The Menominee of Wisconsin lose their Indian status when they are terminated by the U. S. government (see entry for AUGUST 1, 1953). In the years since 1954, when the Menominee were first targeted for Termination, the some $10 million the tribe held in the U. S. Treasury is largely depleted by the costs of implementing the policy. As their once-prosper-ous reservation is dissolved, Wisconsin officials declare that the new Menominee County formed from tribal lands is “an instant pocket of poverty.”
The American Indian Chicago Conference ushers in a new era of Indian activism.
In a week-long conference, 500 representatives from 90 Indian communities come together at the University of Chicago to develop a plan for making their voices heard in the formulation of Indian policy. The largest multitribal gathering in decades, the success of the Chicago conference will encourage Indian groups to work together to solve their common problems.
The conference was first conceived by Sol Tax, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, and his assistant Nancy Lurie. With the heavy involvement of the National Congress of American Indians (see entry for NO VEMBER 1944), Tax coordinated many preliminary meetings to define a program for Indian affairs that would serve the needs and address the concerns of both reservation and urban Indians.
“When Indians speak of the continent they yielded, they are not referring only to the loss of some millions of acres in real estate. They have in mind that the land supported a universe of things they valued, and loved. With that continent gone, except for the parcels they will retain, the basis of life is precariously held, but they mean to hold the scraps and parcels as earnestly as any small nation of ethnic groups was ever determined to hold to identity and survival.”
—from the Declaration of Indian Purpose, issued at the American Indian Chicago Conference
These ideas are incorporated into the Declaration of Indian Purpose, which the delegates to the meeting approve. The declaration calls for an end to the Termination policy (see entry for AUGUST 1, 1953), which it condemns as “the greatest threat to Indian survival since the military campaigns of the 1800s.” It also demands improved education and health services, greater economic development of Indian communities, increased tribal control of natural resources, and the disbanding of10 regional Bureau of Indian Affairs offices.
July
The first World Eskimo-Indian Olympics are held.
In what will become an annual event, Inuit, Aleut, and Indian athletes gather in Fairbanks, Alaska, to participate in the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics. The four-day competition includes games, such as the arm pull and blanket toss, that were traditionally played by Alaskan Natives to build their strength and stamina. The event also features traditional dance contests and displays of Native arts and artifacts.
The Keeler Commission issues a report on Indian policy.
In February, Secretary ofthe Interior Stewart Udall appointed a five-person special task force to investigate how to implement an Indian policy of self-determination. Chaired by William Wayne Keeler, the principal chief of the Cherokee, the commission five months later issues a 77-page report recommending that the Bureau of Indian Affairs abandon the Termination policy (see entry for AUGUST 1, 1953) and instead work to promote economic development in Indian communities. Specifically, it encourages the government to find ways of attracting businesses to reservations, offer increased job training and placement to Native Americans, and quickly settle outstanding Indian land claims.
The National Indian Youth Council is founded.
Ten young Indian activists—most of whom are college students—meet in Gallup, New Mexico, to form a new pan-Indian organization, the National Indian Youth Council. The council is founded in part as a response to the conference endorsed by the National Congress of American Indians held two months earlier in Chicago (see entry for JUNE 13 TO 20, 1961). The youths had appeared at the meeting uninvited, but the delegates allowed them to voice their views, some of which were reflected in the Declaration of Indian Purpose produced at the conference.
Nevertheless, the young activists found the delegates’ approach to Indian policy reform overly conservative, prompting them, with the encouragement of many tribal elders, to create an organization through which they could express their more radical opinions. In the years to come, NIYC will be instrumental in organizing protests, including the “fish-ins” held in Washington State to demand the recognition of Indian fishing rights (see entry for MARCH 1964).
“[The] weapons employed by the dominant society have become subtler and more dangerous than guns—these, in the form of educational, religious, and social reform, have attacked the very centers of Indian life by attempting to replace native institutions with those of the white man. . . . Our viewpoint, based in a tribal perspective, realizes literally, that the Indian problem is the white man, and, further, realizes that poverty, educational drop-out, unemployment, etc., reflect only symptoms of a social-contact situation that is directed at unilateral cultural extinction.”
—the National Indian Youth Council in its Statement of Policy at the 1961 Gallup conference
December
The National Indian Council is formed.
The first major pan-Native organization in Canada since the demise of the League of Indians (see entry for DECEMBER 1918), the National Indian Council is founded as a national lobbying group representing status Indians (i. e., people registered as Indian under the Canadian Indian Act [see entry for APRIL 12, 1876]), nonstatus Indians, and the Metis. The organization identifies its purpose as the promotion of “unity among all Indian people.”
World History
