AFTER EXAM 2 4 1 2015 LECTURE MISSED GET NOTES 4 6 2015 The Aftermath of Attempted Termination Quite a large number of people did move off the reservations The result was most entrepreneur ial tended to take risks The least willing to take risks the more conservative tended to stay on the reservations So you end up with a smaller number of people on the reservations but many on reservations more dependent on federal aid Several of them took federal funds in exchange It didn t take long before the states realized it wasn t a good deal for them The termination period didn t really terminate much Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act 1975 Johnson Nixon It allowed government agencies well beyond BIA to enter contracts with tribal governments but with the idea that tribal governments would then administer federally funded programs The BIA is still a large presence on reservations Now there are programs on reservations from virtually every agency or federal cabinet level that you can imagine The idea with the Indian self determi nation asst act was to make the tribes tribal governments self determining and essentially put them in charge and replace the BIA Diversification of Indian Policy The initial round with the Dawes Act was supposed to give Native Americans ability to fend for themselves With its demise in 1934 it shifted to the creation of tribal governments with ulti mately the idea to replace the BIA and make decisions about how to use their resources and pulling them out of poverty That didn t work so then you get the determination period which is going back to try to make individual Native Americans to become self sufficient and move off reservations and take jobs Which was certainly to a degree successful given the objective but still left a lot on the reservations The tribal governments were essentially put in the business of seeking federal aid and grants from lots of different agencies In many cases making them like local and state governments Some agencies that were involved with reservations after the Indian education and self determi nation act the BIA again is still big but the dept of interior its role with the reservations is shrinking Before the Act about 47 of total spending on programs went through BIA ten years after it was down to 36 5 The Health and Human services was another major agency involved with Native Americans before the Act It s share of total spending or funding also shrank after the Act The Bureaucratic Morass Now many agencies have taken a stake in Indian dependency The funding doesn t decline in fact it increases as a result of these new policies The stakes get larger for these tribal governments The Native Americans become increasingly active politi cally and being put in charge of activity on reservations A New Meaning for Self Determination The meaning is now different than it was it no longer means self sufficiency It means that they have decision making power over the funding that flows into the reservation The dependency is different it s not just funds being filtered through the BIA Learning how to deal with these agencies and compete for federal funds Competing for Benefits The process becomes much more political as they are increasingly involved with more and more agencies in Washington and dealing with and competing with other state and local government entities They also have to learn how to do this because they historically hadn t been active polit ically and they didn t have any political clout to speak of but that is changing with changes in the federal government programs with the war on poverty started by Johnson Changing Competitive Environment Initial changes occurred with the Johnson administration and really reflected the war on poverty Johnson initiated There s all sorts of activities the federal government gets involved in trying to attack poverty investment in capital technical assistance etc The investments increased dramatically since then and federal funding is typically building houses for people Changing Tribal Governments Educated individuals are more likely to leave than stay on reservations There s been increases in government employment though The federal government passed legislation mandating the BIA hire native Americans to work within the agency when qualified Tribal governments are expanding trying to deal with all these agencies so employment is in creasing there You could see a middle class is emerging on reservations mostly as government employees There still isn t a tremendous amount of productive activities though There s an educated mid dle class that is present because of the government employment Many Benefits still captured by Non Indians Non Indian construction companies are being contracted to build on reservations Typically there are laws that say some of the labor forced has to be hired of Native Americans The tribal governments have been investing in education trying to build a body of experts within the tribes but they still often times have to consult with so called experts from outside the tribes for various kinda of services that they pay for The diversion of funds clearly captured by bureaucracies some of the other off reservation ac tivities may not be as obvious but in some ways reservations are like military bases The com munity around it often times benefits substantially because the demand for their various retailing and service offerings Indian beneficiaries Certainly there s been a growing effort to provide benefits that have been directed outside the reservation and to provide those benefits in a way the tribe captures more of them In fact if we go back to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 The Act ordered the BIA to develop tribal governments Growing Indian Employment in Bureaucratic Agencies Increasing bureaucratic employment on reservations but without simultaneous growth of other kinds of employment Initially this wasn t a big deal because most Native Americans didn t have the education to get civil service jobs but over time that has changed A growing middle class has changed Perverted Incentives Federal expenditures going to reservations are largely in the form of wages and salary Certainly the incentives that arise from this development are once again incentives to maintain the bureaucracy and make those jobs secure So the idea or the objective in many cases is not to make the tribes or the reservations self sufficient but rather reinforce or encourage
View Full Document