Although the Navajo (Dineh) voted against accepting the Indian Reorganization Act, which set guidelines for drafting tribal constitutions (see entry for 1935), they choose to hold a constitutional convention on their own terms. The resulting constitution, which declares the tribe’s independence from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is rejected by the U. S. government, which instead establishes a set of bylaws—nicknamed the “Rules of 1938”—that creates a new tribal council consisting of 74 elected representatives.
The Museum of the American Indian returns a Hidatsa medicine bundle.
The Museum of the American Indian (see entry for 1916) in New York City becomes the first institution to repatriate a sacred Indian object when it returns a medicine bundle to the Midipadi clan of the Hidatsa. Four years earlier, following the death of Wolf Chief, the clan asked to have the medicine bundle back. Under pressure from missionaries and government officials to abandon his traditional religion, Wolf Chief in 1907 had sold the bundle to anthropologist Gilbert L. Wilson, who in turn gave it to the museum.
May 2
The first tribal museum opens.
During a ceremony overseen by Osage chief Fred Lookout, the Osage Tribal Museum in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, is opened to the public. The museum, which chronicles the history of the Osage and serves as a cultural center, is the first to be owned and operated by an American Indian tribe.
May 11
Congress allows for the leasing of reservation land to mining companies.
At the urging of Commissioner of Indian Affairs John C. Collier, Congress passes the Indian Lands Mining Act, which permits reservation lands to be leased to commercial mining companies. Collier holds that the leases will provide much-needed jobs and royalty income for reservation residents. However, many of the long-term mining leases approved by the secretary of the interior will destroy Indian resources while offering only extremely low royalties fixed at levels set during the Great Depression.
World History
