Reparations for Reservations
The idea of a reservation should be wholly unnatural. Yet, when the Commissioner of Indian Affairs William Medill proposed the idea of a “reservation system” in 1848, much of the vocal opposition was from white settlers who were unhappy with the size of granted lands. In his annual report, Medill writes that “the policy already begun and relied on to accomplish objects so momentous and so desirable to every Christian and philanthropist is, as rapidly as it can safely and judiciously be done, to colonize our Indian tribes beyond the reach, for some years, of our white population.” His conflation of “Christian” with “philanthropist” is concerning and remarkably untouched as a contemporary rhetoric. More striking, however, is the way in which Medill justifies the concept of reservations. He claims that to establish a reservation for the Indian people is to begin the process of civilizing and evangelizing their communities. Medill’s argument was echoed by subsequent Commissioners, including George Manypenny. In 1856, Manypenny writes that “the red man can be transformed in his habits, domesticated, and civilized, and made a useful element of society.”
It is clear that reservations were justified and legitimized by the rhetoric of development and progress. Legislators in the 19th century tried to frame reservations in a positive manner by guaranteeing that tribal sovereignty would be protected. However, Native nations are technically considered “domestic dependent nations,” meaning tribal sovereignty remains subject to the federal powers of the United States in many regards. While states are (generally) precluded from interfering with tribal governance, the federal government has tremendous control over which tribes are formally recognized and the size of land granted to recognized tribes. Today, there are 567 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes. There is also a significant number of tribes that lack federal recognition: those whose federal relationship was terminated in the 20th century (some of which have been restored to federal recognition) and those who have never been federally recognized or are in the process of petitioning the federal government for recognition.
The whole apparatus is a violent system. Consider that Western Europeans came to this hemisphere bringing with them disease, the greed of empires, and a capitalistic system founded on slavery. Consider that colonizers murdered, raped, and evicted indigenous peoples and that same violence continues today, taking on new and more complex forms. Reservations, in particular, are spaces where genocide, violation, and theft are very real traumas that are constantly re-lived and re-experienced. Even the guarantee that tribal sovereignty would be protected by the federal government is a farce, as the history of diminishment will prove.
I argue that, just as there is a critical discourse on the issue of reparations for slavery and the descendants of slaves, we must generate a tangible consideration of reparations for Native nations and tribal members. One such site where we can begin to formulate a plan for reparations is the illegal blockade of Highway 1806 erected by the Morton County Commission and Sheriff’s Department. A letter drafted in December of 2016 by the Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC) and delivered to law enforcement reads: “By preventing all vehicles — including emergency vehicles — from traveling on this portion of Highway 1806, your blockade has endangered the safety of the thousands of individuals…as well as the neighboring businesses both north and south of the blockade.” The blockade is one example where reparations to, in this case, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe can be discussed in concrete terms. Reparations could include monetary compensation for those whose health was negatively impacted by the blockade and for businesses affected by restricted traffic and flow between the reservation and Bismarck. That monetary sum could also include the damages awarded as compensation for the violation of the civil rights of water protectors as perpetrated by the Morton County law enforcement officers or the Army Corp of Engineers.
The illegal blockade is but one example in an innumerable number of potential cases where the federal government owes some form of compensation to tribal governments and indigenous people as a whole. Additionally, examples such as this one in Standing Rock do not take into consideration loss of land, life, and liberty that have been committed since colonization. It would be immeasurably more difficult to quantify the financial value of those damages. However, in the interest of generating real political action, I would also argue that the breadth of what reparations must address must be broadened to address the systemic ways in which indigenous peoples are continually oppressed. For example, reparations might include altering a national holiday such as Columbus Day into Indigenous Peoples’ Day, as Seattle did in 2014. Doing so would encourage an ideological shift from celebrating colonization and genocide to celebrating the history and culture of Native nations. Another way to address reparations would be within educational institutions. Remodeling K-12 curricula to reflect a more grounded approach to the history of settler colonialism in America and the modern rights of Native nations could help dispel the notion that people indigenous to this hemisphere have died out or remain savage and uncivilized. Educational reform can and should extend to higher education as well. Rather than having undergraduate departments entitled “American Indian Studies” or having law school courses entitled “American Indian Law” here at the University of Washington, we could advocate for a simple change in nomenclature from American Indian to indigenous peoples, Native nations, or even Native Americans. While the practical effect of a linguistic or visual alteration as suggested here might be negligible, I argue that making that change could have rippling effects in even more public spheres. For example, reparations could even extend into the realm of boycotting sports teams such as the Washington Redskins. The optics on educational curricula, legal codes, and sports franchises are so intense that even a name change could generate truly productive conversations about how indigenous peoples remain oppressed.
Reparations will never be easy to quantify or accept. However, if we can make very practical strides in trying to make amends for the systematic and continued violence against Native nations, we can produce a framework which could be applicable to reparations for slavery, religious persecution, and internment camps.
