Public Ethnohistory? Or, Writing Tribal Histories at the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Abstract

IN THE FALL of 1978 the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), promulgated new regulations outlining the Procedures for Establishing that an American Indian Group Exists as an Indian Tribe, as it is stated in Title 25 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 83 (25 CFR 83). These regulations essentially put the burden of proof on claimants to Indian tribal status to establish, principally through historic documentary sources and more recent descriptions of their communities, that they are and have been since first sustained contact with EuroAmerican settlers (i.e., often since the mid-seventeenth century) genuine and cohesive Indian tribes. Prior to 1978, there had been no standard, systematic process by which Indian groups could petition the United States for federal acknowledgment, thus giving them access to the benefits and services provided by the government exclusively for federally acknowledged tribes.l But a deluge of petitions came in the wake of two significant federal court decisions in the mid-1970s, in which federal acknowledgment was a threshold issue, and this virtually forced the Interior Department and the BIA to create and adopt 25 CFR 83. Along with the regulations came the need for professionals to evaluate the evidence and documentation submitted by petitioners and to decide its adequacy, so positions were advertised to hire Indian-specialist genealogists, cultural anthropologists, and Indian-specialist historians---or ethnohistorians.