124 The tribe is better equipped than the state to provide culturally appropriate child services, but it lacks the necessary funding and technical ability, which the state has. As a result, the state and the Unitah Utes reached a cooperative agreement for the tribe to provide the services, with technical and financial support from the Utah Division of Child and Family Services. The agreement includes a provision for the state to make foster care payments to low income Ute families who take in relatives’ children, thus overcoming a primary obstacle for finding appropriate foster care on the reservation.

There are numerous examples of tribal-state and local government cooperation expanding in other fields,125 such as taxation and economic development. Traditionally, the greatest conflict between tribal governments and state and local governments has been over scarce resources. While this is, and to at least some degree will continue to be, an area of conflict, experience indicates that under certain circumstances collaboration will replace competition. Two areas in which resource competition have been strong are fishing and hunting, and water.126 In a number of states, most notably in the Pacific Northwest and the upper Midwest, tribes, in ceding lands to the Federal Government by treaty, retained off-reservation fishing and hunting rights. At the time of the treaty signing, these rights were necessary for tribal members survival, and among the low income reservation residents this food supply remains essential.

The Indian population has always been extremely conservation minded, never taking more fish or game than they needed and always leaving enough for fish and animal populations to reproduce. Pollution resulting from clear cutting of timber and the building of dams by non-Indians have significantly reduced the availability of fish, while non-Indian development has diminished the game population. In addition, many of the non-native people who have moved into or visit these states have not been so conservation oriented, and have over-fished and over-hunted, causing shortages that the states must now contend with. Uninformed sports and commercial fisherman and hunters have often blamed the tribal population for the shortages, while states, in carrying out conservation programs, have attempted to interfere with tribal members exercising their right to provide necessary food for themselves. This has often led to serious harassment of Indians attempting to feed their families by state officials and local people (some of whom, at times, have acted violently).

This has also led to expensive litigation, with Federal courts fairly consistently upholding Native American fishing and hunting rights under the treaties. In the last few years, some of the newer appointees to the Supreme Court have led it to be less favorable to the tribes than had been the case for some time previously, leading to speculation that, if future appointments continue to in that direction, the legal situation concerning hunting and fishing might change. So long as it is fairly clear that the courts will uphold tribal fishing and hunting rights (and Congress does not weaken or end them), and the general political climate is reasonably supportive of the tribes, there is an incentive for state governments to work with tribes to conserve and increase available fish and game, rather than taking legal action against tribes and their members for that purpose. For tribes, joining with state governments in jointly maintaining and expanding resources may be advantageous in building and maintaining a climate of good relations with the surrounding communities, while attaining a greater availability of resources at less costs to their members than could be achieved through fighting through the courts.

An example of this kind of cooperation in dealing with wild life conservation has occurred in Western Washington. There, tribes established the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission to work with state and federal game officials.127 Collaborating closely with state officials, the tribes have created their own fishing regulations and enforcement programs. The commission employs fishery biologists who work closely with state fishery biologists in monitoring and regulating all fisheries. The tribes also have developed more than 60 fish hatcheries, which, as of the late 1980s, were producing 66 million fish a year while providing jobs for over 800 specialists.

More recently, the commission has been collaborating with local, state, federal and tribal governments, and non profit and private organizations to preserve and restore endangered salmon.128 This is a case where relations have developed from confrontation to cooperation, and from cooperation to collaboration, because all parties have the resources to come together on an equal basis as partners in a joint undertaking of great mutual interest. An important factor in the Northwest Fisheries case is that collaborative action led to a significant increase for all parties in the availability of the resource concerned. A strong incentive for collaborating is the realization that without it such increases would not occur.

Whether or not collaboration by tribal governments and other governments involves an increase in power for Indian nations depends upon whether it truly is an essentially equal cooperation between partners who are each gaining more than it costs them. In the vast majority of instances this has been the case. Collaboration has grown largely because tribes have become more capable, and have been viewed as such, and as collaboration has expanded it has built more respect for Indian nations. This has made it easier for tribal governments to achieve many goals that could not otherwise have been achieved, while increasing tribal influence in surrounding jurisdictions, as we will see below. This is not to say that there are fewer conflicts between tribes and neighboring communities, but rather that collaboration increases power to resolve or cope with them.

To make tribal-state and local government-to-government relations collaborative, and to give tribes an Indian people representation in state and local governments requires appropriate channels and coordinating bodies as discussed in relation to the federal government above. A growing number of these have been developing over the last few years.129 For instance, in the Pacific North West, the first of these is an intertribal Indian organization for coordinating and enhancing collaboration concerning health policy with multiple state agencies in the three states that constitute the Portland Area of the Indian Health Service. The Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board discusses problems common to its several member tribes and works to develop appropriate policy and implementation with the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington.130 The Board, representing many of the tribes in the three states since 1974, has a professional staff and actively communicates with member tribes, state, regional and national Indian organizations concerned with health issues; and health related agencies in the three states. By providing professional staff and an active information and dialoging network, a well working relationship for the mutual development of policy and resolution of problems has been established. Clearly, well staffed and adequately funded intertribal policy organizations can greatly help tribes identify and analyze common issues and coordinate tribal communication with other governmental entities. A major factor in the success of the Northwest collaboration is that each state has developed its own vehicles for coordinating Indian health policy, and for Indian policy generally, in dialog with the tribes in the state.

In Oregon and Idaho representatives of tribal governments meet regularly with the state's health personnel and the coordinating institution. In Oregon, the Commission on Indian Services (CIS) was created by statute in 1975.131 The Commission is an organ of the state legislature, consisting of one representative each of: the Oregon Senate, the Oregon House, and of the eleven federally recognized tribes in the state. CIS acts as a resource and advisory board to the legislature, the Governor and state agencies, recommending methods for the state to improve all areas of services to Indians and to improve the state’s relationship with Oregon’s Indian tribes and people.

CIS holds regular meetings to consider how issues of concern to Indian people can best be addressed, often with the participation of state and local government and agency personnel. Meetings include an annual Government-to-Government summit of tribal and state legislative and executive branch leaders, and three or four sets of “cluster” meetings of issue oriented work groups focusing on the details of government-to-government work in various policy areas, involving all 26 executive departments. The Commission evaluates legislation that affects Indian people, both in its drafting stage and after implementation, notifying interested parties about the legislation and coordinating legislative testimony. The Commission also acts as a clearing house and source of information for state, local and tribal governments and the general public on Indian laws, programs, issues, demographics and economics, and tribal government.

The executive branch of Oregon state government also is well developed for the handling of Indian affairs, in collaboration with CIS. Under a 1996 executive order from the governor132 and a 2001 statute,133 an official in the Governor’s office, designated by the Governor, oversees coordination of executive branch Indian policy and communication. Each Cabinet level department head is responsible for seeing that the agency he or she leads communicates regularly in a government-to-government manner with the Oregon tribes on all matters that affect them, making a reasonable effort to cooperate with the tribes in the development and implementation Indian related policy. The department designates, and publishes a list of, “key contact” staff members who dialogue with tribes and are responsible for overseeing areas of Indian related policy in their agencies. Each department produces an annual report of its Indian related policy developments and government-to-government relationship with Oregon tribes. At least once a year, the Department of Administrative Services, in consultation with CIS, provides training to state agency managers and other personnel who regularly communicate with tribes.

Just how the tribal-state and local government relationship continues to develop is likely to be greatly influenced by how the federal government continues to relate to Indian nations. First, will Congress and the administration, at all levels, continue to develop and maintain the government-to-government relationship with tribal governments? Second, will the federal government, in a time of fiscal conservatism, provide adequate resources to Indian nations for self-determination and the development of self-sufficiency, when tribes have never received adequate resources for their needs, or even an equitable per capita share of federal funding? Third, in the course of devolving programs downward, will the federal government provide enough autonomy to tribal governments, and enough incentive to state governments, to promote tribal and state and local government-to-government relations?

The continued development of the ability of tribal governments to function as equal partners with state and local governments, clearly requires the federal government to continue to respect tribal governments, as governments in the federal system, while expanding and maintaining its orientation toward Indian self-governance. The necessary empowerment includes: 1) continuing to expand recognition of existing legal authority, and in some cases creating additional legal provisions, for Indian self-government; 2) providing financial and other incentives to exercise that legal authority, and, 3) more broadly, providing the necessary resources for Indian nations to be self-sufficient, and thus self determining, in finances, education, training and other culturally appropriate services (as will be developed in Chapter 5). These resources may be provided directly, and or the federal government can promote the ability of Indian nations to provide them for themselves through economic and other development.

Internally, the federal government needs to continue to develop appropriate structures for coordinating and carrying out Indian policy in the course of representative consultation with Indian people (both on and off reservations), while furthering the ability of federal employees (through appropriate staffing, education, training, etc.) to function in Indian affairs, and related matters, knowledgeably, in an appropriate government-to-government manner.

In addition, if tribal-state and local government relations are to develop fully, the federal government must structure devolution of federal functions to the states appropriately to encourage, with adequate incentives, promotion of tribal-state and local government cooperation. Moreover, in matters where the federal and lower levels of government are involved, the federal government can enhance the development of such collaboration by providing appropriate means for facilitating tribal-state and local government negotiations and dispute resolution, as exemplified by the mechanisms established by EPA.

Indian nations acting as full partners in federalism, with full government-to-government relations between tribal and state and local governments, will only be realized if neighboring governments: 1) come to appreciate the mutual benefits of relating with Indian nations on a government-to-government basis, 2) create adequate and appropriate structures for government to government relations (including appropriate means of communication and coordination), and 3) develop their personnel (through appropriate staffing, education, training, etc.) to function fully in government-to-government relationships. Further discussion by those concerned may produce additional alternatives for enhancing and coordinating collaboration. Regardless of which specific approach is taken, the development of a fully collaborative and highly communicative government-to-government relationship among tribal and state and local entities will be a most progressive and beneficial process for all the citizens and members of the concerned states and tribes. Fortunately, current trends indicate continued movement in that direction.

The one trend that has been working to undercut Indian nation power and government-to-government relations has been tendency by the Supreme Court under, now former, Chief Justice Rehnquist's leadership to restrict tribal government jurisdiction and authority, somewhat reducing the legal framework for many aspects of Indian power, in some cases limiting federal authority v. states as well.134 Some examples of these cases include Alaska v. Alaska Village of Veneti Tribal Governmente,135 in which the Supreme court, in striking down a village tax on an outside entity operating in the village, stated that Alaska lands conveyed under the Alaska Claims Settlement Act are not "set aside" for Indian People under the "superintendence" of the United States and did not constitute "Indian Country" subject to tribal self-governance.

The United States Supreme Court, on March 29, 2005 by an 8-1 vote, overruled the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Oneida Nation of New York v. City of Sherrill, holding, for the first time, that a tribe's claim of sovereign immunity from state taxation on property it had purchased on its historic reservation was barred by the tribe's long delay in bringing its claims, during which time the land was developed and governed by non-Indians who were unaware of the tribe's claims.136 The court relied on the equity principles of laches, acquiescence and impossibility (that the tribe could not evict non-Indians) in reaching its decision. Writing for the Majority, Justice Ginsburg stated that the proper course of action for a tribe in the Oneida's situation to seek regaining of full sovereignty over its land is to apply to the Secretary of the Interior to have the land taken into trust. The decision has opened questions about all of the Indian land in New York, as none of it is held in trust as all of it that tribes have not purchased was its original land prior to contact, which was recognized as belonging to the tribe by treaty, prior to the trust system's establishment. As a result of the Supreme Court decision, the Oneida nation has received property tax bills of about $400,000 on its Turning Stone Casino and nine other properties in Verona, NY.

     In March, 2003 the Supreme Court ruled 6-3, in U.S. v. Navajo Nation (opinion at: http://supct.law.cornell.edu/html/01-1375.ZO.html), that the Navajo could not suit the U.S. government for lost revenues despite impropriety by the Secretary of the Interior.137 There are some hints in the majority opinion that the court majority might be shifting its view of U.S. trust responsibility for self-determining tribes from that of an all purpose trustee, to that of guarantor of property and rights, but not of assets, risks and liabilities in tribally managed affairs. The Navajo Nation was continuing its $600 law suite against Peabody Coal, claiming the nation was prevented from having a fair contract with the coal company because of its collusion with Secretary of the Interior in 1984, and it remains to be seen if civil suite against the company can provide a remedy now that the Supreme Court blocked by in holding that the U.S. government had no liability for failure to properly and fairly exercise its trust responsibility.
 
In Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, in 1996, the Supreme Court used the Eleventh Amendment to strike down a provision of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) that authorized a federally recognized tribe to bring suit in federal court if a state did not negotiate in good faith with a tribe for a gaming contract.138 While the decision did not overturn or limit any other part of IGRA, it was believed that this holding might lead to states preventing Indian Gaming, or might give them unfair leverage in bargaining with Indian nations over casino compacts, in opposition to the intent of Congress. To date there is no indication that this has been the effect of Seminole Tribe of Florida in practice, in part because the Department of Interior must approve such contracts, in part because states have been under pressure to raise revenue, and thus have often been generally open to there being Indian gaming, as well as the fact that is not yet clear how the lower courts will interpret Seminole Tribe of Florida.

So far, it is not clear how far the Supreme Court will go in limiting the authority and rights of federally recognized tribes or individual Native Americans, or indeed if it will continue to do so. There is fear in Indian Country that members of the court would like to reduce recognized federal tribes to essentially private clubs. So far, there is no indication that anything like that is in progress. What is clear is that so long as law is an important part of U.S. politics, how courts, and especially the Supreme Court decide has an effect on tribal power. The judicial power is not absolute, as it may not come into play unless someone brings a case, lower courts may not follow the intent of the Supreme Court, and may not be reversed by the Supreme Court when they do so, and Congress, or in extremely rare cases the constitutional amendment process, may reverse the court, or courts may change their views, for reasons of personnel changes, or otherwise. However, even the question of whether or not courts will be friendly to Indians and nations, and whether or not it is good tactics or strategy to bring a case, or have the threat of doing so available, is an important one for indigenous power.

This brings us to an all too brief direct consideration of Congress and legislation in the consideration of power in the Indian experience. As the Supreme Court has ruled (in the United States v. Kagama, and other cases),139 since Congress decided to end tribal treaty making and begin forced assimilation in the 19th Century, the Congress through the legislative process (including the limiting roles of the President, courts, and in practice, administration) has the "plenary power" to determine the entirety of Indian law (within Constitutional limitations), from whether there will be federally recognized tribes, who they will be (by name or through what process), who their members will be, and what their powers, jurisdiction and rights will be. Throughout the all to brief historical survey, above, key acts of Congress have been mentioned. Regularly Congress acts in Indian affairs, both in legislation, budgeting, approval of Presidential appointments and oversight. In one currently very relevant example, after the Supreme Court decided that federally recognized Indian tribes had the authority to carry out gaming, Congress limited that power, in passing IGRA by requiring tribes to sign compacts with states to carry out that gaming, giving states a limited veto on what if any gaming it would allow tribes to have, and giving states leverage to negotiate regulation of tribal gaming and income sharing from it, while restricting how Indian nations could use gambling profits. Currently, Congress is considering amending IGRA, placing further restrictions and regulations on Indian gaming.140

While Congress is an actor with power in American politics, it is also, impacted by the power of others (and by other factors), within itself, and external to it. Critical is the structure of Congress, including which party is in power in each house, the committee arrangements, the role of leadership, and who fills which positions at which time. The lack of any committee on Indian affairs until the 1970s, when there was first a select and then a permanent Committee on Indian Affairs in the Senate, meant that the BIA was virtually without oversight until that time.141 The timing of who fills what leadership position is demonstrated by the fact that in 1996 Republican Senator Gorton of Washington, a long time opponent of Indian sovereignty, as chair of the subcommittee dealing with the Interior Budget, was able to extremely severely cut most Indian budgets - on the pretext of having funding for environmental administration and Indian health, following the drastic funding cuts virtually across the board made by the House with its newly elected Republican revolution members following their "Contract for America." The Senate further cuts in Indian affairs were virtually unique, as the Senate generally put back some of what the House had cut from the President's proposed budgets. President Clinton's willingness to veto Congressional budget bills several times, until some restoration was made, led to some increases, but Indian budgets remained generally sharply cut.142

Externally, Congress is impacted by a large number of power and other factors (including the unfolding of events143). What concerns us here is the growth of Indian political power within the larger political interaction. An important aspect of that is the change of Indian financing.

The Developing Economics of American Indian Power

As indicated above, with a great boost from the New Deal, Native American economies improved considerably by World War II, from the terribly harsh time of the Meriam Report, in 1928. Since then, Indian economies have expanded considerably, as part of a real increase in self-determination (as will be shown below), and over all, indigenous Americans are better off then they were, but there is still much economic development to under take to catch up with the population as whole, while tribal economies generally have improved, but remain under capitalized and under developed. For many years it was extremely difficult for tribes to obtain capital because tribal land was held in trust by the U.S. government, and could not be used as collateral for loans, while neither the government nor the private sector provided loan guarantees. As Indian nations began to be able to make their own economic decisions, they realized that they could borrow against the value of future natural resource extraction, as well as gaining capital through increasing that production and gaining better prices for it by negotiating their own deals. Thus in 1970, during the gas shortages brought on by the Middle East oil embargo, a number of tribal leaders, meeting to have tribes take over management of their gas and oil, formed the Council on Energy Resources Tribes (CERT).144 To initially finance CERT, the organization met with government agencies that dealt with energy. Almost all, except the BIA, assisted CERT in getting started. That organization, along with recent efforts and developments, have placed many tribes in a better economic position, but the preponderance of them and their members continue to be considerably economically less well off than the rest of the country.

American Indians rank near the bottom, for measured groups, of almost every social, health and economic indicator, with more than twice the average poverty and unemployment rates,145 and the worst math and English achievement levels,146 while lagging in high school and college graduation rates147. They also have the shortest life expectancy and suffer greatly from more diseases than any other group.148 At the same time, Native Americans receive much less federal money per person for services than Americans generally,149 with Washington spending more money for the health care of each federal prisoner than for each Indian.150 This has been true consistently, and remains the case, even with Congress more than replacing most of the money President Bush proposed in the FY2007, in comparison with the FY2006, federal budget,151 Moreover, as we have seen above, lack of adequate financing has prevented many Indian nations from take over federal programs and giving adequate education and training to tribal members to fulfill, adequately, all the positions that are needed to run tribal government programs adequately. Indeed, adequate provision of resources is a prerequisite for the successful functioning of any effort to develop and carry out government-to-government relations, and, ultimately, is a critical underpinning of Native American power.

To differing extents, most recognized Indian nations suffer from poverty, including high unemployment, low incomes and low net personal worth.152 Although the situation is improving for many nations, most tribes have a shortage of capital and income,153 and suffer from very undeveloped infrastructure,154 restricting their ability to undertake economic and community development, and to provide jobs and sufficient and adequate housing,155 along with appropriate and reasonable quality and culturally appropriate health, education, police and social services. Lack of funding reduces the ability of tribes to govern themselves, with most Indian nations lacking the resources to take over many federal programs, and making it more difficult for tribal governments to collaborate with other governments and have an equitable say about public policy that effects them.156 Thus, there is an immense need for the expansion of tribal economies.

In the last fifteen years Indian nations as a group have made significant economic gains, with just a few tribes very well off, some having made very little improvement, and most significantly improved, but still way behind the rest of the country. For the 40% of the tribes that have them, casinos have played a role in fiscal improvement, but the most important factor in economic growth has been nations gaining control of their economic initiatives, with tribes with casinos increasing economic development from 1990 to 2000 by 36% and those with out gaming by 30%.157 At the same time, while there remain significant barriers to individual indigenous business development, Native American business activity is growing rapidly on, and around, reservations. Among firms earning more than $50,000 annually, these firms are outperforming other minority owned ventures. Dun and Bradstreet reports that American Indian enterprises, which constitute 5% of minority business, have a greater average sales volume and larger number of employees than their counterparts. However, particularly in states with large Indian populations, indigenous people own businesses at a much lower rate than the non-minority population. From 1987 to 2000 the number of Indian owned enterprises grew by 84%, seven times the over all national rate, to 197,000, with sales rate growth double that of the U.S. average, so that their gross incomes have expanded by 179% to $34,3 billion.158

The central set of issues that must be met for continued successful and meaningful tribal economic advancement involve the multi-dimensional aspects of tribal sovereignty. Experience shows that tribal economic development needs to be controlled by the tribes and their members, though considerable appropriate outside expert advice and technical assistance is needed. Studies of economic development on reservations demonstrate that imposed programs have largely failed, while those that have been successful have almost always been undertaken by Indian people themselves or in full partnership with others.159 Only the members of a local community can fully understand their own situation, though outside experts with a sufficient knowledge of the particular people and place may be extremely helpful in partnering with community members in building understanding of the situation and realistic options for action.160 The more different the local culture is from that of outside experts or decision makers – as Native cultures are from the U.S. mainstream – the more this is the case. Moreover, economic development is not merely a matter of providing jobs and income. It is part of community development, and needs to be undertaken consistently with the values and goals of the community, which the community must determine for itself. Thus, as Native American communities have gained increasing control over their own economies and decision making, and individual native people have been able to gain more entrepreneurial freedom, indigenous economies have expanded.

This means that the process by which the community decides must be consistent with the culture of the community members.161 Tribal sovereignty is not the sovereignty of the tribal government or council, which is only an instrument for the expression of the sovereignty of the Native nation. Numerous Indian nations suffer from culturally inappropriate governments imposed by the United States, which need revision as an essential step in returning their communities to harmony and preparing the ground for effective economic and related community advancement.162 Since most Native people continue to hold inclusive participatory values (though they may be frustrated by lack of opportunities to participate in community decision making), in most instances it is essential to give tribal members ownership (and make them feel like owners) of the nation’s economic processes and entities by involving them in economic decision making, in ways that fit the particular nation. This will not only work to stop making economic development a divisive issue, by moving the community toward harmony while increasing the quality and consistency of tribal economic policy, but will increase the ability to of the tribal government to be, and to be perceived as, a reliable partner for working with external entities for tribal economic advancement.

Similarly, many Indian nations either do not have judicial entities, or have tribal courts that are not independent from the tribal councils. This has resulted in difficulty in achieving equitable resolution of conflicts and trouble cases within the community, that are widely recognized as legitimate.163 It has also been a deterrent to numerous businesses undertaking economic ventures with tribes, when they fear that tribal courts will be partial to the nation, should a dispute arise.164

In addition, while tribal governments and the tribal political process ought to set the goals and guidelines for tribally owned business, and should review their operation, tribal businesses need to be given autonomy in their day to day operations, so long as they function well within the purposes and guidelines set for them.165 This is necessary to insure that tribal enterprises are run professionally, and that the quality of their management is not under cut by politics, weighed down by bureaucracy, or overrun with turbulence from rapid shifts in policy or interpersonal infighting. This is also consistent with the traditional dispersion of power in Indian nations, that promotes their participatory democracy.

One set of issues that many Native nations need to address as they grow their economies is how to do so in ways that increase the independence of nation citizens, and overcome the dependence created by U.S. colonialism. Tribal member participation in decision making, education and other services and appropriately developed programs can, and do, play important roles here. In addition, tribes need to find a good balance for their situation between sharing tribal income directly with members, and applying it to increase member opportunity and empowerment through such vehicles as education, including scholarships, cultural exchanges and technical training, and business financing and other support.

In order to promote the effectiveness of Native enterprises, and to reinforce tribal culture, it is extremely valuable to run tribal businesses consistently with the nation's culture. Since the traditional values of most Native nations are participatory, in many instances, it would make sense to run the nation's businesses as participatory organizations. Today, the wider world is increasingly discovering the advantage of using traditional tribal organization principles and methods in the operation of business, governmental and non-profit organizations.21 Research shows that organizations, particularly in business, with properly structured and functioning employee participation, or team process, function better by every measure,166 because well functioning workplace participation brings better organizational communication, more knowledgeable decision making, more understanding in the carrying out of decisions and functions, increased commitment and moral among personnel, bringing greater efficiency, productivity and effectiveness in the organization. Thus it would seem especially appropriate to have indigenous organizations, whose cultural values are participatory, operate with organizational democracy. With tribally owned enterprises, this can mean developing an appropriate participatory or team process, which is usually best reinforced by a parallel reward system that may include group productivity bonuses and profit sharing.167 Where businesses are owned by tribal members, employee participation can be enhanced by structuring the enterprise with democratic worker ownership. This can be done via various vehicles including cooperatives and employee stock ownership plans (ESOPS), under which debt is separated from participation, so that members of the organization may own differing financial stakes in the enterprise, without that interfering with each member's right and ability to participate in decision making. The idea is to use financial reward in ways that reinforce the process of organizational operation while encouraging investment,168 so that both through participation in decision making and in financial compensation, personnel feel like owners, and in this case, contributors to tribal welfare in the course of advancing their personal (and family) interest.

A fine instance of a participatory employee owned Indian enterprise is Navasew, a sewing business started up in an abandoned factory on the Navajo reservation in December 2003.169 The firm, manufacturing dress shirts for the Navy and combat uniform tops for the Army, was carefully started with technical and planning assistance from Industrial Cooperative Association (ICA), which has Native experience, financing from Navajo Nation, Omega Apparel - a firm experienced in the field - ICA affiliate LEAF and grants from the department of agriculture. The Navajo workforce is being trained in all aspects of the apparel business, so that they can effectively participate in the management of the firm. With Navasew already successful, by late 2005 plans for expansion of the operation were in progress.

Because of a lack of business and modern personal financial experience by a high percentage of Indian people living on isolated, low income, reservations or in low income urban neighborhoods, whose parents and neighbors also lacked entrepreneurial and business knowledge, considerable education is needed by many Native Americans. This includes education in economic literacy, and entrepreneurial and business skills and practices,170 while many Native American businesses require technical assistance and mentoring concerning many areas of their operation,171 which need to be provided in culturally appropriate ways. Native nations may develop the capacity to do this themselves, or collectively, including providing incubators for native owned businesses. For example, four Indian Nations in Maine operate the Four Directions Development Corporation, which offers technical assistance and funding to native businesses.172

Where tribes wish to start up businesses, or own exploitable resources, they may need to contract with experienced external firms to manage the enterprise or undertake the resource extraction. It is advisable in such cases for Indian nations to include in the contract that the external management firm will train tribal members to take over the enterprise. A number of tribes have done this, including the Southern Utes,173 who arranged for training and the right to buy out the management contract in setting up their casino. When enough tribal members had attained sufficient training and experience, the nation exercised its buyout right and took over management of the casino, and increased tribal income. Similarly, the Southern Utes arranged for training of tribal members and organized their own natural gas distribution company. As gas leases with external production companies have expired, the tribe has taken over the gas production and distribution from that land, significantly increasing the amount of money the tribe brings in from each cubic foot of produced gas.

Many American Indian nations and tribal members seeking to become entrepreneurs, particularly on reservations, lack access to debt and equity capital, and often are confronted with very high interest rates for what capital is available. For tribal members on isolated reservations, there are often no financial institutions within very long distances, while lack of electricity or telephone lines may prevent electronic access to financial sources. A part of the problem of obtaining financing, and receiving it at favorable rates, is that since land and resources are held in trust, they are not available as loan collateral. In the past, this often meant that tribes could not launch potentially successful businesses, such as tourist hotels, themselves, and were reduced to leasing land to outside companies that would create and manage the businesses, reducing the tribe to receiving a limited number of dead end, low paying jobs, and a small portion of the enterprise income.

As Indian nations have gained more control of their economic and other affairs, including being able to make more lucrative contracts for energy extraction and rights of way, this situation has begun to change, and somewhat more capital has been coming available. The potential profitability of casinos has made acquiring capital or investment to launch them relatively easy, and though the increased tribal income generated by gaming, for nations that have it, has usually been far less than what is required for full business, and social service development, it has provided a significant new source of finance. However, numerous tribes still lack the capital they need to begin to approach the level of economic for self-sufficiency, and for the development of education, housing health and other services, and for the infrastructure necessary for all kinds of tribal development.

The money needed for tribal economic development can come from a number of sources, as grants, investments and loans. The federal government can play a major roll in meeting its trust responsibility, here, both with direct grants and with measures that encourage private investment, grants and low cost loans. This can include loan guarantees, and devices such as declaring low income reservations "enterprise zones," entitling private parties to receive federal tax reductions for on reservation investments, A number of foundations have already provided some important assistance, such as the Northwest Area Foundation providing The Lumni Nation of Washington a $200,000 grant, in January 2004, to reduce the tribe's 18.3% poverty rate through wellness, education and economic development efforts,174 while, Microsoft Corp. deposited $1 million in the Native American Bank to help make mortgages available to American Indians.175

Tribal institutions and tribes can also play an important role in providing economic development related funding to Native nations and indigenous owned businesses. The Native American Bank, has been providing a variety of banking services to tribes and Individual Indians, including loans for capitalization and businesses services.176 Meanwhile, the Lakota Fund, for example, has been making loans to small businesses on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, since 1986, and runs the Spirit Horse Gallery, providing an outlet for Oglala Lakota artists and crafts persons.177 Indian nations can also help their own members, such as the Cherokee Nation Commerce Department has done in promoting tribal member savings for business development, education and home ownership, through offering individual development accounts, together with budget training and credit counciling.178 Federally recognized tribes, as governments, can also issue bonds for economic development and other governmental purposes, though current law limits tribal bounding power to strictly "governmental functions." Thus it has recently been proposed that federal statutes be changed to make Indian nations fully equal to other governments in this regard.179 Most important, now that some Native nations have advanced to the point of being more than self-sufficient, and some others are reaching that stage, the better off Indian nations would do very well to assist their less well off brothers and sisters through investment, grants and technical assistance, either directly, or through Indian economic institutions.180

To be useful, whatever financial and other resources are available for tribes and native entrepreneurs need to be known. This information needs to be included in education, technical assistance and public information programs. It should be regularly updated and made available by Indian nations and institutions, financial institutions and by government agencies, including on the internet.

In addition, both tribal governments and the federal government can clarify policies and rules, and reduce bureaucracy so that business decisions can be made in a reasonable time. Currently, on a number of reservations, the process for gaining approvals from the tribe and/or the BIA, allowing a business start up or move in a new direction, takes several times longer than for a private business on private land to gain the same permissions.181 Similarly, by developing clear land use and other policies and decision/approval processes, tribes can direct development to fit tribal needs and values, while providing certainty and reducing decision making time that facilitate business development, while allowing those affected by a decision to have a say about it. Also, certainty promoting business development can be enhanced by establishing clear appropriate transaction recording instruments (e.g. a method for recording a land use agreement) and effective, low cost enforcement and adjudication procedures.

Although to accomplish it requires capitol, that at times may only become available from economic expansion, a critical requirement for economic development is the creation of the necessary infrastructure, missing on many reservations. This not only includes building and maintaining adequate roads and bridges, but also distribution of electricity, telephone and computer systems. Government, businesses and foundations can play an important role here, as exemplified by a provision inserted into the FY2006 highway bill to allocate $3 million over the next 5 years to pave some of the 7600 miles of dirt roads, of the 9800 miles roads, on the Navajo reservation,182 and by various public and private initiatives to increase computer availability and training on reservations, such as the $6 million grant to the Navajo Nation in 1998 for the Nation’s chapters to build their computer capacity. As of fall 2005, the 110 chapters each had from three to 14 computers, available round the clock to chapter members for any purpose, which wee wirelessly connected to the internet. Much of the development was done by OnSat, a world wide company that helps developing nations establish computer networks in rural areas. Similarly, the Native owned firm, Sacred Wind, began providing cell phone service in isolated areas of the Navajo Nation, early in 2005, and relying federal and state subsidies, hoped to supply 2500 dine households with phone service by the end of the year.183 By using newer technology, sometimes via satellite, communication can be improved without the expense and environmental damage of constructing phone lines over vast distances.

Similarly, a number of nations have been moving to fill their own needs for electricity, consistent with their environmental needs and values, by applying wind and other new technology. By meeting their own needs in this way, they are also assisting in satisfying their neighbors needs, and thus turning required self-development into longer term income producing investment. For example, The Hopi Nation is exploring developing wind generated electricity, and, possibly later on, solar power from photo voltaic cells, in an effort to attain ecological and economic sustainability. This might include involvement in the Sterling Energy wind farm, if that is selected to replace the Mohave Generating station, which uses Hopi coal from Black Mesa and coal slurry water from the N-Aquifer, dangerously depleting that aquifer, while pollution from the Mohave plant is contributing to global warming and high cancer rates in the area.184 Meanwhile, Laguna Pueblo designer Dave Melton and Sacred Power Corporation of Albuquerque have already brought electricity to 30 isolated homes on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico, using wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, as part of a developing alternative power projct.185

An important piece of economic development strategy is to choose economic enterprises that fit the location of the tribe. The most profitable Indian casinos are located in populous areas, as are the Foxwoods Resort Casino Mohegan Sun Casino. Navajo Nation, in sparsely populated scenically beautiful rural areas, has been attempting to increase tribal and tribal member tourist related business. Some nations in isolated rural areas have been providing outsourcing to an increasing number of U.S. companies that prefer to send jobs to reservations rather than outside the U.S. On four Utah reservations, 150-180 jobs were known to have been created from commercial and government outsourcing, by July of 2005, while on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Lakota Express, an Indian owned web design and marketing firm, had a contract to check the accuracy of the transcribing of hand written information in English recorded by an outsourcing operation in China.186 Doing business over the internet is also an option for isolated tribes and native entrepreneurs,

Finally, to be able to develop sufficiently with economic security for the long term, it is usually wise to diversify economic activity. Single lines of business have limited capacity, may have limited lives and are extremely likely to vary in success over time. A variety of ventures provides security as individual enterprises decline or need reorganization, and is likely to better fill community needs. Broad based economic activity is also likely to build better ties with the surrounding community, including providing a wide range of employment and shared interest among tribal and neighboring governments and communities.

Economic Diversification and Intergovernmental Cooperation as Aspects of Indian Nation Power

While much yet needs to be achieved, there are numerous instances of successful diversified tribal business development as parts of broader tribal development. An excellent example that had made significant progress before the advent of Indian gaming, and which has continued to expand with its assistance, is development of the Mississippi Choctaw.

The Choctaws who remained in Mississippi after the tribe was removed to Indian territory, now Oklahoma, in the 1830s had to persist in a difficult struggle of survival as a people and as individuals.187 With the government failing to fulfill its treaty obligation to provide allotments to most of those remaining in Mississippi, many tribal members were reduced to share cropping on what had been their own land, for $.50 a day. Thus, amid poverty and harsh living conditions the Nation's population declined to just over 1200 in 1910. In 1918 the federal government finally acknowledged its responsibility and established the Choctaw Agency with a few sparsely funded programs. In 1921 the government purchased 17,000 scattered acres to create a reservation, today comprising seven communities. Yet conditions remained so desperate that it was only in the 1960s that the birth rate began to exceed the death rate, with the a new federal politics giving space for the tribe to assert its self-determination and begin its own process of holistic development, including building an economic base. Business efforts began with the sale of tribal timber, allowing the tribe to hire one of its members as a business manager. By the late 1960's the Choctaw had established a construction company, building and renovating homes, and an 80-acre industrial park, that by the late 1980s contained six manufacturing plants, three of which were owned by the nation. One of these is Chata Greeting Enterprises (now American Greetings), which near the end of the '80s was the fourth largest producer in the world, by volume, of greeting cards. The plant was financed largely under a compact with city of Philadelphia, MS through the city passing the first industrial bond issue in the United States used for Indian economic development. A second is Chata Enterprises, supplying General Motors with wire harnesses for automobile instrument panels. The plant was expanded to become the Fourth largest employer in the state with many non-tribal workers, also in collaboration with the city of Philadelphia, passing a bond issue.188 In 1985, the Choctaw set up a credit union to provide banking services to tribal members and three years later completed the Choctaw Shopping Center housing a bank, a grocery store, a restaurant, a barber and beauty shop, a gas station and other businesses. As of 2003, the nation owned and operated a broad portfolio of manufacturing, service, retail and tourism enterprises throughout Mississippi, the Southeast and into Mexico, including two resorts centered on casinos.189 The Choctaw then provided more than 8,000 permanent, full-time jobs, 65% of which were held by non-Indians. With an annual payroll of more than $123.7 million, the Choctaw Nation had become one of the 10 largest employers in Mississippi. In addition, tribal revenues have helped the Choctaw to reinvest more than $210 million in economic development projects in Mississippi. Some tribal enterprises, such as the Choctaw Farmers Market, are intended to provide non-economic as well as economic benefits, to tribal members, in this case, enhancing nutrition while increasing tribal farmers' incomes.

On this economic base, the Choctaw have funded tribal, and broader community development, in collaboration with surrounding localities and governments, for mutual benefit. Before the end of the 1980s, this already included an education program from pre-school through high school and a training and vocational center for adult education, providing learning in a culturally appropriate manner along with Choctaw culture, which had led to more than 60 tribal members earning college degrees by late in that decade. Also during the '80s, the health program encompassed a 40 bed hospital with three satellite clinics, a 120 bed nursing home, mental health and substance abuse programs, an ambulance service, a community nursing and training program, and monitoring of sanitation and water quality.

Today, these and other tribal and collaborative programs with other communities are considerably expanded.190 Education has grown to become the largest unified reservation school system in the United States, with 1,700 - 1,800 students, with newer programs including child care, post-secondary education and all levels of post secondary education counseling, scholarships and student support services. Health services have been enhanced with a dental clinic, a Diabetes Management Center, dietary and nutrition programs, non-emergency medical transportation, A Women's Health Center and a WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program. The Choctaw Housing Authority now provides general maintenance, emergency maintenance, housing placement, resident services and the holistic Drug Elimination Program.

Community Services now encompasses a full range of programs, including Child Welfare Service, Foster Care, Handicapped and Elderly Services, Pathway House, S.T.O.P Domestic Violence, food and emergency services, and behavioral health programs. The Choctaw Department of Agriculture and Rural Development operates a number of programs that provide assistance and education to farmers and gardeners, along with education for homemakers. The department's conservation, nature and education programs combine with those of the Environmental Program Office to manage and protect the environment and provide for sustainable development. The tribe monitors air and water quality and runs its own water treatment plant for drinking water and undertakes solid waste treatment. Tribal government is now well financed and has expanded to include a court system, corrections and a police and fire department. The Choctaw nation is now well developed, empowering its members and taking steps to undertake individual and community healing. The nation has applied its development to gain considerable influence in the surrounding communities and the state of Mississippi, including in cooperative programs whose synergy produces mutual benefits for the parties.

Other examples of successful economic development, bringing intergovernmental cooperation, in which tribal gaming played an important role in facilitating business diversification, include two cases from California. In the first instance, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians,191 with one of the largest reservations in the state had long used much of their 32,000 acres for fruit farming and cattle ranching. In later years, land was leased for sand and gravel mining operations or to various utilities, water districts and rail lines. This, however was never enough to fully support the tribal community.

With the launching of tribal gaming, the nation made the strategic decision to utilize gaming revenue as a catalyst to diversify the tribal economy. In 1997, Morongo opened one of the largest Shell gasoline stations in the country. In 1999, that was followed up by an A&W drive-in restaurant nearly twice the size of the national prototype, and one of the most successful A&W franchises. Also, that year, the Morongo opened the first Coco's restaurant owned by an American Indian tribe. The Morongo then acquired Hadley Fruit Orchards, three retail stores and mail order operations. In 2003, the tribe opened a $26 million Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water bottling plant. All of this has made the Morongo the largest private sector employer in the Pass Area, with almost 2000 employees, and a major contributor to the regional economy, with an annual payroll that exceeds $25 million, while generating millions more in payroll taxes, unemployment benefits, employee benefits and health programs.

An economic impact analysis conducted by economist Dr. John Husing estimated that jobs directly or indirectly attributable to all of the economic operations of Morongo would rise from approximately 1,726 jobs in 2002 to approximately 5,800 in 2008. He projected that total economic impact brought to the Inland Empire area during this period would be $2.8 billion including the creation of more than 4,000 new jobs and $1.4 billion in the purchase of new goods and services. The band contributes to the fact that nearly 2/3 of the jobs created by tribal governments in California are held by residents of nearby communities. In addition, as of 2003 Morongo was spending an estimated $20 million per year for goods and services purchased from about 1,200 outside vendors, about 25 percent of which are minority-owned and operated. This does not include the sale of goods and services generated by patrons visiting the area or services and merchandise purchased by tribal employees. The U.S. Department of Commerce research estimates that 42 jobs are created for every one million spent on goods and services. As of late 2003, the Morongo were exploring how to provide clean, reliable and low cost energy to their businesses, tenants and tribal members, in the course of becoming energy self-sufficient, while creating yet another income stream and to maintain its traditional role as a steward of the environment. There is no question the tribe's economic position alone, without any consideration of campaign donations or public relations, gives it considerable influence with area local governments and a cash strapped state of California, and this is the case for other Indian nations who have developed considerably with large scale contribution to the area economy, especially when the tribe engages in cooperative efforts with surrounding governments, as is almost always the case.

In the second California case, investments of casino profits by Elk Valley Rancheria in Crescent City has been reviving one of California's poorest counties.192 The town's dingy bowling alley experienced a $2-million renovation, while the local golf course received new carts and clubs. The tribe also opened an adjacent sports bar and grill in 2003, while operating Harborside Internet, the only Internet service provider serving the southern coast of Oregon, since purchasing it in 1999. Planning was underway in the fall of 2003 to improve 205 oceanfront acres with a four-story hotel, a performing arts center and expanding the existing nine hole golf course into an Arnold Palmer-designed 18-hole facility that local officials hope will finally bring remote Del Norte County into the lucrative tourist circuit. Working with the county's natural beauty, the tribe also looked forward to offering guided expeditions for whale watching, white-water rafting and tide-pool exploration.

By the early 2000s, the tribe had become the county's largest private employer with 250 workers on its payroll and 200 more anticipated with the projected oceanfront resort near the Oregon boarder. In addition to creating jobs, tribal investment has increased the wages and income of community members. In fall of 2003, a bill was winding its way through the state legislature would allow the tribe to partner with the city and county to finance a greatly needed $35-million wastewater treatment plant. For the nation, the casino was a clear path out of poverty. None of the 100 Rancheria members remain on government assistance, and a college fund was putting 13 students through school. Meanwhile, the Rancheria was moving to increase business by moving its casino from a residential street to the major north-south highway. The Elk Valley Rancheria petitioned the BIA to put its newly acquired land in trust, while making an agreement with the county to more than make up for the $2800 in property taxes that it would lose, by pledging the neighboring government a share of bed taxes from the resort that could bring the county as much as $250,000 a year. In addition, the Elk Valley nation has been contributing to funding what has been billed as the largest July 4 fireworks display between San Francisco and Portland. It also has loaned money, interest-free, to the county fair board. The tribe has taken the reins of the community's only Head Start program, which served 60 mostly non-tribal children, while hosting Native American motivational speakers at the local high school.

Increased Funding and Expanded Indian Political Activity

Where Indian nations have been able to develop their economies, sufficiently, tribal sovereignty has been significantly realized internally through providing the needed funding for tribal governments to operate effectively, running their own programs consistently with tribal needs, while providing the infrastructure, education, training and other services necessary to empowering tribal members to be good citizens and government workers. Externally, those tribes that have been able to build decent economies have gained a degree of political power enabling them to fulfill their roles as governments in the American federal system. This has not only involved collaboration between tribes and local governments, but has included Indian nations gaining more input into decisions that affect them in some states, and to a lesser degree at the federal level. This is especially the case in California, where Indian nations collectively are now the largest contributor to political campaigns, and with heavy financing have been able to realize the passage of some ballot propositions.193 As an active member of one California nation stated in the presence of this writer, before her tribe's financial rise, it was difficult for it to obtain any acknowledgement from inquiries to the state's U.S. Senators. Since the nation's coming to economic prominence, when she call's Senator Feinstein's office, the Senator often calls her back personally.

Political spending by Indians clearly has increased significantly. For example, in 1995, in a successful attempt to get the Connecticut legislature to pass gaming legislation, the Pequots spent $1.5 million on lobbying, $292,000 for public relations, $210,000 for advertising, and $188,000 for consulting.194 It was noted in 2003 that Lobbying by Wisconsin gaming nations had increased in recent years, with Democratic Governor Jim Doyle receiving most of the money from 2002-06: $1.3 million, and some money going to other Democrats.195 The Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Tribes of Connecticut donated $141,500 to political campaigns of Republicans and Democrats.196 Oklahoma tribes, as of November 2003, had given $1.2 million to the states politicians since 1996, with almost half of it donated in 2002 and 2003.197 In 2003 and 2004, Wisconsin tribes contributed over $700,000 to the Democratic National Committee to help elect Governor Jim Doyle.198 Michigan tribes, similarly increased political activity, as the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa gave $25,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 2004 year and up to $2000 to Republican U.S. Congressmen Dave Camp (MI) and J.D. Hayworth (AZ).199 The Michigan tribes also reported increased tribal member political involvement with increased voting in tribal elections and registration for local, state an national elections.

Similarly, numerous Indian nations have been spending on public relations and advertising. For instance, in 1993, The Prairie Island Indian Community, operating the Treasure Island Resort and Casino near Redwing, MN, put on a $200,000 television ad campaign showing the extent of the positive impact of their donations in an effort to protect the Indian gaming monopoly in Minnesota, as the state legislature debated whether to authorize state sponsored casinos. At the same time, the Seneca Nation of New York undertook a television, radio, newspaper and internet campaign designed to convince the public that New York State's plans to tax reservation gas and cigarette sales were "unethical, unfair and unconstitutional."200

Large campaign donations, particularly at the federal level, do not necessarily bring about a desired policy action. Often, they provide more in the way of access than direct influence,201 Indeed, a number of Indian tribes and organizations have reduced their donations, because of that, and also finding that spending beyond a certain level is not productive.50I Moroeover, at times Indian nations have been taken advantage of by political operatives to make sizable contributions with no actual possibility of obtaining a policy gain, as has been made clear in the Abramoff scandal.202 Indeed, the Abramoff lobbying scandal created some negative impact on public perceptions of Indian tribes with gaming, as evidenced by the November, 2006 Alameda County, CA Community Food Bank turning away $3,000 from the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians, operators of the Casino San Pablo, several days after the food bank had broadcast a televised plea for donations.203

Never-the-less, though most Indian nations and most Native Americans still have much to attain to be reasonably well off financially, there is no question that advances in tribal economics are increasing tribal welfare and sovereignty at homes while empowering tribal governments to move toward becoming full partners in American Federalism.204 The key to successful tribal economic development is in undertaking it as part of tribal development, as a whole, with the understanding that it is necessary to transcend the overly narrow western definition of economics, transforming it into the art and science of living well within the community, and with the environment, human and non-human, all of which is natural.

Meanwhile, there is clear evidence that increased tribal political spending is being paralleled by growing tribal and individual Indian political activity, of which the increased spending is a partial cause. It is significant, that in the 1996 Presidential campaign, well over a million dollars is known to have been donated by Native Americans to the Democratic Party, and in the that campaign, for the first time, there was a Native American desk at both the Committee to Re-Elect the President and at the Democratic National Committee, and Indian presence and activity with in the Democratic party has been increasing. For example, The Indigenous Democratic Network, INDN's List, celebrated its first anniversary, in Washington, DC, in March, 2006, with more than 100 people in attendance, including elected tribal officials, labor union leaders, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean (D-VT) and DNC Vice Chairman and Representative Mike Honda (D-CA). Meanwhile, at least since December, 2005 the Democratic Party had been considering a change in the presidential primary schedule that could give greater weight to states with large Indian populations, according to the report of a special commission on presidential nominations, issued Dec. 10, calling for one or two additional early primaries to introduce more diversity into the first round of the Presidential campaign. Relevant to this, the recent Democratic National Committee’s fall meeting adopted a strong resolution supporting tribal sovereignty. DNC Chairman Howard Dean, who enjoyed strong Native American support in his run for the Presidential nomination in 2004, stated, ''We are serious about electing Indian candidates, empowering the people and changing the country. The DNC stands in solidarity with Indian Nations and reaffirms their tribal sovereignty.'' At its semi-annual meeting, December 3, the DNC passed a resolution written by executive committee member Frank LaMere (Winnebago) reflecting that Indians had delivered 85% of their votes to Democrats in the last four elections and secured ''several House and Senate seats for Democrats whose elections hinged on the Native American vote.'' ''Be it therefore resolved that the Democratic National Committee stands in solidarity with the Indian Nations and reaffirms [its] support for the exercise of tribal sovereignty and for tribal efforts to be self-sufficient.'' In addition, ''that federal laws, executive orders and regulations in this regard be honored and that the DNC continue to fight for the rights of Native people..." Also in March, the New Mexico Democratic Party Central Committee amended its bylaws, allowing the formation of an American Indian Caucus.205

In 2000, Indian money and activity was critical in the defeat of Washington Senator Slade Gorton.206 The same happened in the South Dakota U.S. House race in 2002. In states like Washington, where there is a high concentration of Indians, they can be an important swing voting group, as a high percentage of them will vote, and vote knowledgeably, if there are important Indian issues involved. This has led to an increase in political organizing of Native Americans. This can be seen, for example, in the National Congress of American Indians leading a nonpartisan effort of many organizations to increase the Indian vote, in 2004, with a target of 1 million new Native voters and then setting up poll watching at significant Indian voting places around the U.S., in collaboration with local tribal leaders.207 In the past, the Indian vote had been low, but heavily Democratic, with neither party paying much attention to Indian interests. Increasing Indian voting and political activity have changed that, with both the Republicans and the Democrats coming to appealing for the Indian vote. In 2004, the Republican National committee signed up 2000 American Indian "team leaders," to work as grass routs level organizers. In February, leading Republican senators hosted Indian leaders at a day-long listening conference in Washington, DC, similar to already regularly occurring events within the Democratic party. Recently, this has included the launching, in 2005, of the Indigenous Democratic Network to "identify, recruit, groom, train, staff and finance Indian candidates across the country for local and state offices",208 and the holding of the first national Indian candidate boot camp, to assist Indian candidates, organized by INDN List, dedicated to recruiting and training Indian political candidates, hosted by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux in mid-October, 2005.209 Indeed, an increasing number of indigenous people are running and being elected to office, and being appointed to political positions, as exemplified in Therese Two Bulls (D-Pine Ridge), being elected to the state senate in 2002, as the first Indian women elected to the South Dakota legislature, and Brenda Frank, appointment to the Oregon Board of Education, in spring 2005, as the first Native American to serve on the board.210

Clearly, Indians do have political power on those issues on which they are not directly opposed by other strong interests, which is regularly the case concerning the development of government-to-government relations. Indeed, constant pressure from Native Americans and their allies on intergovernmental relations issues has kept the development process in motion.

At the same time, there is political opposition to Native Americans, some of it on specific issues such as gaming, and some more general. Some of the opposition is rooted in prejudice and racism, which though diminished, continues, especially around Indian Country. This is seen in South Dakota, where The New York Times reported, in 2004, that Indian's are often given difficulties in registering and voting, and in working at the polls, and where the state and some of its political entities have been forced by the federal courts to redistrict because of Gerrymandering aimed at preventing Indians from electing candidates of their choice.211 The opposition includes a number of organizations, generally opposed to tribal sovereignty, but with particular foci on limiting or eliminating Indian gaming and expansion of land in trust.212 Because there is always potential that such opposition could become significant, most Indian nations and leaders have tried to be careful to promote a favorable public image. This has been shown in some public relations campaigns, mentioned above, and is a consideration in tribal intergovernmental cooperation and charity work, which have roots in traditional indigenous values of cooperation and generosity, as aspects of maintaining mutual respect, harmony and balance.

Power is extremely complex, involving an, often, immense number of interactions and shifting relationships, on many levels, impacting events, that in turn affect power, in ways that chaos and complexity theories tell us are beyond mechanical prediction, no matter how sophisticated. What can be said, here and now, is that Native Americans and their communities, very generally (with a wide range of variation and exception), are returning to power: experiencing a renewal. Although the legal framework for indigenous power has been shrinking, economic and political power, including a generally favorable public opinion, has been increasing, although there is a very long way to go for indigenous Americans, as a group, to have parity with the rest of the nation, and to have more power to contribute to its wellbeing.

Much yet needs to be done, including on the community and personal level to return to regain power, return to harmony and balance. Many Indian communities are gaining the resources, the power, to do more to heal individual and community infighting. It is a question of how the power, the resources, the energy, are used. It is a question of using power for what purpose. For while the means of harmonizing, empowering for mutual benefit, are increasing, the ability and temptation to use power for short term personal or factional gain is increasing. This is a very great source of danger for Indians and their nations; not only because infighting is internally self destructive, but because the injustice it causes lowers external public opinion and invites outside intervention.

To site the most visible manifestation, banishment of tribal members, in various forms, including disenrolment, is growing across the U.S. for various causes, but by far the largest reason continues to be economic, while voicing opposition to political leaders is a leading cause, in many instances where there are either no tribal courts, or courts are not independent. In March, the Pechanga tribe's ejected about 90 descendents of Paulina Hunter, bringing the number of banished tribal members to more than 220. In February, about a dozen dissenting members of the Meskwaki Tribal Council, on the losing side in a dispute that shut down the nation's Tama, IA gaming facility in 2003, said that they were being denied their share of gaming profits ($2000 a month per capita payments) and feared banishment. In March, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribal Council voted to banish members convicted of a second (temporary banishment) or third (permanent banishment) serious criminal offense. The Narragansett Tribe of Rhode Island banished the Champlain family, supposedly for failing to provide documents proving membership, family members say weeks after one of them raised questions of how the tribe had spent $1 million it received from Harrah’s entertainment.213 As of summer 2005, since the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and the signing of Class II gaming compacts more than 1,500 Indians had been removed from membership in 14 California tribes, while several hundred people had had their membership terminated by tribes elsewhere in the U.S., and still others say that they had been improperly barred from becoming tribal members, and those numbers continue to rise.214

It has become critical for numerous Indian nations to overcome the largely U.S. government imposed inappropriate forms of tribal government, that exacerbate factionalism and individual imbalances and misbehaviors, largely stemming from physical and cultural genocide, and reinstitute inclusive processes that promote personal and community healing.215 To return to harmony and power, there is a need to apply the traditional values that kept indigenous communities in balance with themselves and their environments, in ways that are appropriate for the Twenty-First. If this happens, it will be of benefit to the entire nation, and indeed the whole world, which is filled with disharmony and imbalance that threatens the stability of the planet, and could use some examples to help us all return to our often long forgotten indigeneity. As it is, the huge environmental, economic and geopolitical shifts and events developing in the country and the world may totally shift the context, and hence reality, of power for Native American nations.

Fortunately, American Indians may get some help with this from changes in the wider American culture. From the time of contact, indigenous people of the Americas have had a, too often unrecognized, impact on Western thought, that can be seen in a careful reading of Locke and Rousseau.216 Recently indigenous ways of seeing and thinking have been returning, increasingly, to the western mainstream as many of the problems in modern living life more closely parallel those of ancient times.217 Thus the growth team process in work places, restorative justice, and solving disputes through consensus problem solving, to name only a few of the many examples that even encompasses holistic thinking and the cutting edge of contemporary physics, are all movements towards traditional Native American ways. We need to encourage each other to remember that to respect and assist each other is in our own interest. We need to return to recognizing that power with out empowerment is ultimately mutually destructive. Power is a necessary means. But the question always, is power for what purpose, considering the full range of impacts of it application.

AKNOWLEDGMENT

This is a revised version a paper presented by the author at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, itself developed and expanded from several earlier papers by the author including: "Remembering the Circle: The Relevance of Traditional American Indian Governance for the 21st Century," Western Social Science Association 2001 Annual Meeting; "Acknowledging the Circle: The Impact of American Indian Tradition Upon Western Political Thought and its Contemporary Relevance," Proceedings of the 2002 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2002); "Returning the World to Harmony: getting to Peace in American Indian Tradition," Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVII, No. 1, Spring 2006, at: www.indigenouspolicy.org, and Nonviolent Change, Vol. XX, No. 3, Spring 2006, at: www.nonviolentchangejournal.org; with Ladonna Harris and Barbara Morris, "Honoring the Circle: Developing Government-to-Government Relations Between Tribal Governments and the Federal, State and Local Governments," in Proceedings of the 2002 American Political Science Association Meetings (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2002); with LaDonna Harris, Barbara Morris and Deborah Hunt, "Recreating the Circle: Overcoming Disharmony and Infighting in American Indian Communities," coauthored Proceedings of the 1999 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1999); with LaDonna Harris and Benjamin Broome, "Wisdom of the People: Potential and Pitfalls in Efforts by the Comanches to Recreate Traditional Ways of Building Consensus,” American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter 2001; "Working in the Circle: American Indian Leadership and Collaboration through Applying Traditional Values in the Context of the Twenty-First Century," Proceedings of the 2002 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2004); "Termination by Budget," Proceedings of the 1999 American Political Science Association Meetings (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1996). with Deborah Esquebel Hunt, "Appropriate Consulting with Indian Nations: Facilitating Returning to the Wisdom of the People," Proceedings of the 2000 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2000); and "Nurturing the Circle: American Indian Sovereignty and Economic Development," Proceedings of the American Indian Studies Section at the 2006 Western Social Science Association Meeting, published in IPJ, summer 2006.

FOOTNOTES

1. Power here is seen as the ability to get someone to do something that s/he would not otherwise do, or to refrain from doing something that s/he would otherwise do. It should be noted, however, that even in this sense power includes empowerment - enabling someone to act or refrain from acting - and the ability directly to accomplish tasks or achieve ends (which is closer to a physics definition of power). On Morgenthau’s approach to power see, Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1978). Particularly Ch. 3. Lasswell’s approach can be gleaned from reading, Harold Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: P. Smith, 1960). See also Harold Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan, Power and Society: A Framework for Political Inquiry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950).

2. A large collection of articles on complexity theory and chaos theory is available at Complexity Pages: Exploring the New Science of Chaos and Complexity at: http://www.complexity.orcom.net.nz. For a social science application of complexity theory in Indian affairs, see Nicholas C. Peroff, Menominee Drums, Tribal Termination and restoration (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982).

3. John Simmons and William Mares, Working Together (New York: Knopf, 1983), Paul Bernstein, Workplace Democratization: Its Internal Dynamics (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980), especially, Ch. 5; Alan S. Blinder, Editor, Paying for Productivity: A Look at the Evidence (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1990); Edward E. Lawler III, Susan Albers Mohrman and Gerald E. Ledford, Jr., Employee Involvement and Total Quality Management: Practices and Results in Fortune 1000 Companies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992) and Haig R. Nalbantian, Ed., Incentives, Cooperation, and Risk Sharing: Economic and Psychological Perspectives on Employment Contracts (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987).

4. That is with Columbus arrival and the beginning of large scale colonization of the Americans by Europeans.

5. For a discussion of this in general terms, with examples from several nations, see Stephen M. Sachs, "Remembering the Circle: The Relevance of Traditional American Indian Governance for the 21st Century," Western Social Science Association 2001 Annual Meeting, and "Acknowledging the Circle: The Impact of American Indian Tradition Upon Western Political Thought and its Contemporary Relevance," Proceedings of the 2002 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2002). This general pattern is also discussed briefly in Sharon O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), Ch. 2. For discussion of how some particular traditional native nations were participatory see: Lewis Henry Morgan, League of the Iroquois (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, Carol Publishing Group 1996); Bruce G. Trigger, The Huron: Farmers of the North (Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1990), especially Ch. 6, "Government and Law"; Morris Edward Opler, An Apache Way of Life: The Economic Social, and Religious Institutions of the Chiricahua Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), on politics, particularly pp. 460-471; Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorethea Leighton, The Navaho (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 111-123;. Young, A Political History of the Navajo Tribe, pp. 15-16, 25-27; Alfred W. Bowers, Hidatsa Social and Ceremonial Organization (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), particularly pp. 26-64; Catherine Price, The Oglala People, 1841-1879: A Political History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996) [which drew on many sources including the Walker papers], particularly pp. 7-21, 33-34, 60-62, 98-99, 156, 168 and 172-173; the second of the three edited volumes of the James R. Walker papers published by the University of Nebraska Press: Raymond DeMallie, Ed., Lakota Society (1982), Part I, particularly documents 6-16; Ruth Landes, “The Ojibwa of Canada,” in Margaret Mead, Ed., Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937), Ch. 3; Jannette Mirsky, “The Dakota” in Mead, Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples; and Chaudhuri and Chaudhuri, A Sacred Path, particularly Ch 9, but throughout the rest of the work, including in the creation Myth discussed in Ch. 3.

6. There were those in the Army who pushed for banning the Sun Dance, although the greatest pressure for banning it, and Indian ceremonies generally, came from religious organizations, as part of the attempted assimilation process. See Roger L. Nichols, American Indians in U.S. History (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), p. 158)))

7. See Stephen M. Sachs, "Returning the World to Harmony: getting to Peace in American Indian Tradition," Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVII, No. 1, Spring 2006, at: www.indigenouspolicy.org, and Nonviolent Change, Vol. XX, No. 3, Spring 2006, at: www.nonviolentchangejournal.org. Some specific examples, discussed in Ibid., are the Muscogee (Creek) an the Dine (Navajo). For the Muscogee (Creek), as seen in their creation story, and in all their related stories showing how everything is interrelated and must be kept in balance, as set forth by in Jean and Joyotpaul Chaudhuri, A Sacred Path: The Way of the Muscogee Creeks (Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center, 2001), "The beautiful astronomical legends give us a picture of the balance of male and female energies, thereby showing the patch of darkness in light and light in darkness, all circling in the search for harmony in motion. The legends provide a humanities parallel of the science of the Creeks which also sees the search for balance between the four elements and the synergy linking the cycles of dynamic energies of the earth, the water, the sun (fire), and the sky (air). This is no romantic pipe dream, but the vision of an earth-centered culture with sacred trust responsibilities. The Earth centered physics involves exchanges between and transformations of various forms of energy and the cycles of energy among soil, water, nutrients, animals, sunlight, air and rain in an environmentally balanced manner (p. 19)". This dynamic balancing, that is necessary in the physical sphere, is also necessary in society, in which all the elements: men, women, the different clans and the two moieties - indeed all individuals - each have their unique and essential functions that must be kept in, and returned to, balance (Ch. 5-10). The same is true of the individual, who if internally out of balance can not act socially in a balanced way. "In the Muscogee Creek cosmos, all things consist of particular combinations of body, mind and spirit. When these are not in harmony, one is truly lost and healing becomes necessary for the entity to continue (p. 23, the theme pervading chapter 4)." The Dine emphasis upon harmony, or "beauty," is discussed in Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton, The Navaho (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); James F. Downes, The Navajo (New York: Holt Reinhart and Winston, Inc., 1972), particularly chapters 2, 3 and 8; Robert W. Young, A Political History of the Navajo Tribe (Tsaille, Navajo Nation, AZ: Navajo Community College Press, 1978); Alice Reichard, Navaho Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series, 1950); and in Marianne O. Nielson and James W. Zion, Eds., Navajo Peacemaking: Living Traditional Justice (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005).

8. Ella Deloria, Speaking of Indians (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1998), Part II, “A Scheme of Life That Worked,” pp. 24-25.

9. Ibid., p. 37.

10. See the discussion of what Rousseau learned from Indians in Stephen M. Sachs, "Acknowledging the Circle: The Impact of American Indian Tradition Upon Western Political Thought and its Contemporary Relevance," Proceedings of the 2002 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2002).

11. Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984).

12. The relative military and technological power and the impact of disease are analyzed in Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Albert. A. Knopf, 2005), Part One. The situation with the Aztecs is discussed in Mann, 1491, pp. 122-132.; Jake Page, In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000 Year History of the American Indians (New York: Free Press, 2003), 99. 95-96, 100-101; and Nicholas J. Sander, Ancient Americas: The Great civilizations (Thrup, Stroud, Gloustershire, United Kingdom: Sutton Publishers, Ltd., 2004), pp. 110-112. On the disease question, Mann, 1491, pp. 91-92, states,

Europeans routinely lost when they could no take advantage of disease and political fragmentation. Conquistadors tried to take Florida a dozen times between 1510 and 1560 – and failed each time. In 1532 King Joao III of Portugal divided the coast of Brazil into 14 provinces and dispatched colonists to each one. By 1550 only two settlements survived. The French were barely able to sustain trading posts in the St. Lawrence and didn’t even try to plant the flag in pre-epidemic New England. European microorganisms were slow to penetrate the Yucatan Peninsula, where most of the Maya polities were too small to readily play off against each other. In consequence, Spain never fully subdued the Maya. The Zapatista rebellion that convulsed southern Mexico in the 1990s was merely the most recent battle in an episodic colonial war begun in the Sixteenth Century.

13. Mann, 1491, pp/ 31-61. Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States (Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), Ch. 3. Page, In the Hands of the Great Spirit, Ch. 2, 5, 6, 9-12.

14. Debo, Ibid., p. 44, with some examples on pp. 103, 153, 154 ad 290.

15. It is important to realize that every society has a variety of technologies, that is skills and artifacts, applied in every part of life, and that technology is not only the outcome of science and industry, in the western sense. Moreover, even in warfare, different technologies have advantages and disadvantages of differing types that make them relatively more or less effective in differing conditions. Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century rifles, (but usually not pistols), for example, could shoot further than North American bows and arrows, but arrows could be fired more quickly, and far more quietly. Thus arrows, usually fired by modern versions of crossbows, are still used by modern armies in some stealth operations today. Note also that the ranges, accuracy, destructive power, reloading times, ease of use, mobility, and training required to properly employ guns and bows varies with the characteristics of the particular weapon. Fifteenth to Nineteenth Century pistols are more mobile, and faster to load, but of shorter range and lesser accuracy than rifles of the same period, while longer range, more destructive, cannons are less mobile and require more person power to operate. Bows also vary in their characteristics with more difficult to handle, longer bows generally having greater range. Until well into the Nineteenth Century, the very large British long bow had more range than the rifles of the day, which tempted the British Army to bring them back into use. This had become impractical, however, because the strength and ability required to use the rapid firing long range weapon effectively, generally had to be developed over a number of years, beginning at a young age. Mann, 1491, Part One, contains a comparative discussion of contact period European and Native technologies.

16. Debo, A History of Indians, Ch. 1-5, and O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments, Ch. 3.

17. Bruce G. Trigger, The Huron: Farmers of the North, Second Edition (Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1990), Ch 1 and 4.

18. This development is discussed a greater length, with references, in Ladonna Harris, Stephen M. Sachs and Barbara Morris, "Honoring the Circle: Developing Government-to-Government Relations Between Tribal Governments and the Federal, State and Local Governments," in Proceedings of the 2002 American Political Science Association Meetings (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2002), Part I.

19. O’Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments, Part 2, and Ibid.

20. On the pattern of Indian organization development in the U.S., see Harris, Sachs and Morris, "Honoring the Circle", pp. 1-9; Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989 Ch. 18-21; and James S. Olson and Raymond Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1984), Ch. 4-8 and Epilogue.

21. As it was not with the Northern Cheyenne, who returned from Oklahoma to Montana and South Dakota, despite military force and attempts to starve them into agreeing to go back to Oklahoma. See Joe Starita, The Dull Knives of Pine Ridge: A Lakota Odyssey (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), Ch. 2.

22. O’Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments, Ch. 3 and Debo, A History of the Indians, Ch. 15-17.

23. For a discussion of the problems of Indian Education, including in boarding schools prior to 1928, see Margaret Connell Szasz, Education and the American Indian: The Road to Self-Determination Since 1928 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged, 1999), particularly pp. 2-3, 10-11, 18-27 and 67. A more detailed critique of the boarding school experience is to be found in David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995); and Brenda Child and Tsianina Lomawama, Eds., A Hard Lesson: The Indian Boarding Schools (Sant Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press in collaboration with the Heard Museum, 2000).

24, Edgar Cahn, Ed., Our Brother's Keeper, Keeper: The Indian In White America (New York: New American Library, 1969); Robert A. Nelson and Joseph F. Sheley, "The Bureau of Indian Affairs Influence on Indian Self-Determination," in Vine Deloria, Jr., American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century," (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp. 177-197; and Vine DeLoria and Clifford Lytle, Nations Within (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984). The quote is from Cahn, pp. 5, 10, and 13, and repeated by y Nelson and Sheley, in Deloria, Jr., American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century, p. 178.

25. The difficulties in reforming the BIA are analyzed in Harris, Sachs and Morris, "Honoring the Circle", Part I. See also Nelson and. Sheley, "The Bureau of Indian Affairs Influence on Indian Self-Determination;" Duane Champagne, "Organizational Change and Conflict: A Case Study of the Bureau of Indian Affairs," in Lyeden and Legters, Ed., Native Americans and Public Policy; J. Leiper Freeman, The Political Process: Executive Bureau-Legislative Committee Relations (New York: Random House, 1966) pp. 43-46); David Melmer, "BIA Financial Reports Leave Some Questions Unanswered," Indian Country Today, February 1, 1996, pp. A1, A2, "Trust Funds Gone," Indian Country Today, May 7-14, 1996, pp. A1-!3. Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, Ch. 5, "The Indian New Deal." See also, Debo, A History of the Indians in the United States, Ch. 18, "The White Man Repents."

26. The various negative impacts of physical and cultural genocide imparted on Native people by Euro-American colonialism, and what is being done to overcome it, are discussed with further references in Stephen M. Sachs, LaDonna Harris, Barbara Morris and Deborah Hunt, "Recreating the Circle: Overcoming Disharmony and Infighting in American Indian Communities," coauthored Proceedings of the 1999 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1999).

27. Gae Whitney Canfield, Sarah Winnemuca of the Northern Paiutes (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983).

28. Roger L. Nichols, American Indians in U.S. History (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), pp. 174-175.

29. Jake Page, In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000 Year History of American Indians (New York, Free Press, 2003), p. 311.

30. Ibid., p. 352.

31. Ibid., p. 354.

32. Ibid., pp. 349-355; and Debo, A History of the Indians, pp. 334-335.

33. Page, In the Hands of the Great Spirit, pp. 355-357 and Nichols, American Indians in U.S. History, pp, 176-179.

34. Lewis Meriam, et al., The Problem of Indian Administration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1928), discussed in Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States, pp. 336-337 and James S. Olson and Raymond Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1984), pp. 100-112 and 193. A representative excerpt is published in Francis Paul Prucha, Ed., Documents of United States Indian Policy, Second Edition, Expanded (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), No 136, pp. 219-221. A history of Indian policy and its impact under the Dawes Act is also provided in Janet A McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991).

35. O’Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments, pp. 79-82 and Debo, A History of the Indians, p. 335.

36. Szasz, Education of the American Indian, pp 5,6 and 113-114.

37. Ibid., Ch. 3.

38. This is discussed in Freeman, The Political Process.

39. The developments of this period are discussed in Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States, Ch. 18 and Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, Ch. 6.

40. The problems with the imposed forms of tribal governments are briefly discussed in Olson and Wilson, Native Americans In the Twentieth Century, pp. 122-123. There is also some discussion of this in Morris W. Foster, Being Comanche (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1991), pp. 60, 138, 161 and 204 (in footnote 79). With assistance from AIO, the Comanches, and to a lesser extent three other Oklahoma Tribes, initiated community building processes to overcome some of the difficulties arising from this imposition. A consideration of the difficulties is included in a discussion of the steps taken toward overcoming them, in short form in LaDonna Harris, Stephen M. Sachs and Benjamin J. Broome, "Returning to Harmony: A Comanche Effort to Reactivate Wisdom of the People," Native Americas, Vol. XIII, No. 3, Fall 1996, and in longer form in LaDonna Harris, Stephen M. Sachs and Benjamin J. Broome, "Recreating Harmony Through Wisdom of the People: The Case of the Comanche and Other Oklahoma Tribes" (Paper presented at A National Gathering on Aboriginal Peoples and Dispute Resolution: "Making Peace and Sharing Power," Victoria Conference Center, Victoria, BC, Canada, April 10-May 3, 1996); and LaDonna Harris, Stephen M. Sachs and Benjamin Broome, "Wisdom of the People: Potential and Pitfalls in Efforts by the Comanches to Recreate Traditional Ways of Building Consensus,” American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter 2001.

41. E. Cahn, Ed., Our Brother's Keeper: The Indian In White America (New York: New American Library, 1969); Robert A. Nelson and Joseph F. Sheley, "The Bureau of Indian Affairs Influence on Indian Self-Determination," in Vine Deloria, Jr., American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century," (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp. 177-197; and Vine DeLoria and Clifford Lytle, Nations Within (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).

42. A discussion of the Collier reforms is presented in Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, Ch. 5, "The Indian New Deal." See also, Debo, A History of the Indians in the United States, Ch. 18, "The White Man Repents."

43. Nelson and Sheley, "The Bureau of Indian Affairs Influence on Indian Self-Determination," pp. 180-194. The authors comment on p. 182:

The trustee role afforded the BIA the opportunity to make its presence felt in Indian affairs and, though less formally, to maintain roughly the same degree of sovereignty over Indians as it held prior to the passage of public law 93-638 [The Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act of 1975]. More to the point, the BIA has retained its powerful position through increased bureaucratization, a tactic relatively unnecessary prior to Public Law 93-638. During the past seven years, the BIA has maintained and increased its dominance over Indians through 1) a planning orientation suited more to its bureaucratic needs than to tribal needs, and 2) the conversion of tribes themselves to a bureaucratic planning orientation.

The authors' last point is extremely important, for it illustrates one of the ways that the BIA has continually acted to subvert tribal governments for its own purposes. As LaDonna Harris, as President for Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO), wrote to Congressman Morris Udall on October 12, 1979 (This letter, and most of the Correspondence of LaDonna Harris and AIO, and a number of other documents, referred to in this paper are in the LaDonna Harris Collection, formerly at NACE (Native American Community Education) in Chicago, but moved to the University of New Mexico Library, about 2005. Currently, that collection extends from roughly the early 1970s to approximately the late 1980s. Materials referred to in this paper that are in that collection will be annotated with "Harris Papers." Earlier LaDonna Harris and other AIO papers are housed at the University of Oklahoma with the papers of former Senator Fred Harris. More recent papers, including some cited in this writing, are in the files of AIO in Bernalillo, NM.):

Tribal governments have become extensions of the Federal Government and are not functioning to take care of the needs of their specific communities. They are being required to spend their time administering rather than governing.

44. This was particularly the case with limitations on the size of Navajo herds, in an effort to prevent overgrazing. See Nichols, American Indians in U.S. History, pp 181-182.

45. O’Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments, pp. 83-86; and Debo, A History of Indians in the United States, Ch. 19.

46. Termination essentially beginning its end on September 18, 1958, with Secretary of Interior Seaton's speech in Flagstaff, AZ, where he stated that he rejected termination without the full consent of the Indians concerned. Francis Paul Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, Third edition (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), Document #153, pp. 140-142.

47. Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, pp. 158-159.

48. Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, #158. "Task force on Indian Affairs, Extract from the Annual Report of the Commissioner on Indian Affairs, 1961," pp. 247-248.

49. The commencement of what later became known as the era of self-determination policy is outlined in O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments, pp. 86-91, 261-275. See also Debo, A History of Indians of the United States, Ch. 20, 21 and Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, Ch. 7, 8. Examples of the particular Native developments are set forth in. Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, #159, "President Johnson's Special Message to Congress, March 6, 1968, outlining his new Indian policy of 'self-determination,' pp. 249-150, #160, "the Civil Rights Act of 1958," Titles II-VII of which dealt with Native Americans, including applying the Bill of Rights to Native people in relation to their tribal governments, the authorization of a model code for courts of Indian offences, and the requirement that tribal consent be given for state expansion of jurisdiction in Indian country (limiting new application of termination era Public Law 280).

50. There are numerous examples of tribal successes both in their own self government and in partnerships with other governmental agencies. A striking example of the former is the San Juan Pueblo Housing Program, which has been able to build housing much faster than HUD, at 1/3 the HUD cost, and of better quality using a locally appropriate design, instead of HUD's generic design based on average U.S. urban conditions that are very different than those at the Pueblo. See, Steve Brambach, "Building for Bertha: San Juan Pueblo Housing Puts It All Together Without HUD," Indian Country Today, June 4-11, 1996, pp. C7, C8. Similarly, a 1995 Interior Department audit showed that ten tribes that had contracted to take over programs all did a better job of running them than had the BIA (Philip Brasher, "Audit Finds Tribal Governments Run Own Programs Better," News From Indian Country, Late May, 1995, pp. 1, 2). Some of the many instances of well working tribal to state and local government relations are discussed below, in Part II. One of the strongest areas of tribal-other government collaboration has been in the area of environmental protection where relatively good relationships have developed between EPA and the tribes. As will be discussed below, EPA has now delegated considerable regulatory autonomy to a number of tribes, and in a number of cases tribes, with more environmental protection expertise than surrounding counties, have worked with neighboring governments to plan and act together to enhance the quality of a jointly shared resource.

51. Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, Ch. 7 and 8, Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York, The New Press, 1996); and George Pierre Castile, To Show Heart: Native American Self-Determination and Federal Indian Policy, 1960-1975 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), Ch. 4-6.

52. This period of Indian history and the three acts are discussed in Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, Ch. 8; and very briefly in Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States, Addenda. The three acts of Congress are included in, Prucha, Documents of American History, #163, pp. 259-263, #167, pp. 260-262 and #163, pp. 265-267.

53. Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, Ch. 8. Examples of such organizations are: The American Indian Movement, Americans for Indian Opportunity, the Coalition of Indian Controlled School Boards, The Navajo Education Association, the National Indian Education Advisory Commission, The National Indian Leadership Training Program, the National Tribal Chairman's Association, Native American Rights Fund and Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity.

54. Stated by Vine Deloria in a panel discussion at the 2005 Western Social Science Association Meeting, attended by the author, The incident concerning the expansion of the museum board was confirmed in a discussion of Vine Deloria’s career, attended by the author, at the 2006 Western Social Science Association Meeting, by Suzanne Harjo, President of the Morningstar Foundation, and a long time proponent of the development of the National Museum of the American Indian. She stated that she was one of a number of people whom Deloria had contacted to be prepared to speak publicly if the board did not agree to appoint more Indigenous members,

55. See Stephen M. Sachs, "LaDonna Harris, Founder of Americans for Indian Opportunity: Leadership in the Tradition of Native American Women's Voices," to A Leadership Journal: Women In Leadership: Sharing the Vision, Vo. 3, No. 1, fall 1998, and "Working in the Circle: American Indian Leadership and Collaboration through Applying Traditional Values in the Context of the Twenty-First Century," Proceedings of the 2042 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2004).

56. For example, as Deloria said in answering a question during a panel discussion at the 2005 Western Social Science Association Meeting, that being a token Indian can be very useful, if you keep your perspective. He related that on invitation he served for several as the only Native on the Board of what has become the National Museum of the American Indian. Then, at a meeting just before a press conference for an important opening, he forced the board to appoint other Indians, by speaking to the waiting press of the Board's ethnocentrism and unfairness, if it did not do so. That eventually led to a majority Indian board, and set the stage for the eventual development of the National Museum. Similarly, Harris related to this writer, that when Oklahoma Politics prevented Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity (OIO) from receiving funding for one of its first projects through the University of Oklahoma, OIO found a faculty group at a distant, out-of-state university, that would, and did, obtain a grant for the work. An important aspect of her success, over more than four decades of Indian activism, has been remembering friendly contacts that may be useful, and creating or finding alternative vehicles for accomplishing important goals.

57. Ibid., and O'Brien, Native American Tribal Governments, pp. 86-91, 258. The Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 is P.L. 93-638, partially presented in Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, pp. 274-276.

58. This is discussed at length in Champagne, "A Case Study of the Bureau of Indian Affairs," especially pp. 44-57.

59. For example, a bill has been introduced in Congress to remove financing of Indian school construction, repair and maintenance from the BIA (which is unable to keep up with the task to the extent that currently badly needed repairs alone would take 200 years at the BIA's current rate of approving funding) and give it a National Indian Bonding Authority that would provide money directly to the tribal schools. See David Melmer, "$850 million Needed to Repair BIA Schools: No Relief in Sight," Indian Country Today, August 5-12, 1996, pp. B6, B7.

60. Letter from members of the Special Committee on Investigations of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, Dennis DeConcini, Chairman, John McCain, Co-Chairman, Thomas A. Daschle, Member, to President George H.W. Bush, February 23, 1989, p. 2 (Harris Papers).

61. Draft of December 1, 1989, pp. 1-2, from the Harris Papers.

62. A more detailed description of the development of federal government Indian policy communications and coordination from the Johnson Administration to the early George W. Bush Presidency, with references, is in Harris, Sachs and Morris, "Honoring the Circle", Part I.

63. For a discussion of advisory committees, See A. Lee Fritschler, and James M. Hoefler Smoking and Politics: Policy Making and the Federal Bureaucracy, Fifth Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall), pp. 41-42.

64. President Johnson, Special Message to Congress, March 6, 1968, reported in part in Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, No. 155, p. 248-249.

65. Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States, pp. 411-412.

66. See, "Recommendations for Indian Policy, Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Recommendations for Indian Policy," July 8, 1970, Referred to the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, House of Representatives, 91st Congress 2d session, Document No 91 363.

67. Ibid., p. 11.

68. Ibid., pp. 10 and 9-10. The elevating of the head of the BIA was intended to increase oversight of the agency as well as to increase the importance of Indian affairs in the department and the federal government. The independent Indian Trust Authority was intended to overcome the problems stemming from having the Secretary of Interior and the Justice Department handle trust rights cases, and it would have authority to bring cases against the United States with an automatic waver of sovereign immunity. A brief history of the fate of these provisions, and of developments relating to Indian policy in the Nixon Administration is contained in Leonard Garment, Crazy Rhythm: My Journey from Brooklyn, Jazz, and Wall Street to Nixon's White House, Watergate, and Beyond... (New York: Random House, 1997), pp. 223-247.

69. For example, see the letters in the Harris Papers sent to AIO from Stuart Jamison, Supervisor, the Indian Desk, Department of Agriculture between February 1976 and February 1978.

70. Therefore, in the Spring of 1975, the extremely complex Department of Health Education and Welfare established the HEW (later HHS) Intra-Departmental Council on Indian Affairs (See the letter to Casper Weinberger, Secretary of HEW, May 30, 1975 from LaDonna Harris, Harris Papers.), supplementing it in 1979 with the American Indian Advisory Group, chartered to function for two years (See the December 19, 1978 HEW "Note to National Indian Organizations" from A. David Lester, Chairman of the Intra-Departmental Council on Indian Affairs, attached to LaDonna Harris January 17, 1979 letter to A. David Lester in the Harris Papers).

71. In January 1979, the Department of Agriculture established an agency wide Native American Taskforce (. See the Department of Agriculture "Secretary's Memorandum No. 1932: Native American Task Force of January 25, 1978, attached to the letter of Stuart Jamison, Supervisor, Indian Desk, Department of Agriculture of April 4, 1978 (#7160) to LaDonna Harris, Harris Papers).

72. Excerpts from EPA, 7/18/84, "Indian Policy: Answers to Common Questions," Harris Papers.

73. For example, when the Office of Tribal Operations was established in 1994, Terry Williams, previously Executive Director of the Tulalip Tribe's Fisheries and Natural Resources, was appointed its first Executive Director (Terry C. Hansen, "EPA Establishes Offices to Strengthen Tribal Operations," News From Indian Country, Late October, 1994, p. 10). Then in 1997, Kathy Gorpospe, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, for six years an executive assistant with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, was appointed Executive Director of that Office. See, Holly Swanson, "Oregon Natural Resources Specialist Takes EPA Post" Indian Country Today, February 3-10, 1997, pp. B1, B2. Given the decline of salmon for a variety of reasons, which recently has become serious, the collaboration has not always been easy, nor have completely satisfactory solutions to problems always been arrived at.

74. Hansen, Ibid.

75. See EPA letter of January 9, 1988, "To Whom It May Concern," from David K Sabock, Office of Water Regulation Standards, continuing the proposed regulation and P.L. 100-4, ß131.7, Harris Papers. See Remarks of Richard DuBay, in Zelio, Editor, Promoting Effective State-Tribal Relations, pp. 2-7 and O'Brien, Native American Tribal Governments, p. 223. The extension of this practice to a tribe in Wisconsin was accompanied by some opposition from some state and local officials fearing that there would be increased costs for some of their constituents from potentially higher water quality standards that might apply to their jurisdictions.

76. "Two Years After the President's Meeting With Tribal Leaders: Annual Report of the Administration Working Group on Indians and Alaska Natives," August 1996, p.4.

77. Catherine A. Clay, "EPA Proposes to Work with Tribes in Same Way It Works with States," News From Indian Country, Late October, 1994, p. 10.

78. National Congress of American Indians Nuclear Waste Program, "Tribal Radiological Emergency Preparedness: Transporting Radioactive Waste Through Tribal Lands: Protecting the People and resources." (Washington, DC: NCAI, 1996).

79. Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, #194, "Indian Plicyof Ronald Reagan, January 24, 1983," pp. 302-304.

80. "Two Years After the President's Meeting With Tribal Leaders," pp. 3, 22-23.

81. Randall Howell, "Tribes Writing Regs on Housing: New HUD Law Effective Oct. 1, Indian Country Today, December 23-30, 1996, pp. B1, B5.

82. As reported in Brambach, "Building for Bertha: San Juan Pueblo Housing Puts It All Together Without HUD," discussed in more detail above in footnote 28.

83. The potential impact of the 1996 welfare reform for the tribes is analyzed George Waters and Tim Seward Legislative Update from George Waters Consulting Services, 1010 Massachusetts Ave., Washington, DC 20001, "RE: Welfare Reform/Budget Reconciliation -- P.L. 104-193, August 12, 1996 (a copy is achieved at NACE in Chicago). Note that the National Indian Policy Center in Washington, D.C. received an ANA grant to allow it to enter into a subcontract with the National Congress of American Indians to help defray costs of a national forum for tribal leaders to develop a plan to insure the appropriate government-to-government dialogue between tribal governments and the federal officials responsible for initiating welfare reform, "Policy Center to Participate in National Forum," Indian Country Today, September 16-23, 1996, p. A3.

84. For an analysis of the impact of welfare reform on Indian nations and people in terms of intergovernmental concerns (not the in terms of the philosophy and general impact of welfare reform, per say), see Deborah Esquibel Hunt, Stephen M. Sachs and Barbara Morris, “Devolution of Welfare Programs: The Impact on Indian Nations and on Tribal Government-State and Local Government Relations,” Proceedings of the 2000 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2000).

85. This was conveyed to Stephen Sachs in discussions with HUD area office personnel in the early 1980s.

86. A five part series of investigative reports of serious irregularities in Native American housing programs appeared in the Seattle Times in November and December 1996 and were reprinted in the "Northwest Today" section of Indian Country Today five consecutive weeks from the issue of December 14-23, 1996 to that of January 13-20, 1997. In testimony before Senate Committees on Indian Affairs and on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs on March 12, 1997, The HUD Inspector General, Susan Gaffney, testified that the Seattle Times reports of fraud, abuse and mismanagement were generally accurate. MS. Gaffney presented an analysis of the factors that had allowed for fraud, abuse and mismanagement and presented a set of recommendations for regulatory and administrative reform. The testimony is reprinted in, "Housing and Urban Development Inspector General Addresses Congressional Committees About Findings," Indian Country Today, March 31-April 7, 1997, pp. A2 & A6.

87. See, Proposed List of Inherently Federal Functions and Non-Inherently Federal Functions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, May 1997, and "Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Notice of Schedule of Regional Consultation Sessions on Tribal Shares," Federal Register, Vol. 62, No. 95, Friday, May 16, 1997, p. 27064.

88. "Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments," Indigenous Policy, Spring 2005.

89. For a discussion of Indian gaming, see W. Dale Mason, Indian Gaming: Tribal Sovereignty and American Politics (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000); and Kim Isaac Eisler, Revenge of the Pequots" How a Small Native American Tribe Created the World's Most Profitable Casino (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), Compacted percentage to the State of Connecticut. p. 224.

90. "Tribal Leaders Zero in on Treaty Obligations at Summit Meeting," Indian Country Today, Week of May 4, 1995, p. A2.

91. Communication from Michael Chapman, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs. On the establishment of the Working Group on American Indian and Alaska Natives, see"Members of Working Group on American Indians and Alaska Natives of the White House Domestic Policy Council," Revised January 27, 1997.

92. May 23, 1997 White House Memorandum for Heads of Departments and Agencies from Erskine Bowles, Chief of Staff to the President and Bruce Reed, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy concerning Executive Memorandum on Government-to-Government relations.

93. For example the Department of Defense was engaged in 2001 in a new study of the possible impact of the operation of military bases upon Indian tribes; personal communication to Stephen Sachs from Sharon O’Brien, Indigenous Native Studies Program, University of Kansas.

94. Tribal concerns are expressed in Mark Anthony Rolo, “Tribes, government differ on definition of consultation,” Indian Country Today, Wednesday, March 1, 2000. That state governments also have the same concern was shown in discussions between Stephen Sachs and staff of various Indiana state agencies from 1980-2000 concerning the communications process at federal agency meetings for state agency staff.

95. "Two Years After the President's Meeting With Tribal Leaders: Annual Report of the Administrative Working Group on American Indians and Alaska Natives," August, 1996.

96. It should be noted that the Southern Ute Tribe is a small tribe that is economically relatively well off and that has been extremely progressive in taking its affairs into its own hands at every opportunity. By contrast, the Navajo Nation is extremely large in terms of both population and geographical size and spread, and has a bureaucratized central tribal government which is only just now in the process of decentralizing governmental functions to its 110 local chapters. Therefore, the relative readiness of the tribe to act autonomously (and the extent to which it has attempted to do so) may be factors affecting how federal agency personnel relate to the tribe. This notion is supported by the fact that the Navajo Nation's Ramah Chapter, because of its geographical separation from the rest of the Navajo Nation, has developed a high degree of autonomy in running its own affairs, has taken an extremely large number of autonomous initiatives with considerable energy, and generally enjoys better government-to-government relations with federal agencies than is generally the case in Navajo government.

97. Research conducted by Barbara Morris, in the Fall of 2001, to determine the status of the Working Group established by Clinton, published in Sachs, Harris and Morris, "Native American Tribes and Federalism;" and in Native American Policy, Volume XVIII, No, 2, Fall 2002, formerly on line at www.nativeamericanpolicy.org, may now be at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

98. Strategic Plan 2000-2005 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior).

99. Personal communication to the author from Sharon O’Brien, Indigenous Native Studies Program, University of Kansas.

100. Harris, Sachs and Morris, "Honoring the Circle", Part II, provides a longer discussion of the developing relations between state and local governments and tribal governments.

101. Stephen Cornell, Co-Director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, "Politics, Business and Nation Building: Self-Governance and Economic Development in Indian Country Today," paper delivered at the 4th Annual Arizona Economic Summit in Phoenix, AZ, 1997. The one notable exception to this has been that some successful casino gambling has occurred on reservations without direct tribal participation in the development process. Even in this area, however, Indian nations have often been able to significantly increase their economic gain by having their members trained in how to run the gambling facilities, and then taking over the casino operation.

102. For example, see: William L. Stringer in Association with Charles Blackwell, The Economic Impact of Tribal Tax and Expenditure Programs in the State of Oklahoma (Washington, DC and Oklahoma City: The George Washington University Center for Native American Studies and Indian Policy Development and the Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission, 1992); Robert F. Robinson, The Economic and Fiscal Importance of Indian Tribes in Arizona (Phoenix: The Arizona Commission of Indian Affairs, 1993); Alfred L. Parker, The Economic and Fiscal Importance of American Indians in New Mexico (Bernalillo, NM: Americans for Indian Opportunity, 1993); Jill Rowley, "Dollar Impact of Tribes Greater than Air Base, [in South Dakota]" Indian Country Today, June 15, 1995, p. 1. This topic in relation to the development of collaboration between tribal and state and local governments is discussed more broadly in Sachs, Harris and Morris, "Strategy and Choice."

103. See, Sachs, Harris and Morris, "Strategy and Choice," and the discussion below.

104. O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments, Ch. 4, 5. See also Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States, Ch. 4-20 and Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, Ch. 2-5. Note that prior to the forming of the United States several colonies, which became eastern states, did have treaties with Indian nations, and this has led to a limited continuing relationship between certain states and tribes, including state tribal recognition for certain Indian tribes that do not necessarily have federal recognition.

105. David E. Wilkins, "Renouncing Jurisdiction: Tribes, States and Constitutional Disclaimers," Proceedings of the 1998 Meeting of American Political Science Association (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1998).

106. Theodore W. Taylor, The States and Their Indian Citizens (Washington, DC: United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1972), Ch. 2.

107. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, pp. 5-6.

108. This problem is elaborated on in Harris, Sachs, Morris and Hunt, "Recreating the Circle."

109. This happened in the case of the Southern Ute Tribe who were dissatisfied with Ignacio Schools for years, but it was only after the tribe opened its own school that the Ignacio Board of Education began to have regular meetings with the Southern Ute Tribal Council about improving education for Indian students. See the issues of the Southern Ute Drum for reports of the council meetings with the Ignacio school administration and other matters on education of Southern Ute children.

110. Taylor, The States and Their Indian Citizens, Ch. 3.

111. Ibid.

112. O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments, pp. 85-86, 199-200, 203, 206, 225, 276-278, 280, 284, and 292.

113. Taylor, The States and Their Indian Citizens, pp. 39-47.

114. See the discussion of this development in Sachs, Harris and Morris, "Honoring the Circle”, Part II.

115. Stan Bindell, "Southwest Native Tourism Conference Provided a Forum," News From Indian Country, Mid June, 1994, pp. 11, 13.

116. Candy Hamilton, "Governor Janklow Meets with Oglala Tribal Leaders," News From Indian Country, Late August, 1995, p. 9. This is not to say that there were not significant later disagreements on issues between the Governor and the tribes, at times becoming acrimonious. But the climate of discussion was changed by the governor’s approach to tribal leaders in this meeting, and remained better than it had been previously. Janklow, who previously had been strongly anti-Native American, became willing to talk to the tribes on an equal basis and to collaborate with them on some issues. Similarly, the several factors discussed above, though they appear to us to be generally the most important, are not the only developments assisting the development of more collaborative relations. For example, in South Dakota, a number of individuals and groups have been working for reconciliation between the tribes and the non-Native American population, at least since the 1960s, including the South Dakota Peace and Justice Center in Watertown (Personal communication between one of the people involved and Stephen Sachs).

117. O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Government, pp. 205-208, 279-281.

118. O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Government, pp. 205-208, 279-281; Young, The Ute Indians of Colorado in the Twentieth Century, p. 234; News From Indian Country, Mid Jan 01, p. 2A; and “Montana joint law enforcement proves beneficial,” News From Indian Country, Mid January, 2000, p. 12A. The information on the Albuquerque-Pueblo arrangement was obtained by LaDonna Harris in discussions with Pueblo officials. Collaboration has also been attained between tribal and state and local authorities in other aspects of law enforcement. For example, Acoma Pueblo obtained increased law enforcement at its Sky City Casino in an arrangement with the New Mexico 13th Judicial District Attorney’s office to prosecute crimes by non-Indians in the vicinity of the Casino, with the Pueblo paying the D.A.’s office for the service (“DA signs with Acoma Pueblo,” Indian Country Today, May 4-11, 1998, p C3.

119. See Stephen Sachs, "Building Trust in Democratic Organizations," Psychology, Vol., No. 1994.

120. The establishment of mutual assistance is important for gaining collaboration from the tribes as one of their levers to get motorists passing through to pay fines has been for tribal officers to say that if the fine is paid the violation will not be reported to state authorities and will not affect the violator's insurance rates. However, as of April 2000 the state and the tribes had not yet instituted an effective reporting system (S.U. Mahesh, “Tribes Fail to Report DWI Cases: Many Tribal Members Escape State Penalties,” The Albuquerque Journal, April 30, 2000, pp. A1, A6.

121. Remarks of Richard Du Bey, in, Zelio, Ed., Promoting Effective State-Tribal Relations, pp. 2-7.

122. Ibid., pp. 289-90.

123. Ibid., pp. 2-9.

124. “Ute child welfare gains support,” Indian Country Today, September 29-October 6, 1997, p. B6.

125. Harris, Sachs and Morris, "Honoring the Circle", Part II, provides numerous examples of such cooperation.

126. O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Government, pp. 286-288.

127. Ibid., p. 287. Also, Sara Singleton reports of the tribes in Washington State joining with state regulatory agencies in co-management of Pacific Salmon in, "Dividing a Shared Resource: Creating Institutions for Intertribal Allocation of Pacific Salmon" (Western Political Science Association, Tucson, AZ, 1997), p. 2, that, "The management of resource systems in general, and Pacific Salmon in particular, poses difficult problems....Currently, co-management between the state and tribes functions relatively smoothly and the tribes have become active participants concerning land use development throughout the state."

128. Some of this is being accomplished under the cooperative People for Salmon Project (Terri Crawford Hansen, “People for Salmon Project Takes Off,” News From Indian Country, Late April 1999, p. 12). It should be noted, that collaboration between the commission and the agencies of other governments has not always been easy, or smooth. There have been some contentious disagreements over some issues in this important area of economic and environmental concern. On some occasions, even if those from different governments who meet face to face may reach personal agreement, it is sometimes difficult to obtain agreement from the governments of which they are a part to act in concert, given different constituencies and politics. The true test of the collaboration is not how smooth or rocky it may have been on occasion, but its ability to succeed overtime, in spite of difficult moments in dealing with tough issues. That, so far, has been the case here. It is notable that in 1998 the Northwest tribes and states and the federal government came together under the Three Sovereigns Fish and Wildlife Governance Process agreement to improve fish and wildlife management throughout the region (Terri Crawford Hansen, “Three Sovereigns Fish Management,” News From Indian Country, Mid April 1998).

129. Several of these are described and referenced in Harris, Sachs and Morris, "Honoring the Circle", Part II.

130. Edward J. Fox, "Tribal/State Health Policymaking in the Northwest States of Oregon, Washington and Idaho: Institution Building for Policymaking." Proceedings of the 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1998.

131. See the Commission on Indian Services Home Page for more information: http://www.leg.state.or.us/cis/cisinfo.htm, or the CIS pamphlet, “Legislative Commission on Indian Services.” CIS was enabled under ORS 172.100 in 1975.

132. Executive Order No. EO - 96 - 30. The Oregon Department of Administrative Services publishes an annual report, including the annual reports of all state departments, on Indian policy and communication with tribes. See for example, Government to Government 2000 Agency Memorandums, obtainable from: Department of Administrative Services, Office of the Director, 155 Cottage st., NE U20, Salem, OR 97301 (503)378-3104.

133. Senate Bill 770.

134. As, for example, in Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 US 44, (1996), in which the court prevented Congress from providing a forum to review a wide range of state actions by barring Congress to authorize suits against states. See the discussion in David H. Getches, Charles F. Wilkinson and Robert A. Williams, Jr., Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law (St. Paul: Westgroup, 1988), pp. 750-751. Similarly, Employment Division v. Smith, 464 US 872 (1990), in which the court veered from the "compelling state interest" test, to a much lower constitutional bar, in allowing the state of Oregon to regulate the use of Peyote in American Indian Church ceremonies. See, Wilkinson and Williams, Jr., Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law. pp. 254-255 and 768-782. On the change in he court's approach under Rehnquist, see Ralph Johnson and Berrie Martins, Chief Justice Rehnquist and the Indian Cases, 16 Pub Land L. Rev. 1, 24 (1995), and David H. Getches, Conquering the Cultural Frontier: The New Subjectivism of the Supreme Court in Indian Law, 84 Cal. L. Rev. 1573 (1996), among others.

135. 118 S.Ct. 948 (1998), discussed in Getches,. Wilkinson and Williams, Jr., Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law. p 469.

136. See "Indian & Indigenous Developments, U.S. Developments, In the Courts, U.S. Supreme Court" Indigenous Policy, Spring 2005, at: www.indigenouspolicy.org.

137. See "Indian & Indigenous Developments, U.S. Developments, In the Courts, U.S. Supreme Court," Indigenous Policy, Spring 2003, at: www.indigenouspolicy.org.

138. 517 US 44, (1996). See the discussion in David H. Getches, Wilkinson and Williams, Jr., Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law, pp. 750-751.

139. US v. Kagama 118 US 375 (1886), see the discussion of Plenary Power and related cases in Getches,. Wilkinson and Williams, Jr., Cases and Materials on Federal Indian Law. Ch. 5. For a discussion and critique of U.S. Indian law from a tribal perspective see, Vine Deloria, Jr. and David E. Wilkins, Tribes, Treaties, & Constitutional Tribulations, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999).

140. The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs voted, March 29, to send Senate bill 2078, amending the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, to the full Senate, a move long resisted by many tribes because it opens IGRA to further unforeseen amendments on the Senate floor. The scope of the proposed bill was narrowed in response to concerns that requirements for NIGC to oversee all gaming related contracts could prove cumbersome to the conduct of daily business. As amended, 2078 would have NIGC oversee Class III gaming (where the majority of casino profits are found). Many tribes consider the provisions an incursion on tribal sovereignty. The bill would close the door on far-flung off-reservation gaming initiatives, while establishing a process for landless and recently recognized tribes to acquire land for gaming purposes in their ancestral areas. The process would include a consideration of gaming impact-mitigation measures, most probably meaning tribal payments to local communities. The committee failed to add an amendment by Sen. Daniel Inouye, (D-HI), that would have permitted tribes to sue states that refuse to negotiate with tribes on a gaming compact, as required by IGRA. Two other amendments won the committee's approval: one requiring tribes to inform tribal citizens of casino profits and the other extending to mid-April the deadline for gaming-lands applications under the about to be retired Interior Department's two-part determination test. The Interior test, requiring Interior findings that tribes will benefit from an off-reservation casino without detriment to the surrounding community, has come under withering criticism in Congress as an inducement to ''reservation shopping,'' the practice of searching far and wide for off-reservation casino lands that are more lucrative than reservation-based sites. "Indian & Indigenous Developments, U.S. Developments," Indigenous Policy, Spring 2006, at: www.indigenouspolicy.org.

141. The Senate Select Committee on Indiana Affairs was formed, after the termination of the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, in order to try to sort out the more than 200 proposals of the American Indian Policy Review Commission created in 1975 following the occupation at Wounded Knee, SD. (Tom Holm, "The Crises in Tribal Government," and Vine Deloria, Jr. "The Evolution of Federal Indian Policy Making," in Vine Deloria, Jr., Ed., American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp. 139-143 and 253-254).

Both the Senate Subcommittee, and its counterpart, the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs of the House Interior Committee (Duane Champagne, "Organizational Change and Conflict: A Case Study of the Bureau of Indian Affairs," in Lyeden and Legters, Ed., Native Americans and Public Policy, pp. 38-40, 50-52), were charged with examining issues of Indian policy and overseeing its administration in the executive branch. But without pressure from public opinion and/or powerful pressure groups, they generally gave little energy to that function as indicated by the fact that it is difficult to find reference to them in works about the history of Indian policy. Moreover, as most of the members of the subcommittees were conservative Westerners, generally favorable to the assimilationist thrust of traditional BIA policy, and more responsive to Anglo-American constituents than to the tribes, the subcommittees produced little that proceeded to the full committees or the chamber floor for debate. Most of the important reform legislation on Indian Affairs of the 1970s was authored and supported by a coalition of liberal Congressman and Senators who did not sustain interest in Indian affairs. Most important, committee and subcommittee concern was primarily legislation, not oversight of administration (at least until the 1970s; oversight hearings of operations in California were held in 1974. See California Indian Oversight Hearings, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on the Interior and Insular Affairs (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974). In 1979 the committee began two years of oversight review, including hearings, on economic development on Indian Reservations. See the letter of May 3, 1979 from Committee Chair Morris K. Udall to LaDonna Harris, President of Americans for Indian Opportunity, Harris Papers.

142. See Stephen M. Sachs, "Termination by Budget," Proceedings of the 1999 American Political Science Association Meetings (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1996) for an analysis of this budgeting development.

143. Events are partly the result of the interplay of power and other happenings, that partially shape the power context, including . For some brief examples see Adam Goodheart, "10 Days that Changed History," "Week in Review," The New York Times, Sunday July 2, 2006, Section 4, pp. 1 and 3.

144. Bob Nordhaus, "30 Years of Indian Law Practice" (Albuquerque, NM: unpublished paper, 2006), and author's discussion with LaDonna Harris at Americans for Indian Opportunity, June 2006.

145. It was reported in "Indian & Indigenous Developments: Tribal Developments," in Indigenous Policy, Vol. XV, No. 3, Fall 2004, "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States," developed from U.S. Census data, reports that last year 23% of single race native families live below the poverty line, which is double the national rate. Almost 28% of single race, Native Americans are now without health insurance, compared with 15.1% of all Americans. Mean Native American Income dropped 1.6% over the last three years to $33.024, while nationally median family income fell .6% to $43,527. Despite ongoing economic development, Native Americans remain at the bottom of every socio-economic indicator. (Louis Gray, "Editorial: Indians Remain Poorest Under Bush, Study Says; Urban Indians Suffer in Great Numbers, Report claims," Native American Times, September 1, 2004, p.7, and "Weak economy hurting American Indian families," Indian Country Today, September 22, 2004, p. A6)." See also Ezra, Rosser, "This Land Is Your Land: This Land Is My Land: Markets and Institutions for Development of Native American Lands," Arizona Law Review: Vol. 47, No. X, Footnotes 31 & 32, p. 6, and . "Poverty Status, By Race/Ethnicity, 1980 and 1990," in Marlita A. Ready, Ed., Statistical Record of Native North Americans (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1993), p. 814.

It should be noted that because of large average sizes of households, Native Americans remained second from the lowest for all groups measured from 1980 to 1990, but they were the only group to have household income (adjusted for inflation) decline during the decade. Indians were the measured group with the second largest percent of children below the poverty line in both 1980 and 1990, with only Black children suffering a higher poverty rate. However, while the percentage of Black children below the poverty line increased over the decade (37.8% - 38.8%), the percentage increased at a far higher rate for Indian children (32.5% - 37.6%). Jonathan Taylor, and Joseph Kault, American Indians on Reservations: A Data book of Socio-Economic Changes Between the 1990 and 2000 Census (Cambridge, MA: The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2005) found that while American Indians remained the poorest group in the U.S., American Indians in Indian Country experienced substantial growth in income per capita, so that even with this Indian population increasing by more than 20% between 1990 and 2000, real (inflation-adjusted) per capita Indian income rose by about one-third. For both gaming and non-gaming tribes, the overall rate of income growth substantially outstripped the 11% increase in real per capita income for the U.S. as a whole. From 1990 to 2000, Indian family poverty rates dropped by seven percentage points or more in non-gaming areas, and by about ten percentage points in gaming areas. For the U.S. as a whole, family poverty dropped eight-tenths of a percentage point. Meanwhile, between 1990 and 2000 Indian unemployment rates dropped by about two-and-a-half percentage points in non-gaming areas and by more than five percentage points in gaming areas, while overall U.S. unemployment dropped by half a percentage point.

The Harvard Project on Indian Economic Development, issued a report, in July, Eric Hensen and Jonathan B. Taylor, American Indians at the Millennium, showing that census data indicates that urban Native Americans experience a 17% poverty rate, compared to 35% on reservation. Urban Indians have difficulty accessing health care, for while more than 60% of native people live off reservation only 1% of Indian Health Service (IHS) funding is off reservation, and various eligibility requirements prevent many indigenous people from using what health services are available. Among other things, this means that urban Indian children often suffer from substantive abuse without supportive services. With most Indian incomes low and urban rents high, the vast majority are forced to live in questionable neighborhoods. While the number of Natives buying houses is increasing, very few can afford to do so. This is especially so in San Francisco, which has the nation's most costly housing and the fourth largest urban Indian population. For this and other Harvard Project reports go to: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/hpaied/res_main.htm. The report will soon be available in book form.

The economic underdevelopment of most tribes is part of a larger complex of deprivation resulting from colonialism. For a discussion of the impact of European and U.S. colonialism on Native nations and people, and what can be done to overcome it in conjunction with economic development, see Stephen M. Sachs, LaDonna Harris, Barbara Morris and Deborah Hunt, "Recreating the Circle: Overcoming Colonialism and Returning to Harmony in American Indian Communities," Proceedings of the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1999).

146. Of particular significance is that inadequate funding and often culturally inappropriate education have led Indians to have the lowest overall rate of educational achievement of any U.S. group measured. In 1989 Native Americans had the lowest rate of achievement in mathematics (Indian Nations at Risk Taskforce, U.S. Department of Education, Final Report, Indian Nations at Risk: An Educational Strategy for Action (Washington, DC: Indian Nations at Risk Taskforce, U.S. Department of Education, 1991), pp. 7, 9.).

Taylor, and Kault, American Indians on Reservations, found that from 1990-2000 the proportion of adult Indians on reservations with less than a 9th grade education declined substantially. In Indian areas with gaming, this put adult Indians at about par with U.S. levels. The proportion of Indian adults with college degrees rose substantially, though not enough to keep pace with the very substantial gains in overall U.S. college attainment.
 
147. The 1990 census reports that only 65.3% of Native American residents 25 years or older, and residing on reservations, completed high school, as opposed to 75.2% of all Americans over 25, while only 8.9% of the same Native American population obtained a four year college degree, compared to 20.3% of the U.S. population over 25 (IHS, Trends in Indian Health, p. 28). In 1989 Native Americans suffered the highest drop out rate from high school of any ethnic group measured (Indian Nations at Risk Taskforce, U.S. Department of Education, Final Report, Indian Nations at Risk, pp. 7, 9.). More recently, NCAI President Tex Hall reported in his January 1993 'State of the Indian Nations' address that Only 17% of Native Americans go on to college in a nation where, over all, 62% do so ("On going Activities," Native American Policy, Vol. XIV, No. 1, Spring 2003).

148. It should also be noted that the Native American condition relating to health has been considerably substandard for the U.S. It was reported in 1993, that while there has been a significant improvement in the health of Native Americans over the last quarter century, Native Americans continue to have a higher mortality rate than the U.S. population at large (Indian Health Service (IHS), Trends in Indian Health (Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Indian Health Service, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Legislation, Division of Program Statistics, 1993), p. 5) because of poor living conditions and a lower availability of health care than is available to the American population as a whole. The death rate for Native Americans (as of 1988) is higher than for the entire population for selected causes as follows (Ibid..):

1) tuberculosis - 520% greater
2) alcoholism - 433% greater
3) diabetes melitus - 188% greater
4) accidents - 166% greater
5) homicide - 71% greater
6) suicide - 54% greater
7) pneumonia and influenza - 44% greater

Maternal death rates and infant mortality rates remain somewhat higher for Native Americans than for Americans generally (Ibid., pp. 35 and 36). With considerably more fluctuation in rate than for any other group, maternal death rates for Native Americans have improved along with improvements for the population as a whole since 1973, but were rising more sharply than those of other groups after 1985, when all groups suffered some increase. Indian infant mortality rates have always been higher than those of the population as a whole, but have fallen further since 1973 than for any other group. The number of infant deaths per 1000 were as follows in 1988: 11 for Native Americans, 8.5 for Whites and 10.0 for the population as a whole.. Life expectancy for Native Americans has improved, trailing the population as a whole by 10 years in 1972, to coming within 3.4 years of expectancy for the population as a whole and 4.1 years of that of Whites in 1988 (Ibid. p. 71).

Currently, the situation is only somewhat improved. On January 31st, 2003 National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) President, Tex Hall, in the first "State of Indian Nations" address, American Indian life expectancy is five years shorter than that of any other race. Native Americans are three times more likely to die from diabetes and are disproportionately impacted by other diseases, yet Indians receive less health likely to die from diabetes and are disproportionately impacted by other diseases, yet Indians receive less health care than the average American, and development of Indian health services is exceedingly slow. The National Congress of American Indians communicated in 2005 that life expectancy for Native Americans is almost 6 years less than any other group measured in the U.S.. 13% of native deaths are of those younger than 25, a rate three times higher than for the U.S. population as a whole. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission Reported in 2003 that "American Indian youths are twice as likely to commit suicide...Native Americans are 630% more likely to die from tuberculosis, 650% more likely to die from diabetes, and 204% likely to suffer accidental death compared with other groups. ("Trifecta for pro-Indian legislation," Native American Times, May 25, 2005, p.p. 1 and 3, at p. 3).

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported, in July, 2005 that while a national public health goal of reducing infant mortality rates by the year 2000 was achieved for the general U.S. population, American Indians have not experienced the same rate of reduction. For the country as a whole, the proportion of babies who died in their first year of life declined between 1995 and 2002, to a rate of 7 deaths per 1,000 live births. In Montana, the infant mortality rate is the same as the nation's. But the death rate for Indian babies was 9.8 deaths per thousand. In the seven-year study period, 610 Montana babies died; 100 of those infants were Indian, though only about 12.5 percent of births in Montana are Indian. The Indian infant mortality rate was worse in surrounding states: Wyoming: 12 per thousand, South Dakota: 13.6, North Dakota: 12.9 and Idaho: 12.4. For more information go to: http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/07/06/build/opinion/30-gaz-op.inc. Meanwhile, HIV/AIDS infection rates for Indians continue to rise, especially compared with the rates for whites. In 1995, the Native American rate of HIV infection surpassed that for whites and by 2003 were 40% higher than the white rate, at 11.5 per 100,000 compared to the white 8.1 per 100,000 rate. More than a million Americans were reported to have HIV/AIDS, 1900 of whom were Native, with more than half of those cases in California, Oklahoma, Arizona, Washington and Alaska ("Indian and Indigenous Developments," "U.S. Developments," "Tribal Development", Indigenous Policy, Fall 2005

149. "Federal Indian Spending: A Sinking Trust," The Friends Committee on National Legislation, Indian Report, I-55, Summer 1997, pp. 1, 3. The overall inadequacy of federal spending for Indians is discussed in, Stephen M. Sachs, "Termination By Budget: Impact of the 1996 Federal Budget on Native Americans, "Proceedings of the 1996 Meeting of American Political Science Association (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1996). Similarly, Taylor and Kault, American Indians on Reservations report that in the period of the 1990 to 2000 U.S. censuses federal Indian funding levels lost ground against non-Indian domestic spending.

150. "Indian & Indigenous Developments, U.S. Developments, Indian Budgets" Indigenous Policy, Spring 2006, at: www.indigenouspolicy.org.

151. Tex Hall, President of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), delivered the third annual State of Indian Nations Address, on February 3rd, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, reported that "per capita expenditure for American Indian and Alaska Native medical services is less than one-third of the average annual expenditure for individual Medicaid assistance, and is even less than our per capita health expenditure for federal prisoners." ("Ongoing Activities: U.S. Activities," Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVI, No. 1, Spring 2005.

152. High unemployment and poverty have been very long term problems on reservations that while improving, are still serious. After the 1990 census, the picture (now somewhat improved) was:

Most of the available jobs around many reservations are with the tribes, and are at least partially funded by the federal government. There are relatively few Native Americans on or off reservation in high paying jobs, such as those of doctors, lawyers or business executives, but off reservation Native Americans have better job opportunities than on, as is indicated in still generally relevant 1970 figures showing that 48% of employed Native Americans in cities worked as white collar workers, technicians, craftsman, foreman, etc., as opposed to 35% on reservation (Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twenty First Century, p. 164.). While situations vary from reservation to reservation, unemployment generally runs high, driving down wage levels for those who can find jobs. For example at Pine Ridge in South Dakota, unemployment runs from a low of 45% in the summer months when seasonal work, such as construction, is available, to a high of 90% in the winter, to average about 80% (Olson and Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, p. 185.) Also, William Kindle, President of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, in a letter of January 24, 1996 to Alex. J. Lumberman Sr. of the American Heritage Association, continues to report an 80% unemployment rate at Rosebud, which is near Pine Ridge and has similar conditions. Over all, unemployment for Native American males averaged 16.2% for males and 13.5% for females in 1989, compared to 6.4% for males and 6.2% for females in the U.S. population as a whole that year. Indian Health Service (IHS), Trends in Indian Health, 1993 (Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Indian Health Service, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Legislation, Division of Program Statistics, 1993), p. 29. See also the poverty, income and unemployment data in footnote 1.

153. Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), Effective State Policy and Practice: Entrepreneurship Development in Native American Communities, Volume 4, No. 2, Washington, DC, Corporation for Enterprise Development, 2005, available in PDF from www.cfed.org, p. 2., p 2.

154. An NCAI study of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Road Program shows that while Indian country has 3% of the nation's roads, only 1% of U.S. highway funding is spent for them. Of the 50,000 miles of reservation road, three fourths are unpaved. Hazardous road conditions are a significant factor in Indian highway fatalities being four times the national rate. Bridges across Indian country are equally in need of improvement, repair and maintenance (For more information go to: www.ncai.org). while NCAI President, Tex Hall's January 31st, 2003 "State of Indian Nations" address, pointed out that 25% of American Indians have no telephones, more than 14% of reservation homes still have no electricity and 8% have no running water ("On going Activities," Native American Policy, Vol. XIV, No. 1, Spring 2003).

155. While conditions vary from reservation to reservation, in general, there is insufficient housing, leading to crowding of many people into small structures. At Pine Ridge for example, as of 1995, there were only 1500 units for 26,000 people: an average of 17 per house, which may be only 20' by 20' (Van Biema, "Bury My Heart in Committee," pp. 48, 50. Also, "Tribal Housing Susceptible to Economic Stress," Indian Country Today, June 29, 1995 p. A10, contains an overview of the tribal housing situation. The article reports that the situation today would be much worse if there had not been a significant increase in housing in recent years from new construction, and that housing construction has become more efficient in terms of cost and construction time). About 1000 Pine Ridge residents were then on the waiting list for housing, some of whom had been waiting for two decades (Eric Haase, "Tribal Housing Singled Out for Major Cuts," Indian Country Today, June 29, 1995, p. A9). Much of the housing is substandard, without insulation (thus very hot in summer, and quite cold in winter), plumbing, or an adequate kitchen. It is aging and in serious need of repair (with the BIA housing repair program backlogged with a documented $600 million need in 1996), as reported in Ada Deer, "1997 Budget: GOP Cuts Threaten BIA Funding; Impact deep at Reservation Level," Indian Country Today, Week of May 27 - June 4, 1996, p. A7. It should be noted that U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of the Secretary, "Annual Report to Congress: FY1979: Indian and Alaska Native Housing and Community Development Programs," in commenting that much progress had been made during 1979 made a statement (p. 6) that remains largely true today (although, as Taylor, and Kault, American Indians on Reservations, point out, there have been increases in the rate of new Indian housing construction since 1990).

The condition of Indian housing is generally poor, and the needs for community development assistance enormous. Units needing replacement often lack normal water, sewage, and electrical services, or effective weatherproofing. Almost half of all Indian housing is substandard, as measured by relatively conservative BIA standards. Over 25% of existing structures have severe structural deficiencies, are unsuitable for even basic rehabilitation and require replacement.

Housing and community development needs are closely interrelated on Indian reservations. Lack of water and sewer systems, electricity, all-weather roads (paved or unpaved), and fire fighting equipment are as much of a problem and a priority for communities as a whole as they are for those interested in the provision of new housing. Unfortunately, Indian communities are almost uniformly of very low income, and lack the income tax base to finance such improvements.

156. As of May 2005, 232 nations - about 40 percent of all federally recognized tribes - operate one or more programs that had been previously administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The other tribes fall into one of two categories: "638 contracts" or "direct service." Tribes with contracts still report to an officer in the BIA. Direct service tribes continue to rely on the bureau to manage their programs. ("Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments," Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVI, No. 1. Spring 2005). Americans for Indian Opportunity President Ladonna Harris commented to this author that her discussion with Indian leaders and examination of federal legislation and funding indicates that lack of resources is the primary reason that most Indian Nations do not take over federal programs.

157. Taylor and Kault, American Indians on Reservations.

158. CFED, Entrepreneurship Development in Native American Communities, Volume 4, No. 2 (Washington, DC, Corporation for Enterprise Development, 2005), available in PDF from www.cfed.org, p. 1.

159. Stephen Cornell, Co-Director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, "Politics, Business and Nation Building: Self-Governance and Economic Development in Indian Country Today," paper delivered at the 4th Annual Arizona Economic Summit in Phoenix, AZ, 1997; and Stephen Cornell and Joseph P. Kault, Reloading the Dice: Improving the Chances for Economic development on American Indian Reservations (Cambridge, MA: The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1992, PRS92-1).

160. On the whole problem of decision making and consulting by outsiders see Stephen M. Sachs and Deborah Esquebel Hunt, "Appropriate Consulting with Indian Nations: Facilitating Returning to the Wisdom of the People," Proceedings of the 2000 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2000).

161. Cornell and Kault, Improving the Chances for Economic development on American Indian Reservations, pp. 17-23.

162. LaDonna Harris, Stephen Sachs and Benjamin Broome, "Returning to Harmony Through Reactivating The Wisdom of the People: The Comanche Bring Back the Tradition of Consensus Decision Making," Native Americas, Vol. XII, No. 3, Fall 1996; and "Wisdom of the People: Potentials and Pitfalls in Efforts by Comanches to Recreate Traditional Ways of Building Consensus," American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter 2001.

163. Stephen M. Sachs, “Need for More Indian Nations to Develop Independent Courts,” Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVI, No. 2, Fall, 2005, p, 36.

164. Cornell and Kault, Improving the Chances for Economic development on American Indian Reservations, pp. 27-33.

165. Ibid., pp. 33-38.

166. John Simmons and William Mares, Working Together (New York: Knopf, 1983), Paul Bernstein, Workplace Democratization: Its Internal Dynamics (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980), especially, Ch. 5; Alan S. Blinder, Editor, Paying for Productivity: A Look at the Evidence (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1990); Edward E. Lawler III, Susan Albers Mohrman and Gerald E. Ledford, Jr., Employee Involvement and Total Quality Management: Practices and Results in Fortune 1000 Companies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992) and Haig R. Nalbantian, Ed., Incentives, Cooperation, and Risk Sharing: Economic and Psychological Perspectives on Employment Contracts (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Litlefield, 1987).

167. Paul Bernstein, Workplace Democratization: Its Internal Dynamics (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980), especially, Ch. 5; Alan S. Blinder, Editor, Paying for Productivity: A Look at the Evidence (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1990); Edward E. Lawler III, Susan Albers Mohrman and Gerald E. Ledford, Jr., Employee Involvement and Total Quality Management: Practices and Results in Fortune 1000 Companies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992) and Haig R. Nalbantian, Ed., Incentives, Cooperation, and Risk Sharing: Economic and Psychological Perspectives on Employment Contracts (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Litlefield, 1987).

168. Ibid,

169. ICA News and Events: A Report from ICA's Community Jobs Program, Fall, 2005. ICA is located at 1 Harvard Street, Suite 200, Brookline, MA 02445 (617)232-8765, ica@ica-group.org. Another worker cooperative development group with Native experience, particularly in Latin America, is led by Warner Woodworth, Dept. of Organizational Leadership & Strategy, Marriott School, Brigham Young University, 786 TNRB, P.O. Box 2307 Provo, UT 84602 (801)422-6834, warner_woodworth@byu.edu.
170. CFED, Entrepreneurship Development in Native American Communities, p. 2.

171. Ibid.

172. Ibid., p. 4. Another example is The Native Financial Education Coalition (NFEC), a group of local, regional and national organizations and government agencies working together to promote financial education in Native communities, started by the Treasury Department in 2000, but now independent. Native Financial Education Coalition seeks to exchange information, forge partnerships, identify and develop strategies for outreach and training, as well as identify gaps in information about financial education needs. NFEC has trained nearly 800 instructors to teach financial education courses in Native communities using the Building Native Communities: Financial Skills for Families curriculum. NFEC held a policy briefing in Washington, DC, in April 2003, stressing the need for Native Americans to increase their financial understanding. For information go to: http://www.treas.gov/financialeducation.

173. The Southern Ute Casino is run by the Southern Ute division of gaming (http://www.southern-ute.nsn.us/government/divisions.html#gaming).

To produce and distribute it's natural gas, the Southern Ute Tribe set up Red Willow Production Company, 14933 Hwy 172, Ignacio, Colorado, 81137, (970) 563-5100, info@rwpc.us, http://www.rwpc.us/. Red Willow is now part of the Southern Ute Energy Group (http://www.sugf.com/energy.htm) comprised of several different entities owned by the Southern Ute Growth Fund, each with its own management team and its own business objectives, but sharing certain common elements and the opportunity to collaborate on a variety of projects.

The Energy Group consists of: Red Willow Production Company - an oil and natural gas exploration and production company operating predominately in the western United States, offshore Gulf of Mexico and Western Canada.  Red Willow is regarded as one of the world’s leading experts in the extraction of methane gas from coal-bed deposits, although the company is also actively engaged in conventional oil and gas exploration and production; Red Cedar Gas Gathering Company - a natural gas processor and transporter for product moving through Southern Ute Tribal lands.  This operation is a joint venture with Kinder Morgan and is the largest gas gatherer and processor in the State of Colorado (Red Cedar Gathering Company, 26266 Highway 160, Durango, CO 81303 (970) 247-5754, rcgwebadmin@redcedargathering.com, http://www.redcedargathering.com/contact.html); And Aka Energy Group, LLC - a processor and transporter of natural gas and natural gas liquids in the Rocky Mountain states and the Mid-Continent region of the country.  Aka identifies, acquires and operates midstream assets that are under-utilized and/or under-performing, but which possess attractive growth potential. AKA operates largely through its wholly owned subsidiary, Frontier Field Services, LLC (4200 E. Skelly Drive, Suite 700, Tulsa, OK 74135, (918) 492-4450, http://www.frontierfieldservices.com/contact.htm). The combined Frontier assets, as of winter 2006, include approximately 300 MMcfd of gas gathering, treating and processing facilities including 700 miles of pipeline and related facilities operating in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. The Growth Fund's origins began in the 1980s and 1990s, when the tribe aggressively developed its natural resource base and, in January 1999, adopted an official Financial Plan to separate its core government from its various business and related investment activities. The Financial Plan provides the tribe with an economic strategy which ensures that a core government and baseline cash distributions will exist in perpetuity, while at the same time optimizing available investment resources to provide for long-term security of the tribe and its Members.

174. "Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments," Indigenous Policy, Volume XV, No. 1, Spring 2004.

175. "Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments," Indigenous Policy, Volume XVI, No. 1, Spring 2005.

176. For more on NAB go to: http://www.nativeamericanbank.com.

177. CFED, Entrepreneurship Development in Native American Communities, pp. 4-5, which includes a larger list of sources for Native business technical assistance, and also funding.

178. Ibid., p. 4.

179. Proposed by NCAI President Tex Hall in his the third annual State of Indian Nations Address, February 3rd, 2005 ("Activities in the U.S: Ongoing Activities," Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVI, No. 1, Spring 2005).

180. Tim Giago, "It is time for gaming tribes to 'think Indian'," NTN Article #6264, 4/4/2005, published in Indigenous Policy, Volume XVI, No. 1, Spring 2005.

181. For a lengthy discussion of additional economic policies and strategies that Indian nations might consider, and for an explanation of the references here to developing clear and easily applied policies and procedures, see Ezra, Rosser, " Markets and Institutions for Development of Native American Lands."

182. The bill passed the Senate in May of 2006. Whether it was part of the final bill is uncertain ("Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments: Economic Development," Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVI, No. 2. Fall 2005).

183. "Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments: Economic Development," Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVI, No. 2. Fall 2005.

184. Ibid.

185. "Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments: Economic Development," Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVI, No. 1. Spring 2005. Meanwhile, while many plains tribes are planning or beginning creating wind power farms, Honor the Earth, in coordination with Solar Energy International, the Western Shoshone Defense Project, American Spirit Productions and the Battle Mountain Band of Te-Moak Western Shoshone provided free training and installation of a demonstration solar photovoltaic system in the heart of Western Shoshone territory near Elko, Nevada on April 4-9, 2005, a the first step toward the promotion of locally run energy systems and economic development for Native communities. For more information contact Winona LaDuke, Honor the Earth Executive Director (612)879-7529 or Julie Fishel (775)468-0230, www.honorearth.org, www.solarenergy.org and www.wsdp.org.

186. "Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments: Economic Development," Indigenous Policy, Vol. XVI, No. 2. Fall 2005.

187. Sharon O'Brien, American Indian Tribal Governments (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), Ch. 1.

188. See, Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Choctaw Industrial Park (Philadelphia, MS: Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, 1982) and John H. Peterson, Jr., "Three Efforts at Development Among the Choctaws of Mississippi," in Walter L. Williams, Ed., Southeastern Indians Since the Removal Era (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1979).

189. "Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments: Economic Development", Indigenous Policy, Vol. XIV, No. 2. Fall 2003,

190. For current details go to http://www.choctaw.org/government/index.htm.

191. "Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments: Economic Development", Indigenous Policy, Vol. XIV, No. 2. Fall 2003, developed from a statement by Morongo Band of Mission Indians of California Tribal Chairman Maurice Lyons reported in the E-mail Digest of Indigenous News (from Andre Cramblit: andrekar@ncidc.org).

192. Indigenous Policy, Ibid.

193. For example, by October of 2003, California Indian nations were the largest contributor in the recall election for the state's governor, having contributed more than $11 million with more expected in the last week. At that point, Indian money accounted for one of every six dollars of the $66 million contributed to candidates or spent by independent committees so far on the recall effort ("Indian and Indigenous Developments: U.S. Developments," American Indian Policy, Vol. Vol. XIV, No. 2, fall. 2003).

194. Eisler, Revenge of the Pequots, p. 225.

195. "Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Spring 2006, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

196. Pequot donations included $2,4000 to Republican Representative Rob Simmons, $11,000 to three Republican political action committees, $10,000 to Republican Arizona senator John McCain and $4,000 to President Bush's reelection campaign. Democratic senators Joe Lieberman and Christopher Dodd received $9500 and $4300, while Presidential hopeful, Representative Richard Gebhard of Missouri, received $1000, "Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Spring 2004, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

197. The Chickasaw donated the most since 1996, totaling $480,000. The Chocktaw Nation, its leaders and employees made $280,000 in political contributions in the same period. During that time period, Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry has received more than $100,000 from tribes: $$4100 as state senator, $22,950 while running for Governor and $73,550 toward his inauguration. When Chickasaw Nation Governor Bill Anoatubby ran unsuccessfully in Congress in 1998, he received $61,000 from tribes and tribal officials in Oklahoma and around the U.S., Ibid.

198. "Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Fall 2004, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

199. Ibid.

200. “Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Fall 2003, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

201. As for example, the Agua Caliente Tribe of California gave the Republican Party a $100,000 donation, when the tribe was seeking a meeting with the Secretary of the Interior. Sometime after making the donation, a lobbyist representing the tribe met with the Secretary, but did not appear to lead to anything substantive. This is reminiscent of the donation for access, including with Indian nations, in the Clinton Administration. See "Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Spring 2004, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

202. For example, see "Abramoff pleads guilty, promises to help in probe," pp. 1 & 5, and "Documents show lobbyist took $14 million from Mississippi Choctaw," pp 5 & 8, in News from Indian Country, January 23, 2006.

203. "Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Spring 2006, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

204. For an extensive discussion of tribal governments and American federalism see Stephen M. Sachs, LaDonna Harris and Barbara Morris, "Native American Tribes and Federalism: Can Government to Government Relations Between the Tribes and the Federal Government Be Institutionalized?," Proceedings of the 1997 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1997); Barbara Morris, Stephen M. Sachs and LaDonna Harris, "Strategy and Choice: Opting for Cooperation or Competition, Investigation of Tribal and Sub-National Government Relations," Proceedings of the 1998 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1998); and Stephen M. Sachs, LaDonna Harris and Barbara Morris, "Honoring the Circle: Developing Government to Government Relations Between Indian Tribal Governments and Federal, State and Local Governments," Paper presented at the 2002 Western Social Science Association Meeting, available from the author of the current paper.

205. "Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Spring 2006, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

206. See “Indian and Indigenous Developments,” Native American Policy Network Newsletter, Vol. XVII, No. 1, Spring 2001.

207. "Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Spring and Fall 2004, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

208. "Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Spring 2005, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

209. "Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Spring Fall, 2005 on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

210. "Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Spring 2005, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

211. In its "Making the Vote count Editorial" of April 18, 2004, "Bad New Days for Voting Rights" The New York Times (p. 12), reported that Indian's are often given difficulties in registering and voting, and in working at the polls. In 2002 there was much publicity about charges against Rebecca Red Earth Villeda (Lakota) committing voting fraud in registering Indian voters. This January prosecutors dropped charges against her, finally admitting that there only two very minor irregularities amongst her many registrations. Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council member Jo Colombe complained that when she served as a poll watcher in a recent election, she was accused by poll watchers of copying the names of Indians who had not yet voted and taking them to Indians in the parking lot who planned to impersonate those people and vote in their place, when all she did was go to the bathroom. In Bennett county, SD, native people say they are harassed by poll workers who make fun of their names and election officials who make it difficult to register and who falsely charge them with fraud when they register and vote ("Indian and Indigenous, U.S. Developments." Indigenous Policy, Spring 2005, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org, also carrying reports on cases of discrimination against Indians in districting).

212. Two organizations actively opposing Indian sovereignty and gaming announced, in November, 2005, that they will merge. United Property Owners of Redmond, Wash., is coming together with One Nation of Oklahoma to form a new non-partisan anti-Indian organization called One Nation United. The new organization says it will have some 300,000 members across all 50 states. New York is to be represented on the One Nation United Advisory Board by David Vickers, president of anti-Indian organization Upstate Citizens for Equality. A new anti Indian rights organization, birthed from Citizens Equal Rights Foundation, a Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare, is working in the U.S. and Canada, at: www.caicw.org. For one Indian view of its work contact Susanne Aikman, ZSAikman@webtv.net ("Ongoing Activities, Activities in the U.S." Indigenous Policy, Spring 2005).

213. "American Indian and International Indigenous Developments, U.S. Developments, Tribal Developments," Indigenous Policy, Spring 2006, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

214. Stephen M. Sachs, "Need for More Indian Nations to Develop Independent Courts," Indigenous Policy, Fall 2005, on line at www.indigenouspolicy.org.

215. For a discussion of the nature of these problems and what can and is being done about them, see Sachs, Harris, Morris and Hunt, "Recreating the Circle: Overcoming Disharmony and Infighting in American Indian Communities." More on the specifics of reconstituting appropriate tribal governance is discussed in Harris, Sachs and Broome, "Returning to Harmony: A Comanche Effort to Reactivate Wisdom of the People," and in longer form in Harris, Sachs and Broome, "Recreating Harmony Through Wisdom of the People: The Case of the Comanche and Other Oklahoma Tribes" and Harris, Sachs and Broome, "Wisdom of the People: Potential and Pitfalls in Efforts by the Comanches to Recreate Traditional Ways of Building Consensus.”

216. See Stephen M. Sachs, "Acknowledging the Circle: The Impact of American Indian Tradition Upon Western Political Thought and its Contemporary Relevance," Proceedings of the 2002 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2002).

217. See Stephen M. Sachs. "A Transformational Native American Gift: Reconceptualizing the Idea of Politics for the 21st Century," Proceedings of the 1993 American Political Science Association Meeting (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1993), Part II.