Sen. Mike Rounds is taking aim at outdated and “offensive” statutes imposed on Native Americans stretching back more than 100 years to try to assimilate or subjugate tribes that are still part of current law even though they haven’t been enforced in decades.
“We took a look at these laws that are way outdated — we went and picked out some of the most absurd and asked that they be taken off the books,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Some are just crazy.”
The South Dakota Republican first learned of the laws’ persistence from staffers with Native American heritage who complained to him that it was long past time to scrub the books.
Several of the laws were written in the mid-1850s and early 1900s, including one that made it legal to take tribal children from their homes and place them in boarding schools. If Native American parents objected, they could lose government rations.
“… The consent of parents, guardians or next of kin shall not be required to place Indian youth in said school,” the law, which was written in 1906, states.
The law was used to immerse Native Americans in mainstream American life, and in off-reservation boarding schools, such as the Carlisle Indian School. Based in Carlise, Pa., the school forced thousands of students to jettison any outward signs of tribal life they brought with them, including the long braids worn by Indian boys.
Those who ran the schools and supported their creation believed they were necessary to civilize Native American children and make them productive members of U.S. society. The federal government, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, paid for the removal of thousands of children, as well as their education in the boarding schools.
Some of the schools operated until 1978, with the passing of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which gave Native American parents the legal right to refuse to allow their children to be placed in off-reservation boarding schools.
Another law forced Native Americans to be subjected to forced labor on their reservations as a condition of their receipt of “supplies” from the federal or local government.
“For the purpose of inducing Indians to labor and [to] become self-supporting, it is provided that, in distributing the supplies for whom the same are appropriated, the agent distributing the same shall require all able-bodied male Indians between the ages of 18-45 to perform service on the reservation …”
The “allowances provided for such Indians shall be distributed to them only on condition of the performance of such labor …,” the law, dating back to 1875, states.
Even though many of these laws haven’t been used for 50 years or more, Rounds believes it is time to expunge them from the books as an act of reconciliation for the federal government’s treatment of Native Americans in the country’s early formation, an institutionalized injustice that continued for more than 100 years and remnants of which still exist today.
“This represented a time in our culture in which we were trying to take the Native American culture away from them and were trying to force on them European culture,” he said. “Many of them shouldn’t be on the books in the first place, and the first step in reconciliation and bringing back good will is to take these laws and eliminate them.”
South Dakota is home to nine Native American tribes and roughly 75,000 enrolled members who have objected to the laws continuing to remain part of U.S. statutes, even though the federal government has ignored them for decades.
The Repealing Existing Substandard Provisions Encouraging Reconciliation with Tribes Act, or RESPECT, passed the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in September with unanimous support. But Rounds said the Senate simply ran out of time on its calendar late last year, so he is pushing for full passage of the bill as soon as possible this year.
Rounds has called the laws in question a “sad reminder of the hostile aggression and overt racism displayed by the early federal government toward Native Americans.”
“The idea that these laws were ever considered is disturbing, but the fact that they remain part of our legal code today is, at best, an oversight,” he said after the measure’s committee passage.
The RESPECT bill identifies 12 laws pertaining to Native Americans that he considers morally offensive and prime for repeal.
One particularly egregious law, dating back to 1875, would allow the withholding of all money, goods or annuities paid to Native Americans who are deemed “under the influence of any description of intoxicating liquor.”
In effect, Rounds said, if the federal government recognized that any entity owed money or bought or sold land with Native Americans, it could be denied based on whether local and federal officials believed the individuals entitled to those transfer were not drinking alcohol or had “intoxicating liquor within convenient reach.”
“The laws that we are identifying here have no value today whatsoever,” Rounds said.
