LAND MARCH MIRRORS INDIANS’ STRUGGLES

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33965, 4 October 1975, Page 21

LAND MARCH MIRRORS INDIANS’ STRUGGLES

(By STAN DARLING) A Yakima Indian would sit back and smile, if not laugh aloud, at descriptions of New Zealand’s Maori land march on Parliament as a radical move.

One of the largest American Indian tribes, the Yakimas, roamed over more than 11m acres of central Washington state before the white man came. Their 14 bands and tribes gave up much besides land when settlers moved into their territory. For many years, they have been gaining some of it back through “radicai-* but nonviolent means, sanctioned by even the President of the United States. The Maoris of Taranaki want Mount Egmont back, among othei things. Two years ago, after years of struggle through the courts, the Yakima Indian nation got their sacred mountain back. The 12,307 ft Mount Adams (Pahto to the Indians), a glacier - encrusted volcano high in the Pacific northwest Cascade Range, was brought within reservation boundaries. Both indigenous peoples are talking about the same issues | — retention of their remaining land and fair representation in the nation’s bureaucracy. While the American Indians’ talking has been punctuated by gunfire, the talking in New Zealand has continued without greater violence than the tread of weary feet on a long road to Wellington. LIVING IN LIMBO During a 1972 holiday in ' New Zealand, I watched ;

, young Maoris hang a banner saying “Maori control of ( Maori things” on Parliament 1 Buildings. Neighbourhood people brought the protesters tea and sandwiches. At the same time, a radical ! faction of American Indians had taken over the offices of Jthe Bureau of Indian Affairs I in Washington, D.C. > Months later, I sat in a ' teepee on the Yakima i Indians’ summer camping : place and listened to an elderly religious leader talk about what the mountain on • the horizon meant to his people. He did not show anger, only thankfulness that the long fight was over. He was getting ready to walk across to the meeting hall and accept the return of Mount Adams from Government officials. Most American Indians before the 1960 s lived quietly on the reservations, where they were sent after the plains wars. They lived in limbo, floating between two cultures, and not getting on very well in either one. FIGHT FOR RIGHTS They had a unique legal relationship with the United States Government. Their reservations were Federally protected “domestic nations” within a nation, a status they looked upon as just because ( of all the land they had lost. ( But a motorway sparked interest by the Yakimas in fighting for their 1 rights. A.motorway from the 1 north stopped at the Yakima 1 River, the reservation bound- < ary. One day, Chief Robert

Jim was walking through a paddock near the river and came upon a surveyor. He asked the surveyor what he was doing on Indian land, but the man told him to go away. He did not recognise the Indian chief, and said that a survey for extending the motorway into Indian territory was none of his business. Robert Jim went to his lawyers instead of his guns, and the battle was fought through the high courts. The planned motorway was stopped. Then pressures intensified for return of the mountain,

a which had been outside the d reservation in a national e forest since 1907. e The Treaty of 1855 had 1, promised the Indians their o mountain, but a slipshod e boundary survey had missed d it. Much of the land which g should have been Indian n went into private ownership, s lost to the Yakimas for ever. An original treaty map s showing the correct bound--5 ary was not found until the 19305, hidden away in bureaue cratic files. s The Yakimas were offered money for the 21,000 acres, but would not accept it. They d had seen too much of their •> land sold to white farmers, - by fair means or foul, until their reservation looked like a patchwork quilt. ; They posted a “Not for jsale” sign on their claim, land stuck to it. After spending up to s2m i a year in tribal forestry (funds to buy back land, and build up their property' base, [the Yakima Tribal Council [was in no mood to give : away any more. INDIANS CONFUSED , An allotment law passed in the late 1800 s had allowed [individual Indians to own .'reservation land and sell it Jan y way they pleased. It .[was an attempt to motivate j the Indian to become al ((property-owner and farmer; [but many Indians were con-( (fused by the idea of individual ownership, and soon sold ( valuable farmland to the i white man. Through the years, many ! neighbouring whites said that 1 the Indians were wasting ( their time. But their reserva- (( tion superintendent—a Gov-( ernment official and a white ‘ man — stood up for them. ' He said it was remarkable 1 that the Yakimas were able ‘ to maintain their values in * the face of a dominant cul- . ture. and sharply attacked 1 what he called “the immoral-; ity of the American melting (. pot,” in which many immi-i? grants had lost their ethnic identities with nothing to . take their place. Finally, the land issue was settled by a man who later _ fell into disrepute, but a man whom many Indians will I never forget for returning their mountain — Mr Richard Nixon.