Standing Up to Colonial Power by Renya K. Ramirez

Author:Renya K. Ramirez [Ramirez, Renya K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO002000 Biography & Autobiography / Cultural Heritage
Publisher: Nebraska

Coauthorship of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934

My mother, Woesha, always told me that her father, Henry, coauthored the Indian Reorganization Act. During a radio program, Northwest Neighbors, in 1945, he claimed coauthorship of the IRA. He said that he was one of the ten experts who developed the Meriam Survey “and later laid down the new policy for Indian Affairs for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.” He emphasized that the IRA—which radio host Art Kirkham called the Indian Bill of Rights—was his brainchild: “Yes, I drafted it. . . . Most of the things I outlined had been adopted. I wanted the Indians to stop selling their lands, and a two-million-dollar fund was established so they could buy back their land. There were a number of things, such as a $25,000 scholarship fund, increased to $250,000, for Indian youth for vocational education, but perhaps the most important was the opportunity for the Indians to become self-governing. By vote of their tribal councils they could adopt a constitution and become a self-governing body. About three-fourths of the Indians have accepted this.”50 The act had four parts: Title 1, Indian Self-Government, granted Indians the right to organize for local self-government and for economic activities. Title 2, Special Education for Indians, directed the promotion and financial support of the study of Indian civilization, including arts, crafts, and traditions. Title 3, Abolished the Allotment System, restored existing “surplus” lands to the tribe and appropriated $2 million per year for the purchase of new lands. And, finally, Title 4, Court of Indian Affairs, created a special court of Indian affairs, which would serve as a court of original jurisdiction for cases involving Indian communities and its members.51

Based on the available evidence, it makes sense that Cloud assisted in drafting the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.52 Well before the act was passed in 1934, Cloud supported Native students’ Indigenous identities, languages, and cultures in the American Indian Institute. He co-authored the Meriam Report, which documented poor economic conditions throughout Indian Country, the loss of land caused by the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887, and the severe problems of the federal boarding schools and the Indian Service. He argued for the importance of Natives supporting themselves economically. These ideas are necessary precursors to current discussions of tribal self-determination and sovereignty. Cloud could have helped draft the different titles of the IRA.

The IRA, however, was a settler-colonial tool, creating tribal governments that mimicked white corporations rather than traditional political structures. As a result, it encouraged tribal governments to become inherently colonial and male-dominated. Indeed, Cloud had difficulties with the federal government’s tribal constitution-making process as part of the IRA. During a speech he delivered as a superintendent for the Umatilla Reservation at the Northwest, Inter-mountain, and Montana Superintendents’ Conference in Pendleton, Oregon, in September 1941, he said,

Herein lay a golden opportunity for the government to draw up constitutional forms of government consonant with natural concepts of [tribal] government reading back into the centuries. Being one of the

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