19.1.4 20th-Century Challenges

In the 20th century, some tribes grew self-sufficient or even wealthy by harvesting or extracting the natural resources on their reservations. The land of the Osage Nation of Oklahoma was found to contain vast reserves of underground oil. Members of the nation who had oil under their allotments became wealthy, so much so that some were among the wealthiest people on the planet during the height of the oil boom. But soon after acquiring this wealth, White neighbors began marrying into the tribe. Tribal members began being murdered, and authorities were slow to launch any investigations. Eventually, White relatives ended up owning much of the Osage lands. The story of the Osage murders is documented in several books, including Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, which was made into a motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese.

In a similar story, the Klamath tribe of Oregon established a very successful logging operation on their reservation in the early 20th century. The reservation included a million acres of ponderosa pine. The Klamath people established sawmills and sold the timber off the reservation, becoming quite wealthy. They even built an airfield on the reservation. But their prosperity did not last. The federal government had been serving as the bank administrator of the Klamath money and managing their profits. It became apparent that some money had gone missing and that the land was being poorly managed by federal agents. The tribe successfully sued the government for mismanagement, but they only received a percentage of the money they were owed.

In the 1940s, tribal liquidation/termination began to be discussed with the Klamath people. Some Klamath people initially liked the idea of termination because it would free them from control by the federal government. They were initially told they would receive their reservation land, but the government later told them the land would be sold. Termination began in 1954. In 1961, the remaining unsold reservation lands were turned into the Winema National Forest. Klamath members were forced to leave their homelands and find employment in regional cities. The result of termination was that the Klamath lost their land and many rights as Native people. Their population was dispersed, making it difficult to keep the culture alive. By the 1960s, most of the tribal languages were extinct, and many people had lost connections with their tribal past. In the 1970s, some of the tribal elders, many who had remained in the vicinity of the original reservation, began activating for restoration. The tribe was restored in 1983 (Lewis 2009).

An extreme example of the disenfranchisement of Native people is the movement of Indigenous peoples who were part of the Okie migration of the 1930s. The Okie migration was to the movement of people out of Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl crisis, in which agriculture yields collapsed due to drought and poor land management practices. Topsoil blew away in large clouds, and thousands lost their land and their jobs. These thousands included a large percentage of mixed-blood Native people. Those who could no longer earn a living farming the degraded land moved west in search of work in Arizona, California, Oregon, and other western states. These migrants led difficult lives, working at low-paying jobs and moving constantly in search of seasonal work. One result of this movement westward was a shift of Native populations to the West and a related collapse of tribal populations in Oklahoma. Among the artifacts of the Okie migration are photographs taken by federal workers who visited the migrant encampments. Likely the most famous of these images is the one now known as Migrant Mother, taken in 1936 by photographer Dorothea Lange. The subject of Lange’s photo has been identified as Florence Thompson, a Cherokee woman.

By the 1970s, most Indigenous people in the United States were still very poor. In this period, a number of laws were passed to help Native people. These laws gave tribes the rights to control their cultures, educate their people, and administer their own foster care. These rights were difficult to act on, however, without financial resources. In the 1980s, tribes began seeking new ways of making money to take care of their citizens. In 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. This law allowed Native peoples to establish casinos on their reservations. The caveat is that tribes must “compact” with the state they reside in to secure the right to operate a casino. Many Indigenous people have criticized this stipulation, stating that needing to ask permission places them at a lower level of sovereignty than the states. According to the federal government’s own laws, tribal reservations are federal trust lands with sovereignty on par of that of the states. Still, most tribes have compacted with the states they reside within, agreeing as part of the compact to cede a percentage of casino profits to the state to aid with funding for services such as education and road maintenance. Tribal casino profits have made it possible for many tribes to establish fully operational governments that offer services and programs for their members in areas such as health care, housing, education, and jobs.

There have been challenges to tribes’ rights to establish casinos, the most notable occurring in California during Arnold Schwarzenegger’s tenure as governor. Governor Schwarzenegger refused for years to meet with Native representatives to discuss a statewide casino compact, even after voters overwhelmingly approved tribal casinos twice. The tribes felt that Nevada casino operators, who could lose significant revenue from the competition, were influencing the California government. The tribes won a lawsuit in 1999, and many tribes subsequently signed compacts with the state. There have been continued lawsuits against California stating that the compacts require too large a portion of casino profits. Still, tribes in California now have the right to establish casinos, and the income is greatly improving services to tribal members.