Viewing page 49 of 88

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

the Indians. What happened to the Indians, of course, almost everyone knows. Some resisted and were destroyed, others retired to the Reservation and became bitter, while some compromised and came over to the way of life offered by the white man. Today we have about 400,000 Indians in the United States and Alaska, most of whom are on some 50 Reservations and in various stages of adjustment.

Some of our Indians are very rich. Most of them are very poor. Some are still living with little change, in the same manner that they lived 200 and 300 years ago. Some are technically trained and highly skilled, while others are still using their primitive methods of making a living. Non-Indians have pictured the Indians as everything good and noble, and as everything bad and ugly.

Notwithstanding more than 100 years of Government supervision, the American Indian today presents one of our most pressing social and economic problems. The public should recognize the Indian's needs and the  part he plays in our modern economy. The various states having Indian population should act jointly with the Federal Government and the Indians on items of common interest. There should be an exchange of information among those states in regard to Indian affairs, and it would be well for the states to cooperate with the National Congress, Federal and local governmental agencies, and other organizations that are interested in the American Indian, with a view to recommending proper legislation dealing with those various problems.

One of the reasons the Indian problem is not nearer solution is that there has not been effective leadership among the Indians, or such leadership has been negative and effective only in resisting the Federal policy. Indian leadership should contribute to the formulation of Federal policy. It should take the leading part in inquiring into the needs of Indians and making those needs vocal. Such leadership would perform an invaluable service. Instances in which the Indian people of the Americas have formed themselves into cohesive forces, across tribal lines, to oppose an invader or to press for advantage to themselves, are strikingly lacking in the history of the western hemisphere. Such unions of Indian tribes as have been achieved have been brief, sporadic and ineffective. The efforts of Pontiac and Tecumseh to awaken the tribes of their day to a sense of the danger besetting them, failed ingloriously. The Iroquois people who came nearest to holding fast the loyalties of scattered tribes, had the ill fortune to support the wrong group of white men, and in the end their genius for organization was frustrated.

Where faith and interest and religious fervor failed in past history, what liklihood was there that reason and logic would succeed in achieving union in modern times. Heretofore the record was not encouraging. Indians had attempted tribal organization before now and failed to bring it off. The American Indian Association, the National Council of American Indians, the American Indian Federation, these and other efforts failed to work around a program and stay alive.

-47-