19.3.7 Indigenous Critique: Rights, Activism, Appropriation, and Stereotypes

In the contemporary era, the publications of academics have had a great deal of influence on how tribes have been treated by the federal government and other groups. A 1997 essay, titled “Anthropology and the Making of Chumash Tradition,” included the authors’ opinion that the Coast Chumash tribe were descendants of Mexican people, and not Native people of North America at all (Haley and Wilcoxon 1997). The essay relied in part on rumors that were later refuted as unproven by archaeologist Jon Erlandson (1998). These claims, even disproven, aided other Native peoples in accusing the Coast Chumash of not being Native, resulting in many social and political problems for the community. Scholarly publications such as these can affect the ability of tribal nations in the United States to gain federal recognition status because all applicants for federal recognition must establish continuous culture and governance. Public and scholarly opinions can have a huge effect on whether tribes get recognized and are able to restore their culture and sovereignty after centuries of colonization.

Responses to the disempowering effects of colonialism have sometimes been overtly political. In the 1960s, the American Indian Movement (AIM) took actions to bolster tribal sovereignty throughout the United States. AIM was involved with several highly public activities, including an occupation at Mount Rushmore in 1971 in protest over the illegal taking of Sioux lands and the carving of presidents’ faces in a mountain sacred to the Sioux. AIM also participated in the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, the site of a historic battleground, in protest over the failure to impeach Oglala Sioux president Richard Wilson; the resulting standoff with federal law enforcement lasted 71 days. Public awareness of the federal government’s oppression of Native peoples grew when a large military force was deployed during a second occupation of Wounded Knee, an event called Wounded Knee 2. AIM’s work was part of a larger civil rights movement that involved Black, Latina/Latino, and women activists as well as the growing anti–Vietnam War movement. This larger movement created political shifts in the United States that benefited Native communities (Johansen 2013).

Beginning in the 1970s, several laws were passed by Congress to empower tribes. These included policies pertaining to education (Indian Education Act, 1972), child foster care (Indian Child Welfare Act, 1978), college education (Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities Assistance Act, 1978), freedom of religion (American Indian Religious Freedom Act, 1978), and rights to archaeological sites and remains (Archaeological Resources Protection Act, 1979, and Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, 1990). This period also saw the end of the national policy of termination and a turn toward allowing tribes that had been terminated to be restored, with self-determination becoming standard federal policy.