By Eric Vandenbroeck 5 October 2007

In this phase the occupation of indigenous territories, which might occur with or without a formal treaty in place, the newly dominant gov­ernments had to reconceptualize the aboriginal population. They could no longer be seen as allies or worthy adversaries. Instead, they had to be viewed as cultural works in process, uncivilized peoples capable, with effort, of being transformed into valuable, contributing members of the colonial order. The self-righteous Christians believed themselves free to impose their spiritual views, and the cultural baggage which accompanied them, on the original peoples. Indigenous communities, therefore, were deemed to be in urgent need of cultural, economic, and spiritual salva­tion. The incoming settler population had to be protected from the abo­riginal people and vice versa. Government policy, therefore, was typically built around the contradictory motives of separating indigenous peoples from the settlers while simultaneously attempting to ensure that the aboriginal communities became increasingly like the new colonial societies.

These processes, best known in the context of Britain, the United States, and the settler Dominions, were not unique to European empires. Japan's advance toward the Ainu island of Ezochi showed many of the same elements. The area had been disrupted by armed conflict, epidemic diseases, and considerable trading activity before the mid-nineteenth century. Under the expansionist Meiji regime, the Japanese government redefined the Ainu homeland as Hokkaido, declared it to be vacant land and brushed aside any Ainu claims to ownership. The Ainu themselves were ethnically redefined as being Japanese and the promulgation of the Hokkaido Aborigine Protection Act (Kyu-Dojin ) in 1899 launched an era of intense assimilationist activity. As in the British and European colonies, the government of Japan used national schools to undermine Ainu language and culture, encouraged intermarriage, and sought to integrate the Ainu into the agricultural economy. The Meiji era saw, on a very broad scale, the Japanese make a concerted attempt to join with the western industrial nations; perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the desire to perform like the West resulted in a virtual replication of British and colonial European indigenous policies. The image held of the Ainu by the national majority (called Shamo by the Ainu) was rife with condescension and paternalism, a sense of quaintness and interest in primitive peoples. And while the Ainu were not held in the same contempt as were the Burakumin or Koreans, they were seen as quaint remnants of a dead or dying culture.

Asserting political dominion over a population did not inevitably result in the disappearance of indigenous peoples as political communities. As governments sought to incorporate aboriginal societies, they often allowed the societal units to survive. In South and Central America, where government policies toward indigenous peoples were regressive and aggressive, the indigenous groups typically had no formal legal identity, but nonetheless remained together in small, poor, and marginal settlements. Across Siberia, the small peoples of the north remained largely sepparate from the Russian communities, using distance and isolation as a buffer against incursions, a circumstance which obtained in the Australian outback as well. The Russian management of the northern regions fit into three general periods. In the era of direct rule, 1580-1720, the Russians largely left the indigenous peoples alone, but collected taxes (iasak), often holding people hostage to secure payment. In the time of indirect rule, 1720-1822, local aboriginal leaders collected taxes for the government, and during the period of native rule, 1822-1900, sought to integrate native-run administrative units into the broader state apparatus.

Tribal peoples remained as distinct social entities, at least in part because of limited interaction with newcomers. The Maori, although they owned a significant percentage of New Zealand, were not granted large contiguous holdings for settlement purposes; most of the Maori, however, stayed away from larger, urban, and developed areas and remained in remote, Maori-dominated villages. In most nations, mixedblood populations emerged in the early decades of conduct, as the newcomer males took indigenous women as short-term partners or wives. In most parts of the world, the children of these unions did not create a unique cultural group and did not survive as distinct political units. Only in Canada, where the Métis`established a formidable military and political presence in the western districts, did people of mixed ancestry preserve and project a distinctive political community.

Managing indigenous affairs required, in most states, the creation of bureaucratic structures and legislative frameworks. In the United States, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was responsible for establishing and maintaining the numerous reservations set up across the country. For Canada, the Department of Indian Affairs, initially a branch of the Department of the Interior charged with settling the prairie west and later associated with northern development, managed aboriginal issues. A highly struc­tured legal environment, centered on the Indian Act, codified indigenous rights and restrictions. Other countries offered similar systems, ranging from the National Indian Foundation in Brazil to the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes in the Philippines, the Department of Orang Ash (Aboriginal Affairs) in Malaysia and the Hokkaido Aborigine Protection Act in Japan. In Australia, the federal government maintained respon­sibility for Aborigines in the Northern Territory and pursued an activist agenda in that jurisdiction. In the rest of the country, however, Aboriginal policy rested with state governments, most of which paid scant attention to indigenous issues. This changed only when a 1967 referendum granted Aborigines full citizenship rights and asserted a national role in responding to indigenous affairs. The creation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in 1990 was a major attempt to provide national direction on this important issue. (ATSIC was dismantled by the Howard government in 2004, with the politicians arguing that the Aborigine-led organization had failed to improve social and economic conditions.)

There is, in contrast, the policy of the Chinese government, which refuses to accept that any of its peoples are "indigenous" in the internationally understood context of that word; there are over fifty "national minorities" identified within the country, but no acceptance of indigenous rights or indigenous cultures. As Chinese official Long Xuequn said before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1997:

The indigenous issues are a product of special historical circumstances. By and large, they are the result of the colonialist policy carried out in modern history by European countries in other regions of the world, especially on the continents of America and Oceania. As in the case of other Asian countries, the Chinese people of all ethnic groups have lived on our own land for generations. We suffered from invasion and occupation of colonialists and foreign aggressors. Fortunately, after arduous struggles of all ethnic groups, we drove away those colonialists and aggressors. In China, there are no indigenous people and therefore no indigenous issues.5(1)

Government land policy in certain countries reenforced the sense of indigenous identity within the nation-state. Catholic priests in California established an extensive mission system, beginning in the late eighteenth century which tied Native Americans to specific locations. Aboriginal groups were, in a manner similar to the treatment of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, tightly controled, denied the chance to move across their traditional lands, and more vulnerable to disease than before. Native American groups in the United States were assigned to small reservations, typically on unattractive and economically marginal lands. Problems persisted, however. In the case of the Shoshone of the Death Valley region, the establishment of a national park resulted in the removal of the people from their homelands, although they were subse­quently allowed to return. Similarly, the Wanniyala-aetto of Sri Lanka had much of their traditional territory incorporated into the Maduru Ova National Park and subsequently lost control over their traditional livelihoods. In Canada, land allotments called reserves, usually small, uneconomic, and deliberately separated from other indigenous settlements and from newcomer populations, were allocated to both treaty and non-treaty Indians. The Miskito Indians of Nicaragua made a concerted effort to hold onto their autonomy.

When foreign powers squabbled about control over the Miskito land in eastern Nicaragua in the mid-nineteenth century, the Amerindians insisted on local control. The British Administration in Nicaragua relented in 1860 and created a substantial reserve for exclusive Miskito use. Difficulties ensued, and the Miskito eventually accepted integration into Nicaragua, but with the assumption that they would continue to enjoy considerable freedom to manage their affairs. In northern Australia, at the urging of officials and anthropologists, a large tract of land in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, was established in 1931 for exclusive Aborigine occupation.

There were other occasions when indigenous lands proved too attractive to leave in aboriginal hands. The famously painful Trail of Tears ("The 'Ii-ail Where They Cried," is the Cherokee translation) march forced upon the Cherokee people by US President Andrew Jackson in the late 1830s was but one example of indigenous peoples being removed forcibly from their traditional territories and relocated to unattractive lands great distances away. As many as half the Cherokee may have died in the march. There were numerous such actions across North America. Canada routinely moved indigenous peoples around for administrative purposes, the most notable instance being the relocation of dozens of Inuit to the high Arctic Islands in the 1950s. In the Middle East, the government of Israel removed Bedouin tribes from their tra­ditional territories and relocated them in a "closed security zone" in the early 1950s. These policies ensured that indigenous peoples remained within a group. They were often ordered to remain in a community or on a reserve/reservation unless they had official permission to leave. These policies helped retain the sense and reality of being a political community, however constrained and powerless, and also to reinforce among newcomer populations the separate and distinct identities of indigenous peoples.

Governments were not consistent in their motivations for placing indigenous peoples on tribal lands. The United States was comfortable with the idea that Native American governments would exercise consid­erable control - even calling it sovereignty - on tribal lands. New Metlakatla, established in Alaska in 1887 by a group of Tsimshian wishing to leave Canada, was granted a significant range of self-governing powers. The community enjoyed substantial freedom in subsequent decades. Similarly, the US granted the Navaho both a large block of  land in their traditional territories and considerable authority to manage their affairs. British officials in what is now Bangladesh, in South Asia, passed the Chittagong Hill Tracts Regulation of 1900, seeking to protect the interests of the Chittagong Hill people, by endeavoring to keep outsiders at bay and to thereby ensure that local inhabitants retained access to traditional territories. Indigenous peoples in other settings, including Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory and more contemporary efforts to set aside lands to protect indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin, lacked the self-government and autonomy elements; their primary objective was to keep develop­ment removed from the homelands of the tribal peoples.

Governments hoped that the indigenous people would soon abandon communitarian approaches to property ownership in favor of individual control of land. The Maori Land Courts and the Native Lands Act set up to protect Maori land rights and holdings, individualized what had been iwi (tribal) and family rights. The resulting administrative mess, in which individuals held rights to small percentages of specific parcels of the land, complicated Maori landholdings and sales dramatically, mak­ing it difficult for thé Maori to get full value for their properties. In the United States, the 1887 Dawes Act reflected the American government's belief in the "civilizing power" of private property. The Act gave Native American tribes the authority to replace collective ownership with indi­vidual land rights. In operation, the Act resulted in the dispossession of thousands of Native Americans and hundreds of tribes; it proved an administrative disaster and as an effort at cultural transformation was a dismal failure. (Canada flirted with a similar plan in 1969, only to have aboriginal organizations mount an effective public campaign against the initiative.) In 1935, under reformer John Collier, the American govern­ment passed the Indian Reorganization Act, returning a substantial measure of sovereignty to the Native American nations and recognizing, belatedly, the shortcomings of the more aggressively assimilationist poli­cies. It was more common, in fact, for national and colonial legislation to make it illegal for an indigenous person to own land. Under the Canadian Indian Act, a status Indian (a person deemed eligible under the Indian Act) had to surrender their claims to being aboriginal in order to be permitted to own real estate. Few indigenous peoples volun­tarily took this option, which amounted to renouncing one's ethnicity; others were enfranchised automatically as a result of having enroled in a university, entered a profession, started a business, or otherwise demonstrated the capacity for integration.

Managing the activities of indigenous peoples was among the highest priority after ensuring that the government and the settlers had effective control of the land. Colonial administrations used a variety of approaches, ranging from the United States pattern of opening army posts in the middle of Native American territory to the Canadian tradi­tion of using the North West Mounted Police (later and best known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) to assert sovereignty over widely dispersed indigenous populations. The Spanish and Portuguese worked largely through military units, generally small in number but armed with sufficient firepower to impose their will throughout the claimed territo­ries. Pre-Soviet Russian authorities opened combined trading and military forts in locations as widely dispersed as Yakutia, Alaska, and California, hoping to assert domination over the indigenous peoples. In the Soviet era, Russia did not immediately impose order on the "small peoples" of the North, leaving them with considerable autonomy from the state and the freedom to remain on the land. Over time, however, this policy shifted. The Soviet state began to collectivize the reindeer herds in isolated corners of Siberia, including among the Chukchi, with the unanticipated result that reindeer harvests declined precipitously. The Soviets, though intrusive, were also more respectful than most societies to the traditional activities of indigenous peoples. They created mobile indigenous soviets, which were charged with protecting indigenous inter­ests and representing aboriginal needs and concerns to higher-level authorities. The pattern paralleled that used by the Japanese when they expanded initially onto Ainu territory on the island of Hokkaido in the second half of the nineteenth century. In Australia, governments used roaming police units, typically reinforced by Aborigine guides, to impose order on mobile Aborigines. "Tribal peoples in remote regions, small in number and moving across vast expanses, proved difficult to control and influence, if only because their movements meant that they had relatively little direct contact with the newcomers.

The presence of military, paramilitary, or police units had consider­able impact on indigenous populations. Aboriginal communities found themselves encouraged, and eventually compelled, to adhere to a for­eign code of laws and regulations. The forces protected land rights as spelled out in the legal structures of the colonial authorities; much more rarely did they seek to ensure adherence to the terms and conditions of treaties between foreign powers and indigenous peoples. Governments used their authority in a wide variety of ways: to compel residence on selected reserves or community sites, protect newcomers who ventured onto aboriginal lands, and force adherence to the legal system (civil and criminal codes) of the colony. The new legal structures often bore little resemblance to aboriginal constraints on personal and collective behavior. In some settings - the Canadian North being perhaps the best example - authorities were slow to impose the full rigor of the law and sought instead to bring the indigenous peoples gradually under the national legal umbrella. In other quarters - the United States and Australia, for instance - police and military authorities were not as forgiving and understanding. Indigenous peoples were supposed to understand, accept, and internalize the newcomer standards of legal conduct and comport themselves accordingly.

Most governments hoped that indigenous peoples would adapt to the new economic order, if only to reduce demands on the state for food and supplies to support displaced and hungry peoples. On many occasions, the expansion of settlement and development resulted in indigenous peoples being undermined in their traditional pursuits, such as harvesting and trading, but denied ready access to the new economy. A few groups, particularly the Maori in New Zealand who took to farming, whaling, and mining with alacrity, the whale-hunting and fur-trading Inuit in the Arctic and the Sami in Sçandinavia who operated commercial reindeer­herding operations, made significant advances toward the more com­mercial and industrial order. Many others had few skills and less inclination to adapt to the unattractive and unreliable work opportuni­ties provided by the newcomers. Only a tiny number - paragons of Christian and capitalist virtue held up by church, state, and business as examples of what was possible - made a personal transition from the indigenous economies. Many others who attempted the shift found their way blocked by discriminatory attitudes and restrictive hiring practices. Most indigenous peoples quickly found that, government policies aside, there was little place for them in the newcomer economy.

Discriminatory barriers did not stop governments from trying to encourage change. Indigenous economic activity was closely watched and often regulated, occasionally with a view to punishing or threaten­ing the aboriginal peoples. Peasant farmers in Central America rarely enjoyed unfettered access to markets (a problem which persists to the present day), and often found themselves with spoiled crops they could not move to trading centers. First Nations in Canada had to secure govern­ment approval to sell their products, particularly beef and crops; more than a few times, the Indian agents withheld the necessary permission in order to ensure that local non-aboriginal farmers and ranchers did not face undue competition. In many locations - Brazil, Argentina, the Philippines, and temperate parts of Africa - indigenous peoples were pushed off arable land and forced onto unattractive territory where they struggled to maintain a living. Without the meager protections of the British legal and moral code, indigenous peoples in these areas had few protections against the development and commercial priorities of the colonial or national governments.

Education was the cornerstone of government efforts to transform indigenous peoples and communities. In almost all nations, authorities held out little hope for the adults. Raised on the land and tied to tradi­tional lifestyles, these people were, in the minds of most authorities, largely lost to the emerging modern world. Children, on the other hand, had enormous potential. Government-run schools, often made more cost-efficient and more culturally intrusive through cooperation with missionaries, were established in countless indigenous communities. The schools included time-limited summer and day schools, operated only when missionaries or government teachers were available. Such schools had minimal impact, save for allowing the authorities to believe that they were doing something to civilize the aboriginal peoples. At the other extreme, several countries established residential schools, removing the children from the strong influences of family and community and placing them in intensive cultural and educational settings where they could be introduced to the knowledge and teachings of the colonial state.

Canadian and American governments took the lead in the establish­ment of residential schools. They operated from the mid-nineteenth century through to the 1960s, and served as the highly celebrated cen­terpiece of government efforts at acculturation. The children and grad­uates were routinely identified as the "promise" and the future of the aboriginal people. In remote regions, particularly in the Canadian North, children were removed from their homes, typically for the entire academic year and on occasion from the time of admission until gradu­ation. "These children grew up in awkward spaces. Separated from family and community, they were taught to abhor the values, customs, and lifeways of their parents and grandparents. The children were ostensibly trained in the ways of the new material and industrial order. Many of the schools were created as industrial training centers and the students often participated in agricultural and other activities designed to support the institutions. Upon graduation, however, they found themselves trapped between a world they did not fully understand - their home communities - and a society that did not accept them. Few aboriginal graduates found acceptance in the non-indigenous economy, even when they were properly trained, and most foundered between the indigenous and the non-aboriginal worlds.

Indigenous students complained about the experience of the indus­trial and boarding schools. They did not enjoy the military-type regimen and the harsh discipline masquerading as Christian love. Many criticized the food, the cramped dormitories, and the often long hours of work. They did not, as students, understand the full implications of being punished for speaking their language or being denied access to cultural and ceremonial activities. They would come to appreciate the cost of these intrusions in later life. The residential schools became, tragically, the site for physical and sexual abuse; many indigenous residents complained bitterly about their treatment at the hands of the teachers. Although, on balance, the residential schools caused enormous harm throughout the indigenous world, the experience was not entirely one-sided. Some students experienced considerable compassion and support from their instructors and monitors. The students were, as well, often radicalized by the experience, drawn together from various cultural groups, clearly treated differently simply because of their race, and yet armed with the skills and abilities necessary to take on the dominant society on their own terms. It is hardly surprising, therefore, than many prominent aboriginal leaders emerged, angry and determined, out of the residential schools.

Education of indigenous children figured prominently in many coun­tries. In Siberia, the famed "Red Tents" followed the tribal peoples of the North on their annual journeys across the land. The Soviet-trained instructors sought to inculcate enthusiasm for the new order among indigenous communities, largely by focusing on the education of the youth. In Australia, the government paid relatively little attention to the Aboriginal children, but focused instead on half-caste children (those of mixed parentage). These children were often removed forcibly from their Aborigine mothers and placed in boarding schools or foster homes so that the non-indigenous part of their ancestry could be exploited to ensure a more prosperous future. In many countries and colonies, Catholic and Protestant missionaries worked consistently through the classroom to bring aboriginal children closer to the norms of the western world, attacking indigenous "superstition" while they taught reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The era of administration witnessed, in many nations, a systematic assault on indigenous cultural activities. Many authorities believed that the continuation of age-old rituals - dances, singing, ceremonies, and other cultural endeavors - slowed the integration of aboriginal peoples into the emerging mainstream society. They saw in these activities convincing evidence of the barbarism and backwardness of the indige­nous peoples and therefore felt compelled to eradicate them. Officials believed that many of the practices were, in fact, antithetical to the values and expectations of the emerging economic and social order. Some practices - cannibalism and human sacrifice - were generally agreed to be abhorrent and governments insisted that they be stopped. On others, like polygamy, they were more flexible, although the prefer­ences of the external administrators were generally very clear. In general, if the traditional practices were deemed to be quaint and of marginal authority, they were tolerated. Activities`which offended the newcomers' sensitivities and value systems, in contrast, were outlawed, suppressed, and otherwise undermined.

As a consequence, systematic attempts were made to eliminate the most provocative or disturbing activities. Missionaries and government officials along the Canadian west coast sought to eliminate the potlatch, the ceremonial and economic redistribution of personal effects. Traders had encouraged the gifting exercise, which other non-aboriginal peo­ples argued had gotten out of hand. Stringent laws forbidding the pot­latch were introduced. Enforcement was quite rigorous, and several aboriginal people ended up in jail. Many communities found alternate strategies for continuing the potlatch, including holding the feasts in private and disguising the gift exchange as a Christmas event, an irony which the missionaries and government officials appear to have missed. The Sun Dance of the North American plains, an elaborate ritual associated with the empowerment of indigenous peoples, attracted hostile attention in both Canada and the United States, with systematic efforts made to wipe out the practice.

Governments were not altogether sure how to stop unwanted social, cultural, and spiritual activities. Australian officials disliked the many ritual activities of the Aborigines, ranging from initiation ceremonies for young men and women to large ceremonial gatherings, and attempted to break-up the social or cultural patterns. Canadian and American authorities jailed some indigenous peoples for participating in spiritual ceremonies, believing that their activities had to be stamped out. Colonial authorities throughout Asia, Africa, and South America took numerous steps - from attempting to eliminate public nudity to arrest­ing spiritual leaders - to suppress elements of traditional cultures. They found, time and again, that it was easier to pass laws, regulations, or administrative rules than it was to enforce them, particularly when the indigenous peoples remained on the land. Mobile populations typically spent very little time in immediate proximity to the newcomers; when they were out of sight, they were effectively out of control.

Indigenous peoples found creative ways of keeping their most valued traditions alive. Throughout the indigenous world, outsiders made particular efforts to undermine spiritual beliefs, seeing them both as evidence of aboriginal lack of civilization and as barriers to the peoples' integration into the new social order. In parts of Central America, where the Catholic Church made vigorous and even violent efforts to suppress indigenous spirituality, the traditional beliefs resurfaced as soon as the authority of the church declined'. Russian authorities had little time for the shamanistic traditions of the small peoples of the North and sought to remove them as authority figures within indigenous societies. Many indigenous communities which had been officially Christian for several generations nonetheless provided ample evidence that traditional spirituality continued. West Coast potlatch traditions survived concerted efforts to destroy them, as did a wide variety of initiation rituals, spiri­tual beliefs, and practices, and other central elements of the indigenous world-view. On other matters, polygamy being perhaps the best exam­ple, many indigenous groups quickly heeded the directions of church and state that they adopt monogamous relationships. That they did so, of course, revealed as much about the changing nature of the economy and harvesting activity as it did about changing social mores.

There was, curiously, considerable enthusiasm for selective public dis­plays of indigenous culture. Even as the United States continued the occupation of aboriginal land and fought devastating wars with selected Native American groups, the country was warming to Wild West shows, complete with fearsome warriors. Sitting Bull, having returned to the US from exile in Canada, was put on public display, along with other noted Native American chiefs. The Maori haka, an aggressive chant associated with the commencement of battle, became a staple element in New Zealand ceremonial life. It became, in fact, the signature of the country's rugby team. In Canada, aboriginal peoples were invited to set up encampments, wear traditional dress and otherwise serve as an attraction at the agricultural fairs which figure prominently in western Canadian life. Australia proved much slower than other countries in turning to Aboriginal culture as a centerpiece of its ceremonial life, but by the 1980s didgeridoos (a musical instrument) and Aboriginal dances began to figure prominently in national affairs. The celebration of indigenous cultures had, by the last decades of the twentieth century, become commonplace in many nations, even if efforts to sustain and support aboriginal societies languished.

One further element of colonial aboriginal policies needs to be highlighted. Contemporary critics, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, have correctly identified the culturally destructive and paternalistic elements in national and colonial indigenous initiatives. Less attention has been given to the idealistic elements which ran through many of government policies directed at aboriginal peoples. Through the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, national governments and colonial administrations had a strikingly critical perspective of the newcomer societies. They were well aware of the cultural and, some officials believed, genetic limitations of the lower orders within their midst. Church leaders, moralists, and government officials decried promiscuous behavior, abhorred the propensity to alcohol, worried about the intellectual quality of many members of the newcomer society, and routinely criticized the excesses of the maledominated communities which characterized much of the early history of the colonial world.

Faced with the reality of what they viewed as abhorrent behavior by their own people, colonial officials did not actually hope that aboriginal people would become just like the newcomer mainstream. In fact, many government policies sought to restrict contact between indigenous and newcomer communities. First Nations people on reserves in the Canadian West operated under pass laws which allowed Indian agents to control personal movements. The Australian government declared it illegal for a non-Aboriginal to have sex with an Aboriginal. And in many of the British settler Dominions, it was illegal for indigenous people to possess, consume, or sell liquor. In other words, governments hoped that aboriginal communities would have little contact with the lower orders in newcomer societies and would abstain from alcohol. They also aspired to the creation of new indigenous societies which had been stripped of their primitive and pagan elements of the old ways and which avoided the excesses and shortcomings that were so evident in the colonial world. In yet another of the interesting twists which run through indigenous policies, government officials hoped to convert indigenous peoples into "proper" colonials while at the same time attempting to ensure that they did not pick up the least attractive characteristics of the soldiers, traders, miners, sailors, and others who represented the home country in the New World.

This effort failed, often miserably. Some of the initiatives designed to keep aboriginals and newcomers apart had the opposite effect. Prohibiting indigenous peoples from buying alcohol through normal channels, as the Canadian authorities attempted to do, forced aboriginal peoples wishing to purchase a drink to get their supplies from boot­leggers and petty criminals, the very individuals the government was trying to keep away from indigenous communities. Also, criminalizing a large number of aboriginal activities, from the Sun Dance in the United States, to the potlatch in Canada and initiation rituals in Australia only highlighted the unfairness and cultural specificity of national aboriginal legislation. Throwing indigenous people in jail for commonplace acts - such as possessing beer in a public place - served to discredit the legal system in the eyes of the aboriginal communities. Police and the courts were seen for what they clearly were: instruments of the colonial, non­indigenous society, with a strong bias against the equality and cultural rights of the aboriginal peoples.

It was equally clear that governments typically viewed indigenous peoples in harshly negative and pejorative terms, and saw little worth salvaging in their cultures and traditions. The colonial impulse was suf­fused with the "white man's burden," which involved bringing civiliza­tion to the heathen and pagan peoples of jungle, tundra, mountain, and desert. When European powers gathered at Berlin in 1884-85 to divide Africa into colonial bits, they pledged themselves to "elevating" the tribes to a "higher" plane of culture and civilization. Both the League of Nations, founded in 1922, and the United Nations, established in 1945, committed themselves to having the "advanced" countries assist other peoples with their economic, social, and political progress.

The intrusions of government into the lives of aboriginal people often went to considerable lengths. Many officials worried that children were not being looked after properly within aboriginal communities and were quick to remove them to either residential schools or, later, to put them up for adoption by non-indigenous families. Australia was among the most interventionist in this regard. The government banned interracial sexual and marital relations, legislative initiatives which had relatively little practical effect. Australian authorities, particularly in the Northern Territory where the national government had full constitutional author­ity, paid particular attention to half-caste or mixed-ancestry children. Believing that the children were, automatically, better off within non­Aborigine society, they removed thousands from their mothers and placed them in orphanages and foster homes. The process continued for generations, causing great pain and hardship within Aborigine families. Only in the 1980s and 1990s did the practice become the focus for public debate in the country, leading eventually to a national inquiry and the release of a major report, Bringing Them Home, on this now controversial government policy.

Governments hoped, if for no other reason than fiscal prudence, that indigenous communities would take care of themselves economically. Authorities worried, from very early days, that the indigenous peoples would become an economic charge on the state. While there was some willingness to pay costs temporarily, the hope and expectation was that the aboriginal peoples would adapt to the new economy. Land was set aside for some communities, in the hope that they would take up agri­culture. Across the Canadian and American Wests, concerted efforts were made to introduce indigenous peoples to commercial farming, albeit typically with insufficient financial backing or training, and with other intrusions that upset indigenous adaptations. Those indigenous peoples living in remote regions, where traditional economies remained substantially unchanged, were generally left to lend for themselves. Around major cities and in developed areas, governments provided basic welfare support, typically through the provision of food and basic necessities. In very few areas, however, did the non-aboriginal people and authorities make accommodations necessary to draw indigenous peoples into the regional economy. They were viewed, in most countries, as comparable to the peons, peasants, slaves or ex-slaves, and other peo­ples assigned to the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.

But the current analyses of government approaches toward indigenous peoples are often one-sided and, often, simplistic in their emphasis on colonialism and the politics of domination. Bad things happened along the line of encounter, but the relationships that unfolded were more complex and interactive than can be summarized by singular concepts of European imperialism. In a thoughtful and insightful study of British actions in the South Pacific, Jane Samson drew attention to the impor­tance of adding the humanitarian impulse into the reading of British intentions and actions in the region. When the reality that the British - from a particularly cultural, economic, and political perspective - were earnestly seeking to do the right thing is added into the equation, a more nuanced and balanced understanding emerges. As Samson wrote:

British benevolence in the Pacific Islands was based on the assumption that islanders had the same potential for "civilization" as any other human beings. The duties of Britain's naval representatives were, therefore, much more than "policing." Officers believed they had moral obligations, as members of a Christian and civilized society, to help primitive peoples improve themselves. Island leaders, especially in Polynesia land Fiji, could be useful catalysts for "reforming" island societies, something naval captains were determined to do without violence or coercion. In other areas, especially Melanesia, they believed the activities of British traders to be a greater threat than island "savagery."(1)

If pre-1960 interpretations of the actions of colonial administrators were too uncritical, more recent analysis has tended to be overly cynical. Recognizing that officials often intended to improve the lot of indige­nous peoples, and that a humanitarian element often ran through gov­ernment programming, helps provide a more balanced assessment of the nature of government-indigenous interaction.

Because government motivations were typically mixed, few official ini­tiatives achieved the publicly declared objectives. With few exceptions in most countries, most indigenous peoples remained outside the main­stream economy, stood apart from the newcomer societies, and failed to measure up to the confused expectations of official policy-makers. Aboriginal peoples did not quickly absorb the languages, religions, and values of the new dominant societies. In most instances, traditional cus­toms remained active, even if forced underground by government prohibitions and punishments.

Aboriginals found few places in the mainstream economies - and then typically on a casual and low-wage basis, a situation which held in Siberia as much as it did in Arizona or New Zealand's North Island. Deeply entrenched racial discrimination and generations-old hostilities proved too broad a gulf for well-meaning but generally ineffectual government policies to bridge. Generally, government initiatives succeeded primarily in keeping indigenous peoples apart from non-aboriginal populations, at least until the post­World War II era. At that time, aboriginals by the tens of thousands began to leave their isolated, culturally separate communities to take up residence in and around cities, sparking a very different sent of crises and challenges for indigenous peoples.

Aboriginal societies responded differentially to the impositions of the age of administration, varying in large measure according to the speed, intensity, and imperatives behind the government measures. Indigenous peoples responded more favorably than is generally acknowledged to many initiatives, including agricultural development and education. Yet mobile aboriginal populations realized that the new order had under­mined their way of life. Buffalo hunting ceased to be an option on the Great Plains of North America when the massive herds that sustained life for centuries were destroyed in the last third of the nineteenth century. Ranching and herding cut into traditional indigenous land use in broad areas of Argentina, Brazil, Australia, and many African colonies. Mining and forestry operations undercut the viability of harvesting activities in many parts of the world, and the expansion of commercial agriculture removed millions of acres of land from exclusive indigenous use. Faced with a cruel reality, indigenous leaders spoke to their communities about the need to adapt, to sign treaties, to learn the skills of the new order, to adapt to new economic systems. Where the opportunity existed, some aboriginal peoples withdrew from non-indigenous settlements and sought to survive in marginal lands away from the newcomers.

Evasion occurred in many forms. Cultural practices did not die out in the face of government regulation. Most often, they simply went under­ground. In some parts of Mexico, indigenous practices suppressed by the Catholic Church reemerged several centuries later when the church withdrew its priests from the region. Some spiritual and cultural activi­ties were merged with Christian practices in order to make them more palatable to authorities. Indigenous peoples became adept, as well, at having ceremonial lives separate from their encounters with govern­ment officials and the dominant society. Indigenous languages, often singled out for attack by the authorities, survived under oppressive conditions, although there was a noticeable decline in use and fluency with each successive generation. Indigenous peoples clearly wanted their culture to live on, even if adaptations to the new order were required.

 

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