Post by blackcrowheart on Oct 11, 2006 17:13:36 GMT -5
'Operation Indian Country'
Posted: October 06, 2006
by: Philip Burnham / Indian Country Today
Photo by Philip Burnham -- Pat Cuny's family was one of 125 Oglala Lakotas families on the Pine Ridge Reservation who were scattered when they lost their alloted lands in 1943 to the U.S. Department of War for a gunnery range. A year later Cuny enlisted and fought the Germans with the 83rd Infantry Division in World War II.
The taking of Native lands in the name of war
The Summer of 1942
During the World War II era, the federal government condemned and leased hundreds of thousands of Indian acres for military use, much of it never returned to Indian hands. In this series, Indian Country Today spoke with Native people affected by the takings, many who served their country in wartime, lost their land to the government, and still harbor strong feelings on the matter.
KYLE, S.D. - Pat Cuny went to Europe with the 83rd Infantry Division in 1944 feeling like he'd already been through a scrape. His family had just been run off their land on the Pine Ridge Reservation by the Department of War.
In 1942, a gunnery range the size of a whole county displaced 125 Lakota families from Oglala treaty land. They had 30 days - or less - to leave homes, farms, schools and cemeteries behind.
Cuny's parents got $1,200 for an allotted half-section of land, Pat recalled, house, barn and outbuildings thrown in. ''Everything that was left after 30 days, they just came and chain sawed and made little hutches, little A-houses, for machine gunners. We didn't have no money to move the house.''
That summer the family scattered. Some went to work at the Black Hills Ordnance Depot; his mother, recently widowed, moved to Denver. ''I was going to get drafted, so I just enlisted,'' Cuny said hoarsely, his voice rasping from a decade-long bout with throat cancer.
The war found him when the Germans torpedoed his troop transport in the English Channel. Half his company went down, and ''d**n few'' were rescued, he said. Cuny ''fought through France, fought through Germany'' and saw Europe on Uncle Sam's nickel - lucky to come home in one piece. ''There was a lot of these Indian boys who gave their lives.''
After the war, Congress awarded $3,500 extra per family for the gunnery range takings. ''It never came to $5,000 for a half-section of ground,'' growled Cuny, doggedly bitter during several conversations. ''That's good ground. That's the choicest ground there is in the center of this table. That's that black soil about 6 foot deep - I know because we dug a lot of graves over there by hand.''
Stories like Cuny's are as common as prickly pear in Indian country - for the time being. About a thousand World War II veterans die every day, and the memory of the ''good war'' fades with them. But Native veterans still recall what the War Department took from their own backyard while they were off fighting Hideki Tojo and Adolf Hitler.
With blitzkrieg in the air, some powerful buyers came to Indian country. Some of the least productive land in the American West, much of it reserved for Native people in trust, suddenly had enormous military value. While landowners of all races were affected, Indian land, already in federal control, was the easiest to take.
Indian acreage was seized for training grounds, bombing ranges, base camps, air strips, and Japanese-American internment centers. A conservative estimate puts Indian land takings in the World War II era at 1 million acres, an area the size of Rhode Island - with millions more taken in ceded traditional lands adjacent to reservations.
Though never officially named, ''Operation Indian Country,'' to coin a phrase, qualifies as the largest Native land taking in America since allotment. Much of that land has never returned to Indian control.
Some areas were condemned by eminent domain and ''purchased'' for a deflated, court-determined fee. Others were leased from tribes for extended periods, often at dirt-cheap rates. Some land was returned to Indian owners only after absorbing environmental damage that has compromised development for the past half century.
Ask the Walker River Paiute, who have long complained about underground ordnance on their Nevada reservation. Paiute land straddles Bravo 19 Bombing Range near Fallon Naval Air Station, established in 1942. Tribal environment director Tad Williams said there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Native acres in need of cleanup, a job the military estimated at $1 million before a private consulting firm dismissed the sum as inadequate. The tribe filed a tort claim against the government, but the case has languished for lack of money.
Or take the Shoshone-Bannock of southern Idaho, another willing contributor to the war effort. About 1,000 acres of reservation land were condemned by the War Powers Act and taken for use as a landing strip in the 1940s. Though allotment owners were compensated, the tribe was given to understand the land would one day be returned.
Instead, the strip was sold as excess property to the Pocatello municipal government for a nominal fee. Today, the tribe must deal with a large patch of land in the middle of the reservation - the site of the city airport - that creates jurisdictional headaches and a lot of overhead noise. Sixty years later, said tribal officials, the matter still rankles.
Farther north, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska lost prime waterfront land in Sitka village that was never returned by the War Department and is now owned by a private fish processor. Said tribal attorney Jessica Perkins when asked about a paper trail: ''The War Department didn't take notes about those kinds of things.''
Al Duncan Sr., Sitka tribe, a member of the city assembly, can vouch for that. Duncan was an infant in 1942 when the Army asked his father to vacate land on Excursion Inlet, about 50 miles west of Juneau. Peter Duncan, a prospector, boat builder, and former Northwest mounted policeman, was hopping mad. After three warnings, he placed two American flags on his door - one for each of the sons he had in the military. ''You're going to have to kill me to take my land,'' Al Duncan recounted his father saying.
The Army resettled Peter Duncan but never issued a deed. When Haines Borough later claimed ownership of the relocated tract, he didn't have any paperwork. ''If it was up to us to give ourselves a deed, we'd own all southeast Alaska,'' Al Duncan said. He fought to have his father's 60 acres returned and was ready to go to trial when the state gave 19 of them back, a settlement arranged out of court. ''No one even knew what a deed was,'' Duncan said, ''but we sure as hell do now.''
Deeds didn't mean much in wartime, as the Cuny family found out. Those with no paper at all - like the Navajo of Fort Wingate - were in even bigger trouble.
(Continued in part two)
Philip Burnham is the recipient of a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Posted: October 06, 2006
by: Philip Burnham / Indian Country Today
Photo by Philip Burnham -- Pat Cuny's family was one of 125 Oglala Lakotas families on the Pine Ridge Reservation who were scattered when they lost their alloted lands in 1943 to the U.S. Department of War for a gunnery range. A year later Cuny enlisted and fought the Germans with the 83rd Infantry Division in World War II.
The taking of Native lands in the name of war
The Summer of 1942
During the World War II era, the federal government condemned and leased hundreds of thousands of Indian acres for military use, much of it never returned to Indian hands. In this series, Indian Country Today spoke with Native people affected by the takings, many who served their country in wartime, lost their land to the government, and still harbor strong feelings on the matter.
KYLE, S.D. - Pat Cuny went to Europe with the 83rd Infantry Division in 1944 feeling like he'd already been through a scrape. His family had just been run off their land on the Pine Ridge Reservation by the Department of War.
In 1942, a gunnery range the size of a whole county displaced 125 Lakota families from Oglala treaty land. They had 30 days - or less - to leave homes, farms, schools and cemeteries behind.
Cuny's parents got $1,200 for an allotted half-section of land, Pat recalled, house, barn and outbuildings thrown in. ''Everything that was left after 30 days, they just came and chain sawed and made little hutches, little A-houses, for machine gunners. We didn't have no money to move the house.''
That summer the family scattered. Some went to work at the Black Hills Ordnance Depot; his mother, recently widowed, moved to Denver. ''I was going to get drafted, so I just enlisted,'' Cuny said hoarsely, his voice rasping from a decade-long bout with throat cancer.
The war found him when the Germans torpedoed his troop transport in the English Channel. Half his company went down, and ''d**n few'' were rescued, he said. Cuny ''fought through France, fought through Germany'' and saw Europe on Uncle Sam's nickel - lucky to come home in one piece. ''There was a lot of these Indian boys who gave their lives.''
After the war, Congress awarded $3,500 extra per family for the gunnery range takings. ''It never came to $5,000 for a half-section of ground,'' growled Cuny, doggedly bitter during several conversations. ''That's good ground. That's the choicest ground there is in the center of this table. That's that black soil about 6 foot deep - I know because we dug a lot of graves over there by hand.''
Stories like Cuny's are as common as prickly pear in Indian country - for the time being. About a thousand World War II veterans die every day, and the memory of the ''good war'' fades with them. But Native veterans still recall what the War Department took from their own backyard while they were off fighting Hideki Tojo and Adolf Hitler.
With blitzkrieg in the air, some powerful buyers came to Indian country. Some of the least productive land in the American West, much of it reserved for Native people in trust, suddenly had enormous military value. While landowners of all races were affected, Indian land, already in federal control, was the easiest to take.
Indian acreage was seized for training grounds, bombing ranges, base camps, air strips, and Japanese-American internment centers. A conservative estimate puts Indian land takings in the World War II era at 1 million acres, an area the size of Rhode Island - with millions more taken in ceded traditional lands adjacent to reservations.
Though never officially named, ''Operation Indian Country,'' to coin a phrase, qualifies as the largest Native land taking in America since allotment. Much of that land has never returned to Indian control.
Some areas were condemned by eminent domain and ''purchased'' for a deflated, court-determined fee. Others were leased from tribes for extended periods, often at dirt-cheap rates. Some land was returned to Indian owners only after absorbing environmental damage that has compromised development for the past half century.
Ask the Walker River Paiute, who have long complained about underground ordnance on their Nevada reservation. Paiute land straddles Bravo 19 Bombing Range near Fallon Naval Air Station, established in 1942. Tribal environment director Tad Williams said there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Native acres in need of cleanup, a job the military estimated at $1 million before a private consulting firm dismissed the sum as inadequate. The tribe filed a tort claim against the government, but the case has languished for lack of money.
Or take the Shoshone-Bannock of southern Idaho, another willing contributor to the war effort. About 1,000 acres of reservation land were condemned by the War Powers Act and taken for use as a landing strip in the 1940s. Though allotment owners were compensated, the tribe was given to understand the land would one day be returned.
Instead, the strip was sold as excess property to the Pocatello municipal government for a nominal fee. Today, the tribe must deal with a large patch of land in the middle of the reservation - the site of the city airport - that creates jurisdictional headaches and a lot of overhead noise. Sixty years later, said tribal officials, the matter still rankles.
Farther north, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska lost prime waterfront land in Sitka village that was never returned by the War Department and is now owned by a private fish processor. Said tribal attorney Jessica Perkins when asked about a paper trail: ''The War Department didn't take notes about those kinds of things.''
Al Duncan Sr., Sitka tribe, a member of the city assembly, can vouch for that. Duncan was an infant in 1942 when the Army asked his father to vacate land on Excursion Inlet, about 50 miles west of Juneau. Peter Duncan, a prospector, boat builder, and former Northwest mounted policeman, was hopping mad. After three warnings, he placed two American flags on his door - one for each of the sons he had in the military. ''You're going to have to kill me to take my land,'' Al Duncan recounted his father saying.
The Army resettled Peter Duncan but never issued a deed. When Haines Borough later claimed ownership of the relocated tract, he didn't have any paperwork. ''If it was up to us to give ourselves a deed, we'd own all southeast Alaska,'' Al Duncan said. He fought to have his father's 60 acres returned and was ready to go to trial when the state gave 19 of them back, a settlement arranged out of court. ''No one even knew what a deed was,'' Duncan said, ''but we sure as hell do now.''
Deeds didn't mean much in wartime, as the Cuny family found out. Those with no paper at all - like the Navajo of Fort Wingate - were in even bigger trouble.
(Continued in part two)
Philip Burnham is the recipient of a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.