For Tribal Perspectives during World War II, we provide some good links for topics pertaining to the role of American Indians in this war, but we focus on the founding of National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). This successful organization emerged during World War II, reflecting changing federal Indian policies and experiences of Indian people in the early 1940s.
The cousins Pfc. Preston Toledo (on the left) and Pfc. Frank Toledo (both Navajo) use the Navajo language to relay orders over a field radio during a World War II Marine Corps artillery operation in the South Pacific. The Japanese military was never able to decipher Navajo codes. The work of the code talkers remained classified until 1968. Their military service, however, demonstrated Navajo patriotism during the war and helped underwrite Navajo nationalism afterward. Courtesy National Archives (127-GR-137-57875). (Rosier:2006)
American Indians in WWII
Americans are generally aware that Native Americans have fought in all American wars but perhaps are not aware that no group that participated in World War II made a greater per capita contribution than American Indians.
Check out the details provided in an interesting article by Thomas D. Morgan -
www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/NAWWII.html
The National Museum of the American Indian has produced an award-winning website on code-talkers.
Native Words, Native Warriors
http://www.nmai.si.edu/education/codetalkers/
The Founding of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)
The formation of the National Congress of American Indians in 1944 was the result of several factors that emerged out of the World War II era.
In Doug Kiel’s review of Charles Wilkinson’s book, Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations, he focuses on the 1940s and the creation of NCAI, when Indian people “became active agents in their own survival and well-being, despite the most brutal of federal policies...
According to Kiel,
it is important to bear in mind that many indigenous people of the 1940s still primarily identified with their specific tribal (rather than inter-tribal) identities. Finding a common ground and uniting toward a shared cause proved enormously difficult in the early days of the NCAI. With an influx of recently returned World War II veterans eager to join the cause, the NCAI–though struggling and representing a relatively small number of Indian nations--began working to achieve Indian suffrage in New Mexico. The ability of American Indian people to collaborate in the 1940s and 1950s in an effort to advance a nationwide agenda of sovereignty and civil rights was indeed an historic achievement, often overlooked in light of the more boisterous movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
According to historian Donald L. Parman, the NCAI:
relied heavily on precedents established by IRA constitutions and by-laws, and many of the organizers had gained valuable political experience from IRA tribal governments… Because of their contributions to the war, Indians were more insistent about voting rights, ending the ban on drinking, gaining Social Security benefits, and adjudicating their claims.
Reference:
Donald L. Parman, "Indians and the American West in the Twentieth Century," (Indiana University Press, 1994) p121.
Frank George
In 1952, this Nez Perce leader became
executive director of the NCAI. (Philp:1999)
NCAI History
Additional Sources
Vine Deloria, "Of Utmost Good Faith," (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1971).
Subject Areas: history of U.S. Government and Indian tribes, 1830-1970 (includes excerpts of treaties, bills, speeches, and judicial rulings)
Donald L. Parman, “Indians and the American West in the Twentieth Century,” (Indiana University Press, 1994).
Subject Areas: allotment policy, Progressive Era, World War I, Great Depression, New Deal, World War II, postwar policies of termination and relocation, and Indian self-determination.
Alison R. Bernstein, “Walking in Two Worlds: American Indians and World War Two,” (Columbia University Press, 1986)
Subject Areas: American History, World War II, New Deal, John Collier
N. B. Johnson, “The National Congress of American Indians,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, 30 (Summer 1952), pp. 140-48. Accessible through Oklahoma Historical Society: digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/contents.html Subject Areas: overview of and rationale for the NCAI
Kenneth R. Philp, “Termination Revisited: American Indians on the Trail to Self-Determination, 1933-1953,” (University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln & London, 1999).
Subject Areas: Indian experiences, perspectives and responses to termination policy, 1930-1950
The History of Federal Indian Policy
by Robert J. Miller, Professor, Lewis & Clark Law School, Portland, Oregon This excellent article on Federal Indian Policy provides background and context for understanding the emergence of NCAI as a national voice for Indian people. lawlib.lclark.edu/blog/native_america/?page_id=9.
