WPT Archives: 1960s

[ Music ] >> The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network.

[ Inaudible ] >> At one time, the policy of the United States of America was the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

Now the government policy is that the only good Indian is a terminated Indian.

The end result of both policies is the very same, no more Indian tribes in America.

Perhaps the old fathers of the Menominee tribe had a premonition of the tribes and as they told and retold the legend of Spirit Rock.

The old fathers said that as long as this rock endured, the Menominees would endure.

When the rock was worn away, gone, finished, the Menominees would be gone and finished.

It's hard to believe that they could have known about termination and yet the legend of that rock is right on schedule.

>> It was higher.

Now it's getting flat.

It did real shape like a man sitting there.

Long years ago, I remember myself when I was a little kid.

>> The land of the Menominees.

Before termination, this was a reservation administered by the great white fathers in Washington, D.C., the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

After termination, this land is now a Wisconsin county, the poorest of Wisconsin's 72 counties, wealthy only in forest and timber.

And that wealth is not enough to sustain all the people in the county.

Yet the people want to stay here in the land of their forefathers for the fishing, for the hunting, for the quiet country life in Wisconsin's last great unspoiled wilderness.

Termination for all Indian tribes means simply that the federal government is ending or terminating reservations across the country.

All Indians will eventually be on their own, left to fend for themselves.

Termination for the Menominees actually began with a windstorm back in the early 1900s.

That storm blew down valuable timber, and the federal government chose to let that timber rot and decay.

In 1935, legislation was passed by the Congress which permitted all Indians to sue the federal government for past damages.

The Menominees then sued the government for damages as a result of that timber loss.

Without knowing it at the time, the Menominees had launched themselves on the road to termination.

Some said the Menominees had, in effect, dug their own grave.

[ Sound Effects ] >> Our land, this land belongs to the Menominees originally, you know, and why should they take it over?

>> The people here were misled.

>> I don't like it, no how.

[ Sound Effects ] >> Termination is pretty bad.

I'm a strict anti-terminationist.

[ Sound Effects ] >> We didn't even know what the word meant, but boy, we know what it means today.

[ Sound Effects ] >> It was just like a steamroller.

[ Sound Effects ] >> Termination came along and done away with it.

>> Since the hospital's been gone, you don't have any doctors here.

[ Sound Effects ] >> Before they could do as they wanted, you know, but now they can.

[ Sound Effects ] >> But to buy his own land back, well, I don't like that idea.

[ Sound Effects ] >> I look back to these days there and I feel that there's something missing.

[ Sound Effects ] >> I think termination was good.

>> As far as termination was concerned, it was the best thing that happened.

>> The idea of termination is sound.

[ Sound Effects ] >> In 1953, Wisconsin Congressman Melvin Laird introduced a per capita payment bill designed to give each Menominee tribal member a $1,500 payment to settle that claim for windstorm damage to their timber.

When this bill came before the Senate, Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah, then chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Interior and Insular Affairs, stuck a joker into the deck.

If the Menominees voted to accept these per capita payments, the Senator said, their votes would be construed as a vote for termination of reservation status.

Some people have called this Watkins Amendment blackmail.

Other people have simply said, the United States government figured that any Indians smart enough to sue and win in the white man's court were indeed ready to be left on their own.

The Menominees indeed voted for acceptance of their per capita payments.

That vote then meant they agreed to end reservation status.

They in effect agreed to be terminated.

A birthright once again was sold for a mess of pottage, this time $1,500 worth.

The way we lived before termination, well, we felt free.

We roamed this country as we pleased.

We feasted and hunted.

No sooner had termination come about than Internal Revenue Service, National Labor Relations Board, Securities and Exchange Commission, all the alphabetical agencies that pertain at the federal level, plus about 27 agencies of state government, with regulatory authority always and inspection authority to send upon you.

So that having moved out of a quite a passive existence, they moved into a highly regulated existence that they didn't expect.

Unfortunately, we had to spend most of our time trying to keep the people aware of what termination meant.

Explaining to them what they were facing.

And the people up to the last minute took to stand that they weren't going to have anything to do with it.

And they felt if they ignored the thing and pleaded with the government to repeal the act that that would take place.

People didn't realize termination was here until it actually happened.

I bet you about 80% of the people didn't know what termination meant to begin with.

And some of them say, "Well, you voted, you voted."

I wasn't even here anymore.

"You wasn't even, we wasn't even here.

And then you asked somebody else, so how did you vote?"

They all say no.

Well, at the time of termination, I was still in high school and I really wasn't interested in it.

So I didn't pay too much attention to it.

They wanted a $1,500 per capita payment from an award that won on mismanagement of their forest.

And they were told that that's the only way they could get the per capita payment was by voting for termination.

So many of the older people voted for it not realizing what it meant.

They thought they were just voting for per capita payment.

Termination came too quick to the Indian, that there should have been a time, I'd say from 15 to 20 years before actual termination came to get the Indian used to the white man's way of life.

Once more, the Indian met the white man in a head-on confrontation.

And once more, the Indian came out second best.

Contact with the white man eroded by turns the Indian's religion, his culture, mores, language, indeed, his very way of life.

The Menominees, over long association with the white man, are probably more acculturated than any other Indian tribe.

And yet, even for the Menominees, who are so close to being white, termination is not easy.

[Singing] It's going to be that their grade school kid now that is going to be to realize your termination.

It isn't going to be us old bucks.

The most important thing that had to be done in order to make termination a success was a good educational program.

Even today, we have no professional people that is sufficient to help us carry out this program.

We have no doctors, no lawyers.

In old Indian school, you just handed a child a book and it was more of a babysitting service.

They learned to read and write and to add two and two and that was about it.

They were not taught any independence in either thoughts or actions.

And it was a paternalistic sort of thing.

And that, that isn't good.

They needed to learn to make their own way and to think with their own minds rather than having someone tell them what to do.

And the old Indian schools didn't do that.

When we first realized that termination was coming and the day of self-government for the Menominee people was closer than anyone realized, then the State Department worked so closely with us in upgrading the schools, turning everything toward the fact that these children must someday be their own leaders, rather than being governed by the government as they had been.

We revised our school planning in every way.

I think that the future lies in the children.

But we have to work with the children and help them get their education.

I see the change in people being concerned about their children's education.

We have 13 now attending college.

And another thing I noticed is there's more participation in community affairs, which I think is good for the community.

Now I have a sister that's in college.

She's in her junior year.

She's not going to come back here when she's finished.

Now, there are so many of the young people that are in school.

Like Gina said, there are 13 young people in college this year.

But how many of these 13 are going to come back here and work in the county for their people?

Education, we all realize, is going to be our ultimate salvation.

So that the more kids we can keep in school, get graduated, and get on to college, the better off we're going to be.

And even if they don't stay and go on to get degrees in mathematics or whatever they might, and do move away, at least their existence in their social and economic life will be much greater than they would have been here without an education.

I don't have all the answers.

If I did, I'd be a politician instead of a student.

These people do need help, and I don't know what to do.

I just got out of there and I'm helping myself.

Maybe someday I'll be able to go back and help them, but first I'm going to live my life.

I advise my kids, as soon as they're big enough, to get out where there's opportunity for them.

Because there's none here.

There was enough work years ago, but since they terminated, there don't seem to be enough work.

We run our plant to make money these days.

Under the federal government, we run the mill just to employ people, keep people employed.

That's how we make our living here.

We have to have Menominee Enterprise, we have to have the timber, there's no other business.

If something happened to Menominee Enterprise, we'd all, we'd just fold up.

So we have no place to go for jobs outside of going to the mill.

At the present time, our average payroll is about 230.

And prior to termination, it was probably in the 300 people.

There's nothing for the younger people to look forward to here.

We need work for the women here.

There's no young girls working here.

They just sit at home, twiddle their thumbs.

Summertime, sure, they get a few hours a day or a week.

That isn't enough.

I work in Chicago in a mechanic, in a body shop.

I come home every two weeks now.

More and more has been commuting since termination.

I notice that more and more every day.

And the guys have even come to my house on Sundays to ask for a ride back to Chicago where they could get jobs.

I have got jobs for three or four guys already.

I just heard this morning that there's 40-some-odd people in the county going down to Neenah to work now.

The base pay down there is $2.00 and some cents an hour.

So this will create quite a raise in economic level for some of our people here.

Although jobs outside the county do create income for the Menominees, most of that income is also spent outside the county, simply because shopping facilities, stores, and services do not exist here.

In a way, it's like the old days, dealing with the white trader on his terms.

I told George, I said, "If you can tell me how you're going to stop the outflow of money out of this county," I said, "then we've got a chance of making termination work.

If you don't, then I don't think we're going to be successful."

Menominee Indians will tell you they have been studied and surveyed to death.

The federal government and now the state has sent an expert after expert to study, survey, plan, and then replan the future of the county and its people.

There are many ideas for economic improvement, a veneer mill, the processing of pulpwood, a cooperative general store.

There are ideas aplenty, but most of the ideas never get beyond the talking stage.

The only currently operating scheme is the leasing of lake lots to wealthy white men.

This plan is to bring in more money to the county by broadening the tax base.

The leases are for 40 years.

Leasing land here, right and left, you know.

We can go along the river here or go out here to the lakes.

Of course, it's all college issue in the world.

This is private, places here, private, we ask them to walk around their world.

This is all ours.

I like it.

But how are we going to keep it?

How are we going to keep it when they're selling all the lakes out for an address?

People can buy land.

They are putting up huge houses.

This is all part of the county's project to increase the tax base because this is valuable property and these people can afford to pay taxes.

But the land will pass out of the Indians' hands and into the outsiders'.

Our lakes are getting cluttered up.

There's cottages built on them by white men that's got lots of money.

We don't own them anymore.

We can't go out and do a decent fishing for ourselves.

Somebody comes by with high-speed boats, chases our little boats off the lakes, spoils the fishing.

When you go across the lake with a high-speed motor, it's just like if somebody's going to throw a rock at you, you're going to duck and a fish do the same thing.

They go to the bottom of the lake and they'll stay there and you ain't going to catch any fish.

These people lived for hunting and fishing.

We used to be able to hunt and fish whenever we wanted to.

With respect to Menominee, hunting and fishing rights are, the Supreme Court has said they're done, they're terminated.

I've talked with Indians all over the country on this termination problem and one of the principal things they've always brought up was, are you attempting to preserve your hunting and fishing rights?

Indians all over the country have built up a certain economy in hunting and fishing that I suppose don't mean so much to the outsider.

We have quite a few old people that most definitely live off of the hunting.

We attempted to preserve the privilege of hunting and fishing because this was one of the principal requests of the tribe.

We asked Congress to mention in the act that the hunting and fishing privileges would be preserved.

They just ignored it.

They led us to believe that these things would not be taken away from us.

I don't know why they took it away from us, I still can't understand it.

It seemed like to me, it seemed like to me a treaty is a treaty.

They signed a treaty that we could hunt and fish as long as the grass is green and the water is fluid or flowed or whatever they call it, but it's a lot different now and to me, I'd like to know what a treaty really means.

I mean, they broke it, so why shouldn't we be suffering for it?

Well, at the time the termination, Menominee Termination Act was being negotiated and enacted, the record is quite clear that these rights would continue.

For instance, we asked the law section, the American Law Section of the Library of Congress, what is the intent of Congress with respect to certain provisions of the Menominee Termination Act?

One of the questions we asked, what about hunting and fishing rights?

They made a very bold statement that these continue.

The legal legislative council for the Department of the Interior in testifying on the Menominee Termination Bill made the point that there was no need to include a clause preserving these rights because they would continue without any discussion.

When we got to court, the Interior Department reneged on its earlier position.

First they said they would do everything they could to protect these rights and that they continued, but then they reversed and said no.

That's one mistake where what we call a coordinating negotiating committee made a bad mistake by not putting it in writing.

They should have put it right in the Public Law 399.

We know now that we should have insisted upon a precise bit of language dealing with that matter.

It gets pretty darn hard for a lot of people to say that meat and stuff is a concern for the table.

I think if it wasn't for our commodity program here, we'd have had some pretty hungry Indians.

I remember one fellow in particular, I used to meet coming down the stream, the Wolf River, who would be trapping and fishing.

And now I meet him coming down the road carrying his social commodities because he can no longer hunt and fish and he just doesn't have anything to do.

They've made a welfare case out of him.

Our human anomalies are not unlike the older white people in 20th century America.

Discarded, abandoned by a society which no longer respects nor honors its old people.

Our constant pressing for change is one of our great strengths as a nation.

But perhaps our pressing for change is also one of our real weaknesses.

Our old people are just existent.

They've got no better homes.

They ain't got no plumbing in their homes, a lot of our old people, which needs for old people.

I feel sorry for our old people.

The young people will get along.

I think the Congress or the non-Indian is trying to acculturate the Indian, assimilate him into society and do away with the reservations.

Which is bad to me, or I feel it's bad because a lot of the old people can't undergo this change.

I say termination will advance many, many tribes socially and economically.

As far as the culture, this word culture is being constantly brought to bear.

And I've said this publicly.

If we have to retain culture and sacrifice our social and economic advances, then I say let's dump the culture.

If we can hold both of them and advance socially and economically, then I say all right, let's hold it.

But I don't intend for any, I would never want any tribe to retain their culture in front of gaining economically or socially.

So when you talk about things being lost, I don't think we're going to lose anything.

You'll always be an Indian, whether you're terminated or you're not terminated.

When the Indians were terminated, they closed the rolls.

And there could be no more Menominees recognized by the federal government.

It's sort of, even though Indians are still married and having Indians, there are no more Menominees.

And it's sort of a passing the buck, kind of a shifting of responsibility, the federal government.

When the last Indian dies, the federal government will no longer recognize Menominee County or Menominees at all.

He says the government is like a steamroller.

He says they roll, and they roll over everything, and they just smash it down.

He says there is no stopping it or anything.

What they have made up their minds to do, that's what they're going to do.

And I think they still have that same feeling when they took and appointed this year Bennett as our new commissioner.

From what I read in the paper, with the appointment of a new Indian commissioner, and the report that was sent to the BIA in regard to the appointment of the commissioner, is that termination is going to be stepped up and it's going to be brought about much more rapidly than it has in the past.

So that I think you're going to look to see many, many tribes, not only in Wisconsin, but across the United States being terminated rather soon.

Which in many respects is going to be a mistake.

For a termination to be successful, you've got to have a local industry, you've got to have available jobs.

Even to begin to think in terms of taxes, you've got to have the jobs to provide the taxes and the necessities for existence.

And some of these tribes that are now on reservations have absolutely nothing.

I don't see where you can even begin to conceive of termination in this respect.

I think it's absolutely necessary that if Congress intends to carry on termination of Indian tribes, they have to go about it in a different way than they did with the Menominee in the Klamath.

My only hope is that the government does look to us and see some of the mistakes that were made prior to termination, that these are corrected.

If there is a moral here, perhaps it is this.

Throughout history, we white men have been too quick to destroy all peoples, all places, all cultures, which stood in the way of what we so blithely term progress.

At one time, we conquered with the cross and the conquistadore.

Later, we conquered with the U.S. cavalry and the repeating rifle.

Now, we conquer with paperwork, the bureaucrat, and the broken promise.

The Menominee people before termination were regarded as the second wealthiest of all American Indian tribes.

After termination, these same Menominees now comprise Wisconsin's poorest county.

What will happen to those other Indian tribes, poorer by far than the Menominees, as those tribes in turn face termination?

The policies, the obligations, the responsibilities of the United States government to its Indian citizens must be reevaluated and changed in the harsh light of the Menominee experience.

Termination is the end of something.

It is the final chapter in the history of American Indians writ by white men, destruction.

We are systematically, deliberately eradicating the last dug-in roots of Indianness, roots which were implanted deep in this land before Columbus.

But termination can also be the beginning of something, perhaps the beginning of wisdom for the white man.

Our days of conquest are dead, gone, buried in the dark and tragic ground of history.

Perhaps, finally, the sons of the last Menominees and the sons of the last brutal white men can now, together, find the true peace, the true dignity, the true love which always escaped our troubled forefathers.

[drum music] Next week, Local Issue will examine another topic of national interest.

[drum music] [music] This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.