t harm to the Native American community. Since the nineteenth century, the Indians moving to reservations have been faced with the reality of lies told to the Native Americans over the years by the government, and Native Americans today think of the government in a certain way based on how pervasive the government is in their lives :
The bureau [of Indian Affairs] grows and grows, poking tendrils into every aspect of Indian life. . . "Nothing, or next to nothing, happens on an Indian reservation without it being a result of, a reaction to, an attempt to get around, or a violation of an action or policy of the federal government" (White 274).
Shkilnyk points to the case of the Ojibwa tribe from Grassy Narrows in northwestern Ontario, Canada, which had been moved from a different reserve in 1963 by what the author says was a well-intentioned bureaucracy. The result was the complete destruction of the social fabric of the tribe. The result was a community in which suicide, alcoholism, and violent deaths were the norm. This was shown to be a recent phenomenon related to the move from one location to another, for prior to the relocation, all of the deaths in the community were due to natural causes. Social problems caused by alcoholism are common to many Indian communities, but Grassy Narrows is known as the place where sudden death from violence is most likely:
In this community, people have turned their anger inward, lashing out against those closest to them or against themselves. Their self-destructive response to intolerable conditions is clearly evident in the statistics on suicide (Shkilnyk 16).
The same sorts of forces have been unleashed in Native American communities in the United States because of the social problems brought about by government control and bureaucratic actions intended to help but more likely to harm:
Finding an American Indian community anywhere in the United States today where a percep...