Volume 1 Number 1
June 1961

Elizabeth E. Hoyt

Department of Economics

Iowa State University of Science and Technology

On a matter on which there is so much opinion expressed, as there is on current Indian policy, there has been singularly little research. We have data on the high degree of social disorganization among Indians, their high accident rate, their high rate of alcoholism, their high rate of apprehension for misdemeanors and crime, their high rate of dependency, their poor records in higher education and in employment. We also have scholarly studies of Indian life, usually made by anthropologists, which analyze and describe the culture of different tribes as they used to be, and tend to stress the Indians’ integrity, dignity, generosity, love of freedom, and harmony with nature. Some of these studies appear to give support to the idealistic claim that it would be well to encourage, or at any rate not to discourage, Indian isolation, so that old values in danger of vanishing can be preserved. It is argued, moreover, that this is what Indians want themselves. At a recent meeting of anthropologists it was agreed that Indians would continue "indefinitely as distinct social unities, preserving their basic values, personality and Indian way of life" (see Note 1).

The data on disorganization might be used to support the isolation argument, on the ground that it is contact with whites that accounts for the disorganization. But the same data might be used also to support the contrary argument with the claim that contact with whites has already gone too far to be checked, the old values have largely vanished already, and evidences of disorganization are dominant on reservations themselves.

Though we know a good deal in a general way about the behavior of "underdeveloped" peoples under the influences of rapid change, there are a great variety of these influences and a great variety of ways of reacting to them: against this background, the case of every distinct group needs its own special study (see Note 2). But the last "Inventory of Social and Economic Research in Health" by the Health Information Foundation" (see Note 3) does not list any mental health research relating to Indians among the 1200 studies noted. Also, "It would not be an overstatement to say that there is no preventive mental health program for Indians" (see Note 4).

Two pieces of research which relate to mental health, on small samples, have used the Rorschach technique. In one case the Indians studied, a relatively advanced group economically, appeared to have undergone a psychological transformation appropriate to the middle-class American value system. In the other case, the Indians, who also appeared acculturated, gave evidence of a corroded psychological structure, in which such shifts as had taken place were "regressive and disintegrative’ (see Note 5). G. D. and L. S. Spindler believe that the largest group of reservation Indians today are of what they call the "reaffirmative native type." These are younger people who have had a "comparatively wide and intensive contact with white culture" but have encountered blocks in their adaptation to it and perhaps were not strongly motivated to it in the first place. So they have rebounded to the tradition-oriented group maintained by "geographical isolation and the influence of elders within the reservation community." But they have rebounded with only partial conviction, and have doubts about their personal adequacy in the Indian’s world as well as in the white man’s world. They are frustrated and suspended (Note 6). Under pressure, these Indians tend to be resented; they assert the superiority of old values in which they may no longer partake.

The above references relate to adults. It seems particularly important to know of the Indian’s disposition toward his future before he enters the world of adults. Would he prefer to stay apart and live his life in his own way, the old way, or does he want to participate in the more general life and later find the cards stacked against him? On this no research has been found.

The study reported here is an effort to enter this no-man’s land. The Indian death rate is considerably higher than that of whites and the majority of Indians are 21 years of age or below it. Despite the fact that Indians’ values may change a good deal as they grow older—and also because of it—young Indians seemed the most appropriate group to approach, as well as the easiest. The method chosen was through essays written by children 15-17 years of age, of which the writer has 837 in all, as well as 207 essays from white children of the same age group collected for purposes of comparison. Approach by essays has been tested by the writer previously (see Note 7).

Two hundred fifty-five of the Indian children’s essays, mostly from South Dakota, were on the rather narrow topic: "My Plans after Leaving School." Five hundred eighty-two were on a much broader topic: "My Hopes for My Life on Leaving School" and these were from the Southwest, where Indians are as close to old Indian values as they would be anywhere in the United States. This group of approximately six hundred was divided into two parts, of which the larger portion, 363, were from children in what is known as the Navaho Special Program, set up to give intensive training, both academic and vocational, in five to eight years, to under-privileged children, some of whom had never been to school before and could not speak English when they entered the program. The other essays from the Southwest, 219, were from a variety of schools, Indian boarding, Indian public, public integrated schools and mission schools.

The main reliance of this study is on the 582 essays from the Southwest. It was thought that so broad a topic "My Hopes for My Life" might lead to mention of job, to material standard of living and to non-material values sought in life, as well as give opportunity for other comment. No suggestions were given by teachers

It has been suggested to the writer by some persons, who were surprised at the findings of the essays, that school children are likely to say what they think will please their teachers or the persons who asked for the essays. The writer does not believe this is true and some evidence is available. In the experiment at Tiquisate referred to immediately above, the responses of the children in a United Fruit Company school were exactly opposite to what would have pleased the Company. An unpublished study of 2400 essays by children in 12 Indian tribes in the United States, written in our schools, shows that in some of the tribes the children were quite bitter towards white people; others said that the assignment itself was foolish (see Note 8). Further evidence of the frankness of children is given below in connection with discussion of jobs.

The single most striking point of agreement in the essays was that practically without exception they mentioned motivation to job. This might have been expected of the smaller sample, from South Dakota, on "Plans!"; but it was equally true to the essays from the Southwest on "Hopes." Sometimes the nature of the job, or jobs, desired was stated; in other cases the reference was to desire for a "steady," a "permanent" or a "well-paying" job, the nature of which was not specified; or to how the child would try to perform on the job. It was surprising at first to find that the children in the Navaho Special Program, the most vocational of them all, though they said a great deal about performance on job in general, said least about specific jobs, even though most were already in a specific vocational program. In part it is believed this is due to the fact that the Program cannot give them a very wide choice and in considerable measure they take what they can get, not necessarily what would have been their preference. The largest knowledge of jobs, giving the widest basis for choice, appeared to be in the integrated schools, where the Indian children were rubbing shoulders with other children whose fathers had a variety of jobs.

The children did not usually mention whether they wanted a job on the reservation or off it; but from the nature of the jobs available, and named, most would have to be off the reservation. Rarely a student stated a desire to farm or keep cattle. It may be that the young people most interested in such work or most likely to do it arc those who have left school already.

In the first paragraph of this paper it was said that some friends of the Indian believe that Indians want to stay in their own communities away from white men, although this contention has hardly been supported by objective evidence. To those who believe this, however, the concentration of interest on jobs shown by these essays is an indication that the children’s statements cannot be trusted. But the genuineness of their statements is confirmed by other evidence. At the very time the students on the Navaho Special Program were writing these papers another experiment was going on in the same school. Two hundred forty-seven of the boys were asked to check their problems on a slightly modified form of the Mooney Problem Chick List (see Note 9) for junior high schools. On the fist appear 213 problems in seven areas, although the problems were not arranged by areas on the list (see Note 10). The greatest concentration of problems checked by the Indian children was in the group, "Money, Work and the Future," all of which problems were connected with job. The children checked an average of 10.6 problems in this area; the emphasis on jobs was consistently first for students of all ages and independent of number of years in school. The next highest area had only 6.3 problems checked" (see Note 11). The problems connected with job were three per cent of all on the check list, but they received over 12 per cent of the total number of checks (see Note 12). The white children who had checked the list put school problems first and job problems second (Note 13). If the students had been checking their problems in order to please their teachers they would have been more likely to check those problems which related to their desire to do good school work, rather than problems which suggested the limitations of the curriculum of a vocational school. The schoolwork area came fourth among the problems of Indian children (see Note 14).

Taking this interest in job as genuine, how is it possible to account for the relatively poor record of Indians, including younger Indians, in employment? The essays themselves suggest at least four reasons why the children will be handicapped in job performance.

In the first place, as has already been suggested, the children do not actually know much about jobs, the training required to get them or the means by which such training can be secured. A few had heard of the Federal Government’s highly selective help in job training and assumed that it was available to all. Girls tended to want to be nurses and among both sexes there was mention of the occupation of dormitory attendant, both being jobs the children had seen. Some children mentioned three or four very different kinds of jobs. Others said they didn’t know much about jobs:

In the second place, as also has been suggested, the children’s ambitions were for the most part humble and they expressed a good many doubts about their success. Only about half a dozen bad set their sights on being doctors, lawyers or teachers, and though several spoke of going into business (mostly car-repair work) only one spoke of possibly making big profits and owning a Cadillac and a Thunderbird. Most typical were remarks like these, all from the Southwest:

Two of the South Dakota boys expressed the fear that they might become alcoholics.

In the third place the essays revealed a relationship to family or a dependence on family that might interfere with job success. Among the Southwest children nearly a fourth spoke of this, but the Navaho Special Programs children, the less sophisticated children, mentioned it more often than did the more sophisticated high school children (26% vs. 17%). Among the white children of native parentage mention of family relationship and concern was zero.

This tie-up to family has two different aspects so far as effect on job is concerned. Many Indian families expect to share in the child’s earnings, and not only fathers, mothers and brothers and sisters, but aunts, uncles and cousins. This can act as a check on the child’s ambition. The tie-up to family as a demand on future earnings was not specifically stated in any of the essays: there was a suggestion of it in two of them.

More important than the demand aspect of family tie-up is the fact that frequent mention of family indicates that the family gives the child a sense of security, and it may be hard for the child to be away from home for long periods. Especially if he finds himself let down in his modest expectations, he will want to seek the comfort which the family gives. Also if, because of conflicts of values, he breaks with family, as some young Indians do, his future is likely to be consciously or unconsciously clouded by his sense of disloyalty to the source which gave him life.

The fourth and final evidence of the essays that bears on job success is probably less important than the others. Not a single child in the Southwest mentioned prejudice against Indians. It would seem that as school children they had either not met it or it had not seemed important, and it seems likely that they had not heard it much discussed. This absence of comment on prejudice is the more striking in that among the children there was one girl who identified herself as a Negro and who did speak of the race problem. The only reference to race prejudice who in the total group of 837 Indians was from one child in South Dakota who said: "Some people just don’t like Indians." We can hardly escape the conclusion that when they go into the world of employment some of these children are going to be hurt by prejudice which they do not expect. On the other hand, since they as yet show no signs of hurt they are not likely (as Negroes sometimes do) to read prejudice into situations where it does not exist.

Though the presence of job problems is the best evidence that the children will have trouble in the world of jobs, the presence of a large number of other problems indicates this liability too. Responses of Indian children on the check list of the Frederickson study, already referred to, averaged 39.2 problems for each child, whereas the white children who had been given the same list checked 23. In other words, the Indian, children checked 70% more problems than did the white (Note 15).

It was expected that some of the children who wrote on the subject of "Hopes" would express their interest in things they wanted to own. The commonest reference was the desire for a car. This reference was 29.4% among the Navaho Special Program children, 6.8% among the other Southwest Indian children, and 3.9% among the white children. For house or home involving house the percentage was 25.9 for the Navaho Special Program children and 9.1 for the other Indian children. For white children it was still less, but the picture is confused by the fact that white girls frequently mentioned desire for marriage and a family, involving an interest in home not specifically mentioned; Indian girls said relatively less about marriage and more about jobs. It is not to be assumed that the Indian girls cared less about marriage, but that a job was more of a problem to them.

The fact that it was the less sophisticated Indian children who said most about desire for a car and a house is to be explained, no doubt, in part because the other children assumed they would have a car and a house and in part because the less secure feel the most need for the things that show and are symbols of success: a recognized principle is consumption economics.

Travel was mentioned occasionally in the essays but not often enough to have much statistical significance. It was referred to most frequently by the white children, next by the more sophisticated Indian children, and among the 363 Navaho Special Program children it was mentioned only twice.

In all of the groups, but most in the Navaho Special Program, children spoke of their desire to be "good," "moral" and to try hard, One Navaho Special Program boy put his effort thus:

At first, it was thought that the essays might reveal more explicitly the presence of intangible values, especially old Indian values, though other evidence suggests that old Indian intangible values, as such, are no longer important among the young.

It is in any case difficult to express intangible values, especially for persons who do not have a large command of the language in which they arc writing. Two of the Navaho children said they wanted to be people who felt good inside, and this suggests the old Navaho emphasis on harmony with the universe. This mention by the Navaho children is not necessarily very different, however, from what several of the white children had in mind when they spoke of their desire for fulfillment or self-fulfillment. The child who said he wanted to live in the appreciation of beauty recalls the emphasis on beauty in Navaho poetry; but it was a white child who said that. The ultimate in non-material ambition was expressed by two of the Navaho Special Program children. One boy wrote:

And a girl:

In the introduction to this paper it was said, quoting the Spindlers, that the largest group of Indians on reservations were believed to be younger people who had been frustrated in one way or another in their adaptation to the world of whites and who may have been not strongly motivated to adapt in the first place. The personalities of these younger people were clouded by doubts and ambivalence and distorted by what they had sought as compensations.

These younger people on the reservations are those who, a few years ago, were school children. At that time it may be that their motivations toward regular jobs were less strong than those of the children who wrote these essays. That is something we have no way of knowing.

We can, however, hardly doubt the strength of motivations toward job and toward the way of life we associate with regular job in the lives of the children whose hopes are recorded here. We can also see, and through their own words, some of the difficulties that he ahead of them. School, and other influences playing upon their lives as children, motivate them for something that life does not secure for them.

The children still in school are the largest group of Indians. What their future will be is unknown, but we can partially determine it if we know more about them: their dispositions, their affections, their doubts and their hopes, as they stand on the threshold of adulthood.