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After so many quiet years, what got into the Indians? Some scholars believe they never did fully abandon their hopes of regaining lost land and privileges. In Land Grab (1972), John Upton Terrell argues that from the very first coming of the white man the Indians' primary urge has been "defense, a ceaseless struggle to save their homes, their resources, their lives." This view may exaggerate the constancy of the Indians' will during an era when they were displaced by a relentlessly expanding society. Yet that will has plainly stiffened. In Apologies to the Iroquois (1959), Edmund Wilson noted the emergence of a sort of Indian "nationalism" that he likened to that of the Israelis. Clearly, some new assertiveness began crystallizing among the Indians in the 1960s, when they came under the sway of the same influences that had aroused many other minorities into bristling self-awareness. Suddenly, Indians demanded attention in a sequence of media dramatics—the occupation of Alcatraz (1969), the trashing of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters (1972), the new confrontation at Wounded Knee (1973). As it turned out, these episodes proved to be mere diversions compared with a fundamental new strategy that was taking shape unnoticed. That strategy is the ongoing legal offensive—part of a spirit that is now called by its backers the Indian Renaissance.
The size of the offensive is striking. More than half of the 266 federally recognized tribes are litigating claims and contentions. The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, a party to 30 such cases four years ago, was coping with 80 by the end of 1976. The Native American Rights Fund, the largest organization specializing in Indian law, opened headquarters in Boulder, Colo., six years ago with ten cases; today it handles almost 400 cases in 40 states.
The big land-claim cases are all in the East. The million or so non-Indian inhabitants of Maine seemed challenged at first by the land claims of the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes, whose target area embraced 12.5 million acres. The claim remains the largest of those pending, even though the Indians have reduced their target to some 8 million sparsely settled acres. Fully as disturbing as the claim, as some down-Easters see it, is the fact that the Indians have the active backing of the U.S. Justice Department. Actually, Justice has no choice. In a 1974 case brought by the Maine Indians, the courts affirmed that the Indian is a legal ward for whom the Federal Government is obliged to act as guardian, a relationship still little known to the public. Thus if the efforts to settle the Maine case by mediation fail, it is the Justice Department that will file suit against property owners on behalf of the Indians—a prospect that can only salt the bloodless wounds already incurred.