TULSA, Okla. – Most of former U.S. President Richard Nixon’s historical legacy hung on his political chicanery rather than his Indian policy. To help offset the perception, the Richard Nixon Foundation co-hosted a seminar May 23 at the Gilcrease Museum to discuss the impact of a 1970s federal tribal policy that its proponents say altered the course of Indian history.
The day-long seminar, “Restoring the Rights for Native Americans,” highlighted the contributions of Nixon’s 1970 Self Determination policy. The legislation, developed during the Nixon administration in 1969 -71, had the job of building new government-to-government relations with the tribes - a tough task, one panelist said.
Phillip Deloria, director of the American Indian Graduate Center, told the nearly 60 attendees that Nixon’s Self-Determination Act was the “gold standard,” of federal Indian policy.
“Not because it’s perfect,” he said. “Surpassing it could mean making promises that it (Department of Interior) can’t fulfill. No other president is going to top it because they can’t.”
Deloria noted that one of the strengths of Nixon’s policy started in putting Indian administrators in charge of Indian affairs. Indians trying to get help from Congress to change the limping federal policy of the early 20th Century was a no-go, he recalled.
“Congress, which is supposed to set policy, has no clue,” he said. “ You could tell them about federal Indian policy and they’d have no clue.”
The new Nixon version of Indian policy meant to abandon decades of broken treaties, forced assimilation and other federal misinterpretations of Indian rights. The often betrayed tribes had no choice but to hope that a new day had dawned for them, proponents said.
Panelists revisited the era of Termination, Self-Determination’s federal policy predecessor. That policy stripped tribes of their federal recognition and reduced the U.S. Government’s trustee status with those it was designed to protect. Moderator Reid Chambers, former BIA associate solicitor, said the restoring of the Taos Pueblos’ traditional Blue Lake was the symbolic doorway to Nixon’s new Indian policy.
It was the first time in tribal-federal relations that an aboriginal claim to land had been upheld in court and one that restored the Taos Pueblos’ Blue Lake property to them in 1970 after it had been taken by the government in 1906 to establish a park.
“This was a time when most of the Bureau (of Indian Affairs) were non-Indian,” Reid said.
Before Nixon, controlling Indian lands with no tribal input was a standard practice by the government. They sidestepped tribes because lawmakers and Indian affairs officials questioned the ability of tribes to handle their own affairs, Reid said.
In light of the favorable comments across both sessions for Self-Determination, no currently elected tribal officials were in attendance although Nixon Foundation officials said tribal leaders in Oklahoma were extended invitations.
Meanwhile, Nixon Foundation officials said the 37th president favored renewing the way the federal government interacted with the tribes. Coupled with a rising tide among tribal people that the long paternalistic relationship with the U.S. Government represented outdated thinking, a vehicle for new legislation was born. He called his new Indian policy, “a break with the past.”
Because tribes had long dealt with the threat of having their federal monies cut off if they alienated federal officials, they alternated with exaggerated dependence on the same entity, Nixon Foundation officials said.
Other tenets of Nixon’s policy included improving Indian education, restoring tribal lands, helping urban Indians and economic development legislation.
Since that time, Self-Determination has been evolving in other ways, other panelists said. The outgrowths of Nixon’s enduring policy later spawned other interfacing of Indian tribes with the federal government, including the Indian Gaming and Regulatory Act of 1988 and more recently, Obama’s Tribal Law and Order Act.
Walter Echo-Hawk, who introduced panelists for the day, emphasized a willingness on behalf of Nixon to come to the bargaining table with more than promises to tribes, he said.
“This (act) demonstrates that Nixon got it right,” he said.
The sessions were co-sponsored by the California-based Richard Nixon Foundation and Gilcrease Museum and the National Archives.
Other panelists were: Robert Anderson, Director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington; Kent Frizzell, former solicitor and Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI); LaDonna Harris, Americans for Indian Opportunity founder; Wallace Johnson, former assistant attorney general for Land and Natural Resources of the Department of Justice (DOJ); Bobbie Kilberg, former Nixon staff assistant; Bradley Patterson, executive assistant to special counsel Leonard Garment; Robert Pickering, director of academic affairs at the University of Tulsa, Gilcrease Museum; Geoffrey Shepard, former Nixon staff assistant and Hilary Tompkins, current DOI Solicitor.
President Richard Nixon signs the Self Determination policy in 1970.
PHOTO COURTESY RICHARD NIXON FOUNDATION