A New Deal for American Indians

The story of how Americans have treated--and mistreated--their native brethren is a trail of tears and shame that continues to this very day. It unfolds in outrageous detail in the 238-page report of a Senate investigating committee that documents the mismanagement, corruption, fraud and neglect that infect federal programs designed to help American Indians. No member of Congress can read this report without being moved to action. The time has come to free native Americans from the yoke of federal paternalism and good intentions gone sour.

Of many such investigations, this may be the first to produce a program that really can benefit both Indians and the nation as a whole. The committee, led by Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), proposes that tribes be granted full powers to govern themselves, free from the bureaucracies that have stood between them and true self-determination.

Those tribes would receive federal block grants equivalent to the aid that now filters down from federal agencies. They would negotiate independence with a new office reporting directly to the President. Tribal accountability laws would guard against the sort of outlandish corruption that the committee unearthed within Navajo tribal offices. Existing programs administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and other agencies would be reformed and would continue to serve tribes that do not opt for self-determination.

The findings of the committee, alas, will not be shocking to those who are depressingly familiar with Indian poverty, ill health, poor housing, and economic exploitation. The shock is that so many officials refused or failed to do anything. There is no excuse for the committee itself having to discover that 19 of the largest so-called Indian companies winning federal contracts were fraudulent front operations for non-Indians. But in 31 years, the bureau had unearthed only two minor instances of possible fraud, the committee said.

Since Custer’s day, Washington has lurched from one disastrous program to another in dealing with the American Indian. Now Congress finally has a path for making the Indian nations real partners in the federal system--no longer a trail of tears, but one of hope.