Coyote Warrior by Paul Van Develder

Author:Paul Van Develder [VANDEVELER, PAUL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316030687
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The regionwide battle over termination unexpectedly flip-flopped when a report on Public Law 280 was released in 1956 by two young attorneys in North Dakota. The report written by Emerson Murry and Hans Walker recommended that lawmakers take a new approach to this radical law. “Hans and I recommended that they allow the tribes to decide whether they wanted to relinquish jurisdiction, and to their everlasting credit, and after much debate and drum pounding on the Capitol steps, that’s what they did. Of course, the North Dakota tribes all elected to retain their own civil and criminal jurisdiction.”

As a caveat to their general recommendations, Murry and Walker urged the tribes to surrender their civil jurisdiction over disputes with white businesses. That would allow state courts to reconcile any future disputes in civil cases. “We felt this was the only way we would ever see any kind of white investment on the reservations,” says Murry. He and Walker reasoned that the non-Indian community would always be reluctant to invest in Indian Country without certain guarantees to legal remedies for malfeasance. “Unfortunately, the tribes didn’t adopt that provision, and I think it hurt them in the long run. But it didn’t take a brain surgeon to see that this was headed for the courts. It was only a matter of time.”

Murry’s prediction for P.L. 280 revealed his insights into the conflicts embedded in federalism. Eventually, something would have to give at the highest levels of government, and those conflicts would have to be resolved by the nation’s highest court. Just as he and Walker predicted, the final years of the Eisenhower administration saw a reversal of fortunes for the protermination forces in Washington. As momentum and opinion began to swing in the other direction, protermination lawmakers made one last attempt to rally support. Eisenhower’s assistant attorney general, Perry Morton, called a news conference to announce that “recent court decisions relating to old Indian land claims could now cost the federal government billions of dollars.”

Newspapers across the country jumped on the story. The Indianapolis Star wrote, “A government attorney reported yesterday that the Indians are on the warpath again. This time, they want more wampum. The tribes are demanding that Washington pay a fair and honorable price for vast areas that were won by early settlers through firearms, fast-talk, and firewater. Indian memories, it seems, are long, and according to these same attorneys, it appears that the Indians are given unique rights and privileges not enjoyed by any other citizens.”

This time, the old tactics had little effect. Through the National Congress of American Indians, once widely dispersed tribes had begun to rally around the clear voices of Robert Yellowtail and Martin Cross. The painful experiences of the previous decade were plainly reflected in the Declaration of Indian Purpose that was drafted by the NCAI at their Chicago conference in 1961:

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