With the Atlanta Braves’ recent World Series victory, calls have returned to change the team’s name and end fans’ use of the tomahawk chop, the chopping motion accompanied by an incantation. As Fawn Sharp, the president of the National Congress of American Indians, said last week, “In our discussions with the Atlanta Braves, we have repeatedly and unequivocally made our position clear: Native people are not mascots, and degrading rituals like the ‘tomahawk chop’ that dehumanize and harm us have no place in American society.”
The folks who believe that changing team names and fighting other forms of cultural insensitivity will improve the lives of Native Americans have made great strides in recent years. In 2020, the Washington Redskins changed the name of their team to — well, we don’t know yet. The Cleveland Indians, too, have retired their mascot. In 2020, the Chicago Board of Education voted to change the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day, and other cities and towns have followed suit. A school district in Canada removed thousands of books from its libraries (and even burned 30) that allegedly portrayed indigenous people in an insensitive light.
As these symbolic victories have been racked up, the actual conditions for American Indians have, if anything, deteriorated. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of COVID infection among American Indians was 3.5 times that among white Americans, and young American Indians were affected more severely than young members of other races, likely because of preexisting health conditions such as obesity and smoking. Nationwide, American Indians were nearly twice as likely to die from COVID compared to non-Hispanic whites.
The health outcomes of this population are inextricably tied to the poor performance of the Indian Health Service. With a $6 billion program serving 2.6 million individuals, the IHS has been the subject of numerous scandals since its inception, and investigations by the Wall Street Journal in recent years have revealed a corrupt agency with an unaccountable leadership.
In 2019, the Journal revealed that it had “examined 163 malpractice claims against the IHS that the government settled or lost since 2006. One out of four doctors involved in those cases worked for the IHS despite a history that should have raised red flags by the agency’s own standards.” Further, “at least 66 of the patients died as a result of the alleged malpractice.” While “insurance actuaries say U.S. doctors typically have one malpractice claim every 20 years or so … the IHS was willing to hire doctors with many more lawsuits in their past, in some cases more than 10 in less than a decade.” After another investigation into cover-ups of sexual abuse by physicians at the IHS, an independent report was commissioned to see what went wrong. The agency initially refused to release its contents, even after the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs demanded it.
In education, too, the government has continued to fail the Native population. During the 2018–19 school year, fewer than 1 in 4 Native American students in grades three to eight and grade 11 were rated as proficient in reading and writing on standardized state tests. In North Dakota, Native students’ graduation rate is about 20 points lower than that of white students. In South Dakota, the gap between Native students and students of all other backgrounds is 30 points.
Tony Dearman, the Bureau of Indian Education director since November 2016, became the 37th person to hold that position in 37 years after his predecessor used his influence to get jobs for a close relative and a woman with whom he had a romantic relationship. Dearman himself has been accused of impropriety in the handling of fiscal reviews at BIE schools. All the while, the BIE budget has grown to almost $1 billion this year, more than $22,000 per pupil.
Viable educational alternatives for Indian students have also remained limited. Of the five states without charter school laws, three — North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana — are home to some of the largest Indian populations. In February, a push to allow the creation of charter schools in South Dakota was defeated, with lawmakers arguing that they did not want money taken away from traditional public schools. Of course, the fact that those schools are failing Native children (and plenty of other children, too) was not considered.
Native parents are not only deprived of a decent education for their children, but they’re also unable to raise them in a safe environment. There is little good news to report when it comes to combating violent crime on Indian reservations. In 2020, President Donald Trump signed two bills to address the epidemic of missing, murdered, and trafficked indigenous women. But these laws, which are intended to improve coordination between tribal and federal authorities and create an advisory council to help the departments of Justice and the Interior do a better job of investigating these crimes, are unlikely to tackle the real problems behind the violence. Most of these crimes are committed on Indian lands by Indians themselves. And law enforcement in these communities is lacking and often ineffective. Moreover, federal authorities are loath to become entangled in these matters, for fear of stepping on tribal toes, even when it is their responsibility.
A 2017 inspector general report highlighted U.S. attorneys’ uneven track record of prosecuting serious violent crimes on reservations. A law had been passed in 2010 to help improve prosecution rates. Before the law, the Government Accountability Office found that U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute fully half of cases on reservations, leading to concerns that the practice was creating a safe haven for criminals on tribal lands. The latest figures, from 2016, show that U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute 46% of reservation cases. That included rejecting more than 550 assault and sexual assault cases, more than any other type of crime. The danger is only likely to grow for law-abiding citizens living on reservations. The Indian crime problem is on a collision course with growing demands by tribes for greater sovereignty over their territory. In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that about half of Oklahoma, including the city of Tulsa, is within a Native American reservation.
Meanwhile, the economic situation in these communities remains bleak. The decisions about what happens on Indian lands have little to do with any concern for the well-being of tribes or individual Indians, who could use the money and the jobs that come from natural resource development. These policies are merely an extension of environmentalist politics. Whether it’s the Keystone Pipeline or the Dakota Pipeline, the problem is the pipeline. Both would supposedly destroy the pristine environment. If blocking one means also being able to claim the mantle of support for indigenous rights, well, so much the better.
While Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (who oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs) has been hailed as the first Indian Cabinet secretary, her views on energy development are likely to hurt Indian economies. Her opposition to fracking and her support for the Green New Deal will come at the cost of much-needed development on Indian lands. Even gambling, which is not a viable source of income for most tribes, has begun to fail, thanks to a combination of COVID and competition from non-Indian gaming establishments. The profits for Connecticut’s Foxwoods Casino fell 31.6% in 2020, for example.
When it comes to what the most vocal Indian leaders say they want from the new administration, the list is as predictable as it will be ineffective: more money for public infrastructure projects, the IHS, and education. Speaking just before he signed the infrastructure bill earlier this month, President Joe Biden noted, “I’m very proud to say … the single-largest investment in tribal infrastructure ever is going to occur: more than $13 billion in direct investments to Indian country and tens of billions more in grants and future funding opportunities — funding for clean drinking water, high-speed internet, roads and bridges, environmental cleanups, and so much more.”
Yet more money won’t fix the problems. It will go to the exact same federal agencies that have suffered from mismanagement and corruption for years. And what little trickles down to reservations will provide almost no long-term improvements.
But at least Native Americans will no longer be subject to the tomahawk chop.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives.
