American Indian Culture and Economic Development in the Twentieth Century
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Native Pathways EDITED BY Brian Hosmer AND Colleen O’Neill FOREWORD BY Donald L. Fixico Native Pathways American Indian Culture and Economic Development in the Twentieth Century University Press of Colorado © 2004 by the University Press of Colorado Published by the University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Native pathways : American Indian culture and economic development in the twentieth century / edited by Brian Hosmer and Colleen O’Neill. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87081-774-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-87081-775-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Indians of North America—Economic conditions. 2. Indian business enterprises— North America. 3. Economic development—North America. 4. Gambling on Indian reservations—North America. 5. Oil and gas leases—North America. 6. North America Economic policy. 7. North America—Economic conditions. I. Hosmer, Brian C., 1960– II. O’Neill, Colleen M., 1961– E98.E2N38 2004 330.973'089'97—dc22 2004012102 Design by Daniel Pratt 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents DONALD L. FIXICO Foreword vii Acknowledgments xi COLLEEN O’NEILL 1 Rethinking Modernity and the Discourse of Development in American Indian History, an Introduction 1 PART I COMMERCE AND INCORPORATION PAUL C. ROSIER 2 Searching for Salvation and Sovereignty: Blackfeet Oil Leasing and the Reconstruction of the Tribe 27 DAVID LA VERE 3 Minding Their Own Business: The Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Business Committee of the Early 1900s 52 JESSICA R. CATTELINO 4 Casino Roots: The Cultural Production of Twentieth-Century Seminole Economic Development 66 vi FCOREWORDONTENTS NICOLAS G. ROSENTHAL 5 The Dawn of a New Day? Notes on Indian Gaming in Southern California 91 KATHY M’CLOSKEY 6 The Devil’s in the Details: Tracing the Fingerprints of Free Trade and Its Effects on Navajo Weavers 112 PART II WAGE WORK TRESSA BERMAN 7 “All We Needed Was Our Gardens”: Women’s Work and Welfare Reform in the Reservation Economy 133 DAVID ARNOLD 8 Work and Culture in Southeastern Alaska: Tlingits and the Salmon Fisheries 156 CLYDE ELLIS 9 Five Dollars a Week to Be “Regular Indians”: Shows, Exhibitions, and the Economics of Indian Dancing, 1880–1930 184 JEFFREY P. S HEPHERD 10 Land, Labor, and Leadership: The Political Economy of Hualapai Community Building, 1910–1940 209 WILLIAM BAUER 11 Working for Identity: Race, Ethnicity, and the Market Economy in Northern California, 1875–1936 238 PART III METHODOLOGY AND THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS C. D. JAMES PACI 12 Local Knowledge as Traditional Ecological AND LISA KREBS Knowledge: Definition and Ownership 261 BRIAN HOSMER 13 “Dollar a Day and Glad to Have It”: Work Relief on the Wind River Indian Reservation as Memory 283 DUANE CHAMPAGNE 14 Tribal Capitalism and Native Capitalists: Multiple Pathways of Native Economy 308 BRIAN HOSMER AND 15 Conclusion 330 COLLEEN O’NEILL About the Contributors 335 Index 341 FOREWORD vii Foreword The day finally arrived in the late twentieth century when American Indians became an economic force to be dealt with in the U.S. business world. Previ- ously, American Indian communities and their tribal governments had reacted to U.S. actions and policies. Now the rest of America began responding to American Indian enterprises, largely as a result of the success of Indian gam- ing, an annual $10 billion industry involving over 200 tribes in twenty-four states. As a result, American Indian economic development in the twentieth century marked the greatest pivotal change in Native American history. How did this happen? The seeds of successful economic practices had already been sown in the reservation lands of American Indian tribes. There were hard times and lessons to be learned. That enormous change and how it has occurred throughout Indian country are what this book addresses. Brian Hosmer and Colleen O’Neill have carefully chosen essays that broadly cover Indian country, ranging from the late nineteenth century to the present. These important studies are about commerce and incorporation, wage viii FOREWORD work, methodology, and theoretical implications. These salient case stud- ies are written by established scholars and younger scholars, native and nonna- tive, for a well-balanced approach to reveal inside accounts of the rise of American Indian economic development and cultural change in modern native history. American Indians learned the values of their colonizer—the Anglo- Americans. By the late nineteenth century, Indians understood such values and began to operate in the capitalistic system of big business. But have Indian business leaders gone too far? Have they assimilated into the mainstream so they are no longer Indians? The answer and the key to understanding the trag- edy and triumph of American Indian capitalism are provided in the chapters of this book. And the story is more complicated than anyone immediately real- izes. American Indians have always operated within a system of multiple trade relations, temporary agreements, kinship alliances, and military confedera- tions. These relationships shaped their economies in ways scholars are just beginning to understand. The history of business between Indians and the white man has been one of trade and exploitation, with a long tradition of bartering, capitalism, and power. This long history was unfair to the Indians because they were forced to adhere to the white man’s business system. Eventually, native peoples lost property and their homelands while holding on to 2 percent of their original lands. Eager opportunists took advantage of Indian people who could not read or write and whose command of English was often inadequate. The systems of values and dealings were different between Indians and whites, and Indians learned the white ways at their own expense. The Indians’ lack of cultural materials produced an uncontrolled change among Indian communities. Tribe after tribe quickly became dependent on the white man’s material goods, such as metal cooking utensils and guns. The growing need for these items undermined native peoples’ ability to control events within their own communities. External influences became too great, as Indians’ desire for white goods increased. In fact, native peoples became too dependent on the mainstream and on the federal government. Whereas before they had depended on their natural environments for their livelihoods, the shift of dependency to a paternalistic federal government and an opportu- nistic mainstream re-educated American Indians in white ways and capital- ism. But native peoples held on to their basic values, as well as to their hope, identity, and integrity. They would change yet still remain “Indian.” They were flexible enough to control this change. FOREWORD ix As a result, Indian acculturation of mainstream materialism began to change native peoples to a certain degree. Their mind-sets were no longer purely native. Through increasing contact with Anglo-Americans, Indian people found themselves leaving reservations during the late nineteenth century to work on ranches and in Wild West shows. Indians in the business world actually con- stituted the workforce, supplying labor for backbreaking jobs. All of this be- gan to change as the pendulum of Indian business began to swing toward a new cycle, starting with mixed-bloods who well understood the American capitalist system. Change was under the control of native people and their tribal communi- ties, and controlling such change became important for their survival. A sup- pressed people can experience limited sovereignty in their lives as long as they have hope and their basic identity remains intact. These dynamics of controlled change and acceptance of acculturation remained internal within Indian com- munities. Factionalism and kinship influences abounded as they normally did, but the real threat to Indian livelihood and forced change came externally— from the federal government and American culture. In these pages strong arguments are made case after case for the success of American Indian sovereignty in devising a new culture that has borrowed much from the American mainstream. But Indians are in control. That control re- mains vibrant with each passing decade as native business and tribal leaders have learned how to deal effectively with the white man’s linear world. One might even say native systems have meshed with non-Indian systems in an Indian-white business world. The arguments are convincing, and the evidence is here to tell a new story of how native peoples have incorporated external culture into their communities and their thinking. The dawn of a new American Indian culture emerged in the twentieth century, as substantiated in the following chapters. This new culture of native ingenuity is being shaped with each new opportunity as indigenous leaders in various positions seek to advance the interests of their people. This is a new era of American Indian history, and this important book opens the door to understanding a new Indian-white relationship while advancing into the twenty-first century. Collectively, this well-conceived volume is an enlighten- ing native pathway toward an invigorating American Indian history of old and new values operating in a complex Indian-white world. —DONALD L. FIXICO UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Acknowledgments We acknowledge those individuals and institutions that helped bring this col- lection to press.