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Ayabe-Way-We-Tung
became the third Little Shell chief in 1872 and quickly began
pushing the U.S. government for a reservation that would be
his people's homeland. On Friday, his tribe won federal recognition.
(National Anthropological Archives, National Museum of Natural
History, Smithsonian Institution)
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MISSOULA, Mont. Almost 130 years after their treaty negotiations
with the U.S. government first fell apart, the Little Shell Tribe
of Chippewa Indians has at last triumphed.
The Little Shell, with some 5,400 members mostly scattered around
Montana, was officially recognized as part of the $738 billion defense
bill that the Senate passed Tuesday and President Trump signed Friday.
That pen stroke put the group on equal footing with other sovereign
Indian nations, in both symbolic and very substantive ways.
"It's really about dignity, because we've been fighting for so
long," said tribal Chairman Gerald Gray, who tracked the bill's
final steps from a meeting of Native American leaders in Billings.
"It's righting a wrong."
The long and fragmented history of the Little Shell, known for
decades as Montana's landless Native Americans, can now move forward
with a more cohesive future. Members will have access to funding
and programs like the Indian Health Services, plus a tract of their
own land a reservation, not even one square mile, in a yet-to-be
determined spot with the potential for amenities like a tribal
college.
For Gray and others who don't have health insurance because it's
too expensive, the details will be critically important. "There
are a lot of members in this situation," he said.
But the significance of this week's action goes far beyond the
obvious, tangible benefits, which probably will require lengthy
negotiations with the government. Many individuals have painful
personal stories to tell about stigma.
Colleen Hill, who grew up in the central Montana city of Great
Falls, the de facto home base of the Little Shell, says federal
recognition as a tribe will alter the lives of future generations.
Her mother fought for the tribe's rights decades ago, and she has
done the same as a tribal council member.
"One thing that it's going to help with is our identity," Hill
said. "For the Little Shell people, there's a lot of us who felt
like you didn't know where you belonged. It won't be a continual
fight to prove we're Indian or where we came from."
The tribe's modern story began in what is now North Dakota in the
late 1800s, when Chief Little Shell ended treaty negotiations with
the federal government. Left without land, most tribe members became
nomadic and scattered across the Plains region.
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The
Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians has been pushing for
federal recognition as a sovereign tribal nation for generations.
(Little Shell Tribe)
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Today, the tribe owns three acres northwest of Great Falls, with
a cultural center on a site known as "Hill 57." The location, once
home to hundreds of Little Shell, became synonymous in Montana with
urban poverty. Some in the tribe hope their future reservation might
be placed there, a tribute to the past.
For tribal members, part of their struggle has been against two
worlds that considered them outsiders not just white society,
but also Native Americans with reservations of their own.
" 'You're not a real Indian unless you grew up on the reservation'
is a common thing," said Little Shell member Chris LaTray, a Missoula-based
writer. "A lot of us grew up off reservation."
LaTray, 52, who was raised in Frenchtown just outside Missoula,
says his father denied being Native American, while his grandparents
told him that they were Chippewa.
"I didn't hear Little Shell up until a decade ago, which was not
uncommon among members," LaTray said.
The irony of a Native American nation's existence being tucked
into the National Defense Authorization Act, the funding mechanism
for military forces that once worked to eradicate them, has not
gone unnoticed. And for LaTray, it's particularly galling to finally
be recognized by a president who is separating migrant families
at the border, in the same manner Native American families were
once separated. Still, members are pragmatic about what it all means
looking ahead.
With their federal recognition, the Little Shell join the 573 other
Indian nations eligible for funding or services from the Bureau
of Indian Affairs. Entry into this world is not easy; attempts to
carve out a place for the Little Shell have failed repeatedly since
the 1940s. Overall, fewer than 20 tribes have been recognized by
the BIA since the 1970s, and six of those were Virginia groups added
in just the last year.
For the Little Shell, the long road to this week's action began
at home in Montana. The state afforded the tribe recognition in
2000. That turned the tide for many members in terms of reversing
stigma and gaining respect, said Leona Kienenberger, 78, who lives
in eastern Montana.
"After my grandparents and my parents fought so many years for
this, it's important," she explained.
Yet the effort has lost many along the way, including Little Shell
historian Nicholas Vrooman, an adopted tribal member who died earlier
this year.
"Nicholas used to say, 'This is a tribe that literally, until very
recently, funded its operations with bake sales,' " LaTray recounted.
The final push in Congress was bipartisan, led by all three members
of the state's congressional delegation Sen. Jon Tester,
a Democrat, and his two Republican colleagues, Sen. Steve Daines
and Rep. Greg Gianforte. And at a ceremony in Helena on Friday,
Gov. Steve Bullock (D) announced that the tribe's flag would fly
atop the state Capitol. He called on all Montanans to honor "the
strength, endurance and tenacity of the Little Shell people."
The services that will follow could cost $41 million over five
years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, although its
estimate this March accounted for only some 2,600 tribal members.
Kevin Washburn, a scholar of Native American law and a former assistant
secretary for Indian affairs, said they earned their place among
the recognized tribal nations.
"The best evidence that the Little Shell Band is legitimate and
deserving of federal recognition is the sheer persistence of its
leadership. Persistence is the single most important trait of any
tribal nation in the United States," Washburn noted Monday.
"I have always told my law students that persistence is the most
important trait of American Indians," he continued. "If our ancestors
had lacked that, we would have been wiped from the earth long ago."
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Gerald
Gray, chairman of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians,
was meeting with other Native American leaders this week as
the Senate approved formal government recognition of his tribe.
The vote was "righting a wrong," he said. (Matthew Brown/AP)
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Seattle
was named after a tribal chief. Now his descendants own less than
an acre of city land.
D.C.
bill would honor 17th-century treaty by granting Native Americans
free fishing licenses
What
makes someone Native American?
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