The Indian Child Welfare Act Remains Under Attack

Today comes news that South Dakota is going to appeal a federal court decision that found the state guilty of violating the rights of Native Americans under the terms of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act.  The problems in South Dakota have been well documented.  NPR did an in-depth investigation, and the story has been covered widely in the Native American press.  It is devastating to learn about.

What has been missing has been historical context.  If you or your students want to learn more about the problems the Indian Child Welfare Act was intended to resolve, you need look no further than Margaret Jacobs’ “Remembering the ‘Forgotten Child’: The American Indian Child Welfare Crisis of the 1960s and 1970s,” which appeared in the American Indian Quarterly, 37 (Winter/Spring 2013, 136-159.

In Jacobs’ view, the termination was not merely an effort to get the United States out of the “Indian Business” through HCR 108 and PL280, the various termination statutes, and the establishment of the Indian Claims Commission, but as well an assault on Native American families and children.

BIA officials established in 1958 the Indian Adoption Project, a program, the Bureau argued, to shield Native American children from the poverty in Indian country brought about by too many single mothers having too many children.

Even though the evidence that unwed motherhood had reached epidemic proportions in Indian Country was largely unsubstantiated, and that the BIA ignored entirely the importance of extended families in child-rearing, and that policies aimed at attacking poverty and economic inequality might have been better suited for remedying the problems native peoples faced, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Adoption Project looked to dismantle these families by pressuring mothers to give up their children for adoption. The benefits for the Bureau were substantial. It cost $750 per year, Jacobs shows, to support a native child at Minnesota’s Pipestone Boarding School, but only $470 to support that child in the state’s foster care system. Both the Bureau and the states could save even more money if these children were adopted. Thus, according to Jacobs, “the BIA and state agencies looked to the ultimate ‘private’ sector—in this case, white families—to take over the expense of raising Indian children.” Viewing Indian families as drunken and degraded, state officials deceived and coerced Indian mothers, took their children from them against their will, and then denied them due process when they tried to fight back. The BIA Adoption Program was perhaps the most brutal example of the termination policy in action.

The Indian Child Welfare Act was designed to halt the removal of Indian children from Indian families. The problem was severe.  Only a fool would disagree. Dakota Sioux at the Spirit Lake reservation, for example, asked the Association of American Indian Affairs to conduct an investigation. The AAIA reported that of the 1100 Dakotas under the age of 21 who lived at Spirit Lake in 1968, 275 had been removed from their families at least once. In states with large Native American populations, the AAIA found that between 25 and 35% of children had been removed from their homes.

Native peoples organized to halt this highly destructive practice, and the battle for the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, according to Jacobs, “represented one of the most fierce and successful battles for Indian self-determination of the 1970s.” The legislation committed the United States “to protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families by the establishment of minimum standards for the removal of Indian children from their families and the placement of such children in foster or adoptive homes which will reflect the unique values of Indian culture.”

There is much at stake in South Dakota.  The state has to do much with a small budget, but it cannot violate federal law.  The South Dakota case may reach the Supreme Court, and in an environment where conservatives are eager to shift the balance of power in many areas back to the states, this crucial case bears close watching.

Donald Trump to Native America: Go To Hell

Today comes news that President Donald Trump, the Creon for the new millennium, will sign an executive order authorizing the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline.   Before the confirmation of his nominee for Secretary of Interior, before any nomination for a new undersecretary for Indian Affairs at Interior, before any consultation with Native American tribes, before the confirmation of the fool he nominated to head the Energy Department (and who owns stock and sat on the board of the companies most interested in completing Dakota Access),  Our Creon has told America’s Native Peoples, in essence, to go to hell. Damn your protests. Damn your water.  Damn you and your quality of life.  Stock in Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of Dakota Access, meanwhile, was up 4%.

This is disappointing news, but it is not surprising, for Donald Trump is no friend to American Indians, and it looks like his presidency is going to stand in stark contrast to that of his predecessor, in this as in so many other ways. Some have expressed the fear that he will bring back the Termination era.

Little Hands

Barack Obama’s presidency, after all, had been one of great consequence for the nation’s roughly five and a half million Native Americans, and he left large shoes for the man with little hands to fill.

Native peoples voted for Obama in overwhelming numbers, contributing to his landslide victory in 2008 and his reelection in 2012.  President Obama kept the promises he made to Native peoples. He worked with Congress to secure significant increases in funding for the Indian Health Service. He appointed a policy advisor to counsel him on Native American issues, and he held an annual White House Tribal Nations Conference in order to “strengthen the government-to-government relationship with Indian Country and to improve the lives of American Indians and Alaska Natives.” He signed legislation settling at long last the notorious Cobell case, involving the government’s terrible mismanagement of individual Indian trust accounts, and implemented a land buy-back program that has returned more than half a million acres to tribal control. And when President Obama signed legislation reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, it included a new provision allowing tribes to arrest and prosecute non-Indians who committed acts of domestic violence against Native American women, a major problem when courts had held in the past that tribal governments lacked the power to prosecute non-Indians on reservations.  The bipartisan HEARTH Act, signed by President Obama in 2012, allowed tribal governments additional control over their lands. And in 2010, he announced his support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, allowing the United States to join the rest of the world community in a statement affirming the rights of native peoples to live their lives in their own way under institutions of their own choosing.  Read it, if you have not done so already.

As was his wont, President Obama was always cautious.  Too cautious for many of us. He took his time in intervening at Standing Rock, but the Army Corps of Engineers placed a hold on construction of the controversial pipeline while the project was given further review.  In this, as in so many areas of his presidency, President Obama did not go as far as many of his supporters wanted.  Construction might resume, as the thousands of protestors at Standing Rock pointed out.  Still, despite his caution, the record of accomplishment was a significant one.

I am not sure if the steps President Obama took, and the recent publication by the Army Corps of Engineers of its intent to begin the environmental impact process, will be adequate to stave off Our Creon’s executive order.  If you know environmental law, I would love to hear and learn from you.

Because I am not sure what will happen next.  I am not optimistic. And that I am not optimistic really bums me out, because there are a hell of a lot of problems out there that sane political leaders from our two major parties might be able to solve. If they wanted to.  It is a choice, really.  Solve them or not.  But no excuses. Our Creon has said nothing about Indian affairs. Perhaps, despite his record and the racial vitriol his campaign generated, there is room for those who know the issues to work together.  Sometimes I think so.  Ryan Zinke, who Trump nominated to head the Interior Department, made a point of reaching out to Native American communities in his home state of Montana during his brief congressional career.  Collaboration and cooperation between the federal government and Native nations is not only sound policy; it’s the law.  But Zinke did it, and some Native Americans appreciated his efforts.

Of course the Republicans’ promise to repeal Obamacare, aggressively exploit fossil fuels in Indian country, and drastically cut federal spending all bode ill for Native American communities.

But Our Creon campaigned in part on a promise to restore the nation’s aging infrastructure.  He could fulfill a campaign promise and aid Native nations by pushing through Congress a program to repair and replace roads, bridges, and dams on Indian reservations.

Senators and representatives from states with large Native American populations have urged caution in repealing the Affordable Care Act, noting that the progress made in reducing the still gaping health disparities between Native Americans and non-natives were indeed significant and much work remains to be done.

Republicans who supported their candidate’s call for “law and order” might support additional legislation to protect Native American communities, especially women and children, from domestic violence.

And Republicans who favor a smaller federal government might recognize the virtues of supporting the inherent sovereignty of Native American nations and cooperate with Democrats in providing them the resources they need to govern their communities, develop their economies, and tackle the myriad challenges they face.  This could happen.  But the initiative certainly will not come from the Executive Branch.

President Obama left office with significant achievements but with much in the realm of Indian affairs unsettled.  The new president has already weighed in on Dakota Access.  But there are many other challenges that still must be confronted.  Native peoples, for instance, will continue to face concentrated conservative assaults on important and successful pieces of legislation like the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act. Poverty and a lack of opportunity in Indian Country remain vexing challenges to policy makers and tribal leaders alike. Racial violence remains a problem, with a “Red Lives Matter” movement slowly growing in the shadow of the Black Lives Matter campaign against police brutality.  And, of course, the slow burning insults of cultural appropriation and the use of Native American symbols and images as offensive mascots for sports teams continues.  Congress, in recent years, has found bipartisan support for programs and policies that have helped to close, ever-so-slowly, the enormous gaps between Native peoples and non-native peoples in health, education, and welfare, and President Obama played an immensely important role in that. We might have hoped that this slow but steady progress of the last eight years not be abandoned by our leaders.  But today’s unilateral and aggressive action makes that hope seem ever so remote.

American Indian Law and Public Policy

Welcome Back!

It is the first week of classes at Geneseo, and as part of my spring cycle of courses, I am teaching once again my course entitled “American Indian Law and Public Policy.”  The course is required for the minor in Native American Studies, fulfills the college’s Social Sciences and “Other World Cultures” general education requirements, and is an optional course for students minoring in Public Administration. Of course, it is also an elective open to history majors.  The syllabus necessarily changes a bit each semester.  The course is a blast to teach, and I have what looks like a good batch of students this semester.  Here is the syllabus:

 

HIST 262      American Indian Law and Public Policy                    Spring 2017

Instructor: Michael Oberg

Meetings:   MWF, 12:30-1:20, Milne Library, 105

Office Hours:  Monday and Wednesday, 2:30-3:30, Sturges 15 A/B

Contact:           oberg@geneseo.edu

245-5730

Twitter: @NativeAmText

Website: MichaelLeroyOberg.com

 

Required Readings:

 

Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier (2007)

Luke Lassiter, Clyde Ellis, Ralph Kotay, The Jesus Road: Kiowas, Christianity and Indian Hymns, (2002)

Steven Pevar, The Rights of Indians and Tribes, 4th edition, (2012).

Paul Chaat Smith, Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong, (2009)

Circe Sturm, Becoming Indian: The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-First Century, (2011).

Readings on Canvas, and

Additional Readings, for Current Events discussions and assignments:

News Articles on www.indianz.com

News Articles in Indian Country Today.

News Articles on Pechanga.net

 

Course Description:         This course will provide you with an overview of the concept of American Indian tribal sovereignty, nationhood, and the many ways in which discussions of sovereignty and right influence the status of American Indian nations.  We will look at the historical development and evolution of the concept of sovereignty, the understandings of sovereignty held by native peoples, and how non-Indians have confronted assertions of sovereignty from native peoples.  We will also examine current conditions in Native America, and look at the historical development of the challenges facing native peoples and native nations in the 21st century.  This course is required for the Native American Studies Minor, and counts for both the S/core and M/core general education headings.  As a result, it is intended to meet the following learning outcomes:

 

Students Will Demonstrate:

  • an understanding of knowledge held outside the Western tradition;
  • an understanding of history, ideas, and critical issues pertaining to Non-western societies;
  • an understanding of significant social and economic issues pertaining to Non-western societies;
  • an understanding of the symbolic world coded by and manifest in Non-western societies;
  • an understanding of traditional and/or contemporary cultures of Latin America, Africa, and/or Asia and the relationship of these to the modern world system;
  • an ability to think globally.

And

  • understanding of social scientific methods of hypothesis development;
  • understanding of social scientific methods of document analysis, observation, or experiment;
  • understanding of social scientific methods of measurement and data collection;
  • understanding of social scientific methods of statistical or interpretive analysis;
  • knowledge of some major social science concepts;
  • knowledge of some major social science models;
  • knowledge of some major social science concerns;
  • knowledge of some social issues of concern to social scientists;
  • knowledge of some political issues of concern to social scientists;
  • knowledge of some economic issues of concern to social scientists;
  • knowledge of some moral issues of concern to social scientists.

Your grade will be based on a number of components.  Participation, an important part of your grade, is much more than attendance. I view my courses fundamentally as extended conversations and these conversations can only succeed when each person pulls his or her share of the load.  You should plan to show up for class each week with the reading not just “done” but assimilated; you should plan not just to “talk” but to engage critically and constructively with your classmates.  Our conversations will depend on your thoughtful inquiry and respectful exchange.  Remember, as well, that conversations are most fruitful when they involve a mix of well-thought out hypotheses and tentative, partially-formed ideas.  Because this course requires of you an extensive amount of reading, I am basing a large portion of your grade on your participation.  This course will reward both preparation and experimentation.  We are all here to learn, and I encourage you to join in the discussion with this in mind.  Obviously, you must be present to participate, and once you miss more than three classes you will no longer be able to receive any credit for participation.

The individual assignments will be discussed below.  The grading scale is as follows:

Participation:                                                                       100 points

Response Papers 2 papers at 25 points each                 50 points

Current Events Papers  2 papers at 50 points each    100 points

Final Project                                                                        150 points

 

A          400-380                     A-  379-360

B+       359-350                      B    349-330

B-        329-320                      C+  319-310

C          309-290                      C-   289-280

D         279-240                      E  239 and below.

 

With any of these assignments, I encourage you to visit with me during office hours if you have any questions.  You should be clear on what I expect of you before you complete an assignment.  The door is open.  If you cannot make it to my office hours, please feel free to contact me by email, which I check several times a day. The assignments are described in detail, below.

Discussion Schedule

18 January      Introduction to the Course

The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Reading: Banner, How, Introduction; Pevar, Rights, Ch. 1-2; UNDRIP (http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf)

 

20 January     Native Nations in the United States

Reading: Banner, How, Introduction, Chapter 1; Articles of  Confederation, Article IX; United States Constitution; Northwest Ordinance (1787); Federal Trade and Intercourse Act (1790); Treaty of Canandaigua (1794).

 

23 January     The Marshall Court and the Definition of Native Nations

Reading:  Banner, How, Chapters 2-5; Johnson v. McIntosh (1823).

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/21/543/case.html

 

25 January     The Removal Era

Reading: Banner, How, Ch. 6 ; Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831); Samuel A.  Worcester v. State of Georgia, (1832).

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/30/1

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/31/515

 

27 January     Current Events Discussion

The Reservation System

Reading: Banner, How, Ch. 7; Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek (1867); Ex Parte Crow Dog (1883).

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/109/556/case.html

http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol2/treaties/kio0977.htm

 

30 January     Policing the Reservations

Reading: Major Crimes Act (1885); US v. Kagama (1886).

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1153

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/375/case.html

 

1 February      The Policy of Allotment

Reading: Banner, How, Ch. 8; Talton v. Mayes (1896); Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903); United States v. Celestine (1909).

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/163/376/

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/187/553/case.html

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/215/278/

 

3 February      Current Events Discussion

Water Rights in the Arid West

Reading: Pevar, Rights, Ch 12; Winters v. United States (1908).

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/207/564/

First Current Events Paper Due.

 

6 February      The Meriam Commission Report

Reading: The Problem of Indian Administration, Chapter 1 and any one chapter from Chapter 8-14.

http://www.narf.org/nill/resources/meriam.html

 

8 February      Current Events Discussion

The Indian New Deal

Reading: Banner, How, Epilogue; Indian Reorganization Act, 1934.

https://tm112.community.uaf.edu/files/2010/09/The-Indian-Reorganization-Act.pdf

 

10 February    The Termination Era

Reading: HCR 108; Pevar, Rights, 333-337; Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States (1955).

http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol6/html_files/v6p0614.html

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/348/272/

 

13 February    Williams v. Lee and the Modern Era of American Indian Tribal Sovereignty

Reading: Williams v. Lee (1959); Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council (1959); Pevar, Rights, Chapter 14 and pp. 329-332

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/358/217/

http://openjurist.org/272/f2d/131/native-american-church-of-north-america-v-navajo-tribal-council

 

15 February   The Era of Self-Determination

Current Events Discussion

Reading: McClanahan v. Arizona Tax Commission, (1973); Morton v. Mancari  (1974).

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/411/164/case.html

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/417/535/case.html

 

17 February    The Supreme Court’s 1978 Term and Tribal Sovereignty

Reading: US. v. Wheeler (1978); Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez (1978); Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe (1978).

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/435/313/

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/436/49/

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/435/191/case.html

 

20 February    Red Power

Reading: Smith, Everything (Entire Book)

 

22 February    Congress, the Executive, and the Revolution of 1978

Reading: AIRFA; Indian Child Welfare Act; Pevar, Rights, Ch. 17

Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl (2013)

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-399

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1996

http://www.nicwa.org/Indian_Child_Welfare_Act/ICWA.pdf

 

24 February  Tribal Regulation of Non-Indian Activities on Tribal Land

Current Events Discussion

Reading: Montana v. United States (1981).

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/450/544/

 

27 February    The Powers of Tribal Governments

Reading: Pevar, Rights, Chapters 3-9

Reading: Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe (1982)

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/455/130/case.html

 

1 March          The Power of Tribal Governments, Continued

Current Events Discussion

Reading: Duro v. Reina (1990); Fergus Bordewich, Killing the White Man’s  Indian, (CANVAS).

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/495/676/

 

3 March          The Power of Tribal Governments, continued

Reading: Atkinson Trading Company v. Shirley (2001); US v. Lara (2004)

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/532/645/

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/541/193/

 

6 March          The Violence Against Women Act in Indian Country

Reading:  NCAI Materials on VAWA (watch videos and read documents); Denver Post series, “Promises, Justice, Broken” (some of you may find this very disturbing to read)

 

8 March          Issues in American Indian Education: Boarding Schools and their Legacy

Reading:  Read any two of the papers included in Reyhner, Lockard and Gilbert,  eds., Honoring Our Elders: Culturally Appropriate Approaches for Teaching Indigenous Students, (Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University Press, 2015).

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/HOE/

 

10 March       Issues in American Indian Education, Continued

Current Events Discussion

Reading: Continued discussion of papers in Reyhner, et. al.

Second Current Events Paper Due!
Spring Break

 

20 March        Issues in American Indian Religion

Reading: Lassiter, Ellis and Kotay, The Jesus Road, (entire book).

 

22 March        Issues in American Indian Religion

Reading: Pevar, Rights, Chapters 11, 13; Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith (1990); Lyng v. Northwest Cemetery Protective Association (1988).

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/494/872/case.html

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/485/439/case.html

 

24 March       Issues in American Indian Identity: The Mascot Issue

Reading: Do a Google News Search, and read about the Mascot Issue in the news  sources listed above.

 

27 March        Issues in American Indian Identity: Acknowledgment

Reading: Den Ouden and O’Brien,  (Canvas)

 

29 March        Issues in American Indian Identity

Reading: Sturm, Becoming Indian (entire book).

 

31 March         Economic Development in Indian Country

Reading: Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, The State of Native Nations: Conditions under US Policies of Self-Determination, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), Chapter 11. (On Canvas)

 

3 April            Public Health in Indian Country

Reading:  IHS, Trends in Indian Health, 2014 Edition, (Browse); Donald Warne, “The State of Indigenous America Series: Ten Indian Health Policy Challenges for the New Administration in 2009,” Wicazo Sa Review, 24 (Spring 2009), 7-23.  (All on Canvas)

 

5 April             Gaming

Reading: California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians (1987); Randal K. Q. Akee, Katherine A. Spilde and Jonathan B. Taylor, “The Indian Gaming  Regulatory Act and its Effect on American Indian Economic Development” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29 (Summer 2015), 185—208 (Canvas);   Pevar, Rights, Ch. 16.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/480/202/case.html

 

7 April          Thee Land: The Iroquois in Western New York

Reading: Oneida Indian Nation v. County of Oneida (1974); Anne F. Boxberger Flaherty, ““American Indian Land Rights, Rich Indian Racism, and Newspaper  Coverage in New York State, 1988-2008,” American Indian Culture and  Research Journal, 37 (no. 4, 2013) (Canvas)

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/414/661/case.html

 

10 April           The Land, Continued.

Reading: City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation (2005).

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/544/197/dissent.html

 

12 April            The Land: Buy Back and the Cobell Settlement

Reading:   2016 Status Report, Land Buyback Program.
14 April         Taxation

Reading:  Pevar, Rights, Ch. 10

 

19 April           Resistance:  “You Are On Indian Land.”

Film Discussion.  Watch Film in Class:

https://www.isuma.tv/the-national-film-board-of-canada/you-are-on-indian-land

 

21 April            Resistance, Continued.

Reading: Taiaiake Alfred, Wasase, (Excerpts).

 

24  April         What Is to Be Done?

What Is To Be Done?

Reading: Harold Napoleon, Yuuyaraq: The Way of the Human Being (1996),

 

26 April           Catch Up

28 April           Catch Up

1 May              Catch Up

4 May              Final Examination Period

The Assignments, Described in Detail:

Current Events Reports:  A quick glance at the large number of news articles at www.indianz.com and at Indian Country Today should make it clear to you that there are constant new developments affecting the lives of native peoples and their neighbors across the nation and in Canada.  You should also be able to see something of the force of history that still shapes these communities and their relationships to the United States and individual state and local governments. I expect you to try to keep up with some of this, to inform yourselves about what is going on in Native America. To that end, I expect you on two occasions during the semester to write a current event report of no more than 1200 words based on no fewer than five related news articles that you found of interest.  We will discuss current events at the opening of nearly every Friday class meeting. In your brief paper you should describe the basic issues concisely and accurately, and describe the significance of the events or developments you describe in terms of what you have read and what we have discussed in class. The five papers need not be closely connected in time, nor do they need to all come from the same paper, in that you may feel free to follow a story that has developed over an extended period of time.

For your paper, you should use 11 or 12 point type, double spaced, with one-inch margins all around. You should cite accurately at the top of the paper the five or more articles you looked at. The best papers will develop an argument supported by evidence in the form of quotes from the articles you read.

Response Papers: You also will write two response papers, each worth twenty-five points, over the course of the semester.  These papers will be brief meditations (approximately 1000 words) on one of the assigned readings:

 

Smith, Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong, due 20 February

Lassiter, et. al., Jesus Road, due 20 March

Sturm, Becoming Indian, due 29 March

Napoleon, Yuuyaraq, due 24 April

Again, double-spaced, 11 or 12 point type. What do you see as the critical issues these books raise?

Research Project:  You will complete a final project that consists of a paper of 10 to 15 pages in length, endnotes and bibliography not counted, formatted according to the guidelines spelled out in the Turabian Manual. You will play the role of an adviser to a new president (Republican or Democrat—your choice) on American Indian policy.  Your paper should answer three questions: 1). What are the principal problems facing Native American communities today?  2).What are the sources of those problems?  In other words, why do these problems still exist? And 3).  What can and should be done about these problems within the confines of the American constitutional system?

You should have at least 20 sources for your paper.

Whither History and the Liberal Arts: A Note to Students

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently stated that “the future” involves “making the marriage between academics and economics.”  Of course there is some truth to this.  Cuomo has been promoting his new plan to make SUNY tuition-free to New Yorkers from families with an income less than $125,000 per year.  The plan is to be applauded, but it has been promoted largely as a way to create jobs and to spur on economic growth in New York State.  The value of an education, the governor has stated baldly, lies in the financial return it brings.

All of this I find a bit troubling as a professor in a history department of a small-ish public college that has long been celebrated for its rigorous academic standards and its commitment to a liberal arts education.  Our students do well after they graduate.  They find gainful employment in their fields.  Many of you are familiar with the arguments that a degree in the liberal arts, one that trains students in the discipline of critical reading, writing, thinking and research, is more versatile than our critics realize.  And I am happy for any proposal that makes access to college easier, and it seems to me to be a no-brainer in terms of public policy.  People with college degrees earn more than those without.  They will thus pay more taxes over the course of their careers than those without, and over decades the program could pay for itself.  A wise long-term investment.  But higher education is not only valuable for the skills it imparts, but for the critincal thinking it encourages, something that I would argue is essential for the survival of the republic.  Now perhaps more than ever.

And in my field? The most recent edition of the American Historical Association Perspectives has highlighted a continued decline in the number of students studying history in American colleges and universities. There are a number of reasons for this. History is sometimes thought of as a difficult major with lots of reading and writing, and there is some evidence of a decline in professions often entered with a Bachelor’s degree in history.  But in the midst of a presidential election in which the electoral college chose a man who has offered one unconstitutional proposal after another, and received the applause of millions of Americans as he did so, it just may be that the decades-long assault on history and liberal arts is having a significant effect.

You students who study history or other fields in the liberal arts will likely be asked, if you have not been asked already, “What are you going to do with that degree?”  Sometimes those questions can come from innocent curiosity, like, really, what are you going to do with that degree. But these questions can also come with a  barbed tip, too, in the sense that the liberal arts are thought by some people out there to have limited value because, unlike the STEM fields and business and things like that, the liberal arts are too often thought of as adding little of value.

The governor of Florida, for instance, a few years ago, argued that we do not need more anthropologists.  Another Floridian, a United States Senator, during his brief, quixotic run for the presidency said that we need “more plumbers and less philosophers.”   The Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky told students at Eastern Kentucky University that they should not bother studying history, and that since they were attending a public college, funded by taxpayers—people who work—that they should do something useful to the Commonwealth.   And why should the state subsidize the study of French literature, the governor of that state asked.  What value does it add for Kentuckians?

I would argue that history and the liberal arts add a lot, and not just for Kentuckians, because they give us the cultural capital to participate in a democratic society in a meaningful and significant way.  But thinking in terms of nuances, complexities, ambiguities, shades of grey; embracing the big questions, pursuing the answers over the long haul, appreciating the value of open debate and discussion, endeavoring to find truth, and digging like badgers for answers, we can find these times we live in rough sledding.

I struggle sometimes to control my own pessimism.  You students, I fear, live in a world where too many people confuse their feelings and their fears for facts, where being smart and engaged and critical and willing to ask questions can make one an object of scorn.  You live in a world as well where complexity is so often dismissed, where big and difficult answers to the big questions are avoided, that asking these sorts of questions can take a certain amount of courage. You may have seen something of this in yesterday’s “press conference” offered by the President-Elect.

Many Americans live in a world where they simply do not invest their time and energy to ask questions, stay informed.  Americans, according to a recent survey, are more likely to be able to identify any two members of the Simpson family (and, just to be clear, we’re talking about cartoon characters) than any one of the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, rights that now, as they have been at many points in the past, are under assault.  22% of Americans can name all five members of the Simpson family, while only one in a thousand can name all five first amendment freedoms. Many Americans live in fear: of immigrants and Islamist extremists–but a plastic surgeon botching your operation is more likely to kill you in the United States than a terrorist.  Yet we are told to be fearful.  And many of us do as we are told.  Enough to tip the election to a candidate who failed to win the popular vote. People around the globe and in this country—some of them, anyways—seem to have more confidence in fear and anger and hate than in their opposites. With malice towards many, and charity for few, with little interest in seeking out injustice, and correcting oppression.

We are living in this moment where a lot of really old issues—race and inequality and class and gender and violence, are resurfacing in complicated and anguishing ways.  The problems are out there.  But to name them and to ask, “What can we do?” and to gather the information to solve them, that can be tough.  And so many of these problems we face are rooted, in part, in a rejection of critical thought, in an embrace of the irrational, and a society with these problems can fall prey to demagogues with their simplistic answers, and will find it difficult to display emotional maturity, and will be prone to violence.  You have seen that in recent months.  We all have seen it.

Yet If we are stronger together, and if we are to make America great again, or as great as it might be, it might be those of us with a solid training in the liberal arts, whatever our majors, who will best see that “injustice anywhere” just may be a threat to justice everywhere.  And that if it is “an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny, that binds us, one to another,” as Martin Luther King once wrote, that you may be among those best suited to do something about it.  History majors, you who think and reason; we, the people who read the footnotes–we can deploy that wisdom that not only makes our lives richer but makes the world a better place—–only if you have the courage to act, and to use it.

We now live in a world where—when we stand up on the face of the problems before us and ask, “Why?” and when we insist on a reasoned and relevant response to that simple question—it’s like an act of subversion, and subversive acts, even the smallest ones, require a degree of courage, of fearlessness.

It can beat your down, if you let it. Looking at the spectacle of public life that my generation is in the process of bequeathing to your generation, it might be easy to slide into a deep cynicism, especially after the last election, but cynicism is an intellectually lazy position, a sort of cop out.  It can take courage to trust and to respect and to appreciate, as well as to care and to love, and to accept the validity of ideas presented by those with whom we would be predisposed to think we might disagree.  To never underestimate others, to take people seriously, whoever that person happens to be, to accept the possibility that those with whom we disagree might have a point and, indeed, to admit that we might be wrong.  To appear vulnerable in the face of those who despise us.  That is not an easy thing to do. That takes courage, and a willingness—a commitment—to approaching everything and everyone with a readiness to see goodness and to be surprised.  We historians–there is so much that we do that is inherently subversive–we can stand in the face of these forces and demand reasoned answers.

It is easy to feel like the challenges we face are too big and it is possible, I think, that we all feel at times like we are not enough to make a difference—that we need to be wealthier or have more expertise or access or whatever.  But what if we used our skills and our thoughts and our reason and acted as if we were exactly what was needed? If we knew we could close the gap between the way things are and the way things ought to be, even a little bit, would we have the courage to act?

A long time ago I had a great history professor.  His name was Albie Burke.  He died about five years ago. And even though I left Cal State Long Beach where he taught in the late 1980s, I still got back to campus every other year or so to have lunch with him and to catch up, to talk about the Supreme Court, constitutionalism, politics, and all sorts of other things. I can remember feeling nervous and unprepared before having to present some of my work in seminar, my thesis project on two really big Supreme Court cases in the field of American Indian law.  We would meet in his very Spartan office, and he always made really incisive eye contact when you were speaking to him.  Bright, bright, blue eyes. He would listen very quietly, never interrupting.  Very comfortable with silences.  And then when you finished, spilling out your guts, telling him how you were not ready, he would pause for a few beats and then say:  “You will never be prepared. Still got to do it.”  He’d smile just a little bit as he said that. It was a tough lesson for some of his students, I think, but his point was that you can spend all your time worrying and fretting and fearing and preparing and not doing.  Fear can keep you from doing what needs to be done, in public life, and in terms of what you want for your own lives.  His daughter told a similar story at his memorial service about many conversations she had had with him just like that.  It is so easy to talk yourself out of pursuing your dreams, of tackling the challenges that may lie in front of you, and of speaking truth to power.

History is not a science.  But it is a discipline.  We historians are interested in the past, and its connections to the present.  How things came to be.  Continuity and change, measured across time and space, in peoples, institutions, and cultures. But all of that is just a fancy way of saying that we historians make our living by asking questions.   If you are like me, you love the questions–the search for evidence, the complexity and the lack sometimes of definitive answers, and the stories—the stories are at the heart of all that we historians do as teachers and writers. And if we are fearless, we can do important work.  We must be honest, curious, inquisitive, and relentless to be sure, but most of all, in terms of the questions we ask, the evidence we consider, the ideas we engage with, and the theses we advance, but we must also be fearless.  Now, on our campuses, in our country, in this global community, more than ever.  Ask questions.  Demand evidence.  Do not accept easy answers.  Use your skills as critical thinkers, researchers, and writers, to ask and answer the important questions that appear before us.

 

 

 

The Obama Legacy and Native American Affairs

Outgoing Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell has completed her exit memo, touting the accomplishments of her department during the Obama years.  Jewell does not cover everything, but the memo does reveal that government can do important work in Indian affairs, and that it can be a force for good in Indian Country.  I cannot say for sure how many of the men and women staffing the new Trump administration will share that view. In any event, you can read Secretary Jewell’s memo here.   Jewell clearly is most proud of the land buyback program funded as part of the Cobell settlement.  If you have students–or are a student–casting about for a term paper topic, an assessment of the program could be a valuable project.  Check out the 2016 Status report for the Land Buy Back program here.  The Interior Department website will provide you with additional information.  And although President-elect Trump has said nothing about Native American affairs since his election, journalist Mark Trahant does a nice job of setting out a policy agenda upon which–one hopes–rational public servants might agree.