India and the Potawatomi
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India and the Potawatomi
When Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, he thought he had discovered a new route to India. His error was perpetuated in convention as subsequent European settlers continued to call the indigenous people of the Americas "Indians."
Many people are interested to learn that the Potawatomi Native Americans wore turbans, somewhat similar to those worn by Sikhs and Muslims in India, a coincidence that might have helped to eternize Columbus's error.
After the United States Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Native-American communities throughout the United States were forced from their ancestral land and placed on reservations. In 1833, the Treaty of Chicago set the stage for the removal of the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi tribes who lived in the broad region surrounding Chicago, Illinois.
In the years prior to 1830, tribal leaders of the Three Fires (Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi) were encouraged to accept individual plots of land to be owned and operated, in the European tradition, as family farms. Farming in the European style proved to be inconsistent with the core culture of the native people. Warriors and hunters saw farming as women’s work and abandoned prototype farms that were sponsored by Quaker missionaries in an attempt to assimilate the native people to the new order.
The Potawatomi reservation in Kansas retains tribal ownership to this day. However, the division of the reservation into plots for private ownership is a tribal administrative issue which has resurfaced many times over the years.
Had the Potawatomi chosen individual land grants, the progression for many of their farms might have followed the same economic trajectory as many small, family farms in the United States owned by people of European ancestry:
The farm experiences a number of years of economic success
deeper into debt until loans cannot be paid
farming techniques that maximize economic yield
Why is the above pattern important to the modern country of India?
As with many parts of today’s developing world, the nation of India has numerous small tribal farming villages where land ownership is communal or “understood” but not documented. Without formal property rights, the land cannot be leveraged with debt to employ more advanced farming techniques and increase crop yields. Much like the Potawatomi of 1833, the inhabitants eventually find themselves extracting only bare subsistence from the land they occupy.
However, when property rights are established, then many small farmers in the developing world can expect the same sequence of debt and displacement that is described above. Had the Native Americans of the 1830s not chosen a continued tribal existence, they would likely have been scattered and eventually absorbed into today’s homogenous urban-American society. The United States would be deprived of the rich cultural preservation that can be found on the reservations today.
Am I trying to say that the developing world should place its poor, indigenous populations on reservations?
No.
But cultural identity is a key component in the overall mental health of a society. If any lesson is learned from the example of the Native-American experience it is that, when possible, disruptive economic progress should be managed in a way to allow communities to preserve their dignity and core values. The Land Research Action Network (LRAN) tracks the progress of equitable land redistribution in the developing nations.
The very term "reservation" carries a different meaning in India than it does for Native Americans. In the United States, a reservation is a dedicated area of land subject to tribal laws and administration. But India's reservation system is an affirmative action program where job quotas within existing institutions are "reserved" for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST). These protected groups are historically known as untouchable or Delit (meaning crushed).
One of the recent criticisms of India's current system is that reserved jobs are stacked too tightly within specific institutions and at too low a level. However, advocates for SC/STs continue to press for social progress as the nation of India evolves into its leadership role in the global community.
