A Modern Life
After decades of discrimination, poverty, and despair, American Indians can finally look toward a better future
Johnpaul Jones stands alone, slowly beating a rawhide drum. A tall man with weathered features and long, gray hair, he walks clockwise around the domed hall four times, the thumping drumbeat echoing as he goes. He is listening--not with his ears, he says, but with his heart. It is late June, and after 15 years and $200 million of planning, design, and construction, the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., is nearing completion. Jones, a Cherokee/Choctaw architect from Seattle, joined the project in 1998. But today he isn't occupied by load weights or angles. The building, he says, "has to sound right. You have to be able to hear the drum in your chest."
Last week, the museum performed to spec, resonating with the sounds of its first visitors. Some 25,000 Native Americans came to Washington for Tuesday's opening festivities, including retired education professor Wayne Mitchell of Phoenix. He recalled his grandmother Mattie Grinnell, the last full-blooded Mandan Indian. At 101 years old, upon her return from the 1968 Poor People's March, she declared: "There's not much for Native Americans in Washington."
"Twenty-five years later, what a change," Mitchell said over the hundreds of tinkling chimes a nearby group of Ojibwe women wore on their jingle dresses. "Indian people . . . can be proud now."
The museum's opening comes at a remarkable moment in the history of America's indigenous people. After generations as the nation's poorest and most overlooked minority, American Indians continue to suffer from what a 2003 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report called a "quiet crisis" of discrimination, poverty, and unmet promises. Unemployment, substance abuse, and school dropout rates are among the highest in the nation, and Native Americans face epidemic levels of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. But despite it all, this is a time of unprecedented optimism. Buoyed by a decades-long push for self-determination, recent improvements in education, and the success of new tribal businesses, more and more Native Americans are finding ways to "walk two lives," blending a return to traditional culture and values with successful careers. "For a huge long time," says Tex Hall, president of the National Congress of American Indians, "it was not a good thing to be an Indian in this country. But it's starting to be a good thing again."
Native Americans just might be this country's most diverse group. There are 562 distinct tribes with federal recognition, and scores of others recognized only locally or not at all. They are in every state of the union, some living lives steeped in tradition, others more comfortable in a law office or operating room than at a powwow. Despite a history of exclusion from the American mainstream, they serve in the U.S. military at higher rates than any other ethnic group. And while reservations and traditional lands continue to play a central role in Native American identity, 66 percent of the 4.1 million Americans who checked the "American Indian or Alaska Native" box on the 2000 census lived in urban areas.
In the city. Chicago is home to 30,000 of them. "People really started coming in the 1950s," says Joe Podlasek, executive director of the American Indian Center of Chicago. The federal government at the time was actively "terminating" tribes--stripping more than 100 groups of their official status in an attempt to force assimilation--and encouraging reservation inhabitants to move to cities with ads featuring photos of shiny modern homes and, says Podlasek, "a bus ticket, a few bucks in your pocket, and not much else."
Like other Americans, Indians have continued to move to the cities ever since, for education, excitement, and what is perhaps most lacking on reservations, good jobs. The transition from rural to urban life is never easy, but Native Americans often face the additional challenges of discrimination, lack of education, and cultural acclimation. Even simple gestures can be a problem; many Native Americans feel looking someone in the eye is rude; their downcast glances can appear evasive or dishonest.
Centers like the AIC, founded as a self-help agency in 1953, can ease the way. Housed in a ramshackle building in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, the warren of offices, assembly halls, a food bank, and used clothing depot offers programs and cultural events for a community of Native Americans from more than 100 tribes. "We're growing by leaps and bounds," says Podlasek, who is of mixed Polish and Ojibwe ancestry, "using wisdom from the elders and energy from our young staff." That includes Megan Bang, 28, an Ojibwe teacher and Ph.D. candidate, who runs an after-school program called Positive Paths. The program combines tutoring, leadership training, and cultural activities, and, says Bang, gives students who are often the only Native Americans in their classes "a place to be a kid first."
Indian schools were long a tool of assimilation, forbidding children to speak their native languages and forcing boys to cut off their braids, so it's not surprising that many Native Americans have an uncomfortable relationship with the education system. On reservations, many tribes are improving historically abysmal graduation rates by running their own schools, offering classes and teaching methods tailored to Native American needs. In the cities, says Bang, "Indian kids test really well for their first four years, but then they seem to just disappear." She cites one 8-year-old who was asked by his teacher what "herd" he belonged to. "A lot of our kids hold and internalize what they hear instead of turning it around," says Bang.
Mary Anne Armstrong, the AIC's bookkeeper and executive secretary, moved to Chicago from the Lac du Flambeau reservation in Wisconsin as a child and dropped out of high school at age 16. "I wanted to be with my community," she recalls, "where I could be accepted and not looked down on." But like many Indian students, she returned to school later in life, completing a bachelor's degree at 40. (The average age of Native American college students is 33, says Bang.) Even for the most successful, like AIC Program Director Nizhoni Hodge, who graduated from Stanford in 2002, the college experience can be challenging. Beyond the slights of cartoonish "Indian" mascots, the Native American students who make it to top schools, says the Navajo/Cherokee Hodge, "are the top of their communities and the hope of a lot of people, so it can be very hard to accept that you're having problems. Too many feel uncomfortable asking for help, even with academics."
For many Native Americans, reconnecting with their communities and ancient cultures is at the root of renewed strength and success. When Steven Knife Chief was growing up in Pawnee, Okla., in the 1950s, he says his parents had to struggle too hard just to survive to worry about traditions and ceremonies. Standing near a life-size replica of a log-and-sod Pawnee earth lodge at the Field Museum in Chicago--the Pawnee were visiting for a rededication ceremony--he says his generation absorbed enough from their grandparents to revive dozens of traditional dances, games, and other ceremonies. "They must have had an idea that if we don't tell these kids, we're going to lose it all. And we just about did," he says. "But we were raised in those ways, and now we're putting it back the way it was." The Pawnee language almost disappeared, Knife Chief says, but it's a for-credit course at the tribe's high school now, and his brother is busy transcribing tapes of old wax cylinder recordings of Pawnee speeches and ceremonies, "so we can hear them and find out exactly how they were." And on this September night, a half dozen of the Pawnee bunk down in the museum's earth lodge. "Our people haven't slept in an earth lodge in 75, 80 years," Knife Chief says. "It's a big deal."
New names. If many Native Americans are finding strength by re-embracing their cultures, others are resuscitating identities that disappeared long ago. Census data show a rapid increase in the American Indian population during this century--from a low of 350,000 in 1920 to over 4 million today (2.5 million if you count only those who report no other race). It's a jump that far outstrips the Indian birthrate, evidence that Americans are increasingly taking pride in their Indian ancestry, rather than hiding it.
But there's another factor: money. In addition to revenue from natural resources, the advent of Indian casinos in the late 1980s has made some attempts to reclaim Native American identity seem questionable. Only federally recognized tribes can run Indian casinos, which are the sole legal gambling outlets in some regions of the country. And only officially enrolled tribal members can share in proceeds from the nearly $17 billion industry. Defining Indian identity in a time of multiracial and intertribal marriages was already a big concern in Native American communities. But with more than 200 recognition cases now before the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the issue has exploded into mainstream view as well. Would-be investors are scouring the country for groups with even the most tenuous claims to tribal status, critics say, and paying millions to hire genealogists, historians, and lawyers solely in the hope of scoring a casino license.
With $1.5 billion in annual revenues, the Foxwoods Resort Casino is America's largest. Rising out of the woodlands of southeastern Connecticut, the 70-acre complex includes hotels, restaurants, a $193 million museum and research center--and 7,273 slot machines. Not bad for a tribe, the Mashantucket Pequot, who were only officially recognized in 1983. Three decades ago, their 214-acre reservation was home to a single elderly woman. Today, the tribe's 880 enrolled members--who reportedly receive an annual stipend of nearly $100,000 each from casino profits--trace their roots not to colonial times but to the 11 individuals who lived on the reservation at the turn of the 20th century. Combined with facial features that for the most part appear white or black, that tenuous connection has led the tribe's critics to question whether many are, in fact, of Pequot ancestry, or if they are Indians at all.
John Guevremont, the Pequot's chief operating officer, says that Foxwoods has pulled a scattered people back together and helped revive a nearly extinct culture. Tribal defenders dismiss the complaints as jealousy, or even racism, and a misunderstanding of the tribe's history of assimilation and intermarriage. As for their financial success? "We just happen to be not lucky enough to be the first tribe on the North American continent to end up on a reservation," Guevremont says, "and lucky enough to be directly smack dab in the middle of two major metropolitan areas, New York and Boston."
But Indian gambling is still getting a bad name. Critics point to loose governmental oversight, the suspicious removal of critics from some tribal rolls, and the tens of millions of dollars that casino tribes now spend on lobbying efforts and political contributions. But Hall and other leaders say that most gambling operations are doing just what they were supposed to--provide jobs and boost funding for social programs on reservations. (Despite the common perception of federal largess, per capita spending on Native Americans has actually been lower than for the general population since 1985.) "There's this new stereotype that Indians are rich now, because of the casinos," Hall says. "But out of the 200 or so tribes that have casinos, maybe 25 of those are doing pretty good, and that's stretching it." Some of the poorest tribes, such as the Navajo and Hopi, have rejected gambling as culturally inappropriate, and many others are too remote to rake in huge profits. "We're 300 miles from our market," says Hall, whose North Dakota reservation is home to the Four Bears Casino. "We still manage to employ 500 people, but if I can get a little bit on profit after that, damn I'm doing good."
On the Warm Springs Reservation, about 100 miles east of Portland, Ore., a modest resort and casino complex is only part of a growing cultural and economic revival. Like many tribal groupings, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs--mostly Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute people--took over administrative responsibilities from the Bureau of Indian Affairs beginning in the 1970s, following legislation that allowed much of the BIA's budget to be transferred directly to the tribes. At Warm Springs, that has meant investment in business ventures, natural resources, agriculture, and, beginning in the late 1980s, gambling. Proceeds have been funneled into education and healthcare projects and used to purchase thousands of acres of new land. (Nationally, tribes have been reversing 400 years of land loss, acquiring some 7.5 million acres since 1962).
Success. The vast majority of the tribe's 4,500 members don't have high school diplomas, so finding tribal members to run such operations hasn't been easy. But that, too, has begun to change. Jacob Coochise was one of only a handful at Madras High School to graduate in 1991, and when he left the reservation to go to college, he figured he'd never return. But by the time he completed a degree in business and economics--with the tribe picking up most of the tab--Coochise recalls, "I felt more proud of being an Indian, so I came back with the idea that . . . maybe it was time to give something back." Today he is the sales and marketing manager at a tribal business that manufactures fireproof building materials. And more Warm Springs children are following in his footsteps. Graduation rates are still low, but thanks to a dedicated staff, increasing parent involvement, and especially a tribal council decision to withhold a $2,000 to $4,000 trust fund payment until young people graduate from high school, 70 tribal members earned their diplomas last year, a sevenfold increase from just four years ago.
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."
A NATIVE SNAPSHOT
There are more than 562 federally recognized Native American tribes and, in the 2000 census, 2,476,000 people identified solely as American Indians or Alaska Natives. Of those, 60 percent reside off-reservation, almost half of them in cities.
Median family income
(current dollars)
[Chart data are unavailable]
[Chart labels]
American Indians
Total U.S. population
0 $10,000 $20,000 $30,000 $40,000 $50,000
1979 1989 1999
Source: Census Bureau
Postsecondary education enrollment
(in thousands)
[Chart data are unavailable]
[Chart labels]
20 60 100 140
1980 1997 1999
Source: National Center for Education Statistics
Infant mortality per 1,000 live births
[Chart data are unavailable]
[Chart labels]
American Indians
Total U.S. population
0 5 10 15 20
1973 1983 1992 2000
Source: Indian Health Services
INDIAN POPULATION PER STATE
Ala. 0-24,000
Alaska 75,000 and above
Ariz. 75,000 and above
Ark. 0-24,000
California 333,300
Colo. 25,000-49,000
Conn. 0-24,000
Del. 0-24,000
D.C. 1,700
Fla. 50,000-74,000
Ga. 0-24,000
Hawaii 0-24,000
Idaho 0-24,000
Ill. 25,000-49,000
Ind. 0-24,000
Iowa 0-24,000
Kan. 25,000-49,000
Ky. 0-24,000
La. 25,000-49,000
Maine 0-24,000
Md. 0-24,000
Mass. 0-24,000
Mich. 50,000-74,000
Minn. 50,000-74,000
Miss. 0-24,000
Mo. 25,000-49,000
Mont. 50,000-74,000
Neb. 0-24,000
Nev. 25,000-49,000
N.H. 0-24,000
N.J. 0-24,000
N.M. 75,000 and above
N.Y. 75,000 and above
N.C. 75,000 and above
N.D. 25,000-49,000
Ohio 0-24,000
Okla. 75,000 and above
Ore. 25,000-49,000
Pa. 0-24,000
R.I. 0-24,000
S.C. 0-24,000
S.D. 50,000-74,000
Tenn. 0-24,000
Texas 75,000 and above
Utah 25,000-49,000
Va. 0-24,000
Vermont 2,400
Wash. 75,000 and above
W.Va. 0-24,000
Wis. 25,000-49,000
Wyo. 0-24,000
Source: Census Bureau
Rob Cady--USN&WR
With Alex Markels, Stephen Sawicki and Ulrich Boser
This story appears in the October 4, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.