1948: all sorts of wild ideas exist as to the status of an Indian and the meaning of the "reservations"

Misconception About Indians

                                                                 1948, July 12 Great Falls Tribune 
     Most everybody agrees that our governmental policy handling the American Indians throughout the years of their wardship under treaty agreement has not been either successful or just.
     Oliver La Farge, writing in the New York Times magazine, blames the deplorable failure to progress toward solution of the "Indian problem" largely on a number of misconceptions of the white population regarding the Indians. He points out that all sorts of wild ideas exist as to the status of an Indian and the meaning of the "reservations" on which many of the Indians live.
     By exploiting these misconceptions, millions of acres of Indian land and millions of dollars of Indian money have been stolen from them - and the drive to get the rest continues.
     This writer points out that it should be understood that it is neither the reservation or his wardship to the government that prevents the Indian from being "free." It is the manner in which the wardship has failed to educate the mass of Indians and prepare them to take their place in the economic political and social life of America.
     As a person the Indian is free to leave the reservation and to enter into full citizenship. And too often the cry of "set the Indians free" by abolishing wardship and reservations has been a device by which plunderers have led well-intentioned citizens citizens to acquiesce to new raids upon the Indian estate
     It may reasonably be assumed that it will require a minimum of a generation's time to prepare the greater number of Indians for completely self-sustaining citizenship. If we destroy the meager advantage their wardship gives them before the Indians are ready, we simply project them onto the relief rolls, as has often been demonstrated in the past. For a time the federal government needs to spend substantially more -- not less -- money on the Indian.
     The Times writer points out that each white citizen receives an average of $300 per year in services from the federal state and local governments. The Indians receive an average of $166 per year from the federal government, and nothing else.
     The white citizens actually pay for the government services through taxes -- but we have not prepared the bulk of the Indian population to do that. The first job is to prepare them for citizenship -- and a comprehensive start is a century or so overdue.

1948, July 12 Great Falls Tribune