Every Day Is Special: July 8 - Nixon Makes a Positive Policy Shift

July 8 - Nixon Makes a Positive Policy Shift

Posted on July 8, 2019

Flag of the Iroquois Confederatcy

On this date in 1970, Nixon did one of the good things of his presidency (which, in the eyes of history, offsets just a bit of the MANY very bad things of his presidency):

He gave a speech to Congress stating that it is official U.S. policy that Native Americans have self-determination - in other words, when it comes to decisions that affect their own people, Native Americans can make those decisions within their own government.

Throughout history, Native American peoples (or American Indians, or indigenous North American peoples) of course had some good but mostly horrific experiences with the Europeans and European American peoples who explored, settled, and conquered their lands. Self-determination was a movement created by Native Americans to work on several goals:

This beautiful building is the National
Museum of the American Indian, in
Washington, D. C. I recommend it!

restoring tribal communities
renewing tribal cultures
developing reservations
controlling the educations of their own children
having equal or more voice in federal policies about Native American peoples
ensuring that they can form local / reservation-based governments that enact and enforce laws within their communities

John Collier, a European American, had been appointed head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in 1933, by President F. D. Roosevelt. Probably more than any previous BIA commissioner, Collier was knowledgeable about issues confronting Native Americans and respected tribal cultures and values. He was able to get a bill through Congress (the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934), but his original bill had many changes written in by various members of Congress. It was a step in the right direction, but not as powerful as it should have been.

Aaaaannnnd then, in the 1950s, Congress and the U.S. took a giant step backwards. More than 100 tribes were "terminated." Thank goodness, that doesn't mean that people were murdered (although that had happened many times in past centuries), but instead it means that laws were passed and policies announced with the goal of making Native Americans give up their cultures, assimilate, live "as Americans."

I'm sure you get why I used irony quotes around the words as Americans. Obviously, the powerful white folks who were reneging (as per usual) on the latest promise to Native peoples meant that they wanted those people to live like Europeans, or like European Americans. Obviously, the hundreds and hundreds of different tribes didn't share one Native culture - each tribe had its own language, lore, religious practices, customs and traditions, and values. But what could be more AMERICAN than that rich tapestry of diversity? Certainly the English language, apple pie, and Christmas aren't more American than Tlingit, kneeldown bread, and Powwows!

There are more than 570 different recognized tribes in the United States.
Here are just a few of the most famous tribes in Texas.

Here and below - there are many different
styles of traditional Native American clothing.
Here is a sampling of traditional
clothing from Texan tribes - and you can
see that there are similarities and also
differences.

So, the termination policy was aimed at taking away recognition of specific Native American tribes and ending the special relationship between the U.S. government and the various tribes. It was aimed at taking away self-determination.

Luckily, many Native Americans fought back against this unfair movement, and the self-determination movement ended up with a lot more protest-type activism. Tribal leaders also brought suit and appealed decisions all the way up to the Supreme Court, worked on electing representatives to Congress to make direct impact on the laws of the nation, and agitated to be able to present their grievances to Congress.

President L. B. Johnson urged ending the policies of termination, and in 1988, Congress formally abandoned the House resolution that had established termination as official U.S. policy; still, Nixon's speech in 1970 made it clear that, not only was the United States ending the forced assimilation, the federal government affirmed that Native tribes do and should have sovereignty.