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SCI LIBRARY

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.