(1904-77)
Chippewa-Cree anthropologist and writer
Born of mixed European and Chippewa-Cree, or Métis, heritage and enrolled on the reservation of the confederated Salish and Kutenai tribes, or Flathead, in Montana, D'Arcy McNickle reflected the current of American Indian events in the twentieth century and added to its stream.
Although not of Salish and Kutenai heritage, he grew up on the reservation, attending the Catholic boarding school at St. Ignatius and later Chemawa, an Indian boarding school in Oregon. McNickle's mixed heritage allowed him to pass for non-Indian in his youth at the University of Montana, at a time and place where an Indian identity was a disadvantage. A college mentor urged him to pursue his developing passion for writing, which took the young man to Europe and later to New York City, where he settled in 1928.
The Surrounded, McNickle's first novel, published in 1936, was written during his New York years. Set on the Flathead Reservation, it raises the issue of cultural identity for its mixed-blood protagonist, Archilde Leon. It describes how misunderstandings between a tribal culture and that of encroaching outsiders can lead to tragedy. Yet in a time when tragedy was the norm in mainstream America's perception of Indians, McNickle's The Surrounded also pointed the way to a reevaluation and revaluing of tribal life. The novel was not the initial success McNickle had hoped for. Needing work, he joined the Federal Writer's Project in Washington, D.C., and was then hired by John Collier, the reform-minded Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
As an employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, McNickle was charged with implementing the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. His Indian heritage, it was felt, would assist him in gaining the trust of tribes suspicious of yet another federal policy ostensibly created for their own good. McNickle believed in Collier's efforts to stop the further breaking up of tribal lands under the Allotment Act and to encourage the reorganization of tribal self-government along democratic constitutional lines, and made extensive visits to various tribes to help implement the bureau's programs.
This fieldwork, coupled with the Indian Bureau's growing use of social-science scholarship, led McNickle to applied anthropology. He believed that anthropology could provide a fuller understanding of people and their problems than could politics. Anthropology, like writing, would become a lifelong interest of his. In the social-scientist style, he wrote broad overviews, intended for a non-Indian readership, that are still in use today. Among them are They Came Here First: The Epic of the American Indian (1949), Indians and Other Americans: Two Ways of Life Meet (1959; written with Harold Fey), and The Indian Tribes of the United States: Ethnic and Cultural Survival (1962).
Through his work in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, McNickle came into contact with a developing community of nationally oriented Indian leaders. The National Congress of American Indians, established in 1944 by this growing community, was conceived of as representing the interests of Indians in the federal system. Pan-Indian groups and groups concerned with Indians and Indian issues were not new, but the NCAI represented a rising tide of emphasis on coordination and cooperation by Indians themselves.
Disillusioned by the conservative turn of federal policy after World War II, McNickle left the Bureau of Indian affairs in 1952, turning his attention to community development at Crown Point, New Mexico, to NCAI affairs, and to education. During the 1950s congressional leaders sought to remove tribes' special status and protections. McNickle worked with the NCAI to rebut legislation that would have undone the Indian Reorganization Act and other reforms he had worked so hard to implement decades earlier. Their efforts helped to turn the tide of support against these terminationist goals.
During the early and mid 1960s McNickle hosted a series of summer leadership-training workshops for young American Indians at the University of Colorado at Boulder. These seminars were designed to address the high college dropout rate for American Indians and to nurture a new generation of Indian activism. Through them, young Indians came together with an awakened sense of value for their tribal backgrounds and a new sense of solidarity with other Indians. McNickle was also vitally involved in the pivotal 1961 American Indian conference held in Chicago. As a member of the cosponsoring NCAI's steering committee, McNickle drafted "A Declaration of Indian Purpose," a document designed to set the tone for the gathering. The final version of the document reflected a newfound sense of common conditions among American Indians. The National Indian Youth Council and other "Red Power" groups such as the American Indian Movement trace their beginnings to this 1961 conference.
During these years, McNickle was also busy as a man of arts and letters. In 1954 he collaborated with the Apache visual artist Allan Houser to produce Runner in the Sun: A Story of Indian Maize. This story, aimed at young adults, is possibly the first novel set in precontact America that was written by an American Indian.
In 1966 the University of Saskatchewan at Regina offered McNickle a position to develop its newly established anthropology department. He readily accepted, welcoming the attention that came with his first regular university appointment. He also spent much time traveling as a speaker and consultant about American Indians and their concerns. He retired from the university in 1971 and in the following year helped found the Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library in Chicago. McNickle served as the center's first director and remained active there until his death in 1977.
McNickle's third novel, Wind from an Enemy Sky, published posthumously in 1978, was the product of over forty years of labor and experience. The novel documents the seemingly unbreachable cultural gap of communication between the fictionalized Little Elk tribe of the Northwest and well-intentioned outsiders. It depicts a conflict of values that begins with the building of a dam on tribal land and culminates in misunderstanding and bloodshed. In his writing, McNickle presents embattled but viable tribal cultures. His voice is that of an American Indian assessing the state of American Indian nations, and it came to influence later generations of Indian writers and thinkers. His gritty depiction of the reality of Indian lives acknowledges the truth of tribal cultures under threat. Yet in his writing McNickle leaves room for answers to be found within tribal cultures themselves. His movement from Indian New Deal supporter to defender of Indian sovereignty and advocate of self-sufficiency sets the tone for tribal affairs today.
Dorothy R. Parker, Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D'Arcy McNickle (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992); John L. Purdy, Word Ways (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990); James Rupert, D'Arcy McNickle Boise State Western Writers Series (Boise, Idaho: Boise State University Press, 1988).
Scott Bear Don't Walk
Crow, Confederated Salish and Kootenai, Métis
Denver, Colorado
