| Part 1 | Part 2 | Next | Part 5 | Part 6 |
| Table of Contents |

He started out the next segment by saying: Act two of our riveting drama takes place around 1934. In that most distinguished of years, the federal government passed something called 'The Indian Reorganization Act'. This marvel of democracy is also, sometimes, known as the 'Wheeler-Howard Act.'

Ostensibly, the purpose of this bill was to introduce uncivilized Indians to the subtleties of democracy. In short, the United States government wanted to help Native peoples to modernize and democratize their way of conducting tribal government affairs.

The Act outlined procedures for establishing Tribal Councils. The representatives selected for these councils would be nominated and elected through democratic elections in which the simple majorities of eligible voters would determine the successful candidates.

Brian smiled at me and asked, in a semi-rhetorical style: Sounds as American as Mom and apple pie, doesn't it? There was an edge of irony to Brian's words.

I motioned assent with my head. I played my role, knowing that the hammer was about to fall.

Brian went on with his account. The real intent of the Wheeler-Howard Act was to try to further undermine the collective-consensual procedures used by Native peoples to make decisions about tribal affairs.

Apparently, the federal authorities and interested business people found a decision process based on consensus to be too democratic for their liking. They also found it to be too slow and, thus, an obstacle to their plans for rapidly developing the lands and resources of the Native peoples.

Brian laughed and shook his head in amazement. America already had taken 2,800,000 square miles from Native peoples. Nevertheless, the 200,000 square miles of land onto which Natives had been pushed during this, shall we say, 'transfer' were soon discovered to be filled with all kinds of natural resources needed to serve the American economy.

Brian laughed again. The same thing happened a number of times. Natives would be forced onto lands that, at the time, everyone thought were worthless. This is why the government, in its benevolence, assigned such lands to Native peoples.

Much to the chagrin of the movers and shakers of democracy, subsequent developments would reveal the value of these 'worthless' lands to which Native peoples had been removed. So, new ways had to be devised to marginalize the Natives even further by finding new worthless lands for them to be forced onto. All nice and legal, of course.

And, then, lo and behold, the new marginal, seemingly worthless lands onto which Natives were pushed would be found, later on, to have heretofore unsuspected value to the government and business people. Consequently, the problem would arise all over again.

Despite the fact that the bottom line on all of this was the introduction of injustice upon injustice and suffering upon suffering into the lives of Native peoples, Brian seemed to find considerable humor in the situation. He appeared to be mining various veins of levity in the way non-Natives kept bungling everything as they dashed about in a virtually permanent state of economic oestrus that saw them lusting after everything which did not belong to them.

Gradually, a more somber mood came over Brian. He sighed and said: In order to induce Native peoples to abandon their traditional way of government, the Wheeler-Howard Act promised federal aid to any tribe or nation that would adopt the non-Native version of democracy being proposed in the Act.

Eventually, about one hundred and seventy tribes voted to accept the Tribal Council form of government which was being foisted onto the Native peoples through the Indian Reorganization Act. However, in many of these cases, the vast majority of the Natives simply boycotted the vote on whether or not to adopt the non-consensual approach to government.

Consequently, one might find, say, a total of 20-25% of the eligible voters actually participating in any given referendum. Of this 20-25% figure, a little over half of them would vote to adopt the Tribal Council idea, and a little less than half of the 20-25% voter turnout would say no to the new form of government.

Brian leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs, letting them form a forty-five degree incline relative to the floor. David, in order to appreciate what I'm saying, there is something that you should understand about the Native perspective. More specifically, among many Native peoples, refusing to participate in a voting procedure actually constitutes a negative vote. It is an actively passive way of expressing non-confidence in the whole process.

Therefore, if one adds the non-confidence or boycott vote to the negative votes which were registered in any given referendum, then, often times, this meant that 80-85% of the Native people in that tribe were just saying no to the federal government's offer. However, in true democratic fashion, the federal government opted to either: (a) treat all abstentions as positive votes, or (b) to accept, as official, whatever results issued forth from those who did cast a vote in the referendum.

In effect, the federal government's totally arbitrary and self-serving way of tallying the various referendum votes meant the following. Only about 12-15% of the members of any given tribe would be determining what would happen to a people who normally operated according to consensus.

Naturally, the people who, eventually, were elected to sit on these Tribal Councils were drawn almost entirely from those who had co-operated with the federal government. They were the ones who were instrumental in getting the new form of 'democracy' installed in a tribe or nation.

These elected 'representatives' were, in reality, agents of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They did what the BIA told them to do.

Given that the Bureau is, and always has been, very much inclined toward pursuing economic development whenever possible, one doesn't have to have much of an imagination to guess what the BIA told the Tribal Councils to do. Mineral/oil explorations, drilling expeditions, mining operations and inviting corporate interests onto Native lands became the standing order of the day...any day.

In one fell swoop, The Indian Reorganization Act helped to undermine traditional ways of government, economy and relating to the land. Not a bad day's work, wouldn't you say, David?

I didn't know whether to nod my head in agreement or shake my head in disgust. I managed a feeble: Yeah.

Brian continued on. Always the clever ones, federal officials took steps to ensure the Tribal Councils would never be able to step out of line and act in the interests of their people.

Constitutions for the Tribal Councils were written. These documents stipulated that all decisions of the councils would have to be approved by the federal government.

In fact, these council constitutions were yet another expression of what the federal government meant by democracy in relation to Native peoples. These documents were put together by officials of the Department of Interior. No Native individual was permitted to take part in the process, either as authors or as consultants.

Apparently, the federal government had forgotten how much the framers of their own United States Constitution had benefitted from, and relied on, the guidance and assistance of Native peoples. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison, among others, were all studying, and urging others to study, various aspects of the Great Binding Law of the Iroquois Confederacy as a model for their own constitution.

There were more than forty representatives of the Iroquois Grand Council who had been invited to Albany in 1754 to serve as consultants. They were active participants in the deliberation process leading to the Albany Plan of Union, an important stepping stone along the path to the actual Constitution.

Moreover, members of the Iroquois Confederacy also had been invited to attend the Continental Congress. This gathering had been instrumental in helping, eventually, to give birth to the Declaration of Independence.

The Great Binding Law dealt with issues of the selection and recall of selected representatives; tribal versus Confederacy rights (comparable to our state's versus federal rights); multi-cameral legislative bodies with different responsibilities; rights of universal suffrage, including sexual equality; principles of civic or community responsibility, and rules regulating both immigration and emigration. There were many other features of the Great Binding Law that also were of interest to some of the key contributors to the United States Constitution.

Brian grinned and said: Boy-oh-boy, you may be getting the abridged version of things, David, but this seems to be the expanded, rather than the condensed, form of that version.

I laughed and replied: I'm beginning to worry about the size of the bill I'll be getting in the mail for all of this. I added: I thought prisoners were the ones who were supposed to be rehabilitated in prison, not the visitors.

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I began to worry that I had said something inappropriate. My concerns quickly disappeared when Brian seemed to indicate a genuine appreciation of my comment with a hearty laugh.

Gradually the laughter was replaced by a somewhat reflective mood. We were both lost in our respective thoughts.

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Next | Part 5 | Part 6 |
| Table of Contents |