American Indian Culture and Research Journal

"We, the Colonized Ones" is a series of clay sculptures, made by Kukuli Velarde Barrionuevo in New York City from 1990 to 1992. Each of the pieces either symbolizes or represents the emotional consequences of European colonization among Native Americans, Africans, and their descendants in the Americas. Some of the works relate specifically to Kukuli's experience in her native Peru. The goal of these sculptures is to show the point of view of the defeated, those who saw their cultures and societies disrupted by the imposition of another culture. The sculptures embody a communication between the American past and the American present, and the Western and non-Western cultures that cohabit on this continent. These works are used by Kukuli in performance with song, dance, and candlelight to evoke the spirits of colonized ancestors, the spirits of the unborn (whose parents were killed), and the spirit of affirmation and resistance among the living. The following text is based on taped interviews with Kukuli conducted in Central Park and the South Bronx in New York City. I am a Westernized individual. I don't say I'm a Western individual because I didn't create this culture; I am a product of colonization, and in this moment I am trying to define things as accurately and clearly for myself as I can. If I say that I am Western, I could imply that this world that developed in Europe and now in the Americas belongs to me as it does to you. And I don't think that this is true. If there were no discrimination, maybe this relationship to Western culture would be much more successful, and I could consider myself "Western." But I'm coming from what "they" call a "Third World," and I think that we are Third World because we are colonized. We have to face that reality. To face it I must acknowledge my mixed race, to acknowledge that I'm not Indian and that I'm not white; I have both heritages. I feel hurt when I see what colonization has made of the people I come from. That doesn't mean I have an ambiguity, but that I have a new identity: the identity of a colonized individual.

In the opening pages of Mourning Dove’s 1927 novel, Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range, the narrator tells us, “Of mixed blood, was Cogewea; a ‘breed’!—the socially ostracized of two races.” And yet what is striking about this work of contemporary American Indian literature is that it both asserts and, at the same time, subverts this essentialist vision of blood identity. In certain circumstances (where there is a competition for money), Cogewea is indeed ostracized—denied an identity as either white or American Indian. Yet, at the same time, her Indian grandmother, the Stemteemä, and her white suitor, Alfred Densmore, far from ostracizing her, actively seek to claim her against the wishes of the other. The Stemteemä tells stories from the Okanogan oral tradition to the “mixed-bloods” at the ranch— Cogewea, her sisters Mary and Julia, and Jim—to teach them that Indian women have been poorly treated by certain (not all) non-Indian men. Densmore, on the other hand, repeatedly urges Cogewea to forget the past, to deny the relevance of the Stemteemä’s stories, and to affirm the “superiority” of her white lineage. After considerable deliberation, Cogewea chooses to ignore Okanogan oral tradition and to elope with Densmore, a choice that ends disastrously. Yet in denying the truth of the oral tradition, Cogewea in fact relives the old stories, adding her name to the list of wronged Indian women, affirming the truth and value of the stories. The novel, then, becomes an extension of the Okanogan oral tradition, creating a thematic bridge between the oral word and the written text.

As Europeans explored and exploited America, they encountered the problem of what to do with the Indians who lived on the land. The newcomers’ land hunger, superior numbers, and overwhelming economy and technology ultimately pushed the natives aside. Removal and the creation of progressively smaller reservations were the answers settled upon by many whites who coveted Indian lands. Throughout this history of displacement, however, some of those who promoted reservations did so for more noble motives. They sought to preserve natives, if not native societies, away from the evils of the newcomers and to buy time with space by taking the Indians far enough from the encroaching whites that they might learn at a measured pace from friendly missionaries and teachers the rudiments of the expanding culture so they could deal with it on a more equal basis. The themes of covetousness and conscience worked in tandem as Americans moved west. But they were not so closely linked in Alaska, particularly in the territory’s remote northwest corner. During and following the turn-of-the-century gold rushes to Nome and several smaller discoveries, there was little reason for westerners to crave the lands that drained into the Bering Sea.

INTRODUCTION The theme of this paper is that greater tribal self-rule, though favored by tribal populations and a goal of federal Indian policy, comes with a social price. Exercising tribal sovereignty, North Dakota tribal governments, along with other tribal governments across the country, initiated reservation “high stakes gambling.” These tribal “high stakes” gambling enterprises have been praised as examples of successful tribal self-rule and reservation economic development, but that is only part of the story. The other side of the story is that self-rule is accompanied by potential increases in reservation social problems, and, in this case, the problems can be exacerbated by unanticipated gambling-related social dysfunctions. This paper explores a relatively new and uncharted component of Indian gaming. Through primary empirical research, we examine whether there appears to be a positive correlation between the rapid growth in the numbers of tribal casinos and the incidence of pathological gambling activity in two North Dakota Indian tribes—the Devils Lake Sioux of the Fort Totten Reservation and the Chippewa of the Turtle Mountain Reservation. We then compare the rate of pathological gambling activity in the Indian population to the rates for the general population of North Dakota as well as the rates for the general population of Fort Totten, North Dakota, and Belcourt, North Dakota, the major communities on the two reservations. The paper concludes with a discussion of alternative strategies that might be employed to address compulsive gambling behaviors.

INTRODUCTION Tribal reserved lands and the (sometimes porous) federal legal protection of those territories and the natural resources contained therein, both within and without reservation boundaries, are critical for the perpetuation of tribal survival. Individually, these natural resource rights—rights to hunt, gather, and fish, and to own and utilize water, timber and minerals—have been studied in depth by various scholars. My intention, however, is much more modest. I will examine a single case, Ward v. Race Horse, decided on 25 May 1896, in which the Supreme Court announced a set of powerful and problematic doctrines that constricted Indian treaty rights and also articulated a vision of tribal-state political relations that elevated states’ rights to a preeminent role above even federally sanctioned Indian treaty rights. I believe much of the current debate about states’ rights vis-à-vis tribes is rooted in the doctrines laid out in Ward. Certain elements of Ward were previously thought to have been “implicitly” overruled by the 1905 decision United States v. Winans, in which the Court affirmed treaty-defined off-reservation fishing rights. Furthermore, the entire decision has been “much criticized” by other jurists and commentators. However, Ward’s key holdings, which center on treaty interpretation, the relationship between state law and tribal sovereignty as exercised via treaty rights, and the so-called equal-footing doctrine—which requires that all states newly admitted to the Union after the thirteen original states be admitted with the same rights and sovereignty at the time of admission as the original states—were remarkably resuscitated in a recent Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Crow Tribe of Indians and Thomas Ten Bear v. Repsis, in which the court said Ward v. Race Horse “is alive and well.”

In their literary quests for cultural survival, contemporary American Indian writers have transcended the victim role, which had left its marks on earlier periods of American Indian fiction. Today, new ways to understand mixed cultural origins and to reconcile differing beliefs are superseding notions of assimilation, “precolonial purity,” or mere resistance. A reading of James Welch’s novels, Winter in the Blood (1974), The Death of Jim Loney (1979), and The Indian Lawyer (1990) sheds light on this tendency. Welch’s protagonists, to a large degree, are able to reconcile the alienation that stems from living in contemporary U.S. society while drawing from traditions of a tribal past. They figure as cultural mediators who (re)connect with both levels of experience. There is a process of transformation that has the potential of creating a new and dynamic modern American Indian identity. Through his fictional characters, Welch emphasizes the theme of survival—not by idealizing a tribal past, nor by simply rejecting the dominant culture. Instead, survival remains very much a personal and individual quest. What is of interest in this context is how, by what means, and at what cost ethnicity is constructed and survival is achieved. If we accept a wider definition of the term survival—dissecting it into its physical, spiritual, and ethnic components—we can make out different strategies. Within the variety of “an”—not “the”—American Indian experience in contemporary American society, Welch has depicted three very different American Indian realities.

Tribes have always asserted their sovereign status and their ability to govern themselves,” said Henry Sockbeson, an attorney for the tribe. “You’re limited, however, by your financial ability to exercise sovereignty.” What’s happening for the Pequots, Mr. Sockbeson said, is that monetary muscle is finally coinciding with the powers and rights that have long existed for Indians primarily as theory. “If we want a police force we just go out and buy one,” he said. “That’s true sovereignty, and that’s something that not many tribes have had an opportunity to really exercise nationally.” I see the atrocities committed to their people and their lands in the name of “progress” and “civilization.” I am mortified to be associated with a culture in which these atrocities continue. In which our government, politicians and big-business are still riding in like General Custer, with their self appointed superiority over all other peoples and lands. They covertly manipulate their self interests, invading lives, lands and cultures. And ultimately disempower all of these from their natural state to an unnatural one. Gaming is no different. Couched in terms of, “more jobs” and “economic growth and stability” for Native Americans. Sure the instant gratification of “easy money” and/or “big money” is an attractive solution. But don’t be so naive. Gambling on this level is not of spirit. Nor does it concern itself with the needs of The People, the whole, or your Sacred land that you have fought violently and passionately to keep!