– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

The land was dying.

In the early 1930s, millions  of acres of Navajo land 

were at risk of erosion because  of overgrazing by livestock.

So John Collier, the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs,

advocated for its conservation.

Sounds like a solid ally move.

Except… it wasn’t exactly.

In a rush to save the land and use available government funds,

he forced tribes to  dramatically reduce their herds,

in some cases simply by slaughtering them and leaving them to the buzzards.

This was a big deal—

a Navajo person’s livestock was their food, income, and stability —

and now it was destroyed.

So, how can a plan with  good intentions go so awry?

Hi! I'm Che Jim and welcome to Crash Course Native American History.

[THEME MUSIC]

In our previous episode, we talked about what’s known as the Allotment Period,

which started in 1887 with the passing of the General Allotment Act,

A.K.A. the Dawes Act.

The law broke up reservations into smaller chunks of land given to individual Native people.

Their stated intentions were to give Natives more control over their own land…

and to break up tribes in the process.

This legislation had a lot of negative consequences for Native people,

and by the 1910s, white folks in government were starting to take notice.

So, forty years after the Allotment Period began,

Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work commissioned a report to assess the situation,

putting U.S. Census statistician  Lewis Meriam in charge.

Now, hold up.

This was a huge deal.

The U.S. government had been abusing 

Native Peoples for hundreds  of years at this point.

And for the first time, they openly said, “We might have done something wrong.”

Which, yeah, understatement.

But still, this was new for them.

In 1928, Meriam presented  his research group’s findings 

from visiting nearly a hundred  Native American reservations

and interviewing about a thousand Native people.

The survey, which came to be known as the Meriam Report, was more than 800 pages

— that’s like a whole George R.R. Martin book.

‘Cause it turns out… there was a lot to say.

The results were bad—

worse than “twelfth sequel  in a horror franchise” bad.

The Dawes Act hadn’t made things better for Native Americans;

it had made just about everything way worse.

Take finances.

Instead of making Natives more self-sufficient, allotment caused a huge loss of income.

In 1920, the average American was earning about $21,300 annually in today’s money.

But Native Americans were living off of what today would be just over $1,500.

And many Natives who left their allotments to find work in cities found so little support

from white communities that they ended up living in shantytowns.

And healthcare for Natives had deteriorated, too.

For example, the survey looked at the Canton Insane Asylum for Indians

and found that food there was insufficient, tuberculosis was spreading,

and there were so few trained  workers that the people 

living there weren’t getting the care they needed.

The research team also found Native education to be in dire straits.

Native boarding schools were overcrowded, and harsh punishments were common there.

Native kids were being forced to do hard labor for hours every day while being malnourished.

Forget learning, they were suffering.

The Meriam Report shocked many in power.

So, Congress funneled its  recommendations into new legislation,

with the help of well-meaning ally of Navajo Livestock Reduction fame, John Collier.

As Commissioner of Indian Affairs under FDR, 

Collier helped broker what’s  often called the Indian New Deal,

and its centerpiece, the  Indian Reorganization Act, 

passed by Congress in 1934.

This was huge.

Bigger than the Super Bowl, the Eras Tour, and the finale of Great British Bake-off combined.

This was the first piece  of legislation that wasn’t 

aimed at either assimilating  or destroying Native Americans,

but rather helping them.

Major turning point in Native  American history? Check.

The IRA’s purpose was to  throw down an Uno reverse card 

on the federal policy that had come before it.

In the text of the law, the government recognized

that tribes are “qualified to exercise powers of self-government,

not by virtue of any delegation of powers from the Federal Government,

but rather by reason of their  original tribal sovereignty.”

Which is a lengthy way of saying: tribes can rule themselves.

Not because the government says so, but because tribes say so.

After decades of heavy government control, this was a major switcheroo for Native tribes

—and a good one, at that.

Along with reinstating  tribal self-governing power, 

the IRA encouraged tribes to  “reorganize” their governments

by adopting their own constitutions and instating tribal councils to enforce them.

The government also pledged to conserve Indigenous lands and resources,

lessen poverty through a new credit system, and end the practice of land allotment.

Can we make some noise for the end of  

another terrible era?

[blows party horn]

On the surface, this all seemed pretty great.

But here’s the tricky part.

The IRA did pass, but only about 40% of eligible tribal members voted on whether to adopt it,

meaning many tribes reorganized without all 

—or even most—of their members  getting their voices heard.

In the end, 160+ tribes voted  to reorganize under the IRA 

and adopted American-style constitutions.

And 77 tribes voted not to reorganize.

But, why?

Didn’t they want to govern themselves?

To have more agency over  their lives and their lands?

Well, think back to the Navajo.

Their pastoral lifestyle had been all but gutted

by the same agency that was promising them a better future

—even the same guy!

Many Navajo weren’t gonna trust the people and institutions that had already hurt them.

And some tribes had too much internal politics going on to focus on an IRA vote,

while others didn’t want to deal with more meddling from the federal government.

Under the IRA, they’d have to get government approval for lots of things,

from the wording of their new constitutions to their spending plans.

But without that strict oversight, tribes could perform business as usual.

So, what did it look like when a  tribe did reorganize under the IRA?

Let me tell you a story about  the Ute tribes of Colorado…

Collier needed some help  persuading the Southern Ute 

and Ute Mountain tribes to adopt the IRA.

So he enlisted the help of Sapiah, 

the chief of the Muache band  of the Southern Ute Tribe,

to convince them that the IRA was the way to go.

Sapiah was the poster child  for the IRA’s potential— 

he was a successful farmer and leader.

And he managed to sway both tribes—

or at least, the few people who voted— to adopt the IRA.

But he kept the secret to his  financial success to himself: 

preferential treatment from government agencies.

Conveniently left that part out, huh, Sapiah?

At first, things looked  good for the Colorado Utes.

They were able to buy back  220,000 acres of their land 

that had been sold to non-Natives—

and not just any land.

Land with coal, gas, and oil deposits.

Hello, land leases. Hello, moolah.

Their communities were bouncing back.

But something strange happened: the Utes started to lose their culture.

Think: fewer teepees, more picket fences.

Less traditional clothing, more jeans and cowboy boots.

Fewer Ute language speakers, more “I only know English” speakers.

And losing your culture is no laughing matter.

The disorientation many Utes felt led to rising alcoholism and depression.

So things were on the up-and-up, but at what cost?

And that’s the story of the  Colorado Utes and the IRA.

Many Natives saw the changing  governmental structures 

imposed by the IRA to be  another kind of assimilation

— a process where a minority group’s culture 

gets absorbed, or erased, into  the more dominant culture.

Written constitutions and hierarchical governments à la the Founding Fathers

didn’t gel with the ways that tribal governments had historically functioned.

Like, the Ojibwe tribe had previously  operated through consensus,

where representatives from all villages had to agree before a measure was taken.

But under the IRA, things had to move more quickly

—to use funds before they lapsed, for example—and the majority ruled.

On top of that, many Native folks called the IRA “the Indian Raw Deal”

for the way it kept a lot of power in the hands of the U.S. government.

New constitutions would require  most actions the tribe took 

to be approved by the Secretary of the Interior

and/or the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

And tribal councils had to  adhere to the whims of the BIA, 

whose leadership could change each election.

But that’s not all.

The programs created by the IRA  were also severely underfunded.

And despite promises of restoring land – or at least paying for what had already  

been stolen –

the federal government bought back only 2 million of the 90 million acres of land

lost to European settlers and  businesses during the Allotment Era.

While land could no longer be taken by force from tribes,

and the IRA added millions of acres to existing reservations,

Natives were still only given a small fraction of what they were owed.

Maybe the main issue, though, was that the IRA was a single piece of legislation

that was supposed to fix a whole host of different problems in really different tribes.

Hundreds of years of broken treaties, land grabs, 

and punishing legislation took too  high a toll to be fixed by one law.

But hey, it was Congress’s  first shot at rectifying 

those centuries of harms against Native Americans.

No one gets it perfect right off the bat.

You just gotta start an ongoing  process of change. Right?

Right???

Except, here’s the thing.

Even with all the other legislation that has been 

created in the past century,  the IRA is still in place.

Let that sink in for a sec.

The first attempt—made in 1934 —is still the law of the land.

With all its flaws and shortcomings.

So where does that leave tribes today?

In… a lot of different places.

The IRA still holds up its end  of the bargain in some ways, 

like through providing funding  and financial assistance.

And by supporting some Native land use,

even for a handful of tribes that didn’t organize under the IRA back in the ‘30s.

Which brings us back to the Utes and the Navajo.

The Utes, who lost some of their  culture as a result of this policy, 

have been making strides to preserve it —

establishing Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park, the Ute Language Project,

and small bison herds on their reservations.

And the Navajo, whose herds were decimated to prevent erosion and voted not to adopt the IRA,

are still debating the structure  of their tribal government.

Should it be locally-focused or more centralized?

Should they adopt a constitution or keep operating without one?

The project of Native  government is never really over.

Ninety years later, Native Americans still debate whether the IRA was a success or a failure.

And there are arguments that can be made for both.

But perhaps the reason it’s  fallen short of its promise 

is that that promise was too  big to be tackled in one go.

Still, the IRA shows us how the process of repairing a relationship

marred by hundreds of years of generational trauma can begin.

Notice a problem, observe and talk to folks who are dealing with it,

and bring that knowledge into actionable change.

It’s tough, and it won’t be  perfect, but it’s a start.

In our next episode, we’re going to discuss Native American relocation and tribal termination.

And I will see you then.

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Native American History,

which was filmed at our studio  in Indianapolis, Indiana, 

and was made with the help  of all these nice people.

If you want to help keep Crash  Course free for everyone, 

forever, you can join our community on Patreon.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
erosion /ɪˈroʊʒən/ B2	noun - the process of soil or rock being worn away by wind, water, or other natural forces
overgrazing /ˌoʊvərˈɡreɪzɪŋ/ C1	noun - excessive grazing by livestock that damages the land
conservation /ˌkɑːn.sɚˈveɪ.ʃən/ B2	noun - the protection of natural resources from loss or waste
slaughter /ˈslɔːtʃər/ B1	verb - to kill animals in large numbers, especially for food
stability /stəˈbɪlɪti/ B2	noun - the state of being stable or firmly established
awry /əˈraɪ/ C1	adverb - away from the correct or expected course
allotment /əˈlɒt.mənt/ B2	noun - a share of something, especially land, assigned to someone
deteriorate /dɪˈtɪəri.əˌreɪt/ C1	verb - to become worse in quality or condition
malnourished /ˌmælˈnʌrɪʃt/ B2	adjective - not getting enough nutrients from food
sovereignty /ˈsɑːv.rənti/ C1	noun - the full right and power of a governing body to govern itself without any interference from outside sources
reorganize /riːˈɔːr.ɡə.naɪz/ B2	verb - to organize something again in a different way
assimilation /əˌsɪm.əˈleɪ.ʃən/ C1	noun - the process of absorbing and integrating into a larger group or culture
hierarchical /ˌhaɪ.ərˈɑːr.kɪ.kəl/ C1	adjective - relating to a system in which people or things are arranged in order of importance
lapse /læps/ B2	noun - a mistake resulting from inattention
strides /straɪdz/ B2	noun - significant progress or advances
debate /dɪˈbeɪt/ B1	verb - to discuss something in a formal way, often with opposing arguments
rectifying /ˈrɛk.tɪ.faɪ.ɪŋ/ C1	verb - to correct or improve something that is wrong or unfair
funding /ˈfʌndɪŋ/ B1	noun - money provided for a specific purpose
preservation /ˌprɛz.ərˈveɪ.ʃən/ B2	noun - the act of keeping something in its original state or from being damaged
centralized /ˈsɛn.trə.laɪzd/ B2	adjective - organized so that power or authority is held by a single, central group