Hidden Figure: Alice Mae Lee Jemison, Warrior of written words against government intervention of tribal rights
Alice Jemison was born in 1901 near the Cattaraugus Reservation of the Seneca Nation of Indians, one of the six nations of the Iroquois. This area is today known as Silver Creek, New York. Like so many tribes, settler colonization pushed the Seneca tribe into poverty. However, this did not diminish the cultural values Alice was taught by her community. Historian and writer Devon Abbott Mihesuah credited Alice’s tribe’s respect for women and knowledge of the roles Seneca and Cherokee women played in building her confidence to “wage an aggressive verbal war against the government.”
While Alice did not serve as a formal leader of the Seneca Tribe, she was an outspoken advocate who championed tribal rights. She was incredibly disturbed by the living conditions that the policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the New Deal created for her people. Jemison relentlessly and vocally criticized the Bureau of Indian Affairs and was determined to protect the Seneca’s tribe civil and treaty rights.
In the mid-1930s Jemison emerged as the official spokesperson for American Indian Federation (AIF). AIF was a political organization that served as the major voice of Native American criticism of federal Indian policies during the New Deal. The AIF was an early Native American effort to influence national policies and attracted harsh criticism for its affiliation with several extremist groups. Enlisting her journalism skills, Jemison also edited the Federation’s Newspaper, The First American.
Jemison was a vocal opponent of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. She shared the rightful distrust of her tribe and western New Yorkers for Washington-directed policies and the long history of the government making and breaking promises. She questioned and attacked the liberal efforts to extend a “New Deal” to Native people.
In the late 1930s, she appeared at more congressional hearings on Indian affairs than any other Native American, fighting for the removal of the commissioner and the abolishment of the BIA. She made it clear that no act or program created by Washington could do justice to the needs of all Native Americans across the United States. She consistently criticized federal intervention in tribal affairs.
Before Congress Jemison testified about the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act:
“All Indians who voted to accept the so-called Wheeler-Howard Act unwittingly changed their legal status from that of “involuntary wardship” to that of “voluntary wardship.” No one told the Indians this before they voted. Thus they accepted the bill through misconceptions. No one explained to them that when they came to Congress to ask that this act be repealed or changed that they would be told, “Well, you voted for this and by that vote you agreed that the Secretary of the Interior should retain control over your affairs forever.” I dare say the majority of them voted upon accepting the act without ever seeing the act itself and with only the glowing promises of the Bureau that they could borrow money to build homes, go into business, buy land and educate their children, to guide them in a momentous decision which affects their lives and property in that it changed their legal status.”
Propaganda in mass media controlled and facilitated by the government labeled Jemison as a fascist. The government defined this as someone who supports or promotes fascism—a system of governing led by a dictator who typically rules by forcefully and often violently suppressing opposition and criticism, controlling all industry and commerce, and promoting nationalism and often racism. Alice was put under FBI surveillance. The government surveilled and actively disrupted movements of Black and Indigenous people.
For the rest of Alice’s life she would continue to amplify two principles and advocate for the sanctity of Indian treaty rights, and influenced by the writing of Pan-Indian Leader Carlos Montezuma, stood in the conviction that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) should be abolished. Jemison's activism and approach anticipated much of the Red Power Movement of the 1970s and her ideas would be supported and carried on by a new generation of Native people.
Excerpts from her 1940 testimony
Below are excerpts of the 1940 testimony of Alice Lee Jemison on the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, S.2103 Howard Wheeler Act. She was the president of the Sixth District of the American Indian Federation and the Washington representative of the national president of the organization, Joseph Bruner, a full-blood Creek Indian at Sapulpa, Okla.
House of Representatives, Committee on Indian Affairs, Washington, DC
S.2103 Howard Wheeler Act – Exempt Certain Indians
Excerpt from the June 1940 testimony of Mrs. Alice Lee Jemison:
My reasons for being opposed to the so-called Wheeler-Howard Act and in favor of the bill S. 2103, which will exclude certain Indians from it, are as follows:
It is contrary to the 150-year-old policy of the Federal Government because it seeks to keep or take back into a tribal status all the lands of the Indians and thus place it in a status where the Supreme Court cannot take cognizance of what is done to it or with it, by either Congress or the Indian Bureau. As soon as title to property vests in an individual (the courts have held that such title does vest when the Indian has selected or accepted or even just filed for allotment, whether or not a patent-in-fee is issued), the courts can then take cognizance of that land under the usual laws which apply to any other property. It certainly cannot be considered a step forward to keep these lands in a tribal status and thus under the dictatorial rules of the Congress, and through it the Indian Bureau, with no right of appeal to the courts for relief from any legislation affecting that property. Such a step is distinctly a step backward.
All Indians who voted to accept the so-called Wheeler-Howard Act unwittingly changed their legal status from that of “involuntary wardship” to that of “voluntary wardship.” No one told the Indians this before they voted. Thus they accepted the bill through misconceptions. No one explained to them that when they came to Congress to ask that this act be repealed or changed that they would be told, “Well, you voted for this and by that vote you agreed that the Secretary of the Interior should retain control over your affairs forever.” I dare say the majority of them voted upon accepting the act without ever seeing the act itself and with only the glowing promises of the Bureau that they could borrow money to build homes, go into business, buy land and educate their children, to guide them in a momentous decision which affects their lives and property in that it changed their legal status.
There is no self-government in the act, all final power and authority remains in the Secretary of the Interior, which is exactly where it always has rested heretofore. The act provides increased power for the Secretary of the Interior in the mandatory provisions for control of grazing and timber operation.
It does not provide land for landless Indians, as was promised. It merely provides land for the “use” of the Indians, as long as they do not offend the Bureau, and this in itself increases the absolute and autocratic control which the Bureau exercises over these helpless wards.
The act legalizes communism on Indian reservations, in that it provides only one form of living for the Indians, communal living, with all property, both real and personal, held in common, and that it is being administered to destroy the rights of individual enterprise, private property, inheritance, free speech, free press, free assembly, and trial by jury, and that Indians are being encouraged to defy State laws.
The act has caused more hatred, strife, and turmoil among the Indians themselves than anything which has heretofore happened to them. The act itself and the campaigns conducted among the Indians to secure approval of them has aroused the dying embers of race hatred among the older Indians; has served to emphasize to all Indians that they are Indians, separate and apart from other Americans, instead of teaching them that they are Americans, the same as all other races and nationalities which live in the United States; has widened and increased the gulf between full-bloods and part-bloods; has disturbed the peaceful relations of tribes who occupy reservations jointly; has broken up life-long friendships, caused divorces between husbands and wives, and sot children against parents and vice versa.
In conclusion, I want to say this:
In 1934 Congress exercised its autocratic, dictatorial powers over these helpless ward Indians by enacting the so-called Wheeler-Howard Act, over the protests of many Indians, and by that action compelled these wards to vote upon this proposition without making adequate provision to protect the Indians from the Bureau in the elections or to insure that the Indians fully understood exactly what they were doing when they cast a ballot for or against the act.
On the contrary, Congress provided the Bureau with ample funds and facilities to campaign for the act, and all opposition campaigns had to be carried on at the expense of individual Indians, most of whom were verging on starvation. Much misery among the Indians has come from this act. Indians have been brutally beaten, jailed, fined, denied work, or removed from their work because of opposition to this act.
Although I have affidavits from only one reservation, it has been reliably reported to me from three others that employees openly stated, or else intimated, that all Indians who refused to come under the program or objected to it could just starve to death.
Now, it does not seem to me that the question before Congress is whether or not to subject the Indians to another siege of campaigns and coercions in an election about this act. It seems to me that the question is whether or not Congress, as the duly constituted guardian of the Indians, wishes to keep such a program as this in force over the Indians by allowing this act to remain on the statute books.
Before the committee takes final action on this bill, I respectfully ask that some examination be made of the hearings held by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs over a 4-year period. Page proofs of all this testimony are now being rapidly completed. I thank the committee for the time which has been granted me to present this argument in favor of the bill, S. 2103.
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