This research examines the subject of recruitment and retention of underrepresented demographic groups, particularly Native American, in the employment ranks of the federal government, particularly the Veterans' Hospitals, pursuant to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines for hiring minorities. The research will set forth the social and economic context in which employment of Native Americans has emerged as an equal-opportunity issue and then discuss reasons that this group is significantly underrepresented at VA hospitals vis-à-vis its representation in the general population, with a view toward identifying possible strategies for transforming the situation.
The residue of the violence done to the indigenous American culture persists into the modern period. Equally important is the fact that the principal agent of such violence was the United States government. Wiltse tracks the pattern of progressively aggressive expansion of white presence in Indian territories: "The time-honored practice had been to ply the chiefs with whiskey and when they were drunk enough to present them with treaties to sign that conveyed more thousands of acres of their hunting grounds to the white farmers" (Wiltse, 1961, p. 41). The indigenous peoples were not passive in the face of settlement and colonization, as indicated by an 1812 statement made by the chief Tecumseh.
Every year our white intruders become more exacting, oppressive, demanding, and overbearing. . . . Unless each tribe unanimously combines to give a check to the avarice and oppressions of the whites, we will become conquered and disunited and we will be driven from our Native lands and scattered like autumn leaves before the wind (Tecumseh, 1812).
In a book on the Little Big Horn Sandoz compares Canada, which "took over her entire region without one battle with her Indians by the simple expedient of keeping her treaties" with the United States, which "broke most of her...