Shall We Repeat Indian History in Alaska?, (23 January 1947) Philadelphia, PA

Speech Text

[1] I spent eight weeks in Alaska, during the months of October and November, visiting the Tlingit and Haida Indians of southeast Alaska. I was sent by the National Congress of American Indians to offer these people the resources of that organization in their fight to establish their property rights in Alaska. While I do not pretend to have an authoritative knowledge of the Indian situation there, the conclusions I have drawn are based on unhurried visits to each of the fifteen native towns of this area, and on detailed and sometimes repeated conferences with numerous Indian leaders.

[2] If I were forced to choose one word to portray the spirit of the Indians of southeast Alaska, as I interpreted it, that word would have to be “despair.” The Indians know they are standing with their backs to a wall, fighting a situation which they see clearly has a single, inevitable ending if help does not come to them soon. That ending is poverty—a property-less, marginal existence on the fringes of dependency so long as they survive as a race.

[3] The natives of Alaska are today in much the same predicament the Indians of the United States faced a century and a half ago. They are despised and unwanted by those Alaskans, and there are many of them, who are dominated by the “get rich and get out” psychology that is a relic of the gold-rush days. They are despised and unwanted because they own property which this element in Alaska wants and intends to get at any cost. They are being stripped of their property by every means possible, sometimes even by agencies of our Government which has sworn to protect them. Their old avenues of livelihood are constantly being whittled down as more and more white people come into their country. They are being pushed ruthlessly and inexorably lower and lower in the economic scale, not because they are less able but because they are defenseless under discriminatory laws and practices. Even the same things are said of them by white settlers of the territory of Alaska as were said of Indians in the continental United States in the days of Helen Hunt Jackson—that they are a menace to the advance of civilization; that they are obstructing commercial development of the territory; that they should not be allowed to hold onto valuable property which business interests could develop so much better and faster; that they are a vanishing people whose future security need not be taken seriously into account; that they are a helpless and childlike people who will always have to be looked after anyhow, and the looking after will have to be the Federal Government’s responsibility. The parallels are all there, a repetition of history so faithful that one question hammers itself out with desperate clarity—“Will the decent people of the United States stand idle while another century of dishonor is written in Alaska?”

THE PEOPLE

[4] The Tlingits and Haidas number roughly 5,000 people. They have always claimed southeast Alaska as their home. They are a fiercely proud and highly competent people. They were skillful and fearless sailors even before they ever met a white man, and were probably the most advanced and wealthiest native people north of Mexico. They are even today good traders and very skillful fishermen. Today the general consensus in Alaska is that these Indians can beat any other fishermen in Alaskan waters given an even break with boats and good fishing gear. Many of them are excellent boat builders and skilled craftsmen.

[5] There is a comparatively large number of educated men in the group and a few educated women. The mayors of at least three of the native towns I visited were college graduates. While every town except Hydaburg and Klawock chose to use an interpreter at meetings I attended I had the feeling that in most instances this was not actually necessary, even for the very old who were present. English is in common usage. There is at least a grade school in each town, and the Women’s School Committee of the Alaska Native Sisterhood make it their responsibility to see that the children come to school clean and on time. Some of the native towns of southeast Alaska have Government day schools, always poorly equipped, and sometimes poorly staffed. A few have Territorial schools, no better by comparison. All but two or three of the towns would prefer the Territorial schools, however, because of the greater chance for some community control.

[6] The native Indians of southeast Alaska seemed to me to be, on the average, more at home in the white way of life than many of our Indian groups here in the States, probably because the southeastern Alaskan native culture more nearly approximated white culture concepts even before the two came in contact. The Tlingits and Haidas accumulated personal wealth; their culture was aggressive and competitive; they understood and practiced trading. They have not needed to be “civilized” in order to use and understand the techniques of white civilization. They understand and have used to their own advantage the white man’s organizational methods. Both men and women belong to labor unions, and for thirty-three years the Alaska Native Brotherhood, and the women’s auxiliary, the Alaska Native Sisterhood, have been indigenous organizations that have held the people steady through terrific pressures. These two bodies have frequently wielded genuine political power, for when the Indians stand solidly together they can often determine a political issue or unseat a political candidate. This year they elected three Indians to the Territorial legislature. Today the Alaska Native Brotherhood is the strongest force operating in the lives of the people, and the greatest source of hope and courage to meet the heavy odds crowding down upon them.

[7] These are a strong and able people who, given even half a chance, can make their own way and become a solid asset to any country.

THE SITUATION

[8] But today they do not have that half chance. They are having to fight every inch of the way for the precarious foothold they have been able to keep in Alaska. They are enormously proud of their citizenship status, and they have resisted almost to the point of frenzy anything they think might even endanger that citizenship or might set them apart as a special group. Their enemies know this and have used even this sentiment for their destruction, by convincing some of them that if they try to keep land for themselves they will lose their citizenship rights in the territory. In spite of this almost worshipful attitude toward citizenship, however, the Indians occupy a position of inferiority in the Territory. One thing I found difficult at first to understand, because it was so different from what I have known here at home, was the almost frantic desire of so many of the younger group to repudiate entirely their native heritage. Most of the Indians I know here in the States would rather be Indian than to have gold or rubies. This is not always true in Alaska. As I got deeper into the Alaska situation, however, I came to understand this attempted repudiation was in reality a blind effort to escape from an intolerable position. I believe this is a partial explanation, too, of the terrific liquor problem among the natives of Alaska. These passionately proud people who were once top men in this region cannot endure the constant and grueling slights put upon them. Alcohol to the point of oblivion offers one sure means of respite. One educated Tlingit told me that the “natives in Alaska” occupy a position in many respects no better than that of the Negro in the States. This is true. They often have to endure the same kind of exclusions and discriminations. Just a year ago, after a bitter fight, they were able to get through the Territorial legislature a law making it illegal for business places serving the public to exclude individuals because of color or creed. Many Indians feel this was an empty victory, while others are convinced that the situation has been somewhat bettered.

[9] The schools, both Government and Territorial, are doing little to build in Indians a respect for the culture that produced them, or to point out to white children the many splendid qualities Indians possess, or the magnificent episodes of Indian history. On the contrary, the schools too have their part in the destruction of Indian self-respect, though this is apt to be by indirect methods, such as tolerating, too often, teachers who “look down” on the native children. I saw enough of this in Alaska schools to be shocked. In the library of one of the large Federal high schools, filled to bulging walls with mixed-blood youngsters, or relatives of mixed bloods, I found a book entitled “The Half-Breed—the Abomination of Civilization.” There can be no hope of a secure future for a people whose self-respect has been destroyed.

[10] There are signs that the Territory has no intention of accepting the natives of Alaska as an integral part of the commonwealth if this can be avoided. The strongest evidence of this is the recent effort of the Director of Education and the Governor of the Territory to secure a special appropriation for the education of Indians in Territorial schools on the ground that education of Indians is a Federal responsibility, although the Indians of Alaska pay every kind of tax any other Territorial citizen pays. This and other signals lead one to suspect that after Indians of Alaska have been entirely dispossessed (if this can be accomplished) the Territory will follow the pattern of the continental United States and declare these pauperized victims to be the full responsibility of Federal largesse.

[11] The downhill road to poverty has already been laid out for the Alaska native. One by one each of their various means of livelihood has been wiped out. The enormous trading enterprise they had built up under the Russians and even before this period was destroyed with our purchase of Alaska and the establishment of new national boundaries that cut them off from trade with the Canadian Indians. The game laws and white competition have reduced trapping to a barely profitable venture. In fact, even here, the Indians feel big business is crowding them out, in that the owners of mink farms are having far too much influence on the game regulations governing the trapping of mink. The increased numbers of trappers, and renegade trappers who will not observe game laws, are destroying the supply of fur-bearing animals. When the United States bought Alaska, Indian rights were ignored in that valuable timberlands then in Indian possession summarily seized by the Federal Government and swallowed up by the Tongass National Forest. Now these public lands are being given out, piecemeal and with disregard of Indian rights, to white homesteaders, to mining interests, lumber companies, and the fishing canneries. The original land holdings of the Indians of southeast Alaska have shrunk from tremendous acreage that insured a living on a regal basis to bare stretches of sandy beach surrounding their towns and not through any fault of the Indians themselves, but because our Government usurped their property. Not enough land resources are now in actual possession of these Indians to guarantee a decent standard of living on a civilized basis. The best fishing sites, once belonging exclusively to these people, have been seized by the fishing corporations with the connivance of the Federal Government. And the fish traps established at these sites, Indians claim, are rapidly destroying the source of salmon supply. Salmon is the last great natural resource left to these people to ensure them a decent living. The present terror confronting them is that these too will be destroyed and a future too miserable to contemplate left open to them. They feel grievously wronged, and deprived of that which by law should belong to them. And they are right. They feel too that the Federal Government through the Fish and Wildlife Service constantly, by its fishing regulations, its granting of trapsites, favors the great fishing corporations at the expense of the Indians. And many of their decisions must bear out the Indians’ suspicion in this. The most glaring evidence in support of the Indians’ contention is the fact that for about 30 years now no native group has been or is now able to get a really productive trapsite, while the fishing corporations have more than four hundred of these scattered all over southeast Alaska, and many of them on Indian land.

[12] In 1944-1945 the Department of the Interior initiated a policy of holding hearings to determine what lands rightfully belonged to the Indians of southeast Alaska by right of aboriginal possession. These hearings were held in the towns of Hydaburg, Kake, and Klawock, and then apparently, with the change of Secretaries, the policy was abandoned or is now at a standstill. The plan was that after the ownership of the land was established, if the Indians wanted it, reservations would be set up to prevent further aggression upon Indian property, and to assure Indians control over their actual holdings. The Indians all feel that the three towns did not fare very well in their hearings. They say the lands awarded were the poorest lands under consideration, and the poorest fishing sites. They did not get the 3,000 feet of water rights they feel is so essential to them as fishermen. But their worst grievance is the fact that the decisions of the Secretary have never been enforced. They say they have only a paper ownership which everyone goes merrily on ignoring. The Forestry Service is still awarding logging permits for timber on land the Secretary of the Interior says belongs exclusively to Indians, without allowing the Indians any share in the timber sales. The fishing corporations are still operating fish traps on Indian land, and so far Indians have found no means of enforcing “no trespass” warnings, and the Department of the Interior has taken no effective steps to protect Indian property. The powerful fishing industry has fought Indian rights bitterly through the press, through their attorneys, and through a campaign of misrepresentation to the Indians themselves. They have put on a tremendous propaganda campaign against reservations for Indians in Alaska. They have told the Indians, and are still telling them, that reservations are degrading; and that reservations will cost them their citizenship, and their right to vote in the Territory. They have told the white settlers of the Territory that Indian rights, if they are established, will wipe out all white homesteads and other property holdings. All this false propaganda has been solely for the purpose of creating a hysteria that would defeat any move to accord justice to the Indians.

WHAT MUST BE DONE

[13] Four things need desperately to be done at once to help the Alaska Indians before all their holdings are lost, and these things can and must be done by such people as you who make up this organization and others like it. The Indian people must have immediately competent legal assistance to help them fight for their land rights in the courts. Their cases will have to be appealed beyond the courts of the Territory of Alaska if they are to secure justice, for the majority of the judges in the Territorial courts are violently anti-Indian. Prolonged legal fights cost a great deal of money, and the Indians are no longer well-off financially. If they are to have the quality of legal help they need to win we are going to have to help them provide the money to pay for it. The fishing corporations which will be their chief antagonists are, according to the Congressional Record, paying a Washington attorney $250.00 per day to assist the Department of the Interior to protect the interests of the corporations. The Indian people cannot meet that kind of competition without outside help and they ought not to have to depend entirely on help from lawyers from the Indian Office or the Department of the Interior, for these attorneys, however able and honest they may be, are compelled to give divided allegiance. This fight is desperate enough to demand that the Indians have legal counsel fighting on their side only. If, as has happened in the memory of all of us, men in high authority in Government service should be more sympathetic to the desires and enticements of big business interests than they are to the cause of the Indians, attorneys in the Government service responsible to them can fight only as hard as their superior officers will allow. The Indian people ought to be protected against such a possibility by having attorneys who have only their orders to carry out. Nor can the Alaska Indian people hope for legal aid from the Attorney General of Alaska territory who should defend them as part of his electorate. He has declared himself as entirely against them. The first and immediate task of those Americans who believe in justice and fair play is to see that the best available legal ability is at the service of the Indians of Alaska if they are to secure justice. The National Congress of American Indians has offered the service of its legal counsel, but this organization’s budget is limited and it cannot carry the burden alone. Other organizations will have to help. The Robert Marshall Civil Liberties Trust gave the National Congress of American Indians funds to make the initial investigation of the Alaska situation. Other funds from many sources will have to be forthcoming if justice and fair play is to prevail.

[14] A second thing we need to be doing is to keep constant and diligent watch on the activities of the Government agencies concerned with determining policies in Alaskan Indian Affairs—the Department of the Interior; the Fish and Wildlife Service; the National Park Service; the Forestry Service under the Department of Agriculture; the Office of Indian Affairs, to insure that no predatory official within the ranks of any one of these agencies can formulate policies or make important decisions prejudicial to Indian interests. The danger of another Teapot Dome did not pass away with the apprehension of Albert Fall. Nor does all the cupidity in dealing with Indians and Indian property belong to the generation of our forefathers. Alaska is full of possibilities of Federal chicanery yet to be perpetrated on Indians, and it is our responsibility as conscientious citizens to prevent it. That is what organizations such as this exist to do.

[15] Organizations such as the Indian Rights Association, the Association on American Indian Affairs, and other groups interested in full opportunity for all people can and should insist that the aboriginal rights hearings, promised to the Indians of Alaska and already undertaken, be carried out for all native towns that want them. The towns of Kasaan, Saxman, and Klukwan have been asking for these hearings for two and a half years, but the Department of the Interior delays action. Many think this is because the powerful fishing industry is objecting to a further clarification of Indian land rights.

[16] Our fourth task right now is to watch legislation on Alaskan matters to insure that Indians do not suffer therefrom. If, as the Congressional Record suggests, legislation is to be presented which has been prepared by the Federal Government with the help of an attorney employed by the fishing corporations, you may be sure it will be prejudicial to Indian interests. We need to defeat any further attempts to take property or other rights away from the Alaska Indians. We need, I think, to go even further than this and take a more positive approach by seeing that legislation friendly to Indians and other residents of Alaska who are the common people, is introduced and passed so that these people can be assured a just and fair opportunity under the flag of the United States.

[17] Here is a fight before us that is immediate and urgent. To help in the winning of it will justify all the years of our existence as an organization to protect the rights of a defenseless minority, and it will help to keep our national honor clean. We cannot ignore our responsibility.