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This War is For a Whole Life [Culture of Resistance] (4 pages)
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Page: of 4
Hanks argues, for during this decade the Agua Caliente Federationists successfully made
a stand to defend their land and water.
The Southern California Indians were resoundingly opposed to the Indian
Reorganization Act and were critical of John Collier, as was the national right-of-center
national organization, the American Indian Federation (AIF). Political activists like
Rupert Costo saw the IRA as perpetuating both paternalism and Indians’ humiliating
second-class status as wards, while also saddling them with the deviant tag of
communism. A significant insight to be drawn from Hanks’ evidence is that prominent
Federationists like President Adam Castillo held interlocking memberships in the AIF.
This linkage explains the persistence of the anti-Bureau/anti-IRA/pro-termination stance
of the Federation’s later years, as much as—or more than—the personality and politics of
the avid Republican Purl Willis.
What distinguishes Hanks’ book from those of other scholars who have assessed
the region’s history is the strong emphasis he places on consensus and continuity. The
Federation assumed “primary authority” (p. 142) over Southern California Indians in the
1920s and continued to “spread its control” (p. 148) in the 1930s, thus constructing the
Federation as monolithic and hegemonic. Though Hanks notes periodic defections and
factionalism, unity is highlighted, a prime example being the minimization of the
differences between proand anti-termination groups in the 1960s (p. 188). In terms of
historical continuity of pan-Indian goals, Pablo’s opposition to allotment matches the
Federation’s anti-allotment stance (p. 142). There is a nice correlation between the
Federation’s “Human Rights and Home Rule” and Collier’s anti-allotment/home rule
platform, the latter in turn providing a bridge to the pan-Indianism of the 1960s and
1970s. Southern California Indians not only “fought,” they led, he concludes, shaping
national policy in “securing or altering the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, the California
Indians’ Jurisdictional Act in 1928, the creation of the Claims Commission in 1928 and
1946, and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934” (pp. 200-201).
His conclusions are partially persuasive. I heartily concur that the Federation had
an underappreciated impact on national policy. San Diego Congressman Phil Swing and
John Collier co-opted the Federation's call for “home rule” for their own political
purposes. However, it strikes the reader as overly romantic to valorize the Federation as a
noble institution reflecting the majority aims of aged traditionalists who constituted its
“backbone” and were led by ‘Buffalo Heart’ Tibbet, a man called to the people by
prophecy (p. 122). The Federation may rightfully claim a dignified place in the genealogy
of the now-venerated Indian Reorganization Act, but it parented the politically-incorrect
Termination movement in California, as its mid-century alignment with the right-ofcenter AIF verifies. In part this is a semantic problem—in the twenty-first century “selfdetermination” suggests tribal sovereignty, whereas in the 1930s “self-determination”
more readily evoked a freedom from wardship and paternalism. What “home rule” meant
in 1910 was a far cry from what it came to mean in 1960.
Hanks' enthusiasm for his thesis leads to occasional errors: an uncritical reading
of primary documents, overstatements, and assertions unsupported by evidence or
contradicted by the existing empirical evidence. Hanks’ focus on resistance and panIndian mobilization leaves underdeveloped the complex causes of political mobilization
and alliance as they varied across Southern California’s two dozen Indian communities
and morphed over time. Allotment as a powerful force underlying political mobilization,