Volume 5 Number 1
October 1965

Albert Wahrhaftig

BY NOW, all Americans are familiar with the intent of the War on Poverty and of its implementing bureaucracy, the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). Great numbers of Indians are counted as among the impoverished of the nation. The expectation has always been that Indians would be among those benefited by the Act.

Where, as in the case of most Indian reservations, there has been a longstanding institutional connection between the tribe as a "community" and the Federal Government, relationships involving the tribal community as "sponsor" and the OEO as "funder" of community development activities soon came into being.

I address myself to the problem of the relationship between the OEO and non-reservation country Indian communities. Fully 150,000 American Indians live in small, cohesive, rural communities surrounded or even interspersed with non-Indian populations and are embraced within state and county administrative structures. All the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma live in precisely this social situation (see Note 1). They exemplify a type of Indian community found in many parts of the United States. Socially, the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma consist of a large number of "conservative" Indian settlements. There are, taking the lowest estimate for each tribe, 50 settlements of Cherokees with a population of 9,500; 35 settlements of Choctaws, with a population of 7,500; 45 settlements of Creeks with a population of 7,500; 15 settlements of Chicasaws with a population of 3,000 and 10 settlements of Seminoles with a population of 2,500. These are "tribal" communities (see Note 2): (a) The members of each settlement are tribal in their self-conception—they think of themselves as "Creeks," not as "Indians" or as "Americans of Indian descent;" (b) They live in small communities of kinsmen; (c) Settlements within a tribe are interrelated by kinship and by common participation in ceremonial institutions (Christian or non-Christian); (d) The native language is the language of the household; (c) The native language is used at social and ceremonial gatherings—hence, the social world of most such Indians is a non-English-speaking world and English is a language of "the outside." These tribal communities are capable of taking action as a unit. Such tribal communities could operate effective community action projects under the OEO. To date, they have not been able to do so. This is so because neither the country Indian settlement nor the whole tribal community composed of related settlements tends to be recognized and related to as a functional community.

The Economic Opportunity Act, in the title concerning community development activities, defines a "community" as a township, a county, a group of counties, a metropolitan area . . . etc. In practice, this legal definition becomes reified. Any geographically bounded administrative unit is accepted as a "community," whether or not its boundaries coincide with the functioning communities of human beings within it. In Oklahoma, community development planning based on the county as a focus of organization is encouraged. The Cherokee tribal community, as an example, is spread over six counties of northeastern Oklahoma. Each of these counties contains several Cherokee settlements as well as several white settlements. Within a county, Cherokee function as a community and whites function as a community. In their home lives, in their social life, in their religious activities, in their leisure-time activities, Cherokees interact with Cherokees and whites interact with whites. They are not members of a single community.

By treating county administrative structures as though they represented an actual single community of people in interaction, with mutual goals, and with a common understanding of their situation within the general American society, the OEO insists upon a fiction. At the same time, by cross-cutting an actual community of people in interaction, with common purposes and understandings—the geographically disperse tribal community—the OEO suppresses the performance of useful work by a viable human community. The situation is complicated by the OEO’s current insistence that to enter directly into dealings with such Indian communities qua Indian communities would be segregationary.

The following proposal is an example of one way of dealing with this impasse. While the project could be sponsored by any convenient agency—a community, a county, or an acceptable private organization—it allows the tribal community as a whole to function. By concentrating on Indians as a population differing not in "race" but in relative experience of the mores and meanings of the general American society, it can be defined as an intergrative rather than a segregative program. It is an "out" whereby tribal communities can perform as integral parts of the general American society and at the same time as viable cohesive communities.

It is essential to the American concept of Civil Rights that what is offered as an "opportunity" to any group of people in this country be offered equally to every group of people. The process of communication between English-speakers explaining and directing the OEO to impoverished English-speakers is not equal to the process of communication between English-speakers explaining and directing the OEO to Cherokee-speaking members of Cherokee society. Unless equivalence in this process of communication can be established, the civil rights of a population such as the Cherokee are threatened. Furthermore, the American concept of Civil Rights commits the American public to remove barriers to participation in the benefits of the general society. Lack of sufficient information on which to base a prudent course of action is precisely such a barrier.

The OEO has been active in northeastern Oklahoma for only a few months. In this short time barriers to communication and participation have already come into being.

In five of these six counties, county-wide community action organizations, with mandatory Cherokee representation on their community action advisory boards, are being formed. Major attempts to inform Cherokees about the War on Poverty have already been made. These have included meetings in small country communities, county meetings, and radio programs. All have included OEO staff members as competent informants; all have been fully translated into Cherokee.

Although English-speaking Cherokees who live outside of Cherokee-speaking communities have expressed a mild interest in recent developments in the War on Poverty, Cherokee-speakers on the whole await an explanation of what the War on Poverty is "all about," which means, in their terms, comprehensible. On the whole, Cherokee reaction to this program has been one of bewilderment, worry, withdrawal, and, at times, a fatalistic certainty that whatever the Government does is certain either to fail or to be taken over by whites to use against the Cherokees.

So far, the Cherokee-speaking population of these counties interprets the War on Poverty in these terms:

These interpretations are prevalent, notwithstanding concerted and well implemented attempts at explanation. Disastrous as it may seem, it is as good an opinion as could be expected under the circumstances.

We are prone to assume that success in communication is dependent on the effectiveness of mechanical factors involved in "transmission" and "reception." Hence, it would be tempting to explain the failure of the OEO to communicate itself to Cherokees in terms of lack of fluency in English, low literacy, geographic and social isolation, and a lack of sophisticated and bilingual Cherokees. It is evident, however, that these factors donot explain the difficulties Cherokees have had in interpreting what the OEO is trying to say. There has been translation in Cherokee, some articles in the written form of the Cherokee language, meetings "at home" in the country Cherokee milieu, and effective relationships with educated and prestigeful Cherokee spokesmen. Still, meaningful communication has not taken place.

These difficulties in communication must be accounted for in term of the total process whereby Cherokees assimilate information and take action.

First, Cherokees live in small communities in which everyone is related, everyone has grown up together, everyone does generally the same kind of work, and everyone has roughly the same kind of skills. In all respects, Cherokee communities are very homogeneous, even more so now than in the past. Cherokee communities are relatively closed. There is far more communication from Cherokee to Cherokee within a Cherokee community than there is communication between Cherokees and "the outside." This means that each Cherokee is accustomed to communicating with men much the same as he is, within the context of a community in which they are mutually involved, and in terms of experience that they share. For example, I have seen Cherokees discussing case histories in Cherokee medicine and curing (which is indeed an abstract and intellectually demanding subject.) The teaching of apprentice by doctor proceeds in terms of their actual kinship, within a mutually known environment in which medicinally useful plants grow, and with reference to commonly related people who will be clients and patients.. All of these factors are for a Cherokee integral to the process of "learning how medicine works." This is, of course, exactly opposite to the process whereby an American MD learns medicine by going to a distant city to enroll in an unfamiliar school where he will listen to a professor he has never met before tell an assembly of unrelated students how to treat persons they will actually see only years later. This is to say that Cherokees learn new things in context and in terms of particular necessities which they share. Whites communicate generalities and expect each listener to affix to the generality his own private context. To a Cherokee, the statement "under the Economic Opportunity you can borrow money to start a small business" is inherently meaningless. But, in talking, say, to a Navajo who borrowed money from the "poverty people" to improve his cattle herd, and in a discussion of the particulars whereby this was done, a Cherokee will finally arrive at this generalization: "You can borrow money to start a small business."

Furthermore, where whites are apt to tally the results of an activity in terms of economic gain, or even an increment in social status, without much regard to the on-going relationships they have with other people, for Cherokees activities have meaning only in terms of social relationships. What might impress a Cherokee about a small tribal industry, for example, could be the discovery that it enables a man’s sons to live near him rather than having to journey away to find work.

Second, Cherokees deal only with those concrete activities having to do with themselves and "their folk." When, to ensure the well-being of oneself or one’s people something must be done, Cherokees evolve a means of doing it. Thus, Cherokees have managed to provide themselves and their kin with food and shelter under continually changing conditions. Nor are Cherokees confined to dealing with things in the present or near future on some rudimentary level. When the survival of the Cherokee people was contingent on finding a way to deal with an increasingly menacing white population, the Cherokees evolved all the apparatus of the Cherokee Nation. In the nature of the case, Cherokee institutions evolve around doing something particular with respect to particular people. To suggest that Cherokees participate in a committee to "plan for their community" and then carry out what the committee plans on doing is, in Cherokee terms, a ridiculously inverted procedure. In order to build a small factory that will give themselves and their kin jobs (once it is understood how that might happen) Cherokees will form a committee.

Third, Cherokees doubt that Indians really can do the things they want to do and further doubt that white men will let them do what they want to do. Very likely, Cherokees are now beginning to doubt that Indians can even do the same things white men can do.

Only 60 years ago, the community of Cherokee speakers contained as integral and functioning members, senators, judges, and officials of the Cherokee Nation, doctors, lawyers, professionalized people. With the dissolution of the Cherokee Nation in 1907 and the resulting separation of Cherokee and white society, such people no longer exist within the Cherokee community. Indeed, the social boundaries of the Cherokee community have become redefined in such a way that the same process which leads to urbane competence and professionalization at the same time draws an individual, almost irrevocably, out of and away from the Cherokee community. At the same time, plans which spring from the deep and forceful stream of traditional Cherokee aspiration have continually been thwarted. To cite one current example, one contemporary Cherokee organization is devoted to reopening and revising the Cherokee rolls. This they see as the one hope for the survival of the tribe. To do so, however, would not only entail a special Act of Congress, but would tear open the entire structure of Federal Cherokee administration. As a consequence, the organization suffers severe criticism and verbal harassment from "outside." The result, naturally, is undaunted determination coupled with increased secrecy, and along with this, even more rigid conviction that white men will (to put the matter in Cherokee terms) never act justly. The Cherokee situation now is this: for about 30 years, there have been almost no competent, sophisticated Cherokees within the Cherokee community. The Cherokee businessman, the Cherokee professional, and the Cherokee politician are alienated from their community, and Cherokees are ever less able to conceive of the possibility of prosperous and educated people being the same kind of people who lead a Cherokee community life.

The very processes which prevent Cherokees from gaining a clear understanding of the War on Poverty in the present situation may well bring them to a profound understanding of the War on Poverty under other circumstances.

The Anti-Poverty Explorations Project is expected to operate as follows: