Volume 21 Number 1
October 1981

Francis R. McKenna

MULTICULTURALISM and its derivatives-ethnic pluralism or the new pluralism-imply the acceptance, appreciation, and awareness of racial, ethnic, and cultural differences. Governmental policy makers, educators, and the media have recited this creed throughout the 1970s. One is given to believe that America has matured from a melting pot mentality to the genuine recognition of the uniqueness and vitality of the disparate cultures and ethnic societies that are constituents of this multinational, multilingual, and multicultural country. Further, it would appear, America's development and its strength, past or present, lie in the variety, the spectrum, of peoples who color the nation's landscape.

Federal programs abound which presume to bear witness to America's commitment to maintain, even nurture, the cultural and historical values of this divergent polity. The Ethnic Heritage Program (Title IX, Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) suggests that:

The Bilingual Education Programs (Title VII, Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) are intended:

The Indian Elementary and Secondary School Assistance Act claims that:

Thus, the legislative rhetoric is clearly in evidence, though the funding of these programs remains wholly inadequate (see Note 4).

Other segments of the public and private sectors also seem supportive of multiculturalism. School districts nationwide have worked on curriculum revision to include culturally fair treatment of minorities and ethnics. State boards of education have mandated that multicultural content be included in the schools' curricula; Pennsylvania, for example, includes, as one of its goals of Education Quality Assessment, multiethnic studies for all pupils of the Commonwealth. Textbook publishers, historically among the major purveyors of racism and ethnic stereotyping (see Note 5) have developed guidelines recently to eliminate bias in texts and other teaching materials (see Note 6). Schools of higher education have sprouted Black, Latino, Indian, and White Ethnic Studies programs like spring flowers, with about the same durability.

This article seeks to examine the claims for and extent of multicultural commitments in U.S. society-- A case study will be formulated which will assess the respect and reverence for American Indian peoples and cultures as an instance of multicultural values among American educators, policy makers, and publics. The above Federal programs, state and local policies, and corporate pronouncements, it will be claimed, amount to no more than a thin veneer, designed to disguise insidious policies of economic exclusion and devastation, racism, and genocide. This case study focuses upon the Indian in contemporary U.S. society.

The thesis of the article is that multiculturalism, with its presumed liberal, humane acceptance, even sponsorship, of cultural difference is for the Indian a Potemkin village--a façade--to mask the real agenda for American Indians. That agenda is the acceleration of domestic dependency or internal colonialism (see Note 7), the major features of which are political destablization, economic exploitation, cultural annihilation, and the destruction of the spirits and persons of the citizens of Indian nations.

These charges ought not be dismissed as polemical. The evidence is incontrovertible in support of this position and can be found in Congressional testimony, Federal court decisions, more than 300 treaties between the governments of the United States and Indian nations, and in Indian publications, such as Akwessasne Notes and Wassaja. Only a partial set of these data is presented here but is sufficient to substantiate the case. These data are divided into two general classifications, followed by six groupings of phenomena, all of which attest to an inverse relationship between the rhetoric of multiculturalism and the reality of Indian existence in the United States.

The first classification, in reality a categorical assertion, is that the legal relationship between Indian nations and the government of the United States is rarely recognized by the U.S. government and is misunderstood by the masses of non-Indian citizens. Indian nations and peoples are a "special case" (see Note 8) for they have political status as conquered nations, and their rights are framed by international treaties and agreements concluded with the U.S. government. Indian claims to land, water, mineral, fishing, hunting, and other rights proceed from international treaties, as does their receiving of educational, health, and other services from the metropole. These treaties, agreed upon for more than 200 years, are both the source of a captive peoples' defense against total obliteration and the cause of systematic efforts of repression.

The Congress regularly in domestic legislation lumps Indians with other minorities, e.g., witness the language of the Bilingual Act and various titles of the War on Poverty legislation and its recent amendments. But Indians are not a domestic minority. Indian nations are political entities, sovereign nations, and have been recognized as such by the Supreme Court from the Marshall court in the 1830s to the case of Mancari vs. Morton in 1974. Mancari affirms the non-minority bases of Indian entitlements and the inapplicability of certain Federal statutes, e.g., the 1964 Civil Rights Act, because of ". . . the unique legal status of Indian tribes under Federal law, and upon the plenary powers of Congress, based upon a history of treaties . . . (see Note 9). Nevertheless, members of Congress and segments of the American public seek to abrogate these treaties and terminate the Federal relationship with Indian nations. Some claim that because citizenship was extended to Indians in 1924 the Indians' special status is little more than a welfare boondoggle. This view fails to note that Indians, in the main, neither sought nor wanted citizenship and, further, that from the Dawes Act of 1887 (The General Allotment Act) citizenship for Indians, when available, was a smokescreen for the expropriation of Indian lands. Citizenship in 1924 simply added to the shrinkage of the Indian land base.

The second classification or assumption is that few non-Indians have respect or concern for Indian rights. Several examples should suffice to support this assertion.

During the 95th Congress (see Note 10) eleven separate bills were introduced which sought to abrogate Indian treaties or otherwise deny Federal support to Indians. One of these bills, introduced by Congressman Meeds of Washington, intended to deny to Southwestern Indians water rights secured by treaty. The water instead was to become available to corporate ranchers and industrial firms in the region (see Note 11). Another bill, authored by Congressman Cunningham of Washington, ironically titled the Native American Equal Opportunity Act, was a straightforward termination proposal (see Note 12).

The President of the United States showed little interest in the demonstration of Indian concern manifested by people of 1978's Longest Walk. The Longest Walk contingent sought to present Jimmy Carter with a manifesto, but the answer to Oren Lyons' question, "Where is Jimmy Carter?" (see Note 13) was that the President was unavailable due to a concern with a meeting on human rights in Germany at which he would criticize Soviet Nationality Policy.

Groups of white citizens have launched massive anti-Indian campaigns in recent years designed to lobby for severance of Federal-Indian relations. Farmers and ranchers in Montana and Idaho, allegedly backed by powerful economic interest, i.e., big coal, gas and timber companies, have formed the Interstate Congress for Equal Rights and Responsibilities (ICERR) with chapters in 26 states and significant lobbies in Washington, DC, and in state capitols. Among other alleged supporters of ICERR are the John Birch Society and the Sons of Liberty. A similar Dakota-based group is called Civil Liberties for South Dakota Citizens. Even environmentalist organizations, such as the Sierra Club and the Isaac Walton League, who espouse a "wilderness without man" concept, oppose Indians on a number of land use claims. And, of course, sport fishing and hunters' associations are vehemently anti-Indian.

Academics generally have little interest in Indians. Scholars generally divided into three categories: (a) Those who are overtly racist. An example is John Greenway, a folklorist at the University of Colorado. Greenway posed the question, "Did the United States destroy the American Indian?", and answered, "No, but it should have" (see Note 18); (b) Those who exclude Indians from academic life. To illustrate, witness the rejection of the application of the American Indian Historical Society for participation in the International Congress of Historical Sciences (see Note 19); and (c) those who neglect to include the Indian in scholarly presentations. The revisionist historian, Colin Greer, in an otherwise excellent collection of works on ethnicity in America, makes no mention of American Indians (see Note 20).

Add to the above the continued vicious stereotyping of Indians by commercial advertisers who depict Indians in their sales pitches as scalpers, squaws, cigar store dummies and the equally disagreeable characterizations created by cinema and television, and one has a pattern of cultural, political, and economic repression that cannot square with the liberal prattle of multiculturalism. But these are only generalized examples; a more specific set of charges must be added.

Indian cultures, institutions, and humanity are suppressed, manipulated, and crushed by the policies and actions of the government of the United States and its people. These include:

The right to practice one's faith is taken as an inherent and constitutional right in the American society. Despite alleged anti-social views of such religious cults as the Moonies, restrictions on their rights to believe and practice their faith would be and have been resisted by civil libertarians and traditional religionists. Yet Indians are regularly denied opportunity to pursue their beliefs and practices by Federal and state authorities.

Senator Abourezk's (D-SD) Select Committee on Indians in 1978, heard repeated testimony on the denial of religious freedom. The testimony included: Indian inmates at Lompoc Penitentiary in California consistently were refused their requests to have constructed a sweat lodge on prison grounds and to use the sacred ceremonial pipe. While Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims could worship in this Federal facility, Indian religionists could not. Similar complaints have been recorded in various state penal institutions.

The United States Navy banned or limited access to a spa in the Mojave Desert which for more than 100 years had been a religious healing site for the Paiute and Shoshone. Now a naval weapons center, the Navy first totally restricted the spa's use and, recently, permitted access only in daylight, despite the nations' insistence that the most important spirits assemble only at night. Federal drug control regulators prohibit the use of peyote buttons by the Native American Church. The possession of peyote, used in ceremonies of the Church, is deemed illegal, though there is no record of similar restraint on Roman Catholic use of sacramental wine during the prohibition era. Blackfeet, Cree, and Mohawk holy men who traverse the settler frontiers of the U.S. and Canada, carrying sacred medicine bundles, have been stopped and searched by U.S. Customs officials, The opening of sacred bundles despoiled and rendered them useless. Not only does this practice desecrate religious objects, the provisions of the Jay Treaty of 1794, in the case of the Hau de no sau nee people, are violated.

Lastly, in this account, the Smithsonian Museum, a national treasure, ignores Indian religious sensitivity by the Museum's vulgar display of ancestral bones and skulls, medicine bundles, sacred pipes, and other religious objects (see Note 21). This total disregard for the spiritual values of native people can hardly be considered as an instance of respect for and understanding of other cultures.

The forced separation of Indian children and youth from their families has long been a Bureau of Indian Affairs' practice. The establishment of boarding schools historically has been to rupture the cultural and value ties of the home and nation and the rising generation of Indian youth (see Note 22). The so-called civilizing effect of institutional rearing has been designed to aid in the de-Indianization of the young. Long distances separate children from their parents, and a conscious effort to scatter youth far from their homes seems to prevail. Additionally, Christian churches have developed massive programs for adoption of Indian children. Adoption of Indian youth is some 20 times the national average (see Note 23). For Navajos alone, some 2,000 children are spirited away for adoption annually by a single agency, the Mormon Church (see Note 24). The cultural impact of placement in non-Indian homes usually results in marginality or rejection of Indianness, a not unintended aim.

Finally, in this account, family life has been altered or destroyed by Federal relocation efforts of the 1950s and by lack of economic opportunity on reservations. Both have signaled an Indian exodus to the cities. Usually unemployable, due to lack of technical skills, racist hiring practices, or both, the migrant Indian often ends in an urban slum, cut off from his/her family and nation, and the family on the reservation is robbed of the out-migrant's contribution to the family economy, as well as his/her presence in the household.

The Federal programs designed to encourage language development largely exclude Indian linguistic groups. The amount of money set aside for Indian languages or gained competitively is miniscule under the Bilingual Act or the Indian Education Act. Even a Congressional review of bilingual programs criticized DHEW for its lack of programs for many Native American languages (see Note 25). Collegiate programs for the training of bilingual specialists usually exclude Indians. One such program, with which the author is acquainted, now in its second funding cycle, has admitted no Indian graduate students, despite efforts by Indian educators to secure admission. Part A of Title IV. The Indian Education Act, designed to meet the special educational and cultural needs of Indian pupils, allocates most of its limited funds to basic education activities, areas that should be supported by local and state education agencies, ESEA entitlements, or other funding sources. Thus, neither the ideological nor the economic commitment to language and cultural development for Indians is forthcoming.

Indian lands have again become a prized item for White America. Confined to desolate regions during the 19th century, the discovery has been made that Indian lands contain valuable energy resources. Now the multinational corporations, with Federal support, are moving in on Indian country. Timber, water, coal, gas, and uranium are the quests. One illustration of corporate avarice will suffice, that of the uranium cartels. The U.S. Departments of Interior and Energy are assisting multinationals such as Exxon, Anaconda, and Kerr McGee in leasing large tracts of Indian land. Indian resistance to these land grabs is ignored; Indian leaders are co-opted; Indian landscapes are raped; and Indian people are left to attempt to survive the ecological terrors of uranium mining and processing (see Note 26). The trail of tears left by the corporations is extensive. Economically, Indian nations fare poorly in the agreements that the U. S. government has encouraged the nations to sign. In 1975, with uranium valued at $30 per pound, the Navajos received 60 cents per pound as their fair share of the agreement with the multinational corporation. That amounts to two percent of market value. In 1978, with uranium prices in excess of $69 per pound, the Navajos' 60 cents had fallen to less than one percent of market value.

The Navajo Nation supplies the land, furnishes labor at considerably less than minimum wage standards, and absorbs the destruction of the landscape and the waste products of the uranium mills in its water table, thus threatening drinking water, agricultural products, and livestock. Nuclear power is of little use to the Navajo, especially those in remote locations most often disrupted by the corporations. The power generated from Navajo land resources will fuel industrial and urban America. Yet the Navajo may pay with his/her life for this progress. Corporate response, as that of the Energy and Interior Departments, is callous and has been characterized as follows:

In this illustration of Indian confrontation with corporate capitalism, Indian lands, rights, claims and life are ignored and/or violated, and Indian treaties are suspended; political institutions are manipulated or circumvented, and the worth of the Indian to the American government and corporations is clearly evident.

Historically, representatives of the government of the United States have manipulated Indian leadership to serve America's national interests. Treaty signing was often accomplished by ignoring legitimate tribal authorities (see Note 27). "The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 required the election of "officials" despite traditional modes of selection. This set in motion further conflicts within Indian communities over the legitimacy of leaders recognized by the Federal government This complicity of Washington, DC, and of corporate capitalism to circumvent or circumscribe Indian decision-making is as evident today as in yesteryear when manifest destiny required the unconditional surrender of Indian patriots or the treating with their less heroic surrogates.

Genocide is an emotionally charged word. Still it is used to describe the policy of National Socialism toward Jews earlier in this century. Estimates of loss of Indian life in this hemisphere in the past five centuries, since the arrival of the conquistadors and the colonizers, are upwards of 14 million, more than twice the toll of the holocaust. An example of the assessment of American leaders of depopulating Indian nations appeared in a 19th century history textbook on the topic of early colonization:

This article has selected but a fraction of recent evidence but shows, nevertheless, that U.S. Indian policy cannot be cloaked in the politically hackneyed term multiculturalism. A multicultural policy respecting cultural differences could not deny religious freedom, destroy home and family, obliterate languages and cultures, rape the land and devastate individual and collective economies, strip nations of legitimate political authority, ignore international treaties, and pursue genocidal practices against women and unborn young. In face of these examples, any notion of multiculturalism, understood as a progressive instance of nationality policy, must be seen, for the American Indian, not only as a cruel myth but as a vicious charade that seeks to mask an egregious policy of internal colonialism and repression.

1. Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninety-fifth Congress, A Report on the Educational Amendments of 1978, H.R. 15, together with Additional and Supplemental Views, Report No 95-1137, p. 325.

2. Ibid., p. 300-301.

3. Ibid., p. 422.

4. The National Advisory Council on Indian Education in its fifth annual report recommended an increase in funding to $162 per student for FY79. The 1978 figure was $125 per child. This extremely modest per capita authorization cannot begin to meet the needs of Indian children and youth. NACIE, The Fifth Annual Report to the Congress of the United States, June, 1978, p. 9. The figure for FY 81 was $185, an amount that hardly compensates for the inflationary spiral. U.S. Department of Education, Estimates and Projections Branch, American Indians Enrolled in Public Schools, 04/30/81, p. 82.

5 A number of critiques of U.S. Textbooks have been assembled, e.g., Council for Interracial Books for Children, Stereotypes, Distortions, and Omissions in U.S History Textbooks (1977); American Indian Historical Society, Textbooks and the American Indian (1970).

6 The Macmillan Company is one publisher of a recent guide to culturally fair materials. cf. Pennsylvania Department of Education, Guidelines for Creating Positive Sexual and Racial Images in Educational Materials (adapted from Guidelines developed by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.).

7. For an extended discussion of dependency and American Indians, see Joseph Jorgensen, "A Century of Political Economic Effects on American Indian Society, 1880-1980," Journal of Ethnic Studies, Vol. 7:3, Fall, 1978.

8. This special status was admitted by President Johnson's 1966 Task Force on American Indians. "A Free Choice for American Indians," Report of the President's Task Force on American Indians (December, 1966), Walsh McDermott, Chairman.

9. 414 U.S. 1142, 39 L.Ed. 2d 99.

10. For legislative summary of 95th Congress on Indian related legislation, see Wassaja, October/November, 1978, p. 3, 5.

11. Akwesasne Notes, December, 1977, pp. 22-23.

12. Wassaja, May, 1978, p. 15.

13. Akwesasne Notes, Summer, 1978, p. 8.

14. Akwesasne Notes, Winter, 1978, p. 13.

15. Wassaja, May, 1978, p. 3.

16. Wassaja, March, 1978, p. 6.

17. Wassaja, November/December, 1977, p. 6.

18. John Greenway, "Will the Indians Get Whitey?" National Review 21, March 11, 1969.

19. Wassaja, March, 1978, p. 12.

20. Colin Greer, Divided Society, The Ethnic Experience in America. NY: Basic Books, 1974.

21. The author heard several days' testimony before the Select Committee. These data were also reported in an interview with Steve Rios and Kurt Blue Dog in the Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1979.

22. Reports to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs by Indian Agents throughout Indian country to the 1870s and 1880s justified the advent of boarding schools as a means of ending the "savage" influence of the family upon children. cf. Peter Farb, Man's Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State. NY: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1968; Lewis Meriam (Ed.), The Problems of Indian Administration. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928; and in annual reports of the Department of Interior on Indian Affairs.

23. Akwesasne Notes, Winter, 1978, pp. 16-18.

24. Ibid.

25. Committee on Education and Labor (1978), op. cit., p. 89.

26. A special issue of Akwesasne Notes, Late Winter, 1979, concerned corporate theft of Indian resources. Much of this account is drawn from that issue.

27. Akwesasne Notes, Late Winter, 1979, p. 16.

28. For a discussion of treaty making, cf. Grayson B. Noley, "The History of Education in the Choctaw Nation from Precolonial Times to 1830" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 1979), pp. 111-139.

29. Akwesasne Notes, Late Winter, 1979, p. 29. Though these data have been disputed as to accuracy, the issue is not the exact number, but that the practice occurs. Even in casual conversation on the topic, most any Indian person will confirm that such events do take place.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. Noah Webster, History of the United States. Cincinnati: Burgess and Morgan, 1832, p. 108.

Francis McKenna is Associate Professor of Education at Pennsylvania State University. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has done consulting with a variety of tribal organizations and the U.S. Office of Indian Education, is on the Associate Faculty of Native Americans at Penn State, and has done work for the NIEA. Among his publications are "Language Policy and Development of Elites," in the Soviet/Central Asian Proceedings of the Second World Congress of Soviet and East European Studies, and "Interdisciplinary and Comparative Education," in Universidad 2000.