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    Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887
    Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887
    Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887
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    Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887

    By Daniel M. Cobb

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    In this wide-ranging and carefully curated anthology, Daniel M. Cobb presents the words of Indigenous people who have shaped Native American rights movements from the late nineteenth century through the present day. Presenting essays, letters, interviews, speeches, government documents, and other testimony, Cobb shows how tribal leaders, intellectuals, and activists deployed a variety of protest methods over more than a century to demand Indigenous sovereignty. As these documents show, Native peoples have adopted a wide range of strategies in this struggle, invoking "American" and global democratic ideas about citizenship, freedom, justice, consent of the governed, representation, and personal and civil liberties while investing them with indigenized meanings.

    The more than fifty documents gathered here are organized chronologically and thematically for ease in classroom and research use. They address the aspirations of Indigenous nations and individuals within Canada, Hawaii, and Alaska as well as the continental United States, placing their activism in both national and international contexts. The collection's topical breadth, analytical framework, and emphasis on unpublished materials offer students and scholars new sources with which to engage and explore American Indian thought and political action.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe University of North Carolina Press
    Release dateSep 24, 2015
    ISBN9781469624815
    Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887
    Author

    Daniel M. Cobb

    Daniel M. Cobb is associate professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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      Say We Are Nations - Daniel M. Cobb

      Part I: Contesting Citizenship, 1887–1924

      At the end of the nineteenth century and for the first three-and-a-half decades of the twentieth, American Indians contended with a federal government and majority society wedded to the policies of allotment and assimilation. Inaugurated in 1887, the General Allotment (Dawes) Act proposed to convert the 138 million acres of tribally owned reservation lands remaining in Native America into individually owned plots of from 40 to 320 acres. Meanwhile, the larger assimilation project of which it was a part aspired to effect the complete replacement of one identity (Indian) with another (white). These two mutually reinforcing aspects of what President Theodore Roosevelt called a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass had to do with more than land or cultural practice. They addressed a question that vexed the minds of missionaries, federal bureaucrats, members of Congress, and reformers alike—the question of belonging.¹

      The cant of citizenship emerged as the dominant rhetorical vehicle to talk about what it meant to belong in the United States of America. Inclusion and incorporation offered convenient, even optimistic, desiderata. A settler state, whose existence was made possible only through the ruin of indigenous nations, now offered the survivors of that destructive process a place in the new body politic. But it would come at a cost, and a great one at that. Even the Friends of the Indian possessed a narrow, singular conception of citizenship. This citizenship of sameness had little room for cultural pluralism and did not countenance the perpetual continuation of separate political identities.²

      The process of incorporating indigenous peoples into the United States extended beyond reservation communities and became integral to the American imperial project abroad. It took a variety of forms from Latin America and the Caribbean to the Philippines but proved most complete in the Hawaiian Islands, where the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 paved the way for annexation in 1898 and statehood in 1959. As they had in the contiguous United States, assimilative pressures accelerated the extension of territorial, economic, and governmental control. As the common refrain of benevolent assimilation conveyed, the imperative to be the same—even in the absence of U.S. citizenship—guided the nation’s engagement with indigenous peoples.³

      When the United States entered World War I (1914–18) in 1917, the question of belonging took on new meanings. The war served as a transformative force in the lives of American Indians, as many of them left their homes in search of work in war industries or volunteered to fight overseas. And yet, while approximately sixteen thousand Native people served in the military, not all of them had volunteered. Conscription happened unevenly, and it presented a problem. How could a country that did not acknowledge someone’s legal personhood draft that person to fight in its war? As the documents in this chapter attest, some Native communities solved that problem by arguing that their citizens belonged to their own nations and, by extension, went into the military as allies. Some Lakotas, Dakotas, Ojibwes, Goshutes, and Creeks, among others, drew a harder line, reasoning that a settler state they considered illegitimate could not compel them to serve. And still others contended that, in the wake of war, Congress should honor the fact that so many Native people volunteered by bestowing U.S. citizenship.⁴

      The General Allotment Act always had built within it a pathway to U.S. citizenship—one inextricably bound to private land ownership and conflated with competence. The war shortened the distance Native people had to travel—and ultimately left them without a choice of whether they even wanted to go down that road. Between 1919 and 1924, Congress enacted legislation extending U.S. citizenship to veterans and then to all American Indians. As we will see, some welcomed the gift, some refused it, and some sought creative ways of making it compatible with tribal sovereignty. The last of these became particularly important as the assimilationist juggernaut continued through the 1920s and manifested itself in such things as bans on ceremonial practices, allotment, inequitable leases, reduced spending on health and education, and passage of legislation that sought to settle disputed land claims in favor of non-Indians.⁵

      Another critical dimension of Native activism during this period grew out of President Woodrow Wilson’s rationale for U.S. intervention and his vision for the postwar world. In April 1917, he told a reluctant public that the world must be made safe for democracy. Eight months later, in a special address to Congress, Wilson enunciated the Fourteen Points to give meaning and purpose to the Great War. Among the principles were the right of national self-determination, the adjustment of colonial claims, and the formation of an international body, a League of Nations, for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. While Congress refused to join the League of Nations, its import was not lost on Indian rights advocates. Native people well understood the need for the right of self-determination.⁶

      The following documents demonstrate some of the ways in which Native people offered their own answers to the question of belonging during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They constructed blockades to stop the pulverizing engine of progress and built new track to direct it away from their communities. But contests over allotment, assimilation, citizenship, incorporation, and inclusion did not simply place Native peoples in opposition to whites. Rather, these were multivocal affairs that emerged from and served as an impetus for unexpected conversations within and between Native and non-Native communities. Some of the authors in the following documents attempted to delineate nonindigenous and indigenous worlds; others articulated a nebulous space between them—a third space of sovereignty. Talking back to civilization and saying we are nations, then, did not result in a dialogue but an intricate fugue.⁷

      1: My Own Nation (1899)

      ⁸

      Queen Lili‘uokalani

      In 1887, the same year the U.S. Congress passed the General Allotment Act, American missionaries and businessmen forced Hawai‘i’s King Kalakaua to sign the infamous Bayonet Constitution, a document that ceded monarchical power to a settler-dominated cabinet opposed to indigenous sovereignty. Though denounced by the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians), the Bayonet Constitution marked a turning point in the push for annexation. The support it gained on the mainland conveyed to the world that the United States meant to act on its ambition for an empire beyond its continental borders—to make Indians out of Native Hawaiians. After Kalakaua’s untimely death in 1891, it fell to his sister, Lili‘uokalani (1838–1917), to prevent the U.S. Congress from ratifying an annexation treaty and to advocate for a new constitution that enfranchised the Kanaka Maoli. Although she did not succeed on either count, Lili‘uokalani galvanized an ongoing resistance movement. Consider how and why she deployed concepts such as citizenship, civilization, indigeneity, self-determination, sovereignty, constitutionalism, representation, patriotism, international law, and Christianity in defense of Hawaiian nationhood.⁹

      It has been suggested to me that the American general reader is not well informed regarding the social and political conditions which have come about in the Sandwich Islands, and that it would be well here to give some expression to my own observation of them.¹⁰ Space will only permit, however, a mere outline.

      It has been said that the Hawaiian people under the rule of the chiefs were most degraded, that under the monarchy their condition greatly improved, but that the native government in any form had at last become intolerable to the more enlightened part of the community. . . . It is more to the point that Kalakaua’s reign was, in a material sense, the golden age of Hawaiian history. The wealth and importance of the Islands enormously increased, and always as a direct consequence of the king’s acts. It has been currently supposed that the policy and foresight of the missionary party is to be credited with all that he accomplished, since they succeeded in abrogating so many of his prerogatives, and absorbing the lion’s share of the benefits derived from it. It should, however, be only necessary to remember that the measures which brought about our accession of wealth were not at all in line with the policy of annexation to the United States, which was the very essence of the dominant missionary idea. In fact, his progressive foreign policy was well calculated to discourage it.

      And for this reason, probably, they could not be satisfied even with the splendid results which our continued nationality offered them. They were not grateful for a prosperity which must sooner or later, while enriching them, also elevate the masses of the Hawaiian people into a self-governing class, and depose them from that primacy in our political affairs which they chiefly valued. They became fiercely jealous of every measure which promised to benefit the native people, or to stimulate their national pride. Every possible embarrassment and humiliation were heaped upon my brother. And because I was suspected of having the welfare of the whole people also at heart (and what sovereign with a grain of wisdom could be otherwise minded?), I must be made to feel yet more severely that my kingdom was but the assured prey of these conquistadores.

      . . . [In 1893] I proposed to promulgate a new constitution. I have already shown that two-thirds of my people declared their dissatisfaction with the old one; as well they might, for it was a document originally designed for a republic, hastily altered when the conspirators found that they had not the courage to assassinate the king. It is alleged that my proposed constitution was to make such changes as to give to the sovereign more power, and to the cabinet or legislature less, and that only subjects, in distinction from temporary residents, could exercise suffrage. In other words, that I was to restore some of the ancient rights of my people. I had listened to whatever had been advised, had examined whatever drafts of constitutions others had brought me, and promised but little.

      But, supposing I had thought it wise to limit the exercise of suffrage to those who owed allegiance to no other country; is that different from the usage in all other civilized nations on earth? Is there another country where a man would be allowed to vote, to seek for office, to hold the most responsible of positions, without becoming naturalized, and reserving to himself the privilege of protection under the guns of a foreign man-of-war at any moment when he should quarrel with the government under which he lived? Yet this is exactly what the quasi Americans, who call themselves Hawaiians now and Americans when it suits them, claim the right to do at Honolulu.

      Queen Lili‘uokalani’s activism took many forms. In addition to engaging in formal diplomacy, she wrote poetry, songs, and chants to give her people strength. A quilt she made during her imprisonment at Iolani Palace stands as testimony of the love she felt for her nation. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; gift of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum/Art Resource, NY.

      The right to grant a constitution to the nation has been, since the very first one was granted, a prerogative of the Hawaiian sovereigns. . . .

      While in Boston [in December 1896 and January 1897] I was constantly asked if there was any political significance in my visit to America, and if I expected to see the President. It seemed wise to say nothing about my purpose at that time, but frankness would now indicate an opposite course. By the first vessel that arrived from Honolulu after I had reached San Francisco, documents were sent to me by the patriotic leagues of the native Hawaiian people, those associations of which I have already spoken in full; and these representative bodies of my own nation prayed me to undertake certain measures for the general good of Hawai‘i. Further messages of similar purport reached me while I was visiting my Boston friends.¹¹

      All the communications received, whether personally or in form, from individuals or from the above-mentioned organizations, were in advocacy of one desired end. This was to ask President [Grover] Cleveland that the former form of government unjustly taken from us by the persons who in 1892 and 1893 represented the United States should be restored, and that this restoration should undo the wrong which had been done to the Hawaiian people, and returned to them the queen, to whom constitutionally, and also by their own choice, they had a perfect right.

      This was further in the line of the only instructions which to this day have ever been given by the United States to the so-called Republic of Hawai‘i, and those were that the President acknowledges the right of the Hawaiian people to choose their own form of government. Were that one sentence literally carried out in fact today, and the Hawaiians sustained in the carrying out of the same, it would be all that either my people or myself could ask.

      The second package of documents received by me in Boston was addressed to President [William] McKinley, and was similar to the others I already had. . . .¹² Accompanying these papers were other documents, showing that full power was accorded to me, not only as their queen, but individually, to represent the real people of Hawai‘i, and in so doing to act in any way my judgment should dictate for the good of the Hawaiians, to whom the Creator gave those beautiful islands in the Pacific. Commissions were also issued to Mr. Joseph Heleluhe, empowering him to act with me; he having been chosen by the Hawaiians as the special envoy of those deprived by the Provisional Government, not only of the franchise, but also of any representation at the capital of that American nation to which they have never ceased to look for the redress of national wrongs, brought upon them by the hasty action of United States officers.¹³

      When I speak at this time of the Hawaiian people, I refer to the children of the soil—the native inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands and their descendants. Two delegations claiming to represent Hawai‘i have visited Washington at intervals during the past four years in the cause of annexation, besides which other individuals have been sent on to assist in this attempt to defraud an aboriginal people of their birthrights—rights dear to the patriotic hearts of even the weakest nation. Lately these aliens have called themselves Hawaiians.

      They are not and never were Hawaiians. Although some have had positions under the monarchy which they solemnly swore by oath of office to uphold and sustain, they retained their American birthright. When they overthrew my government, and placed themselves under the protectorate established by John L. Stevens—as he so states in writing,—they designated themselves as Americans; as such they called on him to raise their flag on the building of the Hawaiian Government.¹⁴ When it pleased the Provisional Government to give their control another name, they called it the Republic of Hawai‘i. To gain the sympathy of the American people, they made the national day of the Independence of the United States their own, and made speeches claiming to be American citizens. Such has been their custom at Honolulu, although in Washington they represent themselves as Hawaiians. . . .

      Perhaps there is a kind of right, depending upon the precedents of all ages, and known as the Right of Conquest, under which robbers and marauders may establish themselves in possession of whatsoever they are strong enough to ravish from their fellows. I will not pretend to decide how far civilization and Christian enlightenment have outlawed it. But we have known for many years that our Island monarchy has relied upon the protection always extended to us by the policy and the assured friendship of the great American republic. . . .

      The conspirators, having actually gained possession of the machinery of government, and the recognition of foreign ministers, refused to surrender their conquest. So it happens that, overawed by the power of the United States to the extent that they can neither themselves throw off the usurpers, nor obtain assistance from other friendly states, the people of the Islands have no voice in determining their future, but are virtually relegated to the condition of the aborigines of the American continent.

      It is not for me to consider this matter from the American point of view; although the pending question of annexation involves nothing less than a departure from the established policy of that country, and an ominous change in its foreign relations. . . . Is the American Republic of States to degenerate, and become a colonizer and a land-grabber?

      And is this prospect satisfactory to a people who rely upon self-government for their liberties, and whose guaranty of liberty and autonomy to the whole western hemisphere, the grand Monroe Doctrine, appealing to the respect and the sense of justice of the masses of every nation on earth, has made any attack upon it practically impossible to the statesmen and rulers of armed empires?¹⁵ There is little question but that the United States could become a successful rival of the European nations in the race for conquest, and could create a vast military and naval power, if such is its ambition. But is such an ambition laudable? Is such a departure from its established principles patriotic or politic?

      Here, at least for the present, I rest my pen. During my stay in the capital, I suppose I must have met, by name and by card, at least five thousand callers. From most of these, by word, by grasp of hand, or at least by expression of countenance, I have received a sympathy and encouragement of which I cannot write fully. Let it be understood that I have not failed to notice it, and to be not only flattered by its universality, but further very grateful that I have had the opportunity to know the real American people, quite distinct from those who have assumed this honored name when it suited their selfish ends.

      But for the Hawaiian people, for the forty thousand of my own race and blood, descendants of those who welcomed the devoted and pious missionaries of seventy years ago—for them has this mission of mine accomplished anything?

      Oh, honest Americans, as Christians hear me for my downtrodden people! Their form of government is as dear to them as yours is precious to you. Quite as warmly as you love your country, so they love theirs. With all your goodly possessions, covering a territory so immense that there yet remain parts unexplored, possessing islands that, although near at hand, had to be neutral ground in time of war, do not covet the little vineyard of Naboth’s, so far from your shores, lest the punishment of Ahab fall upon you, if not in your day, in that of your children, for be not deceived, God is not mocked.¹⁶ The people to whom your fathers told of the living God, and taught to call father, and whom the sons now seek to despoil and destroy are crying aloud to Him in their time of trouble; and He will keep His promise, and will listen to the voices of His Hawaiian children lamenting for their homes.

      It is for them that I would give the last drop of my blood; it is for them that I would spend, nay, am spending, everything belonging to me. Will it be in vain? It is for the American people and their representatives in Congress to answer these questions. As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler of all nations deal with the grand and glorious nation of the United States of America.

      2: Keep Our Treaties (1906)

      ¹⁷

      Chitto Harjo

      As Lili‘uokalani’s opposition to annexation faltered, Native nations within the continental United States defended their homelands from a different form of incorporation. Allotment intended to integrate reservations into the United States by allocating parcels of tribally owned property to individual Indians and opening the remaining surplus land to homesteaders. It proceeded unevenly. In Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory pressure intensified, and resistance took many forms. Lone Wolf, a Kiowa leader, sued the United States to prevent the dismantling of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Reservation, only to be defeated in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903). Plenary power, the Supreme Court affirmed, enabled Congress to abrogate treaties arbitrarily. After separate legislation extended the Dawes Act to Indian Territory, dissenters refused to sign tribal rolls or accept allotments. The Creeks splintered, and as Oklahoma moved toward statehood in 1906, Chitto Harjo (1846–1911) took the Creek opposition’s case before a Senate investigating committee in Tulsa. Consider the connection he made between land ownership and nationhood, his strategic deployment of history, memory, and race, and the central place treaty making, consent, and justice held in his defense of Creek sovereignty.¹⁸

      I will begin with a recital of the relations of the Creeks with the Government of the United States. . . . And I will explain it so you will understand it. . . . My ancestors and my people were the inhabitants of this great country from 1492. I mean by that from the time the white man first came to this country until now. It was my home and the home of my people from time immemorial, and is today, I think, the home of my people.

      Away back in that time—in 1492—there was man by the name of Columbus came from across the great ocean, and he discovered this country for the white man—this country which was at that time the home of my people. What did he find when he first arrived here? Did he find a white man standing on this continent then, or did he find a black man standing here? Did he find either a black man or a white man standing on this continent then?

      . . . I stood here first and Columbus first discovered me. I want to know what did he say to the red man at that time? He was on one of the great four roads that led to light. At that time Columbus received the information that was given to him by my people. My ancestor informed him that he was ready to accept this light he proposed to give him and walk these four roads of light and have his children under his direction. He told him it is all right. He told him, The land is all yours; the law is all yours. He said it was right. He told him, I will always take care of you. If your people meet with any troubles I will take these troubles away. I will stand before you and behind you and on each side of you and your people, and if any people come into your country I will take them away and you shall live in peace under me. My arms, he said, are very long. He told him to come within his protecting arms and he said, If anything comes against you for your ruin I will stand by you and preserve you and defend you and protect you. . . .

      He told me that as long as the sun shone and the sky is up yonder these agreements shall be kept. That was the first agreement that we had with the white man. He said as long as the sun rises it shall last; as long as the waters run it shall last; as long as grass grows it shall last. That was what it was to be and we agreed on those terms. That was what the agreement was, and we signed our names to that agreement and to those terms. . . . That is what he said, and we believed it. I think there is nothing that has been done by the people should abrogate them. We have kept every term of that agreement. The grass is growing, the waters run, the sun shines, the light is with us, and the agreement is with us yet, for the God that is above us all witnessed that agreement.

      . . . Now, coming down to 1832 and referring to the agreements between the Creek people and the Government of the United States: What has occurred since 1832 until today?¹⁹ It seems that some people forget what has occurred. After all, we are all of one blood; we have the one God and we live in the same land. I have always lived back yonder in what is now the State of Alabama. We had our homes back there; my people had their homes back there. We had our troubles back there and we had no one to defend us. At that time when I had these troubles it was to take my country away from me. I had no other troubles. The troubles were always about taking my country away from me. I could live in peace with all else, but they wanted my country and I was in trouble defending it.

      It was no use. They were bound to take my country away from me. It may have been that my country had to be taken away from me, but it was not justice. I have always been asking for justice. I never asked for anything else but justice. I never had justice. First, it was this and then it was something else that was taken away from me and my people, so we couldn’t stay there any more. It was not because a man had to stand on the outside of what was right that brought the troubles. What was to be done was all set out yonder in the light and all men knew what the law and the agreement was. It was a treaty—a solemn treaty—but what difference did that make? I want to say this to you to-day, because I don’t want these ancient agreements between the Indian and the white man violated. . . .

      Then it was the overtures of the Government to my people to leave their land, the home of their fathers, the land that they loved. . . . He said, Go away out there to this land toward the setting sun, and take your people with you and locate them there, and I will give you that land forever, and I will protect you and your children in it forever. That was the agreement and the treaty, and I and my people came out here and we settled on this land, and I carried out these agreements and treaties in all points and violated none. I came over and located here.

      What took place in 1861? I had made my home here with my people, and I was living well out here with my people. We were all prospering. We had a great deal of property here, all over this country. We had come here and taken possession of it under our treaty. We had laws that were living laws, and I was living here under the laws. You are my fathers, and I tell you that in 1861, I was living here in peace and plenty with my people, and we were happy; and then my white fathers rose in arms against each other to fight each other. They did fight each other. At that day Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States and our Great Father. He was in Washington and I was away off down here. My white brothers divided into factions and went to war.

      When the white people raised in arms and tried to destroy one another, it was not for the purpose of destroying my people at all. It was not for the purpose of destroying treaties with the Indians. They did not think of that and the Indian was not the cause of that great war at all. The cause of that war was because there was a people that were black in skin and color, who had always been in slavery. In my old home in Alabama and all through the south part of the nation and out in this country, these black people were held in slavery and up in the North there were no slaves. The people of that part of the United States determined to set the black people free, and the people in the South determined that they should not, and they went to war about it. In that war the Indians had not any part. It was not their war at all.

      The purpose of the war was to set these black people at liberty, and I had nothing to do with it. He told me to come out here and have my laws back, and I came out here with my people and had my own laws, and was living under them. On account of some of your own sons—the ancient brothers of mine—they came over here and caused me to enroll along with my people on your side.²⁰ I left my home and my country and everything I had in the world and went rolling on toward the Federal Army. I left my laws and my government, I left my people and my country and my home, I left everything and went with the Federal Army for my father in Washington. I left them all in order to stand by my treaties. I left everything and I arrived in Kansas—I mean it was at Leavenworth where I arrived. It was a town away up in Kansas on the Missouri River. I arrived at Fort Leavenworth to do what I could for my father’s country and stand by my treaties. . . .

      Things should not have been that way but that is the way they were. The father at Washington was not able to keep his treaty with me and I had to leave my country, as I have stated, and go into the Federal Army. Then I got a weapon in my hands, for I raised my hand and went into the Army to help to defend my treaties and my country and the Federal Army. I went in as a Union soldier. When I took the oath I raised my hand and called God to witness that I was ready to die in the cause that was right and to help my father defend his treaties. All this time the fire was going on and the war and the battles were going on, and today I have conquered all and regained these treaties that I have with the Government. I believe that everything wholly and fully came back to me on account of the position I took in that war. I think that. I thought then, and I think today, that is the way to do—to stand up and be a man that keeps his word all the time and under all circumstances. That is what I did, and I know that in doing so I regained again all my old treaties, for the father at Washington conquered in that war, and he promised me that if I was faithful to my treaties I should have them all back again. I was faithful to my treaties and I got them all back again, and today I am living under them and with them. I never agreed to the exchanging of lands and I never agreed to the allotting of my lands. . . . Your Government . . . said that if anyone trespassed on my rights or questioned them to let him know and he would take care of them and protect them.²¹

      I always thought that this would be done. I believe yet it will be done. I don’t know what the trouble is now. I don’t know anything about it. I think that my lands are all cut up. I have never asked that be

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