Dean Chavers: Hate groups arise to fight tribal sovereignty

Wednesday, November 2, 2011  

"In the 1970s, following a decade of Indian activism that started with the fish-ins in Washington, the Mohawk land occupations in New York and Canada, the formation of the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), and the occupation of Alcatraz, anti-Indian “white backlash” groups started to form.

In Washington State they were a reaction to the 1974 Boldt decision that stated Indians were entitled to half the runs of steelhead and salmon as guaranteed in the 1854 treaties. Whites who had bought land on reservations also protested having tribal governments exercise jurisdiction over them. In Montana, they formed around protests of tribes exercising jurisdiction over rangelands. Many of the hate groups also advocate for the complete revoking of all treaties with Indian tribes. They also resent the rights Indians reserved through treaties to hunt and fish on reservation lands and other public lands.

They maintain that the white race is superior to Indian tribes or Indian individuals. Labeling themselves as “citizen’s rights” organizations, these groups barely conceal their hate for Indians in general and their scorn and derision for tribal councils. One of their main planks is trying to assert that they are not subject to the jurisdictions of tribes—even though their property may be in the middle of an Indian reservation."

Get the Story:
Dean Chavers: Around the Campfire: Indian Hate Groups (The Native American Times 11/2)