Research Reports
Reflections on Traditional American Indian Ways, 1998
Threats to Tribal Sovereignty, 1998
Traditional American Indian Leadership: A Comparison with U.S. Governance, 1997
Traditional American Indian Leadership: A Comparison with U.S. Governance
The Systems Collide
As stated earlier, it is clear that historical American Indian and European-American society viewed the world in two distinct ways. After European contact, American Indians quickly realized that European immigrants intended to supplant traditional tribal structures with their own. American Indians viewed the structure and laws of European-American government intended to protect individuals from abuses of governing power as limitations on freedom. Dan elaborates:
The white world puts all the power at the top...When your people [Europeans] first came to our land they were trying to get away from those people at the top. But they still thought the same, and soon there were new people at the top in the new country. It is just the way you were taught to think...When you came among us, you couldn't understand our way. You wanted to find the person at the top. You wanted to find the fences that bound us in - how far our land went, how far our government went. Your world was made of cages and you thought ours was, too. Even though you hated your cages you believed in them. They defined your world and you needed them to define ours (Nerburn, 1994, p. 135).
It was difficult for European-Americans to understand the American Indian way of life. The events surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court case Ex parte Crow Dog (1883) are an example of this conflict. On August 5, 1881, on the Sioux Reservation in Dakota Territory, Crow Dog shot to death Spotted Tail, a Brule Sioux chief. Following the tribal system of resolving social conflict, a tribal council was delegated to reconcile the issue. The families of Crow Dog and Spotted Tail met in a tribal council meeting and settled the matter for $600 in cash, eight horses and one blanket. This decision restored relationships between the two families, and was honored and respected by the families and the tribe.
This traditional American Indian system of resolution, however, was not honored by the U.S. government criminal justice system. On orders of the reservation's chief clerk, who was an agent of the U.S. government, Crow Dog was hunted down and locked in jail. Crow Dog remained in a U.S. jail for one year after the matter had been settled by the tribal council.
In 1882, he was tried in a U.S. court, convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court and in the case of Ex parte Crow Dog, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in support of traditional American Indian ways. They held that, following Worcester v. Georgia (1832), American Indian tribes retained tribal law as an inherent attribute of tribal sovereignty and that U.S. courts lacked criminal jurisdiction over crimes committed between American Indians in Indian country.
The events leading up to the case of Ex parte Crow Dog illustrated the clash between American Indian ways and the U.S. legal system. A fundamental principle of the American Indian way of life was to maintain relations between tribal members, not to pass judgement over them. U.S. jurisprudence is based on the concept of retribution or punishment. Retribution exacts a penalty for a wrong or an injury and is codified in Constitutional non-Indian law. The restoration of personal or relational ties is not included in the consideration of a penalty. This contrasts to American Indian ways which focused on restoring respectful personal and social relations. Harring (1994) states:
The council met not to adjudicate the dispute but to reconcile the parties involved. Hence, the result of the case - the offering of property to one side by the other - does not indicate any substantive resolution of the merits of the case: Crow Dog had been in no way 'convicted' by a tribal council. Nor was the offered property 'blood money,' a payment to relatives to atone for the killing in a substantive way or to take the place of blood revenge. It was an offer of reconciliation and a symbolic commitment to continuation of tribal social relations [italics added] (pp. 104-105).
Soon after the U.S. Supreme Court decision that American Indian tribes retained traditional reconciliation methods, the U.S. Congress passed legislation to counteract this decision. In 1885, the U.S. Congress passed the Major Crimes Act which extended federal jurisdiction over certain crimes committed in Indian country. The passage of this legislation marked an end to the American Indian way of resolving these conflicts. All major federal crimes, such as murder, are prosecuted under the jurisdiction of the Major Crimes Act to this day.
The U.S. congressional response the case of Ex parte Crow Dog is only one of many examples where European-Americans realized that American Indians had a different way of managing their affairs, but refused to understand other than through the European-American framework.
The U.S. Congress was unable to comprehend American Indian ways and would not accept that American Indian ways were as legitimate as their own.
For the most part, European-Americans viewed American Indian culture and tradition as inferior to their own. European-Americans believed in the Christian philosophy of Manifest Destiny which granted them the right to dominion over the earth. American Indian people did not agree with this reasoning, but neither interfered nor argued with this thinking because they respected others' rights to their own beliefs. As a consequence of these different approaches, the interaction between these two world views resulted in European-Americans imposing their ways on American Indian people.
The U.S. government's failure to understand and respect American Indian ways has resulted in inappropriate policies that adversely affect American Indians and are not considerate of American Indian traditions and systems. One of the most evident results of inappropriate U.S. policy is the tribal government systems under which American Indian tribes now operate.
Traditional American Indian Leadership: A Comparison with U.S. Governance Contents
The
Well-Being of American Indian Children in Minnesota: Economic Conditions,
1994
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