Tragedy Retold

There is a weary sadness to the story emerging from the present Senate hearings into allegations of corruption in the federal programs dealing with American Indians. The hearing transcripts will take their place on federal bookshelves next to other volumes that tell the same shameful tale over and over again--a tale of distrust, deceit and neglect. There is an occasional chapter of well-meaning paternalism, but an overwhelming theme of exploitation.

Worst of all may be a pervasive perception that nothing can be done to make the situation right. This is not to suggest that the Select Committee on Indian Affairs is doomed in its attempt to identify the failings of the present system under the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior, or to propose some new program that will work. The committee must make every effort to do so.

Unfortunately, the testimony that most people will remember will deal with the alleged corruption perpetrated by both federal bureaucrats and tribal leaders. As the hearings continue, there is likely to be particular emphasis on the excesses of Peter MacDonald Sr., the controversial leader of the Navajo Nation, and items like the $650,000 spent to remodel his own offices and business deals with relatives and buddies.

The MacDonald story contributes to the myth that while Indians want to preserve tribal sovereignty and seek self-determination, they just cannot be trusted to handle their own affairs. Playing to this theme are those who promote the notion of free enterprise or assimilation for the Indians but insist on an end to tribal federal assistance in exchange, leaving the impression that the only alternatives are poverty and welfare.

There are success stories throughout the nation of thriving Indian economic-development programs. But the hulks of failure abound as well, like the abandoned Sun Lodge Motel and the closed carpet mill across the road from the Custer Battlefield on the Crow reservation in southern Montana. These were the sort of tribal enterprises that were to create jobs for the unemployed and help keep young Crows from moving away.

Tribal leaders insist that the businesses failed because they were ill conceived and “they weren’t our ideas to begin with.” Truman Jefferson, the tribal secretary, said in an interview with the High Country News that the mill was doomed from the start. Such failures then become stock examples of Indian ineptitude at the white man’s business. “Now when we try to do something they refer back to the Sun Lodge and the carpet mill,” Jefferson said. Down on the Navajo reservation, some of the entrepreneurial projects are beginning to turn sour, too. Thus the perception is reinforced that self-help programs are bound to fail no matter how much the well-intentioned non-Indian capitalists try to help. It is an age-old story that has affected attitudes toward Indians ever since colonial days--the notion of an unbridgeable cultural gap.

But the record also suggests that whites still are too quick to exploit the Indians’ lack of expertise and to take advantage of both inter-tribal and intra-tribal political rivalries in promoting deals. There is considerable evidence from the Senate hearings so far that federal bureaucrats have indulged in this practice or tolerated it while running Indian programs with considerable inefficiency and mismanagement. The federal government must move away from a paternalistic relationship with the tribes toward real partnerships, but it also must accept responsibility for its role in tribal economic failures.

There have been proposals already to abolish the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or to reorganize it outside the Interior Department. The mere substitution of one federal agency with another usually does not solve the problem. In this case, however, the bureau may have become so stigmatized that reorganization is the obvious place to begin. Even so, that would be just the first step in building a real program of tribal self-sufficiency, pride and dignity.