June 3, 2024: The Indian Citizenship Act: Standing Bear

[100 years ago this week, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act. That landmark legislation was the product of work from a number of influential and inspiring individuals, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of them, leading up to a weekend tribute to 21^st century figures continuing the fight!]

On two ways a hugely impressive 19^th century figure paved the way for the Act.

I’ve written about Ponca Chief Standing Bear in a number of places, including in this post on his wonderful namesake Henry Standing Bear (brought to vivid life by the incomparable Lou Diamond Phillips) on Longmire. Both of those first two hyperlinked pieces say a good bit of what I’d want to start this post with (while the third says a lot more about Henry Standing Bear if you’re so interested), so if you don’t mind checking them out and then coming back here for a couple connections to the 1924 Act, I’d appreciate it.

Welcome back! One of the most consistent facts about American history is that our worst and best are very often present in exactly the same moments, and I’d say that’s certainly true for Judge Elmer Dundy’s decision in Standing Bear v. Crook (1879): it’s profoundly frustrating that it took a federal judge ruling in 18-freaking-79 that Native Americans are people under the law for that seemingly inarguable concept to take hold; but on the other hand, Judge Dundy broke with precedent to make that ruling, and thus significantly shifted the arc of American legal, Constitutional, political, and cultural history in the process. Which is to say, Standing Bear’s successful suit, his (and his allies’) use of the law to advocate for his own personhood and rights as well as those of all Native Americans, achieved those vital results. It’s difficult to imagine a federal law granting Native Americans U.S. citizenship without this prior legal and Constitutional status, and so it’s not at all hyperbolic to say there’d be no Indian Citizenship Act without Standing Bear.

I’d take that final clause one important step further, though. As I’ll argue later in the week as part of my posts on both Joseph Dixon and Nipo Strongheart, and as is the case with many (if not most) federal laws, the Indian Citizenship Act came about due to extensive public campaigns and pressure. And after that victory in court, Standing Bear took part in such a public campaign, a speaking tour of the Eastern U.S. organized by journalist and reformer Thomas Tibbles in which Standing Bear and other Native American activists (including Tibbles’ wife Susette “Bright Eyes” La Flesche) made the case for indigenous rights more broadly. As I highlighted in this very early post, the novelist Helen Hunt Jackson attended one of those talks, and was so affected that it altered the whole arc of her career and work (and thus of American literary history as well). That’s one striking and representative example of the power that such public campaigns can possess, and in that way too Standing Bear helped pave the way for the efforts toward as well as the legal standing of the Indian Citizenship Act.

Next influential individual tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?