Your Land, My Land

[native flute music] [speaking in Klamath] How would you say, 'I am a Klamath Indian'? [Speaking Klamath] How would say, 'I don't feel very well now'. [Speaking Klamath]. 'It is autumn?' Hmm, I forgot that. Our language is dying. [Woman speaking Klamath] Right now, there are only a few elders who remember. And we have to learn from them. If we don't save it, we will lose it forever. How would you say, 'I have lived well, a long time.' [Speaking Klamath]. Every day Gordon Bettles learns a little more from the elders. It is a race against time to save the past. And at the same time to have a future. He's from the Klamath Indian Tribe in southern Oregon, a tribe that today has gone from being one of the richest in America to one of the poorest.

This happened in just a few short years. How it happened took much longer. I come here to think. We call this place [speaks Klamath] or late sun rising place. The Klamath people have always come here for answers. Once we had land that went from mountain top to mountain top. Then the white settlers came and wanted to bargain for a treaty. The Klamath went to the bargaining table possessing that 23 million acres. They didn't come asking for land. They already had 23 million acres. They didn't come asking for sovereignty. They already had sovereignty. And so the treaty was a transaction in which you had two parties that both possessed something and wanted something. Attorney and law professor Charles Wilkinson has worked with the tribe for the past 20 years. And they worked hard to convince the Klamaths to make that huge land session of, more than, 21

million acres. And in return, the Klamath were promised in really in solemn terms and firm terms of promise that they would be able to possess their remaining reservation of 1.9 million acres forever, that it would be their homeland. The tribe signed the treaty in 1864, thinking they had a homeland forever. For the next 90 years, life didn't change much. Selling timber from the forests, farming, and ranching gave each of them enough money to live on. Most of the people were comfortable. Majority of 'em owned their own homes. There were small per capita payments coming in on a quarterly basis and then the ability to hunt and fish and augment that. They lived off the land and were very spiritual in that aspect that they were always grateful and thankful for the substance of the mother earth.

the foods that she provided, the materials that she provided for everyday living. And it was a glorious time to just be alive and to live off of what the earth gave. You never really lacked in what you needed. [native flute music] We had a good amount of, they call 'em 'suckers', call them [inaudible] in Klamath. They had enough deer for anybody to hunt anytime. to hunt any time. We had, the Klamath Marsh was full of ducks and geese and fish. We had everything. There is no word to describe what our land was like. It was such a wonderful place that anyone that ever lived there will never forget it. [native flute music]

[jazz music] The end of World War II brought a new attitude to America. to America. The long period of hardship was over. Eisenhower and Nixon, no more war, And the American Dream. [jazz music] Civil rights of minorities were being questioned. People began to wonder if there was opportunity and equality for all. For the Klamath Indians, opportunity and equality meant their government was planning to change their lives. Don't forget at this time there was a new wave of interest in civil Rights, and the idea of segregation as it related to the Blacks had a negative ring to those

of us who were involved in the Civil Rights program. And I suppose those in the federal Congress and in the federal Administration, not ascribing evil intent, but rather perhaps even sort of picking up on the idea that integration is preferred and segregation is wrong. And therefore the Indians or the Blacks as minorities within our society being segregated on a reservation or in a ghetto ought to be brought into the mainstream, Americanized, and remove the discrimination. President Eisenhower pressured Congress to get the government out of the Indian business. They began working on a bill to end all government supervision of Indian tribes, called 'Termination of Supervision'. "Termination" was a word that would cast a shadow over American Indians forever. It was before we thought of Indians as a nation. We were thinking of them as tribal, primitive, tribal people to be welfare responsibilities for the rest of us.

So in that context, the Indian didn't have really much hope, much to look forward to. A congressional subcommittee held hearings to decide how to begin termination. This committee was led by Senator Arthur Watkins from Utah. Watkins may well fit into the category of people who believe themselves sincerely to be supporters of Indians. And what is tragic is that Watkins, who was so strong minded, really never stopped to consult with Indian people, never really stopped to reassess his belief that extreme assimilation policy in the form of termination might well be extraordinarily destructive. And it's really a wonder, isn't it, that somehow it would become official government policy that it would be in the benefit of a group of people to sell off all their land.

I remember the day we went to general counsel, my mother and I, we always went to the general counsel meetings there at the Klamath Agency on Highway 62. The meeting was about termination, whether the people wanted it or not. It was an overwhelmingly, 'no'. They did not want termination. The leaders of our tribe were to go back to Washington, D.C. and tell 'em, no, we did not want termination. What happened then I do not know. It was brought to the council twice, and was voted down twice, you know, and, so they did it on their own. If it's really something really important, the executive committee will study it and bring it back to the council for a vote. So, we kind of depended on our council for everything. Not all of us could sit in hearings and talk,

you know, just certain ones were elected to speak. Leaders of the tribe testified, trying to stop the legislation. Boyd Jackson from the Klamath tribe faced Senator Watkins in what was a typical exchange. The Japanese say that a man who is always carried soon loses the power of his own legs. I don't know that one. In other words, nobody can walk for you. You have to do your own walking. And the only way you can learn to walk is to use your own limbs. The only way you can learn to manage these matters is by managing them. The United States, this guardian of yours, says you ought to go on with the job. All the things you say are true, but it reminds me of a passage in the scriptures. 'Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' Now, do you think we have reached that point? I think we have trained you. And if we have not trained you, well you'd better get another trainer.

My estimation, Senator Watkins is a very rude individual. Well, when I look at what his statements were, depending on what side of the fence you were on, of course, and why he pushed so hard, I don't know. What was within his agenda or whatever, but he was a type of individual who was using force and threats. Watkins was very hard on Indian witnesses. And there are two explanations for that. One is, that he may have been a person who was doing evil, knew he was doing evil, and was just browbeating witnesses for that reason. And he did browbeat them. On the other hand, it may be that he was an impatient man who thought he knew right, and thought that other people were misguided. Efforts of tribal delegates to prevent or at least delay passage of the termination bill failed.

And in August of 1954, Public Law 587 calling for termination of the Klamath tribe became law. [wind] Passed without the consent of the Indians, the termination law gave each tribe member 3 years to make a decision that would not just affect them, it would affect all future generations forever. There is no question that the Klamath people were mightily confused by the choices that were presented to them, and the Klamaths were given a choice on whether they wanted to receive a cash payment for their land or to become remaining members, whatever that meant. There was no mechanism for the tribe to be able to remain together as an Indian tribe. no mechanism for tribal members to be able to receive land rather than cash. And I imagine that

if somehow a person could quantify the difficulty of societal choices that individual people have to make, have ever been asked to make in history, I cannot imagine one much more overbearing and difficult than the one that Klamath Indians were made as to whether they wanted to become withdrawn members or remaining members. We couldn't understand it very well. See, I'm not educated like the rest of these young people or, I quit school during the war years and never did go back to school. But what I could understand, I knew it wasn't very good. Said it would be the end of the supervision of the government then. So we had one section of the tribe that remained and the other could withdraw,

receive their money and withdraw. And that's the way it was. My grand folks was there, hurt (?) my grandfather. And he decided that we all should withdraw. And, he would remain, him and my grandmother. So that's what went on. But, as I said, nobody really understood what went on. I remember there was a lot of visiting going on in different families. We would gather and we would go to different ranches and have big meetings, family meetings on this. And it was pretty emotional, I mean for the older people. The younger kids didn't understand it, didn't understand what was going to happen to the land.

'Viewpoints' crew, producer-director Frank Opera, cameraman Ronnie Dobson, and I found the election to be the center of the current of doubt and conflict brought on by termination and its efforts. This early news film, produced by a Portland television station in early 1956 documented leaders of the Klamath tribe in their final attempt to change the termination law. law. And then all at once, someone discovered that the Indians had a lot of property of great value. And all at once, we have an Indian problem. But someone butted in along the lines, and [inaudible] We have a big responsibility on our shoulders as parents and making an election for ourselves as well as the children. We don't know that someday those children may say, "Why did you make such an election for me?' [cars passing]

Public Law 587 provided for three advisors called 'management specialists', appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, who would work with the tribe in carrying out the Termination Act. Here in the files of the National Archives, letters written to Tom Waters, one of the management specialists, show the confusion of the Indians. Mr. Waters, I have read the Klamath bill over and over, and it seems to me no matter which way you vote, you are still not free. It is with a sad feeling that this letter goes from me. What do you mean about being out of the tribe? Please let me know as soon as you can. I don't want to give up my tribe for anyone. The management specialists had to find out what the reservation was worth, so that each tribe member would know how much money to expect if they withdrew, and what would be left for them if they remained. Newsletters from the management specialists were confusing, and seemed to encourage leaving the tribe. Members who choose to remain in the tribe and participate in a management plan must face

the facts. Investment in timber managed on a sustained yield basis is not a good investment. Income will amount to approximately one half of the present per capita payments. And in a letter from Specialist Waters to the Bureau of Indian Affairs: It is even questionable whether the federal government as present trustee, should allow any person to remain in such a venture. [bell tolls] Stanford University was hired by the management specialists to help come up with a business plan for the remaining members. They found that 70 percent of the tribe planned to withdraw, which meant 70 percent of the land would have to be sold to give them the cash, estimated at 50,000 dollars each. It was cash that they were not equipped to keep. What termination did, and the Stanford research report in 1956 predicted this almost exactly, was that when you take away the timber, you take away the tribal mill, you take away the payments and now expect

people to have an income on their own, and in the meantime, give them a large cash payment, which theoretically they could invest, but they didn't have the tools to invest, that the whole thing's blown apart. And it was. Termination was not much less than a bomb dropped in the middle of that society. It never could have worked. But the train had already left the station. [old broadcast] Business leaders in Klamath Falls feared that a quick sale of Indian forests depress the local lumber business. Hoping to change the law at the last minute, they publicly supported the Indians. Newspaper editor Frank Jenkins: The disastrous effect will be on the economy of the Indians themselves. It's their timber. They own it. Once sold for, they'll get. And again, if this body of timber is sold on the market, it's a fire sale the highest bidder. What ever it'll bring, it isn't going to be as much in this market as it ought to bring. And so in that event, the loser will be the Indians. And we don't think that

down here that the Indians ought to absorb that staggering loss, because it could be staggering. [old broadcast] In spite of all the advice from the management specialists, the fears of the business community, and the efforts by the tribe's leaders to change the termination law, Public Law 587 was in effect and was about to be enforced. The tribe, in the only votes that they had concerning it, voted against it. And there was never any approval of the tribe for termination. Congress went ahead and enacted the policy, and you had, you know, two choices. You either withdrew or remained, and that was the choices we were forced into, because the policy was going to go through no matter what. My mother, she didn't say anything or anything. But I had my children and one of my boys, he said that- talking about it, he said, 'I'm not going to withdraw,' he said, and so.

'Well,' I say, 'it's up to you.' I said, 'Whatever you want to do.' I said, I said, 'I don't want to either.' But I said, 'I'm going to have to see it through because a lot of people are doing it, you know, and I'll see what happens.' And I never did like it, you know, I didn't want to withdraw. And like they said, we was gonna lose our whole land. The only thing that we ever got was a protest, just just a flat "no". You know, we just didn't want to even think about selling any part of, maybe a tree, but not our home, you know, not the properties that we was raised on, you know. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the end of the reservation. You know, like a lot of them didn't know that. It was just that, my mother wanted us all to be remaining members, and we didn't want to be because we didn't know what

the difference was. We wanted that money right now. We were kids, teenagers. I was a teenager when that happened. So, just the younger people talking to each other about the money only. They didn't know what was happening to the reservation. We thought it was some kind of a big timber sale. [old broadcast] In April of 1958, the final votes were counted. 1,440 members voted to withdraw, 473 remained. In a news film shown on the day of the vote, Tom McCall, then a television news reporter, was critical of the choice given the Indians. A great many of the Indians voted to sell out. And that, what is what they decided to do, to liquidate the reservation. But rather, they did not vote positively. They voted for the lesser of two evils. Their choice lay between taking an undetermined amount of cash for their heritage and the heritage of their children still unborn.

That on the one hand. And on the other, voting to hang on, to hang on as part of a nebulous management entity that promised very little in the way of future security. The land for the remaining members went into a trust that was run by the U.S. Bank of Oregon. For those who withdrew, it was another 3 years before they would actually get the money. Ironically, on April 1st of 1961. Each man, woman and child who withdrew now had over 40,000 dollars. I remember I was governor and there were dire predictions made about these Indians getting that cash, and being fleeced from it very quickly. You cannot take someone who has never been given opportunity or the right or the privilege to call their own self destiny and all of a sudden hand them the symbol of power and the symbol of purchasing and expect them to listen to wise words

from someone who had never even seen them before probably, or had no relationship to them, or little. And so it was disaster. I think, for anybody that would seem like a lot of money at that time. In 1960, 48,000 dollars was a fair amount of money. But when you look at that in reality, buy a home, furnish it, buy you a car, and it's time to go to work. [laughter] It's gone. A lot of what I remember the most is, people living a pretty high lifestyle for a few months or a year or whatever, and then looking like they're on top of the world and all of a sudden becoming leveled, even worse than they were before, worse off. It was like they got used to a certain lifestyle, being able

to go places, do things, whatever they wanted. Then when the money ran out, they were stuck at home. Pretty soon they started selling off the things that they bought with the money. Not everybody but that's the majority of what I saw. A lot of 'em never had money before, so they went right through it like my brothers. I had three brothers that took the money. And, well, it's the first time they had that much before, so. It didn't last too long. It wasn't very long and they were broke, you know, they...nobody knew anything about investing. A lot of them did buy houses, though. That was a good investment for a lot of 'em. But then it turned around. They lost 'em for taxes because they didn't have no way to pay the taxes.

You saw an avariciousness in the local society just to grab that Klamath money, probably inevitable. I don't think the merchants of Klamath Falls were any worse people than you would have anywhere else. But it's maybe an inevitable byproduct of our economic system. When you have large payments to people who are not schooled in how to handle that money, you're gonna have people move in. I remember one young lady come in, and it was in a regular paper sack, 35,000 dollars worth. She bought a new car from me, paid for it in a hundred dollar bills. It was really a pathetic story. It was a pathetic sight to see these people walking down the street to that kind of money hanging out of their pockets, maybe, and, uh, people there with very, very willing hands to get everything they could. And like I said before, it ain't only the Indian people who's really suffering. Man, this community is suferring. You hear Klamath Falls crying every day,

every day. Every school that an Indian kid went to, they got reimbursed for. They got paid for. Every school building that was built, you know, this side of 1940-50, Indian people on the Klamath Indian reservation has had their hands in it through their funds. So it's a hard thing, you know, and it's awfully hard to get up in the morning and walk down the road being an Indian. Our money was really gone sooner than it should have because we had to pay higher prices for cars. We had to pay higher, they raised the prices in the stores just because we were Klamath Indians and got a check. [cars passing] As the withdrawing members saw their cash disappearing, remaining members, ones who chose to live on what was left of the reservation, learned that they were now under a trust run by the U.S.

Bank of Oregon. Ray Lung, the president of the bank at the time, remembers. The way the U.S. Bank became involved was that the government went out and asked for bids. Actually, what they were looking for was the lowest annual fee for the specified services. And I think there was only 2 banks that bid, and we were the low bidder. Our fee, I think was about 93,000 dollars a year for managing the tribal asset of about 23 million dollars, about 145,000 acres of land, primarily timber, grazing lands, cattle, other miscellaneous property. It was a simple business deal to the bank, but to the Indians it was frustrating and confusing. We was put under trust, and, we had to go up and talk to a trust officer. And he was, he would tell you yes or no.

you know, whether you was to get your money or not, you know. Whether it was for clothes or to go to school or whatever, you know. And you never did see any money. He would just, he would make the phone call to whoever and they would OK it or not OK it, you know. And, there was a lot of times, you know, that we just didn't have any. But we had, you know, situations where families were dependent as they had been before termination on the per capita checks, not only for themselves, but for their children. So, you know, you and your wife might be members and your four kids might be members, and you'd go to the agency every quarter or whenever they made that payment, and you'd pick up the payments for the whole family. And that's what you were living on. But when that terminated, see, that stopped when the banks were appointed as the trustees. They had to come in and justify to the trustee that those kind of payments should continue.

Everyone said you'll get a lot of money, but when the checks came All of our money was in, mine was in the First National Bank, and you couldn't get any of it out. If you needed clothes or anything you'd ask for your own money, they'd act like you were trying to borrow some money from the bank or something. They'd quarrel and fight you over your own money if you needed any. I mean, you always kind of set up, you know, very often in an adversary situation with a trust because you got somebody standing between you and your money. The problem is, that it was outrageous that we ever did have a bank chosen to somehow be the overseer or the trustee for a group of tribal Indians. It never made any sense. It was always inevitable that the tribal members, the remaining members, when they had their choice after 10 years, were gonna vote to dissolve the trust because they wouldn't like the trust. Of course, they wouldn't like having their ancestral land managed by a bank. Frustrated with the bank, the remaining members voted to end the trust.

We thought we were terminating the deal with the bank. We didn't know that the government was going to step in here and say, 'Hey, Mr. Indian, we're taking this property, and you're going to take this money, whether you like it or not.' What they didn't realize was that meant the bank had to sell the last of the reservation and give them cash. The final 135,000 acres slipped from their grasp and became national forest land. [bird chirps] And so after these few short years, the money was spent, most of the cars and houses were gone. The reservation land was now owned by the government. The Klamaths faced an uncertain future, and it was a future where they would no longer be called Indians. We were saying, in effect, under termination, 'You're no longer Indians.' That's really what we were saying to them. 'You're gonna be homogenized into the general society of America, and you're just gonna be Americans.'

Not even original Americans or early Americans [laughter] or Indians, just Americans. That was the most devastating point. They said that, one day, someone told us that we weren't Indians anymore. Well, how can we not be Indians? That's what we are. This like an Irishman. How can you tell an Irishman he's not an Irishman if he leaves Ireland? You can't change what you are. And that's what termination hurt, too. It really hurt us, you know, and took our Indian culture away from us. Of course, what it really took away was our identity. You know, we was a bunch of Indians in Oregon, central Oregon here that didn't have no home. We didn't have no name. We didn't have no identity. We would just [laughter] I don't know what the word is, but we were just a bunch of people here with nothing. My brothers and I were talking about that.

I don't know what they mean by, 'We're not Indians,' or be terminated, you know. you know. But I said in my mind, 'I'm always going to be an Indian.' And they felt the same way. [door closes, horse neighs] We would go to rodeos, and at some of the rodeos, you have to be an enrolled tribal member of a federally recognized tribe. They didn't recognize the Klamaths. And here I am sitting on my horse wanting to get into a rodeo, an Indian rodeo, and they wouldn't let us in. So that was something I felt was really wrong, 'cause I was thinking in my mind, 'If I'm not an Indian, then what am I?' You know. And, 'cause I'm not a white person. I'm not a Japanese person, or whatever. People made fun of us for being Klamath Indians. [cough] A lot of them said we were sellouts, and called us white people.

We really lost a lot when they took that away from us. Myself, I never did feel that I wasn't an Indian or anything like that, but it did make a lot of people feel that way. They just said, well, I'm not an Indian anymore. [laughter] As the years went by, the Klamaths had to face that they had lost their land, they had lost their money, and they had lost their identity. The Klamath's problems grew worse. The only thing that I can see that the monetary figure had done for my people. And that's to make them extinct. Since termination, I'd say I'd say about the first 5, 10 years, I went to a lot of funerals. I buried my whole family. There was a lot of alcoholism. And later on, drugs came into the scene. It had taken my family, and my graveyards, and it filled them up.

They did a lot of drinking and drugs, And, I know over half of our tribe is dead because of the termination policy. There was some kind of a survey made, where they found out that half of our tribe living in Klamath County died before they reached age 40. This is all a part of what termination did to the Klamath people. So much is not the same anymore. But the land is hurting. The animals are hurting. The water is hurting. And all because it was all taken away from us and out of our care, and out of our stewardship, and being so totally abused. And I cry inside. I cry for what is not there anymore. [music] My grandchildren's children will never, ever see any part of that kind of a life. They'll never have the opportunity to go down to the river and catch one of them big old ?Towong Fish for their grandmother, take home to cook.

They'll never see that. And the boys will never get a chance to go out on the hill, on their horse and shoot a deer. I don't think they'll see that back again, even close to what it was when I was a boy. [music] To understand the current impact of termination, you don't need to go any further than to look at the basic social and economic situation of the Klamath people. You have a society in desperation, one that was self-sufficient and in its own terms before termination, and one that today is just bankrupt, in terms of day-to-day needs, And burdened with problems that have a magnitude that I think most people in this country don't even begin to understand.

[music] In the early 1970s, something began to stir. The Klamaths knew that if the tribe was to survive they would have to begin to save themselves. With time running out, they began to talk. [music] What the Klamaths wanted was to have the government once again recognize them as a tribe. This would bring in money to begin their recovery. They called it restoration. The tribe's focus turned once again to the establishment of a tribal government, Not to prove it to the white folk or the, or society in general, but to prove to ourselves that we had not been wiped out. We as a people had survived.

Once that nucleus was put, back into our hearts, then the tribe started moving forward towards making plans for restoration. In a small office of an abandoned lumber mill, the tribe started to organize and work together toward restoration. Tribal chairman Chuck Kimball remembers what it was like. And to me, you have to think positive. And I have a saying, you know, 'I don't look back.' I'll never forget. But you got to look ahead, you know. You got to lay a foundation today, and hopefully build a structure that's gonna lead in to tomorrow for your children and your grandchildren. I think out of that experience, things got so bad and things were so bad at that point, as to our fulfillment of responsibilities to any fellow human beings, or any fellow citizens, let alone the Indian Americans that we had taken the land from, that people began

to sort of say, 'Let's look at this situation.' Some wise voices came into the picture. Indians began to demand more of their rights that they should have been given. Restoration brought to full consciousness in the Klamath tribe, the fact that the tribe had suffered a wrong, And that there was an admittance of guilt, and that we had not lost our identity. And so 30 years after the experiment called 'termination' first touched this small group, the government again recognized the Klamaths as a tribe. They now had a way to start their recovery. It was really uplifting during restoration when it happened, and we had a restoration celebration here. And the feeling that was going on there, it was hard to describe. You know, the people were so happy and cohesive,

and it was, just, it was a feeling that we'll probably never have again, you know. We'll never have that feeling again, but it was so neat. And, where we're at now, you know, we're a baby again. And we're struggling. But we're going to get there. So restoration took place in '86, and it was a great moment for Congress. It was the worst termination. Over 100 tribes were terminated, and I think the Klamaths lost more than any other tribe. And to have, finally, Congress admit termination was wrong, I think was a great moment, and really speaks to the greatness of our society when we're able to do things right, when we take the time and really look at the essence of things. And so I see restoration in that category. But restoration for the Klamath wasn't really restoration. It was

just a start. And there won't be restoration for the Klamath tribe in any fair sense until that land is returned to the tribe. They will not be made whole, until that occurs. The Klamath tribe, in order to survive, needs to be recognized as the steward of these lands. The tribe needs a land base, not only to heal what's been done, but to develop a way to coexist with the world both economically and socially. [birds chirp] Returning land to the tribe is what the Klamaths believe will finally put an end to what termination has meant to them. The government made a big mistake by looking at Indians and seeing that they had cut their hair and that they were now wearing 3 piece suits and ties and boots

and speaking the language and learning how to count to 5 and multiply and all this. They made the big mistake of assuming that Indians were indeed like white people, where they could not see on the inside, and see the Indian person on the inside was not changed at all. We are connected to the Mother Earth. The Mother Earth feeds us. We go back to the Mother Earth. [flute music] The Klamath Indians are special people. No matter what the government did to us, we always remained Klamath. I still feel close to the land. It's still part of me, and I want my children to know what that is like. [flute music] It would be nice if most of the Indian people would were, understand more of their own ways as their ancestors. [flute music]

Leave the city behind and come out here and you really feel it. [flute music] [Speaking Klamath] That's what I just said, that we shouldn't give this land up. It's a heart. It's a spirituality. It's a connection to the land of being a people that have been here, and have always been here. Generation after generation after generation. And I'm speaking of thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Our legends and our stories have us created here, created right here in this basin. We never wandered in. We didn't traverse. We weren't moved. Fortunately for us, we weren't moved, but we've been allowed to be here. And there's a connection here.

This is home. And when I say this is home, I don't mean just my house here. I mean, from mountain top to mountain top, is home. The Klamath had character. That was all that was left and the personal histories of who we were and where we came from. It is not in the makeup to go out and cause revenge to happen, but rather to rise above it, to go around it and put it away. And hopefully, create ways. so that will never happen to your children or grandchildren. Hopefully you make the wisest decision. [music]