National view: Native Americans still aren’t equal citizens
Ninety years ago, the U.S. Congress granted Native Americans the ironic right to become citizens of their own land.
But the Indian Citizenship Act was designed not so much to grant equal rights to Native Americans as it was to further assimilate the Indian into American society.
Before it, the U.S. government had established the reservation system (herding tribes onto some of the most desolate lands) and engaged in actions that were designed to wipe out Native American identity. These actions targeted indigenous languages, ceremonies, cultures and a long-held connection to the land.
Native American children were forced into boarding schools whose mission was to “civilize the savages” at all costs. By removing the children from their tribal families and homelands, the U.S. government hoped to blend them into white society and thus ensure the end of future Native American generations.
Other U.S. federal assimilation policies included swinging the gates wide open for land grabbers. The Dawes Act of 1887 was, in legislative print, an attempt to privatize Native American land and turn tribal people into farmers. In the decades to follow, Native American people would lose millions more acres to white settlers and corporate exploiters of natural resources.
Three decades after the Indian Citizenship Act, the federal government launched the Indian Relocation Program. Lured by a free bus or train ticket, the promise of housing and decent-paying jobs, Native Americans left their reservations on what proved to be a pipe dream to most. In cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Cleveland, the program left many homeless and in deeper poverty than they had known back home.
Despite all these efforts to assimilate Native Americans, the U.S. government could not wipe out Native American nationhood. Tribal sovereignty, the cornerstone of Native American identity, remains intact today. Tribes remain ever vigilant in their right to deal with the federal government, states and local municipalities on a government-to-government basis. And most Native Americans prefer their tribal identity. We would rather live as immigrants in our own country than fully assimilate.
Even today, 90 years after the Indian Citizenship Act, we often are treated as second-class citizens.
We still have to contend with stereotypes of savages and with white violence — including rape — that often goes unprosecuted and unpunished. Native American women are raped more than twice as often as other women, and the vast majority of the perpetrators are white men who rarely are convicted.
In that sense, we are not yet full and equal citizens of the United States.
Mark Anthony Rolo is a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. He is the author of the memoir “My Mother Is Now Earth.” He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org