Jim Ito-Adler was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil for two years before returning to study for a Ph.D. in social anthropology
Letters to Howard (An Interpretation of the Alaska Native Land Claims)
by Fred Bigjim and James Ito-Adler c. 1974
Fred Bigjim asked Alaska Native Knowledge Network to have Sara Harriger's (a college student) paper included with "Letters to Howard"
Forward
The letters in this short collection, Letters to Howard, are signed by Naugga Ciunerput and Wally Morton, two residents of Land’s End Village in the State of Alaska. The actual authors of the letters are Fred Bigjim and James Ito-Adler, who at the time were residents of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and students at Harvard University. As graduate students, they were both Teaching Fellows in an under-graduate course at the university, Social Sciences 152, entitled, "Native Americans in the Contemporary United States."
The idea of writing the letters under the name of Naugga Ciunerput and Wally Morton was not primarily an attempt to deceive people or fool them about the things that were being said. The letters are a very honest attempt to put down on paper certain questions, problems, feelings, and thoughts that we had about the situation of Native people in Alaska today. Fred Bigjim is an Alaskan Eskimo, himself, although he is not quite an "old" man yet. Jim Ito-Adler was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil for two years before returning to study for a Ph.D. in social anthropology. Thus, we were able to speak with our true voices in the letters as we combined our questions and shared our knowledge.
During the semester that we were teaching the course on Native Americans in the contemporary United States, we faced a similar situation over and over again. Students would read a book like Dee Brown’s "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" or Vine Delairea’s "Custer Died for Your Sins," and become outraged at the way Indian tribes were destroyed by the onslaught of "Western Civilization." They would hear Native American speakers denounce the Bureau of Indian Affairs and they would see television coverage of the Wounded Knee occupation at Pine Ridge, South Dakota. The result in many cases would be feelings of guild, shame, and sometimes outrage, but all too soon the moment would pass. And besides, Custer is dead and the U.S. Cavalry no longer charges down on hapless Indian villages. But this passes over the deep-rooted and barely perceived story of the expansion of certain forces in the American way of life that had perhaps greater effects on the Native American way of life than the 7th Cavalry. The integration of Native resources into the expanding market economy of the late 19th century meant the loss of their autonomous land base as the treat rights were eroded. The Dawes Severalty Act, sometimes know as the General Allotment Act, did irreparable damage to Native peoples under the guise of helping them to become better farmers and more civilized. The termination phase of Department of Interior might have phased out the BIA and Indian tribes as well under the guise of Indian self-reliance.
When we began to discuss these things in class, most of the students were aroused by the injustices, especially since they were at a distance both in time and space. After all, what happened on the frontier in 1870 was not going to happen in the United States in 1970. After all, the Alaska Natives were going to receive one billion dollars and eighty million - or was it forty million acres in compensation? As we read through the provisions of AN ACT (Public Law 92-203), we began to get a different perception. While it may be true that under the political conditions of the day this was the best settlement that Alaska Natives could have gotten, we decided to look the gift horse in the mouth. The purpose is not to second guess the Native leadership who were faced with the impossible task of representing Alaska’s diverse peoples in the negotiations and drafting of the bill, but rather to attempt to look to the future in an attempt to understand what forces this legislation will set loose in Alaska as far as the Native way of life is concerned.
We found some guidance in the story of the past, in the story of the relationship between Native peoples and the federal government in these United States of America. What is happening to Native people in Alaska is not a new story; it is a new chapter in an old story. Today we have discoveries of oil and an energy crisis; yesterday it was gold, timber, furs, water, and any number of international crises. Only now, as Naugga Ciunerput (Our Destiny) notes, the stakes are higher and the pot is sweeter.
The letters in this collection speak our mind for us. They are written with our voices. They ask the questions that bother us and state the feelings that move us. We do not pretend to have the answers to these serious questions, but we refuse to cover our ignorance in silence. The "experts" can write a complicated legal document like AN ACT, but it is the far simpler and humbler folk who will have to live with the consequences. And who will look to the future for them, their children, and the many generations to come? Will this be a story that started a century ago or will it start in twenty years when a new generation will have to live with today’s decisions?