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Woods Wisdom

Notes From All Over

Horsepower logged Menominee Reservation forests in Wisconsin in the early 1900s. The tribe has been managing its forests for more than a century, and recently won the Presidential Award for Sustained Development, presented by Vice President Al Gore.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, there have been four clearly defined periods of United States Indian policy. Beginning with the Fort Laramie treaties in 1851, the federal government began establishing reservations that would separate tribes from encroaching non-Indian settlement. Federal policymakers saw these reservations as enclaves where Native Americans could learn the “arts of civilization” that would prepare their entry into EuroAmerican society. Included within the reservation concept was a program for allotting 80 acre parcels of land to tribal members with the expectation that such individual ownership would accelerate acculturation. The reservation policy eventually led to fragmentation and land alienation in many tribal communities. Before the policy ended in the mid-1920s, some critics estimated that Native Americans had lost more than 86 million acres of their tribal estate.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs of the 1930s also ushered in a new era for Native Americans. Passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 signaled a shift in emphasis from the individual tribal member to the tribe as a political and cultural unit. Through the IRA, tribes reorganized as governmental bodies and began reacquiring lands that they had lost during the previous 100 years.

The ultimate goal of many Congressional critics of federal Indian policy did not change with the “Indian New Deal.” Beginning in the late 1940s, various western congressmen looked to the increasing vitality of tribes as a means to end federal supervision over and responsibility for Native Americans. “Termination policy” dominated the relationship between tribes and federal and state governments during the 1950s. It led to the ultimate withdrawal of federal supervision over the Klamath Reservation in Oregon and the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin. Numerous other tribes were identified for termination, often based on the availability of natural resources such as tribal forests. However, by the mid-1950s, tribal and state opposition to termination forced Congress to reject its application to most reservations.

In the wake of the failure of termination, the executive branch adopted a policy of tribal “Self-Determination.” President Lyndon Johnson clearly favored this policy. But, it was the administration of Richard Nixon that focused national attention on the goal and ultimately led to passage of the Self-Determination Act of 1975. Under this policy federal agencies and Congress have encouraged tribes to assume responsibility for many of the programs once staffed by federal employees. Selfdetermination has fostered the growth of tribal governments and institutions, ranging from forestry to the courts.

It also has led to a stronger and more vocal tribal presence in the jurisdictional interplay of state, federal and tribal governments.