JR notes, 2002 update: I devoted the better part of my college years to the study of U.S.- American Indian relations. At the time, I was on a "pre-law" track, poised to graduate, head to law school, and become a rabble-rouser with credentials. That particular future was not to be. Nevertheless, my experiences in "Native American Studies" transformed my thinking about the world on almost every level. In terms of a tangible record of all that work, the only thing I have to show for my efforts today is a 150 page "Senior Thesis" that is currently gathering dust on the shelves of the Hampshire College library. At the time I published the paper in 1991, I was trying to use my research on anti-Indian groups in Wisconsin to help local Indians deal with a fishing/treaty rights conflict that was becoming increasingly violent. The paper was supposed to become a book, but I was denied a crucial grant to continue the work by my own college. If anyone from Hampshire's academic leadership is reading this, I'm still scratching my head about that one, can you get back to me with an explanation one of these decades? But aside from my tale of self-pity and lost opportunity, there was a happy ending - as far as anything associated with Native Americans can be called a happy ending - for the Chippewa in Wisconsin, who, years later, did win the legal disputes over their treaty rights. But I guess there's a happy ending of sorts to my story as well. When I put up this web site, I remembered a major cover story I published after graduation in 1992. Although the context has changed and the Quincentennial has long since passed, I'm still proud of the way this piece summarizes a very complicated history and sets the table for the modern issues of land rights, "energy rights," and natural resources. It goes without saying that these issues now affect all Americans in some way, and pose one of the greatest challenges to human survival in the twenty-first century and beyond.

As originally published in The Valley Optimist in June, 1992.

The Quincentennial: Native America at the Threshold

By Jon Reed

October 12, 1992 marks the 500th year anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the "New World." The Quincentennial brings with it heated debate about the history of American lands and peoples. What some see as a time of celebration, others see as a time of reflection on a disturbing past. A careful look at the last 500 years may not be easy, but rethinking the past allows us to imagine new possibilities for the future.

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus happened upon a Caribbean beach. "Neither then, nor in subsequent landings, did he see what lay before him - a continent rich in culture and civilization," contends Cree/Cherokee Metis Indian Ward Churchill. Had Columbus been willing to look, he would have seen an impressive array of indigenous societies. More than two thousand cultures, each with their own customs, beliefs, languages, and values, had thrived for centuries on North American soil.

But Columbus didn't see civilizations. His European eyes saw only primitive, backwards people with a charming openness to outsiders and an unfathomable disinterest in the gold metals the Spanish craved. The cultural gap between Europeans and Native Americans resulted in a violent history, the morality of which is debated to this day.

The same American Indians that the French labelled "sauvages" had highly sophisticated systems of governance, trade and diplomacy, skillful engineering and architecture, and environmentally-sound farming techniques, from which came well over half of the modern world's vegetable foodstuffs. The agriculturally-based economies were able to support cities as large as the 40,000-person Cahokia in present-day Illinois.

But within an amazingly brief timespan, traditional Indian life would be altered almost beyond recognition.

During the first decade of Spanish presence in the Caribbean - while Columbus himself was governor - the deadly components of "New World" conquest were established. Slavery, slaughter, and Old World diseases had an immediate effect on the natives. Within 30 years, the 14 million Indians of the Caribbean basin had been declared extinct.

The Indian people of North America were soon besieged by European powers. "After the indigenous population was virtually liquidated, its agricultural economy destroyed its remaining food sources - most notably the buffalo - wiped out, white settlers took over most of their land," writes Churchill. By 1890, only 250,000 of the original six to eight million American Indians remained alive. The bulk of the survivors were soon moved onto reservation land.

At the end of military hostilities between the United States government and Indians in the 1880s, 138 million acres of tribal land remained. But in 1887, the Dawes Allotment Act "allotted" much of the collectively held land to individual Indians, which they then sold to white landowners. If an Indian could not prove his tribal status through strict blood quotas, the government confiscated his allotment. The U.S. finally nullified the Dawes Act in favor of the comparatively progressive 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, but by then Indians had lost two-thirds of their remaining lands.

In 1934, Native American land totaled 50 million acres - 2.5 percent of original Indian holdings. The best 100 million acres were opened up to non-Indian homesteads and corporations. According to Churchill, "This model was later borrowed by the apartheid government of South Africa for its 'racial homeland' system of territorial apportionment."

But a modern irony lay buried beneath this seemingly worthless land. "By a curious act of fate some of the reserves contained extraordinary quantities of oil, natural gas and minerals," explains Churchill. The vast energy reserves beneath Indian land created a fateful tension between the future of the Indian peoples and the future of American industry.

Indians have had to confront powerful companies intent on mining the resource-rich Indian land ever since the 1920s. "What had seemed valueless land became some of the most precious real estate in North America," reporter Corey Dubin writes. "Deliveries of Indian coal and oil had to be guaranteed if the desert Southwest was to bloom with profit. Indian coal, oil and water would provide the energy needed to build and sustain Las Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Los Angeles, in addition to ensuring the domestic energy resources needed to fuel the U.S.'s rise as a global power."

To ensure access to these valuable resources, the U.S. needed to retain ultimate control over Indian governance - thus the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934. The IRA's hierarch of tribal councils, directly accountable to the federal government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has persisted to the present day.

There are currently about 1.5 million native peoples in the U.S., including the Inuit (Eskimos) of Alaska. Indians make up .5 percent of the overall U.S. population of 230 million. The Bureau of Indian Affairs recognizes 266 tribes in the United States and an additional 261 Inuit (Eskimo) and Indian communities in Alaska.

The present land base of Native America is 50 million acres - about two percent of the surface area of the country. Much of that land is divided between a few large western reservations. Although the total available land owned by Indians appears substantial, it is poor-quality, often desert land. Almost half of the remaining Indian land is classified as arid or semi-arid.

But due to the vast energy reserves which lie beneath, heated battled over Indian land continues to this day. U.S. government studies place as much as 80 percent of all remaining U.S. uranium reserves on Indian Land. Reservations occupied by the Dine (Navajo), Hopi, and Oglala Lakota (Sioux) are among the most affected. By current estimates, a quarter of the country's "readily accessible" low sulphur coal, a fifth of its oil and natural gas, and major deposits of copper, other ores and water resources rest within reservation boundaries.

"By any reasonable estimation, with this small number of people and vast amount of resources, we should be the richest group in the United States," asserts Anishinabe Indian activist Winona LaDuke. "But we are the poorest. Indians have the lowest per capita income of any population group in the U.S. We have the highest rate of unemployment and lowest level of educational attainment. We have the highest rates of malnutrition, plague disease, death by exposure and infant mortality. On the other hand, we have the shortest life-span."

Most Indians are now dependent upon white society for jobs. Since the 1950s, numerous Indians have relocated to poor urban areas in search of work. Many were forced into the cities through the infamous "termination" years of the late 1950s. What historians call the "termination era" began with the passage of Public Law 280 (PL280) in 1954. PL280 authorized the federal government to server its legal and economic obligations to selected tribes, in the hope that disbanding the tribes would allow Indians to integrate into mainstream America. "Between 1954 and 1962," writes Shawnee Indian Glenn Morris, "the U.S. 'terminated' over one hundred indigenous nations."

Without the economic and cultural support of the tribes, Indians floundered in inner city slums. Today more than half of all Indians live in urban areas, most of them well below the poverty level. Tribal identities are further threatened by the amount of non-Indians now settled on reservation land. Of the estimated 1,260,000 people now living on Indian reservations, 45 percent are non-Indian.

But much to the chagrin of bigots and mining companies, American Indians show no signs of relinquishing their land claims or their religious beliefs, despite 500 years of persecution. The last twenty years have witnessed a marked increase in Indian political organizing, culminating in efforts to be admitted into the United Nations General Assembly as sovereign nations.

The stakes of today's Indian struggles couldn't be higher. Industrial societies in search of land and resources have conquered indigenous communities, not just in the United States, but all over the world. The environmental damage of this massive resource extraction will likely pose a major obstacle to human survival in the 21st century.

Facing adversity is nothing new to the Indians of Massachusetts. This state's record of Indian treatment mirrors the national picture. Up until the 1600s, Massachusetts teemed with successful Indian communities such as the Southern Abinaki, Massachusett, Nawset, and the Pocanacuit (now known as Wampanoag). The two tribes who lived closest to the valley were the Nipmuc, who lived in the central part of the state, and the Pocumtuck, who made their home in what is now the Springfield/Pioneer Valley area.

But in the 1600s, the condition of Massachusetts Indians changed dramatically. According to the New England Native American Institute (NENAI), between 1613 - 1615 a European disease, possibly influenza, killed over fifty percent of the coastal Indians, including many in Massachusetts. In addition to disease, wars (such as King Phillips War in 1675 and the French and Indian Wars from 1690 - 1763) and outright massacres displaced the majority of Massachusetts Indians.

Massachusetts has had its share of Indian killing. Local muckrakers are aware of Lord Jeffrey Amherst's pioneering work in biological warfare - intentional smallpox infection - which was responsible for the slaughter of more than 100,000 Indians.

But fewer know about the Turners Falls Indian massacre of May 16, 1676. At Turners Falls, Captain William Turner and 180 English colonist from Hatfield disposed of an Indian fishing encampment composed of women, children, and elders. Indian casualties numbered about 300. The "Turners Falls Massacre" referred to in history books is actually the Indian retaliation for May 16.

Massachusetts Indians critical of the European way of life were compelled to leave the area. "Those who resisted had to leave, or they would have been killed or sold into slavery," says the NENAI. Most left. Even today, there are large remnants of Massachusetts tribes in Eastern Canada. Others were pushed into the wilds of Main and New York. Those few Indians who remained in Massachusetts adopted Christian ways and became loyal and subservient to the commonwealth. Many were taken in by the slave communities. Traces of the Pocumtuck tribe can be found in the old black communities of Springfield.

Whites purchased much of the Massachusetts tribal land through the U.S. government without the consent of the tribes. Vast acreage of tribal land was bought from individual Indians who didn't have the right to sell the tribe's land. Yet the tribes were never able to reclaim the land sold in these illegal transactions.

Very little Massachusetts land remains in Indian hands today. The Wampanoags still have a modest piece of land in Mashpee, and the Nipmucs have a small patch, but land claims remain a central issue for many Massachusetts Indians. Currently the Nipmucs and Wampanoags have land claims against the local, state, and federal governments that they plan to exercise. According to NENAI, "There is no statute of limitations on fraud."

Even when land was legitimately sold by Massachusetts tribes, they were often short-changed. The Nipmucs are now seeking compensation for lands in Grafton and Dudley that was never paid. The unpaid interest on the land, by conservative estimate, is well over a million dollars.

But John Peters (Slow Turtle), Massachusetts Commissioner of Indian Affairs, knows that even monetary compensation cannot address the root problems. "It's hard to change when the whole system is corrupt. Everyone contributes to the destruction of the rainforests. Your money is invested in it. You're a part of it, whether you know it or not."

Slow Turtle's people, the Wampanoag, are determined to hold on to their sacred lands. "We're not interested in giving up our sovereignty, so people are real timid about dealing with us. We're challenging them. The justice system doesn't know how to deal with us. We're still on our spiritual homelands. Most tribes are on someone else's territory, and they don't have the same reverence or connection to the land. But we're not for sale.

Elwood and Jane Wanisis Webster, owners of Two Row Wampum - American Indian Arts and Crafts, share Slow Turtle's passion for Indian ways. They make their living travelling to PowWows on weekends, selling their silk-screening and crafts. During the week, they print t-shirts from their Amherst home and prepare themselves and their two children for their next PowWow.

The Websters trace their ancestry to the famed Iroquois confederacy of the New York state area. Jane Wanisi knows very few Indians with roots in Massachusetts. "We're all transplanted. Most of the Massachusetts Indians were victims of genocide, massacred in places like Turners Falls."

Wanisi has a different take on the upcoming Quincentennial than most non-Indians. "For us, it's not a celebration. Don't get too absorbed in the past. We shouldn't be talking about all the terrible things that happened. That's gone now. There's no need to cry about all that - it's gone. Indian people are still fighting, still struggling for religious freedom.

"Just as in the past, all we hear are hollow words," Wanisi continues. "There is supposed to be a law protecting our religious freedom, but the law means nothing. The Supreme Court smashed it to pieces when they ruled that religious use of peyote was illegal. What kind of religious freedom is that?"

Wanisi believes that the restrictions on Indian religious freedom are part of a deliberate plan to break the spirit of her people and buy their lands. "If you can take away the things that are basic, take away the people's religion and language, spiritually kill them, then the rest is easy. Western Europeans have always done it that way. They'll go in and take away a people's language, culture, and religion."

Elwood Webster's grandmother, who died last year at the age of 96, was a survivor of these missionary-sponsored language wars. At the turn of the century, she was enrolled at the well-known Carlyle Indian School. If she was ever heard speaking her own language, Elwood's grandmother was beaten. "They put you in a little suit, put a hat on you, gave you a tie, and cut your hair," says Elwood Webster.

"Indians are still forced to cut their hair to get certain jobs," adds Wanisi. "They say it's illegal, so why do they still do that? That's no religious freedom. We're not just hippies, using long hair for our rebellion. The creator gave us that hair. It's sacred to our people."

But the Websters are not just concerned with Indian hair length; they are also worried about the energy resource and land claim issues that have been so important to the western tribes. "Governments have to learn that the dollar isn't the answer to everything," argues Wanisi. "They've got alternative technologies if they would jut use them. There is power in the sun and the wind, and they could harness that power. They have the means to do it. But it won't put money in their pockets, so they won't do it."

In Wanisi's opinion, federal resistance to alternative energy sources is not just a financial issue. "I believe the reason we don't have solar power is because it's not good for big oil and electric companies for us to have solar panels, windmills, to be independent from them. If we become independent, we might start having independent thoughts - that's what they fear the most."

If the Indians lose the fight to keep uranium in the ground, they then have to fight to keep the toxic waste from being dumped back onto the reservation. In the last few years alone, more than 50 tribes have been offered millions of dollars by American industries to store toxic waste on Indian land. Although storing toxics on sacred land is hardly in keeping with the traditional Indian reverence for the land, Wanisi can see how hungry Indians might be willing to sacrifice the future for the present.

"It's real hard to think seven generations ahead when you need food on the table, and the people in power have realized this, so they come to us and say, 'We'll give you high sums to bury our toxics…' I think they should bury them on the White House lawn, right next to the fountain. They could put fifty gallon drums of toxic waste in the rose gardens."

Wanisi thinks that ancient Iroquois prophecy predicted this environmental crisis. "The Iroquois believed that there were giant snakes and serpents in the ground. They prophesized that when these snakes came out, they would cause great destruction. Trees would start dying from the top down. I believe that the Iroquois were talking about Uranium."

Indian nations all across the North American continent have similar prophecies. Hopis are guided by their own southwest prophecy of grave modern dangers for their people. Chief Seattle (of the Pacific Northwest's Salishan tribe) spoke of the impending crisis in precise ecological language. According to Wanisi, "It was Chief Seattle who predicted that one day you'd have to buy your water and the air you breathe."

The Cree have a particularly inspiring prophecy about a group of people from diverse backgrounds who together bring the world back from disaster. To Wanisi, the need for this prophesized coalition has never been greater. "People are going to have to look at what kind of future we're preparing for all people. Even many Indians have forgotten to think about the seven generations ahead of us, forgotten that Indian people are the caretakers of this earth. These days, when you travel to another area, before you get a drink from your friend's tap you have to ask, "Can you drink the water here?" If there's going to be a beautiful place for our children, not just a wasteland, things have to change."

Don Ogden, member of the 1992 Alliance for the People's Quincentenary, is part of a core of local white activists who share Wanisi's call for social change and environmental protection. A valley resident for the last ten years, Ogden makes his living as a roofer and writer.

Ogden is helping with two upcoming Alliance projects, the Time Capsule burial and the Council Fire. The Time Capsule will bury "a legacy of truth for future generations" to mark the 500 year anniversary. Area residents can contribute items to the Time Capsule, such as newspaper articles or original artwork, that address issues raised by the Quincentennial. As the Alliance puts it, "Why should governments and multinational corporations be the only ones to try and bury the truth about Christopher Columbus?"

The Council Fire, originally conceived by Ogden, is the Alliances' most ambitious project to date. The fire will be the focal point of a series of events planned for the October Quincentennial. The Council Fire, to be held at a "historically significant" Valley site, will provide a chance for people committed to an ecologically-viable future to come together. Leaders from the four main surrounding indigenous groups, Nipmuc, Wampanoag, Abenaki, and Mohawk, will open the ceremony. Ogden hopes that the even will "honor Indian nations, but also help people to become more aware of contemporary issues."

Ogden knows that many capable people avoid political involvement because the troubles of the modern world are so overwhelming. He encourages people to be militant about confronting their despair. "The only thing I can do to overcome hopelessness is to do something. If you become stymied by it, it's a bottomless pit… If you don't do something, what are you going to say in the final hour? If we get involved, at least we will be able to say, 'I did my best.' If you don't try, you add to the hopelessness."

This is a time of crisis for Indian people. Even a partial list of the current issues is unsettling. From the Black Hills of Arkansas to Big Mountain, Arizona, resources battles with multinational corporations rage on. If New England states choose to buy power from Canada's HydroQuebec, the homeland of the Cree peoples of Quebec will be destroyed. American Indian political prisoner Leonard Peltier, a symbol to many Indians of a corrupt U.S. legal system, is still behind bars. Virtually unknown within U.S. borders, Peltier has yet to earn even a retrial despite overwhelming international support (look for Robert Redford's upcoming documentary for more information about Peltier).

There is no end in sight to the religious repression and racial harassment that American Indians have endured for 500 years. Even the inter-tribal goal of recognition as a nation by the United Nations General Assembly, as important as it is, is more valuable as a symbol of cultural pride than as significant social change.

To make matters worse, too few whites are sympathetic. Most white Americas are clinging tightly to what they have. They do not want to be bothered by Indian demands for religious freedom and land claim compensation. There is even a national white network, based in the northwest, which is not above exploiting the racial fears of poor whites to achieve its goal of dismantling the Indians' treaty rights.

But despite the barriers of prejudice and poverty, there is a legitimate cause for hope. Ironically, the ecological crisis brings with it more common ground between whites and Indians than has ever before existed. As Ware Churchill concludes, "The same system which has been at odds with the indigenous peoples is increasingly destroying the land itself… If the land dies, no humans can survive. Thus, the struggle which confronts and unifies us is saving our collective habitat as a 'survivable' environment, not only for ourselves, but for the generations to come. At long last, we have arrived at the point where there is a tangible, even overriding, confluence of interest between Natives and non-Natives."