Indian reservation

History

Before colonization, well over a thousand Native American ethnic groups populated the North American continent. As a result of systematic land grabbing and planned reclamation by European settlers, they came under increasing pressure and lost much of their land.

Authors describe the reservations in their early days as prison camps, which the Indians were only allowed to leave with permission. The restricted reservation life made it impossible for the Indians to be self-sufficient. They were dependent on food rations, which were used as leverage by government officials. If individual Indians showed resistance, their food rations were withheld, leaving the Indians with no choice but to comply or seek sustenance elsewhere outside the reservation.

Various images of reservations existed. In addition to prison camps, in the early days people spoke of reservations as "schools for civilization and education". Once Indians were sufficiently "civilized," they would be allowed to leave the reservations. Others saw them as the key to the survival of Indian culture.

Most reservations were created by treaty. The Indians had, in a sense, reserved land for themselves; the government had no authority to reserve land for the Indians, as it was mostly acknowledged to belong to the Indians. Some reservations had been created by land swaps during the relocation period. In the U.S., after the government moved to stop making treaties with the Indians in 1871, the Indians had been stripped of any say in the matter. Now the US government determined the new creation, reduction or enlargement of reservations ("enactment reservations"). These are lands provided by the government, which it can dispose of again at any time. Land purchases enlarged reservations; rarely were entire reservations established by purchase. The same applies to donations, which were essentially made by church institutions.

In Canada, numerous tribes formally transferred their former lands to the Kingdom of England by treaty (especially between 1867 and 1923). Instead, they received much smaller, tradable plots of land. Also written into the treaty was the amount of food rations the Indians were to receive as compensation in perpetuity, and financial compensation, which was about twelve dollars per person. Chiefs would receive an additional $25 or so per year. In addition, the Canadian government undertook to provide education and health care for the reservation Indians. Fishing and hunting rights continued to be granted to them in some cases. There were many different treaties with widely varying terms and some groups today argue that the Native side did not have the legitimacy to enter into these treaties.

Most U.S. reservations are very small and about 93% of them are located in states in the western United States. Only just three percent are located east of the Mississippi River.

Contemporary life

Mineral Resources

Often, the Indians were allocated reservations in semi-arid to arid areas, which were initially not very desirable for the white settlers. Later, however, it was precisely in these areas that large deposits of mineral resources were discovered. For example, about 55% of all uranium deposits in the USA are in the soil of the Indians. The health consequences of uranium mining are devastating for the Indians. Their land is also rich in oil (about 5% of all US reserves) and coal (about one-third of all US reserves). The Indians have little recourse against mining. The right to mine is granted in the US by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The revenues from this are also marginal for the Indians.

In Canada, most revenues from such transactions are administered by the authorities in Ottawa. The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (INAC) is responsible here.

Work situation

Uranium mining and its consequences are only one problem of many that the reservation Indians have to deal with. In general, poverty is very high, living conditions are compared to the Third World. Since 1980, the unemployment rate has hovered between 40% and 80%, depending on the reservation. According to BIA statistics, the unemployment rate on reservations in 1985 was 39%. On U.S. reservations, more than 40% of families were living below the poverty line in 2002. Some reservations, however, have much higher unemployment rates, in some cases over 80%. Yet the public sector is by far the largest employer. The BIA, Indian Health Service (IHS), and other Indian agencies alone employed nearly 60 percent of the reservation workforce in 1980. In contrast, just five percent were employed in the service sector, 16% in the secondary sector, and ten percent in the primary sector. About one-third of all reservation Indians have jobs outside the reservation boundaries. Primarily due to the poor employment situation, a total of only 30 % of all Indians in the USA still live on the reservations.

Industry

Industrial enterprises are hardly ever found on reservations. This is an expression of the collective consciousness that still determines the everyday life of the Indians. There is very little interest in stocking up on cash reserves and material goods through high incomes, as is the case in the European conception of life. Regular, continuous work is not seen as the standard by many members of Indian communities. Rather, they engage in sporadic work that again satisfies their basic needs for a while. They are less likely to make financial provision than the rest of the American population. In addition, there is a less pronounced sense of competition. All of these factors inhibit the development of industry on reservations. Other negative conditions militate against the Indian reservation as an industrial location. For example, the isolated location, the low-income and thus low-purchasing power of the inhabitants, the lack of infrastructure such as repair and service outlets, bank branches, means of communication and energy sources, railway connections, public transport, and the quality and density of the road network severely restrict industry. Add to this a climate of political instability and opaque jurisdictional disputes. Questions about with whom potential investors must negotiate or what competencies the respective negotiating partner has are difficult to clarify. A lack of capital is also an important obstacle. Hardly any industrial enterprises can be financed by the Indians. In addition, the reservations and their inhabitants are usually not considered creditworthy.

In addition, there are also factors that promote the economy, such as the large pool of labour. The high unemployment rate means cheap labour for the entrepreneurs. The environmental protection regulations in the reservations are very low, their control practically non-existent. Targeted tax breaks and government economic incentives are designed to attract investors. Compared to a foreign industrial location with cheap wages, there are no customs duties and currency risks in reservations.

Canadian legislation does not allow land within reserves to be sold to non-aboriginal people. Therefore, mortgages and loans on them are not tradable. Therefore, there is little investment activity.

For some time, many U.S. reservations have been improving their economic bases through Indian casinos.

School system

In addition to the work situation, the school system is also problematic; for a long time, Indian children were often only offered boarding schools (compare Residential School). These usually did not aim at education, but rather at identity deprivation. The schools were often used by the state as a welcome tool to implement its assimilation policy. Subjects such as history, civics, geography and English served as suitable means to pass on the values of the dominant majority society and to convince the Indians of their cultural inferiority.

Attending boarding schools often led to negative psychological and social consequences for Indian children, who were forcibly removed from their familiar socio-cultural milieu at a very early age and were often unable to see their families for years.

After 1928, there were fewer and fewer such off-reservation boarding schools; instead, the BIA built schools on the reservations themselves. However, according to a 1980 survey, 16% of all Indians attended school for less than eight years; the national average was 10%. If only Indians living on reservations are considered, the figure is 26%. Compared to the national average, this is very high, but compared to the 1970 survey, when the percentage was 50% for reservation Indians, it appears relatively low.

Until 1967, it was the practice in Canada for children to remain in boarding school all year round in partially nomadic groups. It was not until 1970 that this practice was revised. Around 1990, cases of sexual abuse at such schools became public. In 2008, the Prime Minister apologized to the aboriginal people for these schools and the conditions that prevailed at them.

Property rights (USA)

About 80 % of the reservation land is owned by the tribal government, despite the parcelling policy around 1900. The respective tribe grants usage rights to its members. This handling represents the traditional collective system of the Indians. Depending on the reservation, however, there is quite high individual ownership, for example, on the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Lakota or the Crow Reservation, where individual ownership ranges from 60 to 85%. On the Osage Reservation, it is as high as nearly one hundred percent. Most of the land is held in trust by the BIA. Because of the special status of Indians, individual landowners do not pay property taxes.

Since the plots are too small for self-sufficiency and there is often little interest in farming anyway, leasing means the only income possibility. In 1984, 13.6% of the reserve land was leased. Today, much of the reservation land is in the hands of whites. On the Crow Reservation, for example, a quarter of the land is owned by whites and 65% is leased to agribusinesses.

Property rights (Canada)

Due to the many different histories of the origins of the reserves in Canada (treaties, decrees), it is hardly possible to make generally valid statements. Although a law of 1876 allowed the aborigines to manage the income from the use of the reserves, until 1959 only about 20 % of the 600 reserves in Canada were at least partially self-managed.

System of government (USA)

Indian reservations are predominantly self-governing, although financial grants, without which Indians cannot live, account for about 70% of all tribal revenues. Most ethnic groups have a constitution based on that of the United States. However, the jurisdiction of the tribal government is severely limited. Depending on their status and on the type of treaties they have signed with the US government in the past, their powers vary.

Many reservations are still under the administration or supervision of the BIA, which often acts against the interests of the Indians, although its management has been in Indian hands since 1965. Traditionally minded Indians are hardly interested in a position at the BIA and so the central positions at the BIA are often occupied by progressive "half-breeds" who sometimes show little understanding for the Indian collective.

List of US reservations

According to the U.S. Department of the Interior's National Park Service, there are currently 304 registered Indian reservations in the United States. The 2001 census in Canada lists 600 reserves, 976,305 Canadian citizens with aboriginal status, of which 286,080 live on reserves.

Movies

• In 1969 DEFA made the feature film Tödlicher Irrtum (Deadly Mistake), which deals with the life of the Indians on a reservation. The white Americans' greed for oil, their unscrupulousness in obtaining it, and the coexistence of the two fundamentally different groups of people are portrayed in an exciting way that is as close to history as possible.
• In 1973/74 DEFA made the feature films Apaches and Ulzana, which basically deal with the same subject, but specifically focus on the coexistence of the Apaches with the European settlers.

American films that deal with life on reservations include:

• 1992: Half-Blood (original title: Thunderheart)
• 1994: Dance with a Murderer (Original title: Dance Me Outside)
• 1998: Smoke Signals
• 2002: Skins
• 2003: Dreamkeeper
• 2008: Rez Bomb
• 2017: Wind River

• United States Indian Policy
• American Indians
• History of the First Nations
• List of Indian tribes recognized in Canada