Lakota Struggles for Cultural Survival: History, Health, and Reservation Life
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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Nebraska Anthropologist Anthropology, Department of 2006 Lakota Struggles for Cultural Survival: History, Health, and Reservation Life Benjamin Jewell Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nebanthro Part of the Anthropology Commons Jewell, Benjamin, "Lakota Struggles for Cultural Survival: History, Health, and Reservation Life" (2006). Nebraska Anthropologist. 19. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nebanthro/19 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Nebraska Anthropologist by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Lakota Struggles for Cultural Survival: History, Health, and Reservation Life Benjamin Jewell Abstract: The effects of alcohol use on Pine Ridge are epidemic and have had a devastating impact on the current status of the residents. The historic effect of u.s. colonial relations with the Lakota has engendered a system of dependency, making the transition from an independent trading economy to capitalism difficult. This paper is an attempt to investigate the current life ofPine Ridge residents and relate how the past has shaped the present through a successful attempt by the u.s. to bring an end to the life-ways of the Lakota. This analysis will include a detailed statement of the economic and social impacts occurring at Pine Ridge, and also interactions between the Lakota and Whiteclay, NE. Introduction The Pine Ridge reservation, in Southwest South Dakota near the Nebraska border, is in many ways typical of reservations across the United States. Abject poverty, diseases resulting from a sedentary way of life, alcoholism, and unemployment are reflections of the sociocultural alterations brought by the U. S. government. Through the Ft. Laramie treaties of 1851 and 1868, the Sell or Starve Bill of 1877, and the Act of 1889, the once bountiful territory of the Lakota is today represented by a fraction of what it used to be (Website 1). The Indian Allotment Act of 1887 (known as the Dawes Act) stripped Indian land from communal use and transformed it into a Western model of individual ownership where land was doled out in individual parcels for use in agricultural production. The remaining tribal land was sold to non-Indians, and the profit of the sales was used for "education and civilization [ofindians]" (Reyhner & Eder 2004: 82). The outcome of this policy was that it "contributed to the state of poverty most Indians found themselves in during the harshest days of Indian land dispossession" (Wilkens 2002: 60). Without a stable land base, and expected incorporation into the capitalistic environment of the United States, the social structure of 129 many Native American groups was forever altered. In the establishment of trust relations between the U.S. and quasi-sovereign Indian nations, the United States assumed "a protectorate role for tribal people, their lands, and their resources", demonstrating the belief that Native Americans were incapable of managing their resources (2002: 3). As such, the alteration of evolved cultural systems of expression has made the transition into mainstream Euro-American society problematic. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate that the life of a resident on a reservation in the United States, with the example of Pine Ridge, is representative of a successful endeavor by the United States to control an enemy nation. Reservations are a means to restrict, deny, or alter freedoms to a group of people and, as such, the reservation system in the United States has accomplished these aims. Evidence of these limitations to freedoms can be seen through the continuum of relations between the U.S. and Lakota nations, whose totality has brought the situation to its current manifestation. Reservation L~re The late 17th and early 18th centuries brought dramatic social and economic change for the Lakota, as they migrated westward from Minnesota and onto the Plains region of the upper Missouri (Lazarus 1991). The Lakota adapted to a region lacking familiar ecosystems by utilizing a bountiful new resource for subsistence, the bison. In fact, the Lakota's reliance on the bison as both a means of nutritional and economic subsistence would prove to be both a blessing and a curse. The nomadic existence of the hunters had the effect of greatly reducing the devastation wrought by European contagions, yet the twin juggernauts of American westward expansion and the explosion of the bison-robe trade in the mid-19th century would ultimately cripple the Lakota economy (Isenberg 2000). The confluence of a multitude of forces was brewing an explosive situation on the Plains in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The influx of smallpox in 1780-82 and the construction of the fur trade brought a new fonnation to the Plains economic environment. The result of the smallpox epidemics (1780-82 and 1801- 02) was that many of the once powerful horticultural groups of the Missouri, who were the most dramatically impacted due to their sedentary lifestyle, were forced to take up the nomadic way of life. According to Isenberg (2000): The Omahas had remained agriculturalists along the Missouri despite the epidemic of 1780-82, only to be nearly destroyed when the 130 pestilence swept the Missouri again in 1801-02. The second outbreak of the disease reduced the number of Omahas from an estimated thirty five hundred to three hundred. The Omahas thus belatedly opted for the alternative that the nomadic societies had chosen in the mid eighteenth century. (60-61) Not only did this create greater competition for the Lakota, but perhaps most importantly it removed the trade alliance from which horticultural foods could be acquired without the effort of growing them (Isenberg 2000). Changing economic conditions had begun long before the impacts of smallpox, as the "economic and political incorporation of the Lakota was well under way by 1725", largely in the form of the fur trade (Pickering 2000: 3). The expansion of this trade throughout the 18th century, and most explosively in the beginnings of the 19th century, led to the depletion of the beaver and the increased demand for the bison robe trade (Isenberg 2000; Wood 2004). The importance of the fur trade to the Lakota is two-fold. First, it created a steady source for the acquisition of European trade goods such as "firearms, metal ammunition, glass beads, knives, blankets, and cloth." Second, the demand for fur in the Eastern U.S. and Canada (and later for the leather thongs in industrial manufacture }-combined with the increased efficiency in the hunt and aided by new technologies from trade would ultimately catapult the bison into the same fate as the beaver (Wood 2004: 419). For the Lakota, the beginning of the treaty era came in 1851 when the clashes between Plains tribes and migrating settlers had reached a pinnacle unacceptable to the United States. Retaliatory efforts by the U.S. military to protect homesteaders did little to lessen the tensions, spurring the need for an agreement (Lazarus 1991). The ensuing negotiation, known as the Fort Laramie treaty, brought a promise of peace between the Indian tribes and the U.S. citizens migrating through the Plains, in exchange for the recognition that "every square inch of the Great Plains [was] the sovereign territory of one or another of these counterpart nations and [the United States] pledged itself to prevent the establishment of permanent communities of its citizens within their domains" (Churchill 1997: 223). For a brief time, Lakota life returned to normal. Then, in 1868, the two nations came once again to the negotiating table, this time for the establishment of an undisputed territory for the Sioux Nation created in perpetuity, and guarded from trespass by the U.S. military. The Fort Laramie Treaty, signed April 29th, 1868, states that: l3l The United States pledged that the Great Sioux Reservation, includin the Black Hills, would be "set apart for the absolute and undis~ use and occupation" of the Sioux Nation (Sioux), and that no treaty for the cession of any part of the reservation would be valid as against the Sioux unless executed and signed by at least three-fourths of the adult male Sioux population. (Website 1). The territory delineated by this treaty was quite substantial in comparison with the current reservation occupied by the Sioux people. The Great Sioux Nation included "all of present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River, and reserved to the Lakota the right to hunt north of the North Platte River-in Nebraska and in the territories of Wyoming and Montana-and on the Republican River in Kansas and Nebraska" (Biolsi 1991: 5). The U.S. government was relatively unconcerned about the loss of such substantial tracts of land because it was deemed worthless (Albers 1983; Churchill 1997; Lazarus 1991). The soil was dry and brittle; the growing season was short and the semi-arid summers provided little rainfall for significant agricultural development. However, this is precisely the life the U.S. would have the Lakota lead, as agricultural implements were included in the treaty negotiations. The attempted establishment of agricultural production on Pine Ridge, as stipulated in Article 8 of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, was an effort to eradicate the traditional subsistence strategy of the Lakota that required high levels of mobility (Website 1). This tactic would provide two benefits for the burgeoning United States: first, with the Lakota confined to a reservation, great tracts of land would be unguarded for easy passage and settlement by westward migrants, and second, from a purely economic standpoint, the United States, beset by major economic depression, could afford relatively inexpensive yearly payments to support a Pax Americana, but not the major economic cost of continued military engagement (Lazarus 1991: 69).