A Fifty-Year Perspective on the Indian Reorganization Act

The achievement of John Collier, commissioner of Indian Affairs under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and father of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), has been increasingly ignored or denigrated by the anthropological profession, upon whose advice Collier relied to reverse the nation's Indian policy and resuscitate the inherent powers of Indian tribes. I assert that but for the IRA, Indian tribal governments would probably not exist today. I also attempt to refute those critics who assert (1) that the U.S. government imposed elective systems on the Indians against their will; (2) that even though Indian voters may have voted to accept the IRA, the vast majority indicated their rejection of the act by not voting at all; (3) that IRA governments are "puppet" governments; and (4) that Indians have lost independence and freedom as a result of the IRA. The tribal structures created or revived by the IRA are now vigorous and growing in power and authority, and I postulate that with the growth among anthropologists of a "resistance model" of Indian. White relations and the gradual repudiation of the assimilationist model held by most anthropologists 50 years ago, Collier's policy of locating tribal autonomy within the federal system of government rather than in resistance to it came to be seen as a "cop-out" by anthropologists who failed to realize that without the policy Indian tribal governments would probably soon have ceased to exist.