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Religious Freedoms

15 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by danielwalldammit in Justice, Native American Themes, Politics

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

civil Rights, Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause, Freedom, History, Indian Civil Rights Act, Jurisdiction, liberty, religious freedom

Russian orthodox Church in Anchorage

Here is an interesting question (to me anyway). What legal mechanism prevents the Federal Government from banning your church?

(Hopefully, they don’t want to, but humor me…)

That would be the First Amendment, right, or more precisely the ‘free exercise clause’ of the First Amendment.

Okay, so what stops your state government from banning your church?

It’s not the First Amendment, not alone anyway. The relevant text of the First Amendment reads as follows; “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” So, that prevents CONGRESS, and by extension other Federal entities operating under the authority of Congress, from banning your church. It doesn’t say anything about the actions of state governments.

What would prevent a state government from doing such a thing?

That would be the Fourteenth Amendment, or perhaps the First Amendment, as incorporated into state jurisdiction via the Fourteenth Amendment.

Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment reads as follows (emphasis added):

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

This is significantly more ambiguous, of course, but I do believe most people, and more importantly, most of the relevant legal authorities, generally take this to mean that state governments have been operating under the free exercise clause (or some principle like it) since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Okay, good fun, right?

Now here is a question, most Americans might not think about. What prevents a tribal government from banning a church on their own lands?

By tribal government, I mean the government of any Federally recognized tribe within the United States. We are talking about American Indians or Alaska Natives here. So, I am asking what legal mechanism would prevent a tribal government representing one of the indigenous peoples of the United States from banning a church under the own jurisdiction?

It isn’t any explicit measure in the U.S. Constitution itself.

Nope!

There is nothing specific in the text of the U.S. Constitution which limits the authority of a tribal government to restrict the religious activities of anyone subject to their jurisdiction. Congress has of course asserted plenary power to alter the relationship between tribal governments and the Federal Government at will since Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903). (At least that is when the doctrine of ‘plenary power’ received its most explicit expression under the Federal courts.) Still, absent any explicit action from Congress restricting the authority of an Indian tribe, indigenous people are assumed under U.S. Law to retain any sovereign powers they had before colonization began. So, in the absence of any clear Federal statement to the Contrary, a tribal government may resolve the matter of religion and religious freedom as they deem fit. (Some would argue, that is exactly how it ought to work.) In any event, the Tenth District of the Federal Courts ruled in 1959 that no such law existed. According to the decision in Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council (1959), neither the U.S. Constitution nor any Federal Law obligates tribal governments to respect the free exercise clause or any principle like it.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, some would say that is how it should be. Let indigenous people settle any questions about religious freedom for their own members (or others subject to their jurisdiction) themselves! For good or for ill, it’s their business.

Well, that’s not what happened.

What happened was The Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968.

In other words, the answer to my third question is The Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968.

What stops a tribal government from banning a church is The Indian Civil Rights Act. This was part of a larger Federal Law expanding civil rights in a number of areas (most of which were of more direct concern to African Americans at the time). The Indian Civil Rights Act applies most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the actions of tribal governments. Significantly, it does not incorporate the establishment clause of the First Amendment into tribal jurisdiction. Tribal governments are free to establish their own religions, but they are not free to restrict the religious activities of those subject to their jurisdiction.

You can see this in the relevant text.

“No Indian tribe in exercising powers of self-government shall—

  1. make or enforce any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition for a redress of grievances…”

Note that there is a clear reference to the principle of free exercise, and yet, there is no mention of establishment. So, you can see it in the text. The Indian Civil Rights Act only incorporates 1 of the 2 basic religion clauses of the First Amendment into the context of tribal government. This somewhat belies the thinking of America’s founding fathers who might have suggested that the two clauses work together to ensure that religion will not become a source of abuse, or more to the point, to prevent an establishment of religion from becoming the reason religious freedom is restricted, but of course all of this ignores the context of colonialism here. The power of any religious establishment that might occur under tribal jurisdiction is significantly blunted by the presence of a larger Federal government which has already compromised a great deal of tribal sovereignty,not to mention state governments eager to eat away at what might be left of tribal sovereignty. In any event, the thinking at the time the ICRA was passed is that traditional tribal government is far too entangled with the ceremonial systems and spiritual narratives of the people in question to introduce the proverbial “separation of church and state.”

Of course, the ICRA has other significant limitations, particularly insofar as anyone might attempt to apply it to civil disputes, but that’s another matter.

All of this is to say nothing whatsoever about the religious freedoms of Native Americans facing regulations by the Federal and State governments. That’s a whole other messy history in itself.

Damned ugly one at that!

Finally, one reason I think this little exercise is worth doing is it helps to illustrate the way that religious freedom sits in the context of American law. Most people just think they have a right of religious freedom. They don’t really distinguish the establishment clause from the free exercise clause much less think about how these measures relate to one another. More importantly, folks tend not to think very carefully about the way that concepts of religious freedom play out in different layers of American government. Of course far too many people, think government is government is government, until they are pushed to start making distinctions, but the point at the present is this, religious freedom is not simply an abstract concept under the U.S. Constitution. Religious Freedom takes different forms in relation to different layers of American government.

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An Uncommon Rosie

18 Friday May 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, History, Politics, Uncommonday

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Alaska Natives, Anachorage Museum, Art, civil Rights, Decolonization, Elizabeth Peratrovich, History, Museum, Unsettled

Rosie - Copy2Rosie the Riveter is one of those proverbial gifts that just keeps on giving. So, was Elizabeth Peratrovich. She would have been a contemporary of the many women who inspired this icon, which makes it just a little more interesting to see her standing in here for the women (whose real name was Naomi Parker) most of us envision when thinking about Rosie. This poster is part of the Unsettled exhibition currently showing at the Anchorage Museum.

Elizabeth was a major figure in the movement to combat discrimination against Alaska Natives in the 1940s. She is memorialized every February 16th, the day in which the Alaska Territorial Government signed the Anti-discrimination Act 0f 1945 into law. You can learn more about her work on civil rights at Alaskool.org. The quote featured in this poster is commonly thought to have been part of her testimony at the Alaska Territorial Legislature during hearings over the Anti-Discrimination Act. It isn’t entirely clear whether or not these were her exact words, though it probably says something about her actual testimony that it has become something of a legend in itself. The wit would certainly be right at home with other things that Elizabeth clearly did say.

Seriously, the woman kicked ass!

Apayo Moore, the artist behind this particular piece has the following to say bout it:

32838106_10216397714880526_2160255119801712640_n

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May Conservatives Remember you Fondly!

18 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in History, Politics

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Activism, Black Lives Matter, civil Rights, Colin Kaepernick, Martin Luther King, Protest, Race, Racism, Take a Knee

26239122_10215319195278210_5540301171360502791_nMy title may seem like an oddly partisan blessing, but it’s more of a partisan curse. It’s not the worst form of damnation you could wish upon a person, but for some folks it oughtta be bad enough.

The curse is real though.

This happens.

Civil Rights activists must have felt the sting of this curse this last weekend as right wing America did its best to distinguish Colin Kaepernick from Martin Luther King, Jr. It seems, their efforts had been necessitated by publican of an image linking Kaepernick, Michael Bennett and Martin Luther King, all kneeling together. Outraged to see Kaepernick and MLK connected, plenty of folks took to the net to tell us Bennet and Kaepernick shouldn’t be put on the same level as MLK. Beyond that, cultural conservatives assured us that MLK was selfless and that Kaepernick is simply out for himself, that King was a patriot whereas Kaepernick hates America, and that MLK preached unity whereas Kaepernick is being deliberately divisive.

Heard that last one a lot this weekend.

I’m not old enough to remember MLK’s activism in its day, but I am old enough to remember cultural conservatives attitudes towards him before he became a national holiday, before you could find roads named after him all over America, before admiration or MLK became a forgone conclusion. And of course before conservatives began to claim him as one of their own. We heard many of the same things about Martin Luther King back then that are said of Colin Kaepernick today. Lots of folks were not so impressed with his patriotism. As to divisiveness? Hell, he could be so lucky as to be described as merely divisive! I grew up hearing stories about how MLK and other civil rights leaders were just trying to cause trouble, simply drawing attention to themselves. Things were getting better, plenty of people assured me. Those activists were simply making things so much worse. Divisive? Hell, MLK that would have been an improvement over the things said of him at some of the dinner tables I’ve attended.

It’s a poetic injustice, really, seeing Martin Luther King transformed into a means of silencing black activists. He’s been held over the heads of the Black Lives Matter movement for some time now, and thrown in the face of just about any African-American deemed a little too disruptive by conservatives, especially by those conservatives moderate enough to think of they’ve learned the lessons of the civil rights movement. Gone are the days when cultural conservatives would spit ‘commie’ after hearing the name of Martin Luther King. Now, being more comfortable with his legacy, they spit his name at any black activists they find more threatening today.

That’s gotta be a special kind of Hell, to be used against those who carry on your legacy? If so, it’s a special Hell reserved for people who’ve earned a lot better.

What I think a lot of moderate conservatives and a good deal of middle-of-the-road America likes about MLK is the notion that we should be color blind. Some folks may even mean it. Others just like the prospects of using this principle against social justice warriors, affirmative action programs, and any number of left wing causes that ask us to take difference into account. Yet, the message of equality changes a great deal when it’s employed in this manner. When King delivered his “I have a dream” message, equality was message flying in the face of white privilege. If you’ll pardon the cliche, it really was a way of speaking truth to power. Today that message is used to speak power to truth. It is a call to ignore real differences in opportunity, to silence those in need of help, and to preemptively dismiss any political agenda aimed at helping the underprivileged. There is something genuinely vicious about the way cultural conservatives have turned King’s message on its head and turned him into a weapon well-suited to re-enforcing comfort and privilege.

It’s enough to make you lose your lunch.

***

Sadly, this isn’t an uncommon thing. It seems that those leaning to the right have a general tendency to remember some lefty figures fondly, but only after forgetting the lefty part. How many people have complained about the politics in Roger Waters concerts over the years? Some folks may have specific complaints about aspects of Waters’ politics, but a fair number seem genuinely shocked to find political content in Animals or The Wall.

Maybe they were just too stoned to listen the first time.

I know. Pink Floyd lyrics may not warrant the same admiration as the life of Martin Luther King, but in a sense that impression too illustrates the point. Just as with Kaepernick and questions about whether he should be on the same par as MLK, the veneration of MLK here misses the mark. When someone advocates on behalf of those in need, or confronts those who abuse power, should we really be all that concerned about how they compare to other heroes? Or should we be more concerned about how their politics contributes to something of value?

Yes, that was a rhetorical question.

***

And then of course, there were those people shocked and outraged to find Coretta Scott King. As George W. Bush attended her funeral, some thought it inappropriate for those honoring her legacy to speak out against the Iraq. And thus his decision to honor her, became her limitation, or rather the limitation on what could be said in her honor while he was present. I get it. It’s a little rude to criticize the President when he’s sitting right there, especially knowing that he doesn’t have to be. But you know what’s more rude? Expecting the funeral of an activist with a life-long commitment to non-violence to pass by without any comments on the greatest war of the day.

In America, even our conservatives are happy to celebrate liberal activists.

Once they and their own learn to be quiet about it.

“We love you, shhhhhhh…”

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Dreaming Away the Nightmare of Right Wing Double-Speak

21 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics, Write Drunk, Edit Stoned

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

civil Rights, Double-Speak, Dreams, Irony, Martin Luther King, Recursion, Rhetoric, Right Wing, Sarah Palin

sarahpalin_aI have a dream!

…that one day, folks will stop playing the race card …card.

…that one day, accusations of racism will be judged on the merits of the actual claims and not simply taken up as plot points in a well-known narrative.

…that one day some folks really will stop crying racism whenever convenient. …and that other folks will stop dismissing cries of racism whenever convenient.

I have a dream that professional bigots will no longer find an audience ready to believe that ‘racism’ needs a prefix and ‘reverse’ really needs a place to hang out.

In this dream no prominent figure would be so foolish as to suggest that the best way to end racism would be for people to stop complaining of racism when it happens. Should such a figure step forward, she would be banished to the Hell of many guffaws, which is admittedly happening, now but in this dream she does it without the golden parachute for a job well abandoned and a history of throwing her own allies under the bus.

In this dream my hero Sally the Smart Swan shows up and puts putrid pundits in their place, saying; “knock it off you damned head; stop talking!” She waves her wand and war ceases to be about peace, taking from people no longer counts as providing them jobs, and kindness no longer leaves a bruise. (Some folks still fuck for virginity, that was always a good idea.) Then a pack of wild jackalope buy the world a coke and sing in perfect harmony. …everyone except me, I’m off-key of course, and my pants are down.

I did mention this was a dream.

In any event, I have a dream that one day recursion will not simply mean a political u-turn back to old Jim and his Crows. Or that people who send us on such a trip will not loudly proclaim their commitment to values they clearly don’t hold.

I have a dream that concerns about opportunistic anti-racism will not serve the goals of opportunistic anti-anti-racism. It’s a funky dream to be sure, and somewhere in this dream the Great Double Negative will descend from the sky and pronounce its wisdom to all! “Yea verily!” it will say (because the Great Double Negative talks like that). “Tis true, a not well knotted becomes a do, and a tangled web it weaves for me and you!” And the crowd will cock their heads slightly and look confused (because no-one talks like that anymore, if anyone ever did), and they will shout up at the Great Double Negative; “Get to the point you damned personification!” The the Great Double Negative will say; “If you consistently oppose anti-racism, there is a point when we might be justified in suggesting you are yourself a racist!” And “Oh” said the crown, surprised thatactually made sense, and “no” said the echo-chamber hoping they could bend a yea into a nay and no-one would notice.

I have a dream that anti-war speeches will not be out of place at the funeral of a peace activist.

BedWRvJCUAAq7UMI have a dream that people who say liberals are communists are fascists, and the Holocaust starts with compassion will be recognized for their comedic genius, because no-one would be so foolish as to take that as serious political commentary.

I have a dream that people who attack others will not play the victim when they draw return fire, and that those seeking to defend such people will read their words before telling the rest of us all about it.

I have a dream in which helping people is not confused with enslaving them, in which those defending privilege do not call others ‘elitist’ in a folksy voice, in which poverty is not blamed on efforts to end it, and in which greed is not celebrated as the source of all that is good and gooey.

I have a dream in which not being racist does NOT mean you wait for others to use racial epithets first, and in which the word ‘satire’ does not absolve one of all guilt.

I have a dream in which professional bigots will not count as ‘conservatives’, ‘patriots’, “Christians”, or even ‘entertainers’. I have a dream in which such people are dismissed for the living caricatures that they are.

I have a dream in which those actively working to stop African-Americans from voting, lower wages, and take away all forms of public support do not assume the voice of civil rights leaders and lecture others on dreams they clearly do not themselves share.

This is not a dream without enemies; it’s a dream in which those enemies do not include quite so many clowns. In fact it’s a dream full of tougher questions and better arguments, but it’s a dream in which the other side doesn’t stand every important value on its head and their professed politics comes a lot closer to an honest engagement with the rest of us. But that’s all just a dream of course. In the real world, all of this continues as before, and amazingly with straight-faces all around.

And lotsa people have their pants on the floor.

***

Sarah Palin appears here (I’m sorry) by way of The Hollywood Reporter. The American Headache Institute comes to us courtesy of HKS, who assures me that this is where Sarah can be found. I think she might be the director.

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Irritation Meditation Number 2: The Second Amendment and Japanese Internment

14 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in Irritation Meditation, Justice, Politics

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

civil Rights, Gun COntrol, Internment Camps, Japanese Internment, Justice, Memes, Politics, Second Amendment, The National Rifle Association

580694_475788705791155_2127648074_nI suppose it is too much to ask that folks distinguish the varieties of gun control from an outright ban. The way the gun rights crowd raises the specter of a completely disarmed populace when speaking about any variety lesser measures smacks of dishonesty.

It would hardly give away the farm to distinguish such things from one another. There are plenty of legitimate questions about the efficacy of lesser gun control measures, especially when applied to a population already so well armed as we are here in the U.S. But that is an interesting and well focused discussion some folks don’t seem to want to risk.

But what is really fascinating about memes like this is the slippage between a right to bear arms and a prescription for doing so. The second Amendment was alive and well when the internment of Japanese occurred in the first place. So, that right and that right alone simply is not a cure for the evil that this pic wants us to think about. The meme only works if we are to imagine a population which is not merely in possession of the right to bear arms, but which actively uses that right even to the point of preparing for war against its own government.

And can anyone really imagine Japanese immigrant population of the west coast doing this in the years leading up to World War II? Can anyone imagine the response from their neighbors?

This is not merely a defense of the Second Amendment, it is an argument for the expansion of private gun ownership well beyond anything previously imagined in American history. To make this argument work, we need more than just the right to bear arms, we all need to have the arms, the training to use them, and enough firepower to make them an effective counter to the powers of the United States Government.

Is the author suggesting that gun owners could stop such a thing as internment? Perhaps, but would they?

It’s a pretty common claim from the gun rights crowd, the notion that the Second Amendment puts the teeth in the rest of our civil rights. It is through gun ownership, so the argument goes, that people are protected from abuse by government officials. It is the most important means by which our rights are protected.

Pardon me, …from ‘thuh government.’

But gun owners did not stop the internment of Japanese.

Or of Aleuts during the same war.

Neither did they stop lynching of blacks.

Nor did gun owners secure the right to vote for African Americans.

…or for women.

…or Native Americans.

Gun owners did not stop the Federal Government from kidnapping Native American children to be taken to schools far from their families.

They didn’t stop police harassment of homosexuals.

They didn’t improve treatment of the mentally ill.

They didn’t stop the Zoot Suit Riots.

…or legacy provisions precluding Jews from owning homes in some neighborhoods.

Gun Ownership didn’t stop Jim Crow laws.

It was not gun owners that secured for any number of minorities the right to an education or any other protections by states or the federal government.

In each of these instances, the rights in question were won by protestors, and lawyers, and people who talked a hell of a lot, even if their main opponents didn’t. In many of these instances gun owners were actively involved in the very repression suffered by those in question. Since the founding of the country, Gun violence has played a far greater role in the repression of civil rights than it has in protecting them. There are exceptions to be sure, but this narrative is not built on the exceptions. It is built on a fantasy that skips any active consideration of how these things actually work.

Herein lies the biggest problem with this fantasy scenario; it presents us with the image of a government acting on its own, independent of the public will. That could happen, I suppose, but is far less likely than the countless times in which government policies actually have facilitated repressive measures popular with the American people, or at least a large segment of it. And in such moments, the victims of repression have rarely been sufficiently well armed to make an effective stand against those who wanted a piece of their liberty.

In real world history, those who have suffered the greatest deprivations did not merely face the threat of Federal Authority; they also have had to contend with the prejudice of an American population content to have them suffer.

…one that sometimes even demanded it.

We can imagine the victims of repression better armed, yes, but only if we also imagine the majority better armed as well. This is hardly a story which leads to a successful defense of liberty. I would call the scenario anarchy, but I don’t wish to sully the term ‘anarchy’ with such a vision of violence and destruction.

It’s damned hard to read these self-indulgent fantsies when considering the actual history of people struggling for their rights. It’s hard to give credence to this juvenile narrative, knowing what it took for the people in these camps to survive, what it took the Freedom Riders to earn rights enjoyed by gun-toting whites in the South. And it is especially hard to hear such arguments from those with so little to say about such things as Guantanamo Bay or the countless encroachments on Fourth Amendment Rights we’ve seen over the last few decades.

What pisses me off about this argument isn’t the defense of gun ownership, or even opposition to gun control. Frankly I don’t think this kind of crap even touches either one of those issues. It sheds no light on those issues whatsoever, and leave us with a whole different discussion to have if we can ever get clear of noise like this. What bothers me about this stuff is the scorched-earth tactics; the vision of politics as warfare and questions about rights as an invitation to shoot at one another. It’s a vision of government as a faceless evil empire in opposition to private citizens, and begging for opposition from heroic gun-owners everywhere. Folks telling this yarn have no sense of how such things actually happen. But they are happy to tell stories of gun-toting heroes squaring off against a government turned inexplicably on its own population. How that will work is a Hell we can only hope we will never see.

And it’s a Hell as likely to be brought about by gun-owners defending their own rights (as they define them) as anything done by a corrupt and tyrannical government.

While others have struggled and died for some of the most basic human rights imaginable, so many in the gun crowd openly fantasize about acts of violence over basic policy disagreements and the possibility of restricted access to a commodity. The pretense that this commodity is the key to civil rights plays a big role in these fantasies. The end result is a tantrum born of paranoia and privilege and a gun culture increasingly dangerous to the rest of us.

No. I’m not talking about the weapons. I am talking about the mindset of people who produce memes like the one above. People who make such arguments are not interested in protecting anyone under serious threat of government repression. The gun rights crowd did not protect the Japanese during World War II, and I for one don’t believe they will be there the next time someone decides to create camps like this.

…unless of course it is to close and lock the gates.

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Real World Villains, Volume III: Those Troublesome Alaska Natives!

15 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, History, Justice, Native American Themes, Politics

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Alaska Natives, Alberta Schenck, civil Rights, Duck-In, Ducks, Elizabeth Peratrovitch, Hunting, Inupiat, Subsistence

Governor Gruening Signs the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945

“What the Hell is a duck in?”

That must have been my first response to one of the stories I want to write about today. Hopefully, I didn’t say it out loud, but the duck-in is one of many historical narratives that has changed my sense of the political landscape since coming to Alaska.

Yes, I’m still a lefty. I said “changed” not “destroyed.”

And like many a lefty, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about civil rights issue. You know, Martin Luther King, the Freedom Rides, Brown vs. Board of Education, …all good stuff!

Since coming to Alaska, I have been blessed to learn about several new and unexpected additions to the list of civil rights struggles, some with clear parallels to those taking place outside Alaska.

Somewhere in my list of my thoughts about nuclear power, I now add the struggle over Project Chariot. Next to the relocation of Japanese in World War II, I now have a definite place for the story of Anangan (Aleutian) relocation. And of course the big story up here, at least in my mental timeline would certainly be passage of the Alaska Native Lands Claims Act.

But I don’t want to talk about any of those things today.

No, what interests me at the moment is a range of smaller battles, and the story of those who fought them. I’m talking about battles like the one fought by Alberta Schenck.

Alberta Schenck Letter

Who is Alberta Schenck? Well, she was the best kind of troublemaker. As a girl of mixed heritage (her mother was Inupiat and her father was white), Schenck faced discrimination against Alaska Natives and “half breeds” on several occasions. At the age of 16, she wrote this letter to the editor of the Nome Nugget, protesting the segregated seating of natives and whites at a local movie house, known as the Dream Theater. To say that the significance of her protest stretched beyond the specific policies of that specific theater would be an understatement.

It’s worth noting that Schenck herself worked at Dream Theater, at least she did until the letter was published. She later returned to that very theater on a date with a white army sergeant. After refusing to leave her seat, the Chief of Police for the city of Nome physically removed Schenck from her seat and she spent the night in jail.

Outrage over Schenck’s arrest helped eventually to fuel for passage of the Anti-Dicrimnatory act of 1945. She was subsequently elected Queen of Nome during the Spring Carnival of that year. This was in 1944, 11 years before Rosa Parks picked her fight with the city of Montgomery Alabama. …well before the sit-ins, or the freedom rides.

And then of course there is Elizabeth Peratrovitch, a Tlingit Native whose testimony before the territorial senate helped to secure the final passage of the Anti-Discriminatory Act, mentioned above. She said a lot of things in that testimony, but this particular line is particularly memorable:

I would not have expected that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with five thousand years of recorded civilization behind them, of our Bill of Rights.

With actions like those of Alberta Schenck and testimony such as that of Elizabeth Peratrovich, the territory finally passed a law banning such acts of discrimination.

I should add that the law did not merely eliminate discriminatory policies at the government level; it forbade discrimination by private businesses. Opponents of the bill had argued, as many do today, that government had no role to play in limiting the choices of private businessmen. Fortunately, that argument lost in 1945, as it did in 1964, and as it should today. Those who imagine it is enough to keep government policies free of racial bias have seriously underestimated the impact of private discrimination. Here as elsewhere the individual decisions of private businesses were the centerpiece of segregation.

But my all time favorite story about civil disobedience in the great state of Alaska would have to be the “Duck in.” This narrative begins in 1918 with a treaty between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Under this treaty, the U.S. agreed to ban the taking of migratory waterfowl from the period between March 10th and September 1st.

So what’s the trouble? That is the ONLY time that migratory waterfowl can be found on the North Slope of Alaska. For a people very much dependent on subsistence hunting for their survival, the terms of this treaty removed a critical resource from the Spring and Summer menu.

The issue does not appear to have been much of a problem, at least not until Alaska became a state and began to enforce Federal laws with greater diligence. Then Fish and Wildlife officers began arresting people and confiscating their weapons, and their catch.

Duck Hunters at Point Barrow

How did the Inupiat population of Barrow respond to the arrest of people in their own community? How did they deal with a game warden in town to enforce the hunting regulations?

Well, they were very cooperative.

He found about a hundred and fifty Barrow residents outside his hotel room one day, each with a duck in hand. He didn’t have enough forms to process all the arrests, so Barrow Magistrate Sadie Neakok advised him to record the names on extra paper and attach them to the main form. And thus, everyone with a duck got counted.

Subsequent to this, State Senator, Eben Hopson, sent a request to then Governor, William Egan, asking that welfare officials be sent to help take care of all the children whose parents would be locked up due to enforcement of the law.

…and Fish and Wildlife simply stopped enforcing the regulations.

That’s called a ‘win’ folks!

*********************

Okay, that’s it, just a few of my favorite stories about troublesome Alaska Natives. I haven’t covered any of this with sufficient detail to do justice to these stories, so I’ll just briefly mention some better sources:

Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson produced a wonderful documentary on the Duck In. It is available through the North Slope Borough School District.

Wikipedia does seem to have a page on Elizabeth Peratrovitch. , and she is mentioned in quite a few additional sources. This one from Alaschool.org has a pretty thorough discussion of her contributions to the state of Alaska.

Numerous references to Alberta Schenck may be found in sundry parts of the net. Her memorial website would be a good place to start.

One good reading on the subject of discrimination would be an article by Terrence M. Cole, “Jim Crow in Alaska: The Passage of the Alaska Equal Rights act of 1945,” in Stephen W. Haycox and Mary Childers Mangusso (eds.) An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past, (Seattle and London. University of Washington Press, 1996) pp 314-335.

The Images of Governor Gruening signing the Anti-discriminatory Act, Elizabeth Peratrovich, and Alberta Schenck’s letter are from Alaska’s Digital Archives. The image of Duck Hunters came from the Marine Image Bank of the Digital Collections at the University of Washington.

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