Thread by @ErikLoomis

This Day in Labor History: February 14, 1940. A group of 4 Navajo leaders write to Congress in protest of mandatory sheep reduction that was destroying the Navajo economy and social structure. Let's talk about the connections between internal colonialism and ideas of work.

The creation of Navajo sheep culture was a response to the forced transformation of Navajo work culture around raiding and hunting in the face of white domination in 1860s, a phenomenon faced by many tribes during these years.

Many tribes faced allotment under the Dawes Act, forced into small farming economies they were not equipped for and losing their lands to whites as part of the larger strategy to dispossess indigenous people of their land, culture, and work traditions.

The Navajo had begun integrating sheep into their work culture around 1598, as Spanish flocks wandered north out of Mexico into what is today the American Southwest, along with other domesticated animals that transformed what was possible for Native American life.

While sheep and weaving became very important to Navajo life, it was originally another animal, the horse, that primarily redefined their work culture.

The Navajo engaged heavily in raiding well into New Mexico, where they, along with the Comanches, made the Spanish colony and then Mexico, as well as the Puebloan peoples who lived there, reside in constant fear.

The U.S. put a stop to Navajo raiding when, in 1864, the Navajo were rounded up and forced on the Long March to the Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico.

There the Navajo were dumped for four years and about 25 percent of the population died.

Reports of the conditions at the Bosque Redondo went public at the same time that the nation was engaging in Reconstruction.

There was enough outrage in that rare moment when white Americans cared enough about people of color to do something to help that the Navajo were allowed to return to a large chunk of their lands, in no small part because it seemed to have no economic value to whites.

But in doing so, they had to give up their raiding and horse culture ways. Sheep and weaving became ever more important to Navajo work culture after this.

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed John Collier as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. For most tribes, this was a breath of fresh air.

Collier rejected the corrupt and genocidal policies of the past, attempting to treat indigenous Americans as relative equals and respect their cultural heritage.

Collier and New Deal land managers, heavily influenced by the Dust Bowl, saw Navajo sheep herding practices as incredibly destructive to the land and completely unsustainable.

They noted the erosion transforming the land, the gullies turning into deep canyons, and the impossibility of this continuing for long. And to be clear, they were right. Navajo sheep heading was an environmental disaster.

By 1931, the Navajo owned perhaps one million sheep on land with a carrying capacity of 500,000; they had only owned about 15,000 in the 1870s, but their population had also exploded from 8000 people in 1868 to 39,000 in 1930.

So Collier acted, even though the Navajo themselves were not brought on board. Collier respected the Navajos, but felt he needed to save them from themselves. Even Collier was ultimately paternalist toward Native peoples. This, to say the least, did not go well.

In 1934, the first of the sheep and goat slaughters took place. By 1935, the Navajos were actively resisting.

By 1937, in the face of this resistance, Collier and the Department of the Interior issued a new plan setting a cap on the amount of livestock each extended family could own.

Weaving and harvesting the sheep provided about half the cash for the Navajos and nothing was done to replace that. Much of this loss was gendered. Weaving was the source of women’s income in a matrilineal society.

It had provided women with economic authority even as the pre-1864 Navajo economy was forcibly terminated. They controlled their own means of production. Collier and the other New Dealers did not see this at all.

Men handled the relationships with whites and so the New Dealers never even spoke to women, nor did they think of asking about them.

With control over the means of production stripped away, masculine economic and political dominance was reinforced and the gendered norms of Navajo work and life were transformed.

The irony of this is that Collier was right. The Navajo were vastly overgrazing the land and they refused to admit it. It was absolutely not sustainable.

But Collier shoving his reforms down the throats of the Navajo without consent resulted not only impoverished many already poor people, but also created a long-term resistance to environmentalism still powerful on the Navajo Nation today. Hint: Ask people what they want.

The stock reduction program ended as the nation went into World War II and the government had bigger fish to fry. But it also happened in the face of widespread resistance, such as the letter that I mentioned that started this thread.

In 1940, the Navajo Rights Association formed to lead the resistance to continued stock reduction.

The government started threatening the Navajo with police power if they refused to hand over their livestock, which broke the resistance. John Collier started realizing that there was a problem with his program only in 1941, which was far too late.

Collier relaxed some of the restrictions, but the damage to Navajo work and life was already done. An already poor people were made more impoverished.

After World War II, many men would seek to escape that poverty through uranium mining, which would have enormous implications of its own on the health of the miners and work culture of the Navajo people.

You can read the 1940 letter here:

books.google.com/books?id=F-FxC…

Many of the other details for this thread come from Marsha Weisiger, Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country. This is a great book and you should buy it.

amazon.com/dp/0295991410/…

Back tomorrow to discuss another of the many connections between racism and American work--this time the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 that ended Japanese immigration to the U.S. due to widespread resistance by racist Californians.