Tearing down the ‘buckskin curtain’: domestic policy-making and Indigenous intellectuals in the Cold War United States and Canada

ABSTRACT

North American Indigenous peoples remain overlooked in Cold War scholarship, despite being tangibly impacted by this global conflict. This article presents a study of four foundational texts, to argue that the Cold War shaped the introduction of new destructive Indian policies in the United States and Canada, which aimed to eradicate the special legal status of Indigenous peoples. Moreover, Indigenous activist intellectuals like Vine Deloria, Jr. and Harold Cardinal successfully embedded their writing in the Cold War context of decolonisation and anti-communism to challenge harmful federal policy and the image of the United States and Canada as upholding ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’.

KEYWORDS:

• Decolonisation
• Indigenous peoples
• domestic policy
• United States
• Canada
• settler colonialism

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all the participants of the August 2018 John Morton Center for North American Studies Writing Workshop for their support and feedback, especially Benita Heiskanen, Albion Butters, Henna-Riikka Pennanen, and Samira Saramo. My thanks also to Matti Roitto and the two anonymous reviewers for their astute comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Emphasis added. Harold Cardinal, The Unjust Society (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1969), 1.

² For instance, Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell, eds., Uncertain Empire: American History and the Idea of the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) does not mention Indigenous peoples.

³ Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (New York: Macmillan, 1969; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 28.

⁴ House Concurrent Resolution 108 (1 August 1953) in Documents of United States Indian Policy, ed. Francis Paul Prucha (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 234; and Jean Chrétien, “Foundational Document: Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969 (The White Paper),” Aboriginal Policy Studies 1, no. 1 (2011): 192–215.

⁵ Mexico is not here considered due to the different position of Indigenous peoples within the country. However, Mexican Indigenous rights activism significantly expanded in this period, see: Maria L.O. Muñoz, Stand up and Fight: Participatory Indigenismo, Populism, and Mobilization in Mexico, 1970–1984 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016).

⁶ Reginald Whitaker, “‘We Know They’re There’: Canada and Its Others, with or without the Cold War,” in Love, Hate, and Fear in Canada’s Cold War, ed. Richard Cavell (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 37.

⁷ Reginald Whitaker and Gary Marcuse, Cold War Canada: The Making of a National Insecurity State, 1945–1957 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1994), 59–62.

⁸ Whitaker, “‘We Know They’re There,’” 37–8.

⁹ Heonik Kwon, The Other Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 26.

¹⁰ Daniel Cobb, Native Activism in Cold War America: The Struggle for Sovereignty (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008); and Paul C. Rosier, Serving Their Country: American Indian Politics and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: University of Harvard Press, 2009).

¹¹ In recent years, historians have called for bringing together diplomatic and American Indian histories for precisely this reason. See Brian Delay, Alexandra Harmon, and Paul C. Rosier’s, “Native American Forum,” Diplomatic History 39, no. 5 (2015): 927–66.

¹² Patrick Wolfe, Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race (London: Verso, 2016), 37.

¹³ “Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction,” http://www.ncai.org/about-tribes (accessed 30 September 2018); and “Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: First Nations People, Métis and Inuit,” https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-011-x/99-011-x2011001-eng.cfm (accessed 30 September 2018).

¹⁴ Glenn Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 7.

¹⁵ Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell, “Introduction,” in Uncertain Empire: American History and the Idea of the Cold War, ed. Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 8.

¹⁶ Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 10.

¹⁷ Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins, 144.

¹⁸ Odd Arne Westad, “Exploring the Histories of the Cold War: A Pluralist Approach,” in Uncertain Empire: American History and the Idea of the Cold War, ed. Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 57.

¹⁹ Studies of Canada in the Cold War include: Whitaker and Marcuse, Cold War Canada; and Sean Maloney, Canada and UN Peacekeeping: Cold War by Other Means, 1945–1970 (St. Catherines: Vanwell Publishing Limited, 2002).

²⁰ See for instance: Richard Cavell, ed., Love, Hate, and Fear in Canada’s Cold War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); and Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert, eds., Rethinking Cold War Culture (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001).

²¹ See for instance: Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); and Penny von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).

²² Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights, 12.

²³ See: Alyosha Goldstein, Poverty in Common: The Politics of Community Action During the American Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); and Megan Black, The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).

²⁴ John Herd Thompson and Stephen J. Randall, Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 200–2.

²⁵ Ibid., 233 and 241.

²⁶ Alan Brinkley, “The Illusion of Unity in Cold War Culture,” in Rethinking Cold War Culture, ed. Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 62–7.

²⁷ Whitaker and Marcuse, Cold War Canada, 13–5.

²⁸ Sally M. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden Agenda, 1968–70 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 54–5.

²⁹ Interior Department Appropriation Bill for 1948, 28 February 1947, Congressional Hearings Digital Collection (CHDC), https://congressional.proquest.com/ (accessed July 10, 2017).

³⁰ HCR 108, 234.

³¹ Roberta Ulrich, American Indian Nations from Termination to Restoration, 1953–2006 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 15–20.

³² Reetta Humalajoki, “‘What is it to Withdraw?’: Klamath and Navajo Tribal Councils’ Tactics in Negotiating Termination Policy, 1949–1964,” Western Historical Quarterly 48, no. 4 (2017): 427.

³³ Ulrich, American Indian Nations, 19–20.

³⁴ Lyndon B. Johnson, “The Forgotten American,” 6 March 1968, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=28709 (accessed 24 May 2018); the links are from the digital archive The American Presidency Project.

³⁵ Ulrich, American Indian Nations, 135; and Valerie Lambert, Choctaw Nation: A Story of American Indian Resurgence (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 3.

³⁶ Richard Nixon, “Special Message on Indian Affairs,” 9 July 1970, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2573 (accessed 24 May 2018); the links are from the digital archive The American Presidency Project.

³⁷ Ulrich, American Indian Nations, 153.

³⁸ Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 19.

³⁹ White Paper, 195.

⁴⁰ Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 4.

⁴¹ Ibid., 120–1.

⁴² Appendix of letter by Acting Deputy Minister H.M. Jones, 16 October 1963, File of Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Canada’s Centennial Headquarters Vol. 2, RG10 8575, Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

⁴³ Emphasis mine. HCR 108, 234.

⁴⁴ White Paper, 205.

⁴⁵ HCR 108, 234; White Paper, 195.

⁴⁶ Quoted in Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 174.

⁴⁷ Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 180.

⁴⁸ C.I. Fairholm, “United States Termination Policy,” 22 September 1969, United States Termination Policy. Reports and Documents, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND), http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/aanc-inac/R5-189-1969-eng.pdf (accessed 15 April 2018).

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ On Canadian exceptionalism, see: Maloney, Canada and UN Peacekeeping, 2; and Thompson and Randall, Canada and the United States, 228–30.

⁵² Fairholm, “United States Termination Policy.”

⁵³ Termination of Federal Supervision Over Certain Tribes of Indians. Part 4: Klamath Indians, Oregon. 23–24 February 1954. Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Senate; Subcommittee on Indian Affairs; Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. House. CHDC, https://congressional.proquest.com/ (accessed July 12, 2017).

⁵⁴ Patrick Haynal, “Termination and Tribal Survival: The Klamath Tribes of Oregon,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 101, no. 3 (2000): 281.

⁵⁵ Fairholm, “United States Termination Policy.”

⁵⁶ White Paper, 203.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 205.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Emphasis in original. Arthur V. Watkins, “Termination of Federal Supervision: The Removal of Restrictions over Indian Property and Person,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 311 (May 1957): 48.

⁶⁰ Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 101.

⁶¹ John F. Leslie, “Assimilation, Integration or Termination? The Development of Canadian Indian Policy, 1943–1963” (PhD diss., Carleton University, 1999), 308.

⁶² Fairholm, “United States Termination Policy.”

⁶³ Statement of Glenn L. Emmons (14 May 1957), Senate Hearing on Area Redevelopment. Subcommittee on Production and Stabilization; Committee on Banking and Currency. CHDC.

⁶⁴ White Paper, 212.

⁶⁵ Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, 60.

⁶⁶ Haynal, “Termination and Tribal Survival,” 280.

⁶⁷ Gordon Bettles, interview with author, 29 October 2015, Eugene, Oregon.

⁶⁸ Deloria and Cardinal remained key figures throughout their lives, both passing away in 2005.

⁶⁹ Robert Warrior, “The SAI and the End(s) of Intellectual History,” American Indian Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2013): 229.

⁷⁰ Deloria interview (1978), University of Arizona, http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/wordsandplace/deloria_transcript.html (accessed 3 May 2018); The article was originally published in: The American Way, inflight magazine published monthly by American Airlines, as Look to the Mountain Top (San Jose, California: Times Mirror Company, 1972).

⁷¹ Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, 3.

⁷² Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins, 59.

⁷³ Cardinal, The Unjust Society, 38.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 138.

⁷⁶ Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins, 28.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 50–3.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 53.

⁷⁹ Cardinal, The Unjust Society, 2–3.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 112.

⁸¹ Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins, 8.

⁸² Ibid., 178.

⁸³ Ibid., 179.

⁸⁴ For information on Red Power, see: Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: New Press, 1996).

⁸⁵ Cardinal, The Unjust Society, 90. Notably, Cardinal’s book does not mention the civil rights struggles of Black Canadians, who were influenced by the US Black Power movement. See: Agnes Calliste, “The Influence of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement in Canada,” Race, Gender & Class 2, no. 3 (1995): 123–39.

⁸⁶ Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins, 254.

⁸⁷ Notably, Mel Thom (Paiute) and others were closely involved in the Poor People’s Campaign, see Cobb, Native Activism, 148.

⁸⁸ Thomas Clarkin, Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, 1961–1969 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 271.

⁸⁹ Herbert T. Hoover, “Vine Deloria, Jr., in American Historiography,” in Indians & Anthropologists: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Critique of Anthropology, ed. Thomas Biolsi and Larry Zimmerman (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), 30.

⁹⁰ Edward Abbey, “Review: Custer Died for Your Sins,” New York Times, 9 November 1969, BR46. BR46 refers to the Book Reviews section of the newspaper, page 46.

⁹¹ O.T. Fuller, “Proposal for a Comparative Study of American and Canadian Indian Policies,” 21 November 1969, United States Termination Policy. Reports and Documents, DIAND, http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/aanc-inac/R5-189-1969-eng.pdf (accessed 15 April 2018).

⁹² O.T. Fuller, “Effects of the United States Policy of Indian Termination and its Bearing upon Implementation of the Canadian Indian Policy,” undated, United States Termination Policy. Reports and Documents, DIAND, http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/aanc-inac/R5-189-1969-eng.pdf (accessed 15 April 2018).

⁹³ Emphasis in original. Ibid., 22.

⁹⁴ Harold Cardinal, “Why Indians Fear ‘Cultural Genocide’,” Toronto Daily Star, 4 December 1969, 7; and William Dunning, “Reality Sunders a Stereotype,” Globe and Mail, 6 December 1969, 21.

⁹⁵ In 1971 two more provincial Indigenous organisations compiled position papers: the Union of BC Chief’s ‘Brown Paper’ and the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood’s ‘Wahbung: Our Tomorrows’.

⁹⁶ Indian Chiefs of Alberta, “Citizens Plus (June 1970),” Aboriginal Policy Studies 1, no.2 (2011): 201.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 193.

⁹⁸ Cobb, Native Activism, 16–17.

⁹⁹ Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins, 180.

¹⁰⁰ Associations, clubs and societies – Assembly of First Nations (previously National Indian Brotherhood), 1970–1976, RG #22, 1992-93/208, File B1070/A3, LAC.

¹⁰¹ Ibid.

¹⁰² Ibid.

¹⁰³ Ibid.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland, Research Council for Culture and Society, grant number 307740.

Notes on contributors

Reetta Humalajoki

Reetta Humalajoki is an Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher at the John Morton Center for North American Studies, University of Turku. Her work has previously been published in the Western Historical Quarterly and Journal of American Studies.