Off Guard by Chandler LeRoy of Sinte Gleska University

In the summer of 1971, the Twin Cities Institute for Talented Youth, in collaboration with the Minnesota Historical Society, organized a six-week archaeology project for 45 area high school students. Participants would take part in a real-life “dig,” excavating and collecting artifacts from what was once an Indian village located near the present-day town of Welch, about 50 miles south of St. Paul. But not everyone was on board with the project. Many people from Minnesota’s Native communities, none of which had been consulted, expressed their opposition. Artley Skenadore, the executive director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Commission, summed up the feelings of many when he stated, “We will not stand for the desecration of our Indian burial grounds.”

Over the course of the ensuing weeks, the anger boiled over, even while the project’s directors and the participants remained either dismissive or completely oblivious to the growing resentment. Hence, it came as something of a shock when a group of American Indian Movement (AIM) activists showed up on the scene one evening and began confiscating shovels, picks, and trowels. The archaeologists were even more dumbfounded when the activists filled in the trenches they had excavated, destroyed their equipment, burned their field notes, and proceeded to guard the site. Students were visibly shaken, some started crying. Unmoved, AIM leader Clyde Bellecourt explained that they were trespassing, looting, and grave robbing on stolen Indian land. He then informed the students that the artifacts they had taken would be reburied following an intertribal ceremony.

In many ways, AIM was the blunt instrument of a growing intellectual movement that challenged the long-held assumptions of mainstream academia. To be sure, the organization’s actions and tactics were both confrontational and coercive, but more importantly they illuminated that for far too long, Native peoples and cultures had been treated as objects of study, observation, even experimentation. It was high time that things No one articulated this sentiment better than Vine Deloria Jr. In his classic 1969 manifesto, Custer Died for Your Sins—deemed by many Red Power acolytes, including Clyde Bellecourt, to be the bible of their movement—Deloria ripped into the “parasitic scholars” who needed to “get down from their thrones of authority and PURE research and begin helping Indian tribes instead of preying on them.” Published just two years before the events in Welch, Minnesota, Deloria warned, “the wheel of Karma grinds slowly but it does grind finely. And it makes a complete circle.”

Deloria especially had choice words for anthropologists. In his chapter, “Anthropologists and Other Friends,” he maintained that reservations were nothing more than “private zoos” for those studying their inhabitants. “Why should tribes have to compete with scholars for funds when the scholarly productions are so useless and irrelevant to real life?” he queried. But the Lakota scholar didn’t just question and critique, he also offered some practical, common-sense solutions that tribes could impellent. Long before the wide-spread implementation of institutional review boards, Deloria suggested that tribal governments require anthropologists to complete an application before they could conduct a study on Indian land. He further recommended that the study only be approved if a financial contribution was made to the tribe that equaled the amount spent on the study. After those two conditions were met, Deloria concluded in trademark sardonic fashion that “anthropologists would thus become productive members of Indian society instead of ideological vultures.”

Nearly 30 years after the publication of Custer Died for Your Sins, Deloria reflected on how anthropology, and specifically its subfields of archaeology and ethnography, had evolved. He noted that “some immensely useful work” had been done on behalf of Native peoples and communities. Ethnographic evidence had been employed to great effect in the landmark case U.S. v. Washington, which resulted in the affirmation and protection of Northwest tribes’ treaty-protected fishing rights. Yet Deloria pointed out that grave robbing and artifact stealing continued, even after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. He added that this lack of respect continues largely due to the Western values that undergird the research. The time had come for Native peoples to assume control over research in their own communities.

Today, Deloria’s prophetic observations remain as relevant as ever. At the same time, we are facing new challenges and increasingly complex problems. This issue of Tribal College Journal explores the foundations of data sovereignty and what it portends for the future. In the article, “Not for Sale,” journalist Kalista Peña examines the datafication of Indian Country—a new form of colonialism that in large part seeks to commodify Indigenous knowledge and lifeways in pursuit of the profit motive for outside non-Native enterprise. But Peña shows how Native scholars and thinkers at tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are striking back and leading the effort for Native people to manage information—both quantitative and qualitative— in ways that are culturally sensitive as well as beneficial for the communities they serve.

The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), the unifying body of America’s TCUs, has taken big steps toward Indigenous control over Indigenous data. The organization’s membership and student services team has developed a reporting system that more accurately tracks TCU student metrics, which can be game-changing for institutional planning, decision making, and public policy. Moreover, AIHEC recognizes that TCUs’ metrics of success differ from those of mainstream institutions. For TCUs, preserving culture and strengthening communities hold greater weight than dollars and status. Read all about it in the Research article, “Wéwéné gda nadmadmen gzhiwéwen”.

Another way in which TCUs are leading data sovereignty efforts is by overseeing and controlling research and programming. As showcased in the feature article, “Desert Drones,” students at Tohono O’odham Community College in southern Arizona are learning how to operate drones to gather data about wildfire preparedness and damage assessment, invasive species threats, environmental changes, as well as about the location of traditional O’odham migratory routes. Informing the program is the himdag— the O’odham’s culture, way of life, and values. This uniquely indigenized program is taking data back for the Tohono O’odham Nation.

While there remains much work to be done, TCUs are making giant strides towards greater data sovereignty for their chartering tribes and Native nations more broadly. Vine Deloria Jr. may no longer be with us here in this world, but TCUs are fulfilling his vision and transforming how data is gathered and utilized for the betterment of future generations.

Bradley Shreve, PhD, is the editor of Tribal College Journal.

REFERENCES

Biolsi, T., & Zimmerman, L.J. (Eds.). (1997). Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Critique of Anthropology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Deloria Jr., V. (1969). Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. New York: Macmillan.

Indian Artifacts Turned Over to State Commission. (1971, July 25). Winona Sunday News, p. 2A.