To Consider - Part 2
Return to: Consider Part 1
Thoughts for the Year 2006
I thought that I should share this, especially Inupiat Ilitqusiat (Ii nu pi at Ii liit ku si at,), Inupiat is the People, and Ilitqusiat is traditional learning given to a person beginning from a very early age.
Morals, values, or virtue - they are all unique elements in any society. They are vital components of every group of people on earth, and they are very much a part of indigenous man. They are much a part of our ethics, but so much have gotten in their way. Formerly, a Council of Elders pav*ed the path to solidarity, as still occurs in the indigenous societies of the world. This system formed a solid unit, and it became the way of the people. Several Native corporations formed with the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971, have unique reminders to their members that they are a part of a society that has few equals, or no equals, in the western world. Inupiat Ilitqusiat is the guideline followed by the Northwest Arctic Native Association based in Kotzebue, (Alaska). Inupiat Ilitqusiat is the spiritual trail of our ancestors, as it portrays a lasting image of the wisdom of the Inupiat of the Kotzebue region and the rest of the indigenous world, and it is a baseline that is observed and followed by every indigenous group represented in North and South America. The reindeer people and sea mammals hunters of the Russian Far East are a part of this unique group.
Inupiat Ilitqusiat : Every Inupiaq is responsible to all other Inupiat for the survival of our cultural spirit, and the values and traditions through which it survives. Through our extended family, we retain, teach, and live our Inupiaq way. With guidance and support from Elders we must teach our children Inupiaq values, knowledge of language; sharing; respect for others; cooperation; respect for Elders; love for children; hard work; knowledge of family tree; avoidance of conflict; respect for nature; spirituality; humor; family roles; hunter success; domestic skills; humility; and responsibility to tribe. Our understanding of our universe and our place in it is a belief in God and a respect for all His creations.
In brief, every group has a set standard so that everyone can pursue life as a whole person and as a part of a whole community. The Council of Elders decided everything, and this system has seen some grave reviews from present day authority in communities that continue to follow the ancient ways of their ancestors.
(Italics from Increasing Value of Wilderness: Protecting Cultural Heritage, by Herbert O. Anungazuk. In: USDA Proceedings, Wilderness in the Circumpolar North: Searching for Compatibility in Ecological, Traditional, and Ecotourism Values. 2001 May 15-16; Anchorage, Alaska. Herb
By Herbert O. Anungazuk, Cultural Anthropologist, National Park Service, Division of Cultural Resources 240 West 5th Avenue, Room 114 Anchorage, Ak 99501 Office: (907)644-345 FAX: (907)644-3811
Bureaucrats and Indians By JOHN TIERNEY NYT OPINION 7.28.05
CROW AGENCY, Mont. The Crow Indians rode with Custer at Little Bighorn, but they have since reconsidered. On the anniversary of the battle Saturday, they cheered during a re-enactment when Indians drove a stake through his fringed jacket and carved out the heart of the soldier going by the name of Yellow-Hair in Blue Coat Who Kills Babies, Old Men and Old Women.
Their revised opinion is understandable considering what has happened to them since that battle to get their valley back from rival tribes. Today it's a Crow reservation with enough land and mineral resources to make each tribe member a millionaire, yet nearly a third live below the poverty level, and the unemployment rate has reached 85 percent.
What went wrong? Before Custer, the Crows had prospered by trading with whites, but he represented a new kind of white: the one who tells you he's from Washington and he's here to help you. As the economists Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney have documented, the downfall of the American Indians correlates neatly with the rise of two federal bureaucracies.
The first was the standing army established during the Mexican War of the 1840's. Before then, settlers who wanted Indian land usually had to fight for it themselves or rely on local militias, so they were inclined to look for peaceful solutions. From 1790 to 1840, the number of treaties signed with Indians each decade far exceeded the number of battles with them.
But during the next three decades there were more battles than treaties, and after the Army's expansion during the Civil War the number of battles soared while treaties ceased. Settlers became an adept special interest lobbying for Washington to seize Indian land for them. For military leaders, the "Indian problem" became a postwar rationale for maintaining a large force; for officers like Custer, battles were essential for promotions and glory.
Indians no longer had any bargaining power, and they were powerless to resist the troops that avenged Custer's death. They were consigned to reservations and ostensibly given land, but it was administered by another bureaucracy, the agency that would grow into what's now the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The agency, in addition to giving some of the best land away to whites, allotted parcels to individual Indians with the goal of gradually transferring all the land and ending federal supervision. But what self-respecting bureaucrats work themselves out of a job?
As the land under their control dwindled, they presumed that Indians were not "competent" to own land outright. It had to be placed under the agency's own enlightened trusteeship. They kept allotting parcels of this "trust land" to individual Indians, but an Indian couldn't sell or lease his parcel without permission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The rules discouraged sales and encouraged parcels of land to be passed on to multiple heirs. Today it's common to find a tract with dozens or hundreds of owners. Instead of inheriting the family ranch, which they could work themselves or use as collateral to start another business, these Indians inherit the right to collect checks from the federal bureaucrats who lease their land to others, usually non-Indians.
Some Indians are trying to go back to the old system, but it's not easy, as Gus Gardner has discovered. For five years he has been hoping to exchange his trust lands - tiny portions of more 100 different tracts on the Crow reservation - for one big piece of land for his own cattle ranch. But he figures the paperwork involved will take at least another three years.
"Just give me a regular deed to land that I own and let me go on my own," he said. That sounds like a reasonable enough request in a capitalist country, but changing the current system seems politically unrealistic. It has too many defenders at the local and state level whose living depends on it.
Cutting paperwork means cutting bureaucrats' jobs, a feat that makes killing Yellow-Hair in Blue Coat look easy. No one has yet figured out how to drive a stake through the heart of White-Collar With Red Tape.
E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com
For Further Reading:
The Wealth of Indian Nations: Economic Performance and Institutions on Reservations by Terry L. Anderson and Dominic P. Parker, June 2004, 42 pp., working paper.
The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier by Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill, Stanford University Press, 256 pp., May 2004.
Property Rights: Cooperation, Conflict, and Law edited by Terry L. Anderson and Fred S. McChesney, Princeton University Press, 448 pp., 2002.
For more information, go to: www.perc.org. Journal #443 from sdc 6.30.05