A Modern Life
After decades of discrimination, poverty, and despair, American Indians can finally look toward a better future
Life is still hard at Warm Springs, a diminutive town of shoebox ranch houses and a few brick buildings that once served as BIA boarding schools for Indian children. Tribal government and businesses now employ more than 1,100 people--but that leaves unemployment hovering around 50 percent. And car accidents, diabetes, heart disease, and suicide contribute to a life expectancy of just 47 years--about what you'd find in Somalia. And yet even that, remarkably, is a sign of hope; 20 years ago, before intensive health programs and a new tribal health center, life expectancy at Warm Springs was a downright medieval 32. Jeff Sanders, 66, credits his longevity in part to a diabetes awareness program on the reservation. "We're still way behind the white man," Sanders says. "But we've added 15 years to the average Indian life, which gives me a lot of hope for my grandchildren."
That hope, and the growing confidence that helps it blossom, are also leading to increased political involvement throughout Indian Country. Voter turnout for tribal elections has always been high, but Native Americans--who gained the right to vote in 1924--have generally shunned federal elections, with turnout rates typically hovering around 35 percent. Yet despite their small populations, many American Indian communities are situated in swing states like New Mexico, Arizona, and South Dakota, and both political parties are actively courting Native American voters this year. Indian leaders, seeing a chance to bring visibility to their issues, are pushing voter registration, vowing to double the Native American vote to 1 million.
Policy matters. Those issues include full funding for healthcare and education--chronically underfinanced treaty promises--and BIA mishandling of potentially billions of dollars in Indian money. Reasserting tribal sovereignty (based in treaties and the U.S. Constitution, tribes are semiautonomous entities with many of the same rights as states) is widely seen as Native America's most important issue. Indian leaders claim--and independent studies confirm--that sovereign tribes, with the power to set policy and run their own affairs, are a key factor in the improving lot of Native Americans. "[President] Bush a couple of months ago said that the U.S. honors all of its treaties," Hall says. "Well, right on then, let's start honoring some of these Indian treaties."
Obviously, relations between Indian tribes and the federal government can still be testy. But another stalled bill, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, was finally slated for reauthorization just one day after the national museum's opening. And in a more symbolic but particularly delicious example of Native Americans' growing influence, GOP Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, a Cheyenne chief, had to leave the NMAI opening ceremonies early to introduce the legislative branch appropriations bill--still dressed in full buckskin regalia. "You've got a chief of the Northern Cheyenne going to oversee the budget for the Great White Father," he laughs. "Now that's got to be a first."
For all the bright lights and determination, change has come slowly for American Indians, and the new hope remains fragile. But perhaps what Bang says of her Chicago students is true for Native America as a whole: "Sustainable change doesn't happen overnight. But it's working."
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