Thirty Thousand Lost Americans
James L. Busey
[Reprinted from The Freeman, September, 1941]
Of Alaska's 73,000 people, about half are Indians, Eskimos, or
persons of mixed blood. Alaska's native population is about evenly
divided between the Indians and the Eskimos.
Representatives of Alaska's Indian population are found in
practically all the larger towns of the territory. The remainder live
in a vast hinterland of innumerable villages. These hamlets range all
the way from Metlakatla and Hydaburg, at the southernmost point, out
to Uyak, Unga, and Ugashik in the far western section, and on up to
Pt. Barrow at the northernmost tip of the North American continent.
The great Indian occupation is fishing. Practically all the Indians
in this industry work either as cannery hands or as small-boat
gill-net fishermen. Ownership of canneries, of fish-traps, and of
large seining operations la almost exclusively in the hands of the
white population.
The chief industries of interior and Bering Sea Indians and Eskimos
are trapping and reindeer herding.
A few Indians and Eskimos are engaged as day laborers at the lowest
rungs of the economic ladder. Although mining is Alaska's second
Industry, practically no Indians or Eskimos are found in it.
Indians or Eskimos in the professions are virtually unknown. All of
the Indian lawyers Of Alaska are included within one family. The few
Indian or Eskimo teachers are employees of the Office of Indian
Affairs, working within native schools. Except in the progressive
village of Metlakatla, there are no Indians or Eskimos in other
professions.
Living conditions among Indians and Eskimos In Alaska are universally
at the lowest possible level. Houses, both in white towns and in
Indian villages, are for the most part little more than ramshackle
board lean-tos. The poorest, most squalid living quarters in the
territory are almost invariably occupied by Alaska's original, native
people.
The clothing of most Indians and Eskimos is on a similar low level.
Rarely can a native Alaskan be found who owns a suit. Overalls, work
shirts, heavy shoes and socks are the rule.
Very few Indian Alaskans have any concept of food values or of proper
food balance. Green vegetables, which are reasonably plentiful for
those who desire them, are seldom found on native tables. Fish,
potatoes and booze are the staples of the Indian diet. Frequently
there is only booze.
The native populations of Alaska are faced by an almost incredible
number of seemingly insurmountable economic and social obstacles. The
greatest of these is the difficulty of coping with the white culture.
A little over two generational ago -- in 1867 -- Alaska was sold by
Russia to the United States, and the Indian slaves were catapulted to
the lofty status of free men. All the Indian had to do was master such
technicalities as fish-trap law, hunting and trapping regulations and
licensing, fur-island ownership, fishing regulations, home ownership,
city taxation, marriage and divorce requirements. land-ownership
title, homestead requirements, and corporation law -- that is, he had
to absorb the whole of white culture as it applied to the northwest
fishing, trapping and hunting economy. This culture was seldom within
the comprehension of the white man, and always far beyond the reach of
the aboriginal Indian and Eskimo.
That the Indian and Eskimo have been able to survive at all In the
Territory of Alaska Is little short of a marvel. The economic
obstacles In their way are stupendous; social obstacles are
overwhelming. The two are laced up in an almost impenetrable
barbed-wire network, and next to nothing is ever done to untangle it.
One of the most important obstacles to Indian progress is the lack of
any sort of genuine education. The Indian home affords little or no
opportunity to pick up the training so necessary in a white world. The
average Indian home is but two generations removed from the Stone Age.
About all the average Indian parents have been able to do is to keep
their heads above the swirling waters of white supremacy. They have
not mastered the white culture themselves, cannot impart it to the
rising generation.
Alaska has a double school system.
One set of schools is operated by the Office of Indian Affairs.
Judging by results, its main object is to keep the Indians in their
present servile condition. The other organization is the Territorial
school system. It provides instruction for whites which is equivalent
to that in most states. Indians are admitted to the Territorial
schools only if there is no Indian Affairs school to which they can be
sent.
The Office of Indian Affairs, under whose strangulating care are
found most of Alaska's Indians, has its headquarters in Washington,
D.C. It was set up shortly after the Civil War to provide for Indiana
then roaming the Great Plains and depending for their living upon corn
patches and buffalo meat.
The policy of the Office of Indian Affairs has always been to retain
the picturesque Indian cultures, to train the Indians in their native
crafts rather than in modern-day trades, to retain the Indians of
America within closed and protected reservations, and generally to
shackle the Indians to a primitive, outmoded, useless and completely
dead culture.
A few Indian Office teachers have followed more independent policies,
have given their pupils full grammar school education, sent them to
Territorial high schools, and had the satisfaction of seeing them sail
through the twelfth grade and even through university with flying
colors. But for the most part the Indian Affairs schools adhere
slavishly to the doctrine of "resurrecting Indian culture"
and "retaining the native arts and crafts." The result is
that most of the Indian pupils of Alaska's Indian Office schools waste
their precious years pounding copper plates, sewing moccasins, mending
mukluks, and otherwise binding themselves to prehistoric times.
The policies of the Office of Indian Affairs have led to some pitiful
miscarriages of Justice. Most Indians say, "We don't want to go
back." But they are sent back anyhow. One girl had a husband
waiting for her, picked out by her father in accord with Indian
custom. She had no desire to marry the man, fought the Indian Office
decision to send her back to her community, but was in the end
dispatched to her home town and forced by community pressure to marry
the man her father had chosen. In other cases Indian youngsters have
been seized toy the Office of Indian Affairs from white homes in which
they were just getting a start in the direction of a better life. They
have been sent back to primitive, booze-sodden, tuberculosis-infested
communities. Their futures, their plans, their hopes - all kicked
aside by the supreme authority of the Indian Office.
Tied up with the economic problems faced by Indian Alaskans are
social problems, notably the ever-present race prejudice.
Some churches in Alaska, supposedly devoted to the teachings of
Jesus, either keep Indians out altogether, or segregate them to a
special side or corner of the church.
In the three largest towns of Alaska -- Juneau, Ketchikan, and
Anchorage -- may be found restaurants displaying the sign, "Native
trade not solicited here." The Frisco Cafe, of Anchorage,
recently boasted over the radio that it does not "solicit native
trade." In the large towns most hotels tell Indians there are "no
vacancies."
Practically the only organization in Alaska that admits Indians to
its membership is the Alaska Native Brotherhood. Such groups as the P.
T. A., Ladies' Aid, practically all nationally known lodges, and the
all-important Alaska Fishermen's Union, either deny entrance to Indian
Alaskans, or make them so uncomfortable that they soon leave.
In conversation Indian Alaskans are commonly referred to by the
contemptuous term "siwash." Persons who try to treat Indians
with consideration and decency are soon referred to as "siwash
lovers" and "squaw men." In Anchorage, Juneau and Sitka
very few white men risk being seen walking or talking with Indians.
As a result of the strong social and economic barriers between whites
and Indians, most contacts between the two races are under cover.
Contact between Indian women and white men places man beyond the pale,
and thus involves only white men of the lowest stratum. Of course,
most of the contacts are immoral, and there is a discouraging number
of illegitimate mixed-blood offspring.
Thus the Indian is hemmed in, not only by economic obstructions and
social prejudice, but also by a rotten moat of derelict white garbage.
As a result, the Indians have lost whatever moral code they may once
have had, and have learned nothing but immorality and indecency from
most of the whites about them. They have not been permitted access to
the higher realms of white culture.
A final, and perhaps even more, disheartening problem faced by Indian
Alaskans, is liquor. Absolutely no training has been given Indians
regarding the effects of liquor. For the sake of enlarged profits, and
for even less respectable reasons, whites have pumped Alaska's native
population so full of alcohol that there are few Indian homes not
blighted by this curse. Workers in the field frequently state that
liquor is the first and foremost problem of Alaska's Indian
population. The Indians drink without restraint. They become so
weakened that their homes are veritable breeding places for everything
from venereal disease to tuberculosis.
The modern adult Indian is a discouraging product.
Observers have commented on the vitality, enthusiasm, and apparent
intelligence of Indian children. But at adolescence a change takes
place. The prejudice about them, the economic insecurity facing them
on all sides, the moral irresponsibility encouraged and stimulated by
the whites, the sickening effects of rum, and the ravages of disease,
particularly tuberculosis, combine to make the adult Indian a morose,
sullen, sickly, ambitionless, dull, stupid, ox-like individual utterly
lacking in resource or enterprise, remarkable only for his
overwhelming inferiority complex.
There are rare exceptions, of two types: (1) the Indians who have
been so secluded that they have had little or no contact with the
white man, and (2) the Indians who for humanitarian or other reasons
have been taken into white homes or sent to the States.
The Indians of the first category, chiefly members of the Koyukuk
tribes above the Yukon River, have retained a certain vigor and pride.
Indians of the second category have in individual cases equalled in
every sense the standards set by whites.
Practically all work for the genuine betterment of Alaska's Indians
has been done by church groups through modern, progressive homes
operated by idealistic men and women. An outstanding example of what
can be done is the community of Metlakatla, in southeastern Alaska.
Metlakatla was founded in 1887 by Father William Duncan, and since
then has been operated by about 400 inhabitants as a cooperative
undertaking. The town has a salmon cannery, a sawmill and a
hydro-electric plant, all owned by the community and operated under
the supervision of the Town Council.
To secure more general improvement in the condition of the Indians, a
threefold reform must be accomplished.
(1) Indians should enjoy educational equality. The Office of Indian
Affairs should abandon its present schools, and turn over its
educational funds and equipment to the Territorial Department of
Education, so that all Alaskans may be taught within one school
system.
(2) The Indian must be given an opportunity to enjoy a decent home
environment. It would be well to provide training in successful home
making, and encourage the adoption of Indiana into white homes. Above
all, the domination over the Indian's private life by the Office of
Indian Affairs should be ended.
(3) The Indian must be allowed equal economic opportunity. To obtain
this, the Indian must be accorded full equality in the right to use
tend and trap-sites.
We speak much of our compassion for oppressed peoples and persecuted
minorities. Alaska offers us a great opportunity for discovering the
causes and solutions of minority questions. The plaints of
well-intentioned Americans over the distress of European victims of a
doctrine of race superiority must have a hollow sound while we close
our eyes and minds against our own submerged thousands.
What is the Jewish problem of Europe but the Indian problem of
Alaska, the Negro problem of the South and East, the Oriental problem
of the West Coast? Our actions at home will speak louder than our
words abroad -- louder even than Fourteen Points, or Eight Points, of
endless campaign promises and party platforms, windy platitudes which
pay lip service to the noble ideal of human equality and leave
untouched the problem of how to attain it.
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