Voice of the Tribes: A History of the National Tribal Chairman's Association by Thomas A. Britten (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Voice of the Tribes: A History of the National Tribal Chairman's Association by Thomas A. Britten Paul McKenzie-Jones (bio) Voice of the Tribes: A History of the National Tribal Chairman's Association by Thomas A. Britten University of Oklahoma Press, 2020 THOMAS A. BRITTEN has produced a meticulously researched history of the short-lived and often-forgotten American Indian advocacy group, the National Tribal Chairman's Association (NTCA). Founded in 1973 and ended in 1987, the NTCA sought (often unsuccessfully) to present itself to the U.S. federal government and Indigenous people within the lower forty-nine U.S. states as the sole "bona-[fide representative of] federally recognized Indians" (104) when lobbying the government for Indigenous rights. Britten tracks the genesis of the organization—as a perceived antidote to the "wrong Indian voices" (42) of urban Indian activism and the structural uncertainties that beset the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Britten argues that the elected tribal leaders who sought to chart a more conservative approach to American Indian rights reform saw an opportunity to fill a vacuum and seize control of the narrative and direction of the self-determination movement. The text is preceded by a foreword from founding member of the American Indian Press Association and former NCAI director Charles Trimble, who hints at the still-lingering resentment felt over the ideological divisions between American Indian rights advocates from that era. In the current climate of Indigenous rights activism, the foreword can best be described as tone deaf in the way Trimble excoriates and seeks to invalidate the youth movements of the NCAI and the American Indian Movement as being rude, divisive, disrespectful, radical, and violent. Fortunately, while the book exposes the tensions that existed between the various groups fighting for American Indian rights during the 1960s and 1970s, Britten takes a much more measured and diplomatic tone than Trimble when discussing these divisions. As Britten shows, there was a certain amount of lateral violence and prejudice behind the decision to create an organization of elected tribal chairman and attempt to position themselves as the sole voice of American Indians within the United States. This prejudice included resentment at the NCAI opening its membership to include urban Indians. The charter [End Page 187] members of the NTCA saw urban Indians as inauthentic, illegitimate, and undeserving of either a voice in the Indian rights movement or government funding. In their eyes, the only "real" Indians were reservation-based Indians. As such, they determined that their organizational membership was exclusively limited to democratically elected tribal leaders. Fundamental to this exclusivity was the NTCA founders' determination to take a more measured and conservative approach to fighting for reform by using official channels of diplomacy and more politically "traditional" practices of lobbying, rather than protests, blockades, or occupations. The strength of Britten's history of the NTCA is his honest evaluations of the success of the organization in shifting or directing government policies toward American Indian communities and people. He offers a measured judgment that reflects the ambiguity with which the NTCA was viewed within Indian Country. Some saw NTCA as de facto mouthpieces for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) while others resented their disdain for nonreservation based American Indians. Connecting the mistrust from both sides of this argument was a collective distrust of NTCA insistence on conservative approaches to federal policy reform and insistence on framing themselves as the exclusive authentic voice of American Indians and tribal nations. As Britten points out, many more tribal chairmen were members of the NCAI than were members of the NTCA. Somewhat ironically, the downfall of the NTCA was a result of the very factionalism and aggressive activism that the organization was created to counter. "Radicalized" (181) by the stringent budget cuts of the Reagan administration, NTCA leaders became much more vocal in their criticism of the government and government policies. Ultimately, this more vocal approach resulted in the government pulling away funding that the organization relied on. Unsurprisingly, the demise of the organization went largely un-mourned in Indian Country, except for those members involved. Britten shows how some former...