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Reviews
SELF-DETERMINATION: THE OTHER PATH FOR NATIVE AMERICANS
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by Terry L. Anderson, Bruce L. Benson, and Thomas E. Flanagan
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| Stanford University Press, Stanford, Cal., 2006. Maps, tables, bibliography, index. 332 pages. $35.00 cloth. |
| One familiar with the history of Indian policy in the United States — in which self-determination was presented as an alternative to the termination policy which preceded it — might think Self-Determination: The Other Path for Native Americans would be about the presidential messages sent to Congress by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 and by President Richard Nixon in 1970 and the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975. One would be wrong. |
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The "other path" signaled by Self-Determination is a federal and tribal policy in Indian Country that is shaped along the following lines: all property should be treated as private property, giving owners the rights to use, exclude others, and freely transfer on an open market; government (tribal) institutions are essential to the creation of these rights; and tribal institutions must recognize the rule of law and be constrained from redistributing wealth. This arrangement, proponents of "the other path of self-determination" tell readers, enables man's universal search for growth opportunities and fulfills the universal need for wealth accumulation. This is the path to societal and economic development. |
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The first four of the ten chapters in Self-Determination are most relevant to those studying the history of Indian law and policy. Each essay is a historical survey through the lens of the "other path." Chapter One concludes that the perceptions that Indian cultures were fundamentally more collective that European ones, and that in those cultures economic development was subordinated to a harmonious relationship with nature, are "false myths" (p. 6). Instead, the authors argue, there is ample historical evidence to show that "precolonial indigenous populations had a highly developed sense of individual private property" (p. 7). Furthermore, the economic history of precolonial indigenous people is a "history of utilizing technology and innovation to maximize the yield from the land and other productive assets" (p. 15). |
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Chapter Two continues the inquiry with a study of buffalo hunting on the plains before contact with whites. Plains tribes were not "peaceful environmental stewards" or "primitive communists" (pp. 56 and 57). Rather, they, like all men, engaged in years of war and conflict driven by the need of each to establish exclusive property rights. Because the struggle for individual rights prevailed over community values, the buffalo population was systematically overhunted and depleted. |
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Chapter Three examines the early fur trade between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Western Woodland Cree, which depleted the population of fur-bearing animals. The authors wonder: Since private property rights prevent depletion of a resource otherwise left in the commons and since the Western Cree recognized private property rights before contact, why was the resource depleted? Chapter Four argues that a proposal to privatize the British Columbia salmon fishery at auction is consistent with traditional tribal values. |
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The historical research informing these essays is limited to a survey of the existing literature. That survey yielded some interesting conclusions. Governor William Bradford converted the Plymouth Colony from a communist collective to private ownership "using the surrounding indigenous people as a model for individual lands rights and economic sustainability" (p. 7). Franz Boas got it wrong when he saw the potlatch as a means of establishing social rank in a culture surrounded by abundant natural resources. Instead, the potlatch amounted to protection payments to other tribes who were challenging ownership of the resources. The potlatch resulted from a cost-benefit analysis. That is, potlatching was cheaper than war and as a result "lowered the transaction costs of enforcing exclusive tribal property rights" (p. 114). The warring claims for the right of private property on the buffalo plains proves that Vine Deloria Jr. got it wrong when he said that Indians prefer a tribal and communal way of life that is devoid of economic competition and that society was much safer and more humane when Indians controlled the whole continent. |
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The policies advanced by The Other Path have long been a part of United States Indian policy. From the time of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to the second President Bush, there have been those who propose to turn Indian Country into private property with a private market in which tribal members engage in the universal need to accumulate wealth. This policy was particularly prominent during the period of allotment, from 1887 until 1934. There were 138 million acres of tribal lands when the General Allotment Act was passed in 1887, forcibly converting tribal ownership into private ownership. By 1934, 90 million acres of that tribal land had been transformed into private land — private non-Indian land. The Other Path is both unaware of this history and destined to repeat it. |
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| Dennis C. Colson
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| University of Idaho |
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