INTRODUCTION BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN HISTORY The very existence of American Indians has systematically been under attack, since the arrival of European settlers in North America. It would be remiss to discuss housing development challenges Indian tribes are facing today without first acknowledging the structural erasure of Indians tribes in relation to the formation of the United States of America. Scholar Patrick Wolfe categorizes the United States’ structural erasure of Indians and dispossession Indian land as a form of settler colonialism. The end goal with settler colonialism, is to remove and erase existing populations [i.e. Indians] from a territory and replace them with the settler society [i.e. English] via assimilation, spatial sequestration, and genocide.1 English settlers have sought policies to erase and remove Indians from their land in efforts to claim territory for the United States of America, since the establishment of the first English colony in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Of the 2.5 billion acres of land Indians originally owned, only 55 million acres remain in Indian Trust [Note: Land trust refers to land the federal government holds the title for the protection and benefit of an individual tribe member or a tribe] and managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs under the US Department of Interiors.2 It is important to draw a connection between the federal government of the United States relationship to Indian tribes and the chronological order of federal Indian housing policy. Historically federal Indian housing policy has supported the dispossession of land from Indian tribes and the assimilation of Indians. In 1831, Indians tribes were explicitly recognized as sovereign nations under the court ruling of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831). The court ruling established a trust responsibility and defined a ward to guardian relationship between Indian tribes and the federal government of the United States.3 The trust responsibility guarantees Indian tribes federal support for services, program development, and financial assistance to operate as sovereign nations. Additionally, the trust also provides tribes legal protection from state and local police powers.4 Despite the United States federal government trust responsibility to support and protect the best interest of tribes; for the past 150+ years the United States has fallen short delivering adequate housing development support to Indian tribes. Even more so up until the late 1960s, the federal government of the United States has pursued anti-Indian housing policies that secluded tribes to reservations devoid of natural resources and/or far from economic centers of employment opportunities, or forced tribes to assimilate in white American culture in urban areas.5 Much of the systemic impacts of these anti-Indian housing policies can be observed today. Approximately over 75% of American Indians reside in urban areas today and an estimate 24% of American Indians
1 Wolfe, Patrick. (2006). Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, Journal of Genocide Research, 8:4, 387- 409, DOI: 10.1080/14623520601056240
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Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST). (2020, February). [Federal]. Retrieved from https://www.doi. gov/ost/about_us/Statistics-and-Facts 3 West, W. Richard. (1990). Address: From “Cherokee Nation v. Georgia” to the National Museum of the American Indian: Images of Indian Culture. American Indian Law Review, 15(2), 409-420. www.jstor.org/stable/20068685 4 Wilkinson, Charles., Harris, LaDonna., Unger, Steven., Peterson, Helen., & Reifel, Benjamin. (1986). The Trust Obligation. In O’Neil F., Joseph A., & Hart E. & PHILP K. (Ed.), Indian Self Rule: First-Hand Accounts of Indian-White Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan (pp. 302-310). University Press of Colorado. doi:10.2307/j. ctt46nr85.30 5 Keeler, Kasey. (2016). Putting People Where They Belong: American Indian Housing Policy in the Mid-Twentieth Century. Native American and Indigenous Studies, 3(2), 70-104. doi:10.5749/natiindistudj.3.2.0070
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