NATIVE-AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY AND NATURAL-RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

The relationship between Native Americans and the Euro-American settle rs has evolved from the latter seeking to end the separate identity of the former to one in which the U.S. government uses Native rights to control large-scale resource problems. This new relationship arose out of a need to control water in Western states for irrigation, but has expanded into other areas. The Navajo sheep reductions of the 1930s an d 1940s may be seen as an instance of this relationship. Concerns abou t siltation behind the Hoover Dam justified a program that dramaticall y transformed the Navajo economy. A second case concerns conflict over a caribou herd in northwestern Alaska. The conflict eventually led to the Federal government taking management of fish and game on Federal lands back from the state government. Both these cases show the develo pment of a technocracy, based on Federal trusteeship over Native resou rces, concerned with the control of nature similar to that observed in Wittfogel's writings on Chinese irrigation.