Paternalism to Partnership: The Administration of Indian Affairs, 1786–2021

Paternalism to Partnership provides a biographical sketch of each head of Indian affairs between 1786 and 2021 in context with each commissioner’s political philosophy. These administrators have been responsible for enforcing an Indian policy as directed by the president and/or the Congress but also influenced by their own political and social philosophy. From 1786-1848, authority was delegated to a superintendent of Indian affairs, a superintendent of the Indian trading houses, a superintendent of the Office of Indian Trade, a chief clerk, and a commissioner of Indian affairs, all of whom reported to the secretary of War. Since 1849, the commissioner of Indian affairs, and after 1977, the assistant secretary for Indian affairs have reported to the secretary of the Interior. Today, the BIA is administered by the assistant secretary for Indian affairs—all of whom have been Native Americans. Previous studies focused on the commissioners, completely overlooking the superintendents that preceded them and the colonial and early American antecedents. David DeJong’s documentary edition is the first to provide an understanding of the political philosophy of each head of the Indian bureau through the emphasis of policy.

India’s Doctrinal Modifications: Counterforce Temptations in South Asia

This paper assists in understanding contesting technological capabilities and doctrinal modification between India and Pakistan that are drifting South Asia towards instability, leaving the nuclear deterrence in a dark abyss. Hawks on both sides of the nuclear armed rivals are unprecedentedly chanting threats of nuclear war. More bothersome is the indications of shifting the Indian policy of No First Use (NFU), calls for doctrinal modifications and counterforce temptations. An Indian quest for escalation dominance and Pakistani quest for stability against India is in fact a mutual struggle beyond ‘minimum credible’ to ‘assured second strike’ capabilities.

India's multi-alignment management and the Russia–India–China (RIC) triangle

In its Eurasian diplomacy toward Russia and China, India has preferred to engage these states bilaterally and through the Brazil–Russia–India–China–South Africa (BRICS) and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) multilateral alignments. By contrast, India views the Russia–India–China (RIC) triangle as a less effective mechanism. However, despite its ongoing militarized crisis with China in the spring/summer of 2020, India surprisingly agreed to participate in a meeting of RIC foreign ministers and initiate RIC defence ministers' engagements. India also initiated the revival of RIC summits in 2018. This article analyzes the drivers for India's recent shift toward enhancing RIC. Drawing upon Indian policy statements and alignment documents, the article firstly argues that India generates policy agenda overlaps across RIC, BRICS and SCO, which facilitate forum-shopping. Introducing the case-study of Indian counterterrorism diplomacy across the three alignments, the article secondly argues that Indian dissatisfaction with its progress in advancing a security policy agenda within one grouping leads it to refocus on building this agenda in alternative alignments. This article contributes to conceptualizing multi-alignment management, while providing new insights into Indian relations with Russia and China within multilateral institutions and diplomacy in the era of regime complexity.

Intensifying the Assimilation of Indians in the Сontext of Implementing the Indian Act

The article examines the policy of Canadian authorities toward the indigenous population (Indian policy) within the framework of implementing the Indian Act. The analysis concerns the policies from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century and the long-lasting effects of those, which remained existential in the second half of the 20th century, the Oka crisis in particular. The literature shows it is necessary to identify the whole range of the factors that determined the implementation of assimilationist policies and to trace the influence they had on subsequent events in the historical perspective. To provide a comprehensive outlook, taking into account such processes as territorial consolidation, colonization and demographic tendencies, the research is based on inductive assumptions. The central assumption why such policies arose is the demographic factor, being the key cause of the inter-racial and inter-ethnic imbalance. This, in turn, provoked the assertive stance taken by the political elites toward the indigenous. It is due to the Anglo-Saxon chauvinism that shaped the attitudes of the Canadian elites and thus became the ideological trend of the late 19th ‒ early 20th century Canada. The Anglo-Canadian nationalists’ intention to ensure the predominance of the Britishness element in the emerging Canadian society is demonstrated to have stemmed from the transatlantic ties with the former metropole. The discriminatory measures taken under the Indian Act that were explored in the text demonstrate that the processes of the Canadian state’s evolution and the ideological tendencies were marred by innate discrimination. The connection between the political measures implemented in the past and the current situation is considered. The Indian policy laid down the foundation for the inter-ethnic tensions that can manifest themselves in modern Canada. The Oka crisis of 1990 serves as the example. The scientific discussion of the effects of the Indian policy and of that particular case that involved the indigenous population and the military was analyzed, and alternative perspectives perceiving the Canadian soldiers as peacekeepers were scrutinized. The dominant scientific position based on criticizing the assimilationist Indian policy, discriminatory measures against the First Nations and ethnic intolerance is concluded to be justified. And therefore the study is politically and historically relevant: it is important to understand that the discriminatory ethnic policy is often integral to the development of seemingly respectable political regimes, which maintains the effects, sometimes hidden, of such discrimination on modern social (dis)integration.

Between Civilization and Savagery: How Reconstruction Era Federal Indian Policy Led to the Indian Wars

This article considers the event of a single year, 1873, to explain how President Ulysses S. Grant’s federal Indian policy led to the Indian wars of the late nineteenth century. Some historians have argued that Grant’s so-called Peace Policy failed due to systemic mismanagement and corruption; others have suggested it was due to administrative incompetence or ambivalence, while still others have accused the administration of cynicism in its approach to Indigenous affairs. This article argues that the Peace Policy reflected the unresolved tensions inherent in the era’s zeitgeist and that it failed to usher in a lasting peace because it did not account for the enmeshed reality of life in the American West where the boundaries and borders between Indian reservations and settler communities were entangled to say the least. The article begins with a detailed consideration of the Grant administration’s Indian policy as articulated by Francis Amasa Walker in the winter of 1872–73. Largely overlooked by historians of post–Civil War Indian policy, Walker was an influential thinker in his day whose policy recommendations emphasized the moral necessity of proprietary individualism and racial segregation on isolated reservations. The article then turns to the unfolding drama of the Modoc War (1872–73) to explore why the federal government abandoned the project of peacefully incorporating Indigenous people into the body politic, leading to a harsher and more militant approach to Indian affairs. By focusing on the nexus of ideas and events as they played out at this critical historical juncture, this article argues that the Modoc War was the precipitating event that marked the end of Grant’s so-called Peace Policy and the resumption of the Indian wars in the decades following the Civil War.