"While innumerable Indians still live in abject poverty (despite Indian gaming), an increasing number of tribal citizens are now firmly part of the middle class as a result of hard work and sacrifice. This three-part series explores the tribal middle class, beginning below with a discussion of its genesis, which ironically was the result of federal policies that sought to destroy Indian America. Part Two will consider the emergence of a distinctly tribal middle class, including the tribal small business/private sector, as a consequence of Indian self-determination policy. Part Three will examine the rising national attack on the tribal middle class and how Indian Country might countervail that attack.

The creation of the Indian middle class stemmed largely from a focused and determined federal policy to “[k]ill the Indian[,] and save the man.” This policy emerged in the late 1800’s with the proliferation of Congressional attempts “to keep order in Indian country,” and to otherwise legislate Indian affairs for the “national interest.” The “national interest,” of course, was to “encourage Indian assimilation into the white system of private property ownership” (Yankton Sioux Tribe v. Podhradsky).

In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment (Dawes) Act, giving the federal executive branch authority to carve up Indian reservations into personally assigned allotments for distribution to individual Indians. Once a reservation had been divided into allotments, the government purchased “surplus land” and opened surplus areas to white settlers. The magic of private property ownership was supposed to drive Indians to adopt the “habits of civilized life” and in turn, towards the progressive individualism of the American dream. “Within a generation or two, it was thought, the tribes would dissolve, their reservations would disappear, and individual Indians would be absorbed into the larger community of white settlers” (South Dakota v. Yankton Sioux Tribe)."

Get the Story:
Gabe Galanda: Occupy Wall Street and the Attack on the Tribal Middle Class, Part I (Indian Country Today 10/21)