The Trail of Self-Determination, 1976

A different Bicentennial

In 1976 the United States marked 200 years of independence. For American Indian communities still fighting for self-determination, it meant something else: despite recent legislative wins, much remained to undo nearly two centuries of federal policy aimed at eliminating tribal nations.

Four years after activists occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), a new cross-country caravan set out, amid the celebrations, carrying the Twenty Points of the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties to Congress and President Ford. The aims, as before:

• make the government honor its treaties and commitments;
• replace the BIA with an agency elected by and for Indian peoples;
• above all, economic self-determination and control of tribal resources. With vast coal, oil and timber on western reservations, one participant warned these times were "critical": without self-determination, the BIA would lease those lands with or without tribal consent.

The press barely noticed, but federal officials watched closely for a repeat of 1972. The 1976 protest was tame by comparison, yet it told Washington the movement would go on until relations truly changed — and it foreshadowed decades of struggle over land and resources.

The caravan

• June 1976: it left the Yakima Nation in Washington State, following the Bicentennial Wagon Train's route — a covered-wagon reenactment of westward settlement — in reverse.
• Joined by: the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux of South Dakota, the Wolf Point Sioux and Blackfoot of Montana, and Chicano activists pressing their own rights under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
• Lawrence, Kansas: a week of conferences and workshops at Haskell Junior College, one of the oldest federal schools for Native Americans.
• Spirit: Gene Heavy Runner (Blackfeet, Montana) called it a spiritual movement too: "Our spiritual heritage is all that has kept what remains of the Indian way of life alive."

Watched all the way: perhaps 150 people strong on arrival — far smaller than 1972 — but federal agents, working with state patrols, formed a squad for the "Indian scare." The fears were unfounded, though friction was always possible. In St. Louis, the National Park Service ejected the caravan's tipis from the Gateway Arch, then reversed itself and issued a special camping permit.

Washington

• July 3, 1976: the caravan arrived, camping at American University's soccer field and the Piscataway Indian Center.
• July 4: now about 300 strong, they gathered before the White House to a drumbeat, demanding a meeting with President Gerald Ford and a joint session of Congress on Indian self-government and control of resources. Neither came.

The arrests: the protests got little coverage until 54 caravan members were arrested — on an order the article attributes to Dennis Ickes. The group went to the BIA building at 1951 Constitution Avenue NW, center of the 1972 occupation, and asked for a tour. Interior officials, remembering 1972, refused, closed the building and sent its 200 employees home. When the group, gathered in the parking lot by the back door, refused the Federal Protective Service's order to leave, they were arrested without resistance: 16 men, 16 women and 22 young people.

The road goes on

• The D.C. Corporation Counsel quickly dropped the charges, and the group met BIA officials the next day.
• Demonstrations continued outside the White House through July.
• The BIA made no commitments, and the demonstrators went home without further incident.

But their journey was far from over.

Sources

Based on "The Trail of Self-Determination, 1976," part of the series The Struggle for Sovereignty: American Indian Activism in the Nation's Capital, 1968–1978, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Its sources include the Philadelphia Tribune (July 3, 1976), Akwesasne Notes (June 30, 1976), the Washington Post (Wilson Morris and Paul Hodge, "54 Indians Seized, Charged Following Argument at BIA," July 8, 1976), the Bicentennial Commission of Pennsylvania (Ford Library) and Jessica Brodt, "Native American Delegations, Diplomacy, and Protests at the White House," White House Historical Association, 2020. The article calls Dennis Ickes Secretary of the Interior; the Secretary in July 1976 was Thomas S. Kleppe. It also says officials watched the "Trail of Broken Treaties" where the 1976 caravan is meant, and that the struggles continued "well into the twentieth century." The Washington Star photograph of the White House march is not reproduced.