Transcripts

[DRUMMING, SINGING] MONIKA BAUERLEIN: Almost every day for more than seven weeks, the drum beat in a makeshift camp across from the White Earth Reservation tribal buildings. Jim Weaver started a hunger fest here on July 6. He wanted to oust tribal Chairman Darrell Chip Wadena. Even after stopping his fest this week, Weaver says he will continue to fight the chairman. He says the tribal government is corrupt and dictatorial.

JIM WEAVER: He calls himself super chief. But I know better, my people know better. He's a super thief.

MONIKA BAUERLEIN: Chip Wadena has dismissed this protest, as he has many others in the past. He says the protesters are a small minority of welfare abusers who can't win an election. He says he's tired of defending himself against unfounded allegations.

DARRELL CHIP WADENA: I'm just getting a little disgusted. What we're going to do here is we're going to do a PR, we're going to hire a public relations firm, to do the real story on this situation. And then you can get the story from them.

MONIKA BAUERLEIN: The fight between Weaver and Wadena may look like a clash of personalities, but similar protests have erupted elsewhere in the past few weeks. Tribal members and tribal government clashed violently on the Big Mountain Navajo Reservation in the Southwest and in the Six Nations Confederacy in the Northeast.

Gordon Regguinti edits The Circle, an Indian newspaper in Minneapolis. He says the problem is not so much individual leaders. It's the structure of tribal government.

GORDON REGGUINTI: We kind of had a system imposed upon us, a system of hierarchical form of government about 50 years ago through the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. It's just not there. It's not our way of life. It's not our way of governing ourselves. So what does it matter if there's 100 Chief Wadenas throughout the country. It doesn't matter if there's 100 dynamite leaders across the country. It's the system that is undergoing the change.

MONIKA BAUERLEIN: When white people first met with Indians, they knew little about the tribe's traditional ways of government by consensus. Rather than negotiating with a whole group of Indians, white people picked big chiefs who would negotiate land cessions and sign treaties. In 1934, the federal government mandated a constitution for Indian tribes.

Now, reservations are governed by business committees. The committees are bureaucratic bodies set up to administer state funds rather than to govern sovereign nations. Vernon Bellecourt, an American Indian Movement leader, served on the Business Committee of White Earth in the late '70s. He says tribal governments could be more powerful, but they are too dependent on outside money.

VERNON BELLECOURT: They always acquiesce to these politicians' threats that if you don't capitulate, we will cut off the funds. As it was historically when our people didn't capitulate to the politicians, they withheld the rations, they withheld the blankets, they withheld the medicine, and tried to starve us into submission.

MONIKA BAUERLEIN: Bellecourt and other Indian activists say tribal government is a colonial system. They say state and federal governments want tribes to be weak so they don't fight for treaty rights and sovereignty. In Wisconsin, some tribal governments have sued the state for the right to hunt, fish, and gather timber without state interference. Minnesota tribal chairmen have preferred to negotiate with the state. They've been accused of selling out.

Roger Head is the director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. He says tribal governments are not selling out. They're simply trying to get the best possible deal for their communities.

ROGER HEAD: The programs that they bring in, the jobs that they're trying to create, and the work that they do better the lives of the residents of that reservation.

MONIKA BAUERLEIN: Head says tribal government is like any other local government. It must deliver services, lobby for state and federal programs, and try to get re-elected. In all three respects, he says, tribal leaders in Minnesota have done well.

ROGER HEAD: It's basically using the system, using the system effectively to get what you want done.

MONIKA BAUERLEIN: Some reservations say they can make the system of tribal government work. Many have rewritten their constitutions to encourage more community involvement. Even on White Earth, some in the opposition are trying to use the system. They do the paper trail, circulate petitions, and file complaints. Marvin Manypenny follows this strategy, but he says it's only a means to an end, changing the system.

MARVIN MANYPENNY: What we're attempting to do without getting violent, without raising a bunch of hell is try to use a system to our advantage and bring about constitutional change.

MONIKA BAUERLEIN: A new kind of government, Manypenny says, could take different forms. Indian history provides models like the Iroquois Confederacy, which is said to have inspired the US Constitution. Indian leaders also look to contemporary models such as Sweden, Libya, or the US Constitution itself. Whichever way tribes decide to go, Manypenny hopes disputes like White Earth will open up a new chapter in Indian history. He says the first sentence is already written.

MARVIN MANYPENNY: The United States government does not have the right to tell us how to govern ourselves.

MONIKA BAUERLEIN: I'm Monika Bauerlein reporting.