THE IRONY OF SELF-DETERMINATION: COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, SELF-HELP, AND THE SOCIAL EDUCATION OF NATIVE AMERICA--1940 TO 1975 (INDIANS, POLICY)

This thesis has a central aim to define the development of self-determination as it has been used in American Indian educational policy. It is not limited, however, to a treatment of schooling. The education of Native America has proceeded to a great extent by way of social and economic programming as well as through formal education.; The policy of self-determination has become the latest in a series of attempts to reform social and educational development programs involving Native American people. It has captured the imagination of reformers who, unsatisfied with perceived inadequacies in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, saw in the development of an enlightened "self-determination" policy a chance for Indian people to take control of and improve their social destiny. This dissertation is a critical analysis of self-determination as a concept and a policy development.; This study finds that self-determination was not conceived as an attempt to confer legitimate control for social and educational programming from government agencies to Indian people, thereby purportedly ending the persistent threat of termination and allowing Indian control to co-exist with federal trust protection. On the contrary, self-determination was designed as a sophisticated attempt at social and institutional development which would then be used to build a plan for "justifiable termination." Much of the local control of programs was illusory, and many attempts to "Indianize" decision making and policy were designed by officials in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Interior departments as a method to reduce Indian non-cooperation due to fears of termination--"termination psychosis."; As such, this thesis represents a significantly different reading of recent Indian policy history and throws light on the development of a policy whose roots have been misunderstood and obscure and which will continue to affect the lives of Native American people today and in the future.