Chapter 3, "Disputable Truths: The American Stranger, Television Documentary and Native American Cultural Politics in the 1950s." Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1996, Pamela

8/6/2019 Chapter 3, "Disputable Truths: The American Stranger, Television Documentary and Native American Cultural Politic

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Wilson, Pamela. "Disputable Truths: The American Stranger , TelevisionDocumentary and Native American Cultural Politics in the 1950s." Dissertation,University of Wisconsin, 1996.

CHAPTER THREE: CONSTRUCTING THE AMERICAN STRANGER

PREPARING FOR THE STORM

In the summer of 1958, journalist Robert McCormick, who was State

Department correspondent for NBC's Washington News Bureau, began researching

what he thought would be a routine political story about a "feud" developing between

two Washington bureaucrats--Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton and

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn Emmons (whose agency, the Bureau of Indian

Affairs, fell under the jurisdiction of the Interior Department). However, during the

course of investigating the tensions within the Interior Department, McCormick soon

realized that the "story" was actually one of a much larger scale which concerned not

only national policies and practices but which involved the complex history of political

and ideological struggle surrounding what was often, in white circles, called "the

Indian problem." This "story" represented deep tensions between local, regional and

national interests which were manifested and circulated in cultural, racial and

politico-economic discourses. These tensions had been coming to a head for several

years in the political maneuvering surrounding Congressional termination legislation.1

To understand the complexities of the government, it is important to

distinguish the perspectives, missions and accompanying discourses which separate

the policy-making factions of the federal government from those directly responsible


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for implementing those policies. The Department of the Interior and its subsidiary

Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) were the agencies which implemented the policies set

by Congress in the areas of land and resource management, as well as the complex

administration of Indian reservations. The BIA was set up in a series of regional Areas,

with Agencies at each major reservation. As in any other national organization with

regional and local branches, the implementation of policies slowly filtered down

through the ranks, and the politics of each locality differed according to the dynamics

of the personalities involved and the particular relationship between the Agency

personnel and the tribes within the jurisdiction. As Vine Deloria has explained,

In Indian affairs, . . . policy occurs at two levels of involvement.High-level pronouncements deal with the theory and ideology of socialresponsibility, and here the pendulum swings back and forth betweenaccepting an onerous and continuing financial responsibility forproviding services to Indian communities and abruptly casting Indiansinto the American mainstream where they can be slowly digested at thebottom of the industrial economic pyramid. This arena is defined bynewspapers, politicians and legislators. It is usually phrased in pious butwell-intentioned ideas that seek spiritual comfort and direction ratherthan on . . . the implementation of policy.

Deloria continues:

At a much lower level of policy we find the nebulous arena ofimplementation. Here personal whims, misunderstandings, the securityof federal employment, the informal networks of political bureaucracy,and the guerilla tactics of political activism play an important role. . . .The lower-level bureaucracy largely determines what the policy of thegovernment will be. . . .

Traditionally, we have sought to analyze federal Indian policy in a linearfashion, pretending that one line of ideology is dominant at both levels ofpolicy-making. . . . While this line of thought helps us to interpret theheroes and villains of the piece, it rarely accounts for the importantchanges in the configuration of Indian country.


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Thus, Deloria views federal Indian policy discourses as a sometimes-connected

bunch of topical interests that have considerable interplay and that all demand our

attention. 2 Even though the termination policies were made official with the 1953

passage of HCR 108, which ambiguously expressed the sense of Congress in these

matters, there was a great deal of debate as to its appropriate interpretation in

practice: specifically, the degree to which the Resolutions mandate dictated

immediate and continued implementation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The

argument frequently came down to a general distrust of the judgement of federal

administrators, particularly the civil servants in the administrative echelons of the

Bureau of Indian Affairs. As one resident of Montanas Fort Peck reservation

expressed,

Too long Indians have been at the mercy of one man, the Secretary of the Interior . This man is human, and, therefore, must have assistants.Indian people have for the past 150 years been the victims of underlingsof the Secretary of the Interior. The underlings in turn depend upon therecommendation of lesser underlings of the Indian Bureau fieldpersonn e l to make decisions on important matters. . . . [italics inoriginal] 3

As Max Gubatayao, a non-Indian Montana activist, wrote about the crisis on the

reservations in 1958:

Termination is . . . the guiding principle of the [Interior] Department. Wemust try to get through to the public about this dangerous fact and askfor a new policy directive in the next Congress. Every Agency is stilloperating on the 1955 memorandum from the Commissioner for"programming" termination. The Bureau was told to withdraw itsservices and its support from the tribes in order to make the tribes carrythe whole load of subsistence and reservation development. I think thecrises of the reservations in 1958 are directly due to efforts of fieldpersonnel to accomplish these objectives. . . . This seems to be the k ey to demoralization and unmet needs running riot on every reservation. 4


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"Every day here in Great Falls," he continued, "I see evidence that the tribes are

coming apart at the seams, and unless something happens but quick there are going

to be wholesale casualties, not only among the Indians physically through starvation,

but through the disastrous death of tribal organization." Gubatayao criticized

termination as the "negative approach" to the Indian question, "an approach of

abandonment that solves nothing but creates a new wave of problems of want and

misery." 5

Any binary explanatory model conceiving of conflicts between local and

national levels, between tribes and the federal government, or between dominant (by

virtue of race/class/ethnicity) and subordinate groups must be complicated by the

existence at the local/regional level of, on the one hand, liberal white non-Indian

grassroots activists (such as the many citizens' groups of Great Falls), whose

progressive social reform interests often overlapped with those of the tribes, and, on

the other hand, of wealthy corporate landowners and entrepreneurs in natural

resource exploitation, whose local interests in tribal land were behind the legislative

drive for "termination." At a political level, these opposing camps generally were

affiliated with Democratic and Republican perspectives, respectively. Also at the

regional level, state and county governments and agencies such as departments of

Indian Affairs, Public Health and Public Instruction were generally anti-terminationist

because under the terms of the proposed policies, the responsibilities for most social

services to Indian communities previously handled federally government would fall to

them. Western Montana's Congressional delegation was heavily Democratic at this

time, and stood "united in the matter of Federal responsibilities and obligations, united


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in the defense of Indian rights and the welfare of Montana, where the special status

and services to Indians must be maintained." 6

Local tribal groups and interest groups were also affiliated to varying degrees

with national organizations and coalitions, which played significant roles in working

with national media, rallying support in other regions, connecting local/regional issues

to broader national ones, and lobbying for policy changes in Congress. These include

the NCAI, the AAIA, Indian Rights Association, and more regional clusters such as the

Montana Intertribal Policy Board and the Governor's Interstate Indian Council. Many

religious denominations and interdenominational groups (such as the National

Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.) had Indian Affairs Committees, and were

primarily dedicated to altruistic and benevolent goals. Catholic, particularly Jesuit,

missionary orders were engaged in "ministries for justice," which involved securing

basic human rights and cultural dignity for oppressed groups. Also strongly

anti-terminationist were national conservation associations such as the National

Forestry Association, the National Wildlife Federation and Resources for the Future,

all of which saw termination efforts as environmental threats. These national groups,

however, were not free of internal ideological and political conflicts, and their alliances

with local and tribal movements were frequently viewed with suspicion. 7

DOCUMENTARY AND THE TELEVISION INDUSTRY

When McCormick began independently researching the story for his

investigative documentary on American Indian politics in the summer of 1958, the

National Broadcasting Company (NBC) television network was in a state of major


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transition. Always the dominant broadcasting network during the radio years, the

network had begun to face stiff competition from CBS, particularly in the field of news

and public affairs. NBC had in 1956 acquired a national signal through their coaxial

network, so the stage was set for a new vision of programming for a national

audience. 8 A number of factors within the industry contributed to the fertile soil in

which the seed which was to become The American Stranger could take root and be

nourished.

Foremost among these favorable conditions was the new attitude about news

and public affairs taking hold at NBC. Just a few months earlier, Robert Kintner had

taken the helm as President of the network after a turnover following the departure of

Sylvester Pat Weaver, during which time RCA Chairman David Sarnoffs son Robert

had presided over the network operations. Once at NBC, Kintner, a newspaperman

and columnist prior to working his way to the Presidency of NBCs rival network the

American Broadcasting Company (ABC), fused his passion for journalistic excellence

and his zeal for high entertainment ratings into a highly successful formula which

shaped network programming trends for the next several decades. Kintner was

lauded within the industry and the press for applying the doctrine of common sense to

many a ticklish problem and for his refreshing cold realism. He spearheaded the

move to make television a respectable journalistic medium by dedicating

unprecedented network resources and air time to news and documentary

programming.

As the first journalist to head a network, Kintner took pride in the informational

potential of broadcasting, and believed that television could fulfill its mission to society


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through news programming. He possessed a keen understanding and clear vision of

televisions potential as a journalistic medium. Known affectionately as the managing

editor of the NBC news division because of his hands-on approach, President Kintner

was directly responsible for the development of a strong news component at NBC. By

increasing budget allocations and air time for the news division, and hiring top news

executives and journalists (often from CBS, with whom NBC was in ferocious

competition), Kintner had by the end of the decade built a high-prestige, unequaled

news division at NBC which reigned throughout the early 1960s.

The major components of Kintners three-pronged public affairs initiative were

the nightly network newscasts, the development of strong prime-time documentary

series, and the preemption of regular programs to provide live coverage of breaking

news events. The anchor team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley dominated news

during this period, and by 1963 both NBC and CBS would extend their evening

newscasts from fifteen to thirty minutes, a move which many critics credited as making

television a serious information medium comparable to newspapers.

Kintners vision of the medium as a way to educate and inform citizens about

social issues was enabled by public and government pressures, especially

heightened in the wake of the quiz show scandals which would shake the industry in

1959, to increase the prestige of the industry by increasing prime-time public affairs

programming by the networks. In the years following The American Stranger, Kintner

would revitalize NBCs network documentary units, which had focused mainly on

cultural programming, to begin to take on serious social and political issues in series

such as NBC White Paper. By 1962, Kintner would be claiming that the networks were


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proving whats right with television--bringing space flights, civil rights riots, election

coverage and swiftly breaking events into Americas living rooms. Although often

gently criticized for micro-managing the NBC news division, Kintner hosted the

transformation of news/informational programming from a peripheral aspect of

television programming to the prestige end of broadcasting.

When Kintner came aboard the network in 1958, however, the mandate under

which he was to operate involved operations with low budgets and aimed at high

ratings and the attraction of consistent and habitual viewers. Programming produced

by outside packagers, such as filmed westerns and action shows as well as the trendy

quiz shows (which were at their peak in the 1958-59 season, just prior to their downfall

due to scandal), dominated the schedule. However, Kintner's support for journalistic

programming altered the administrative perception of the role of the network's news

division, which had previously been undersupported since it was not a lucrative

programming division. According to Kepley,

[Kintner] looked to news specials to secure viewership for NBC's regularevening news broadcasts. . . . Rather than lots of educational or culturalspecials, . . . Kintner's news division organized their specials aroundtimely events, "hot topics" for which there was much immediate, andsometimes perhaps ephemeral, interest among the population. . . .Those who tuned in for these topical programs were also expecte d to . .. decide to become loyal watchers of NBC's evening news report. 9

The financing of television news documentaries was apparently not a problem

during the Kintner era, according to Kepley, since up to 40% of the cost was absorbed

into the division's prior budget in salaries and materials:

An hour-long news special could actually be produced at less cost to thenetwork than the license fee for an hour-long entertainment program.When NBC ran a news documentary, they scheduled it in their weakest


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slots, usually up against a CBS ratings leader. . . . Then NBC would sellcommercial time to specialized or institutional advertisers, hoping tocounter-program CBS's presumably middle-brow fare. NBC had a

standing arrangement with Gulf Oil, for example, giving them first refusalon commercial time in news documentaries , a plan that banked on theoil company's interest in image advertising. 10

Little information is available in the archival materials about the conditions under

which the Kaleidoscope series originated or was funded. Unlike other new public

affairs series, such as Wide, Wide World, there seems to have been no regular

corporate sponsor of the series, which began airing in the Sunday afternoon time slot

occupied by the well-received Omnibus (which was underwritten by the Ford

Foundation with spots sold to commercial advertisers). 11 There is no indication in the

archival materials on The American Stranger regarding sponsorship, if any, of the

documentary. However, Boddy has noted that in 1958 corporate image advertising

was down sharply, partly due to an economic recession. 12

NBCs promotional materials indicate that NBC spent $55,000 on the net

program costs of The American Stranger. A slick brochure about the documentary,

distributed by NBCs sales department to try to attract potential advertisers, lists a total

of seven minutes of commercial time available, in four positions, plus a ten-second

opening and closing billboard for each sponsor. (In the kinescope, there is indication

of one station break halfway through the hour-long script.) It is apparent that NBC was

targeting the same demographic group with this show that it had been able to

successfully attract with Wide Wide World (which had been aired from 4:00 to 5:30 on

Sundays the previous season). The sales brochure provides an economic rationale

for the purchase of advertising spots by emphasizing that the 5:00-6:00 p.m. Sunday


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time period is Sunday afternoons peak viewing hour, with 42 percent of all television

homes (approximately 18,732,000) having sets turned on at that time. In addition, this

time slot offers the characteristically high Sunday afternoon availability of men which

last year enabled Wide Wide World to deliver 89 men viewers per 100 homes (nine

percent more than the average evening program). With NBA Pro Basketball providing

the lead-in audience, the Kaleidoscope series was projected to attract perhaps an

ever larger percentage of men, since NBA basketball had been known to draw 99 men

per 100 sets. 13

Records indicate that NBC made The American Stranger available for

sponsorship either as a full hour telecast or for joint presentation by two advertisers.

The per-telecast sponsorship cost, based on November 1, 1958 rates for a typical

lineup of 125 top NBC-TV stations with an estimated NTI coverage of 97.5% of U.S.

TV homes was $119,266 for sponsorship of the full hour, or $65,120 for each half

hour. The brochure adds that, As a filmed report on a little-known aspect of the

contemporary scene, assembled and narrated by a veteran newsman, THE

AMERICAN STRANGER offers the same type of informative, challenging approach

that has made Omnibus (now alternating with NBC Kaleidoscope in the 5:00-6:00

p.m. time period) a favorite with the late Sunday afternoon TV audience. A special

dividend, the marketers added, was the sponsorship of a conversation-piece series

backed by the full resources and authority of NBC News, the oldest, most

experienced and best-known news-gathering organization in the broadcast

industry. 14


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Since the kinescope did not contain any indication of sponsorship, and no other

records with any such indications are available, it is unclear if national sponsorship

was ever acquired for this particular broadcast. It is interesting to note, however, that

there is no correspondence in the files indicating any desire by either a sponsor or the

network to amend any of the controversial editorial positions voiced by McCormick,

even those critical of major corporate interests and government policies.

This particular documentary seems to be a solitary effort pushed through

based primarily on the interests of an individual producer who was a respected

journalist and network employee, and who was given the freedom to pretty much do

what he wanted from his Washington headquarters without much supervision from the

New York offices of NBC. A Kentucky native, McCormick, like Kintner, had started his

career as a newspaper journalist. He had climbed the career ladder at the Washington

News during the Depression years, moving from copy boy to reporter to city editor and

columnist during the heyday of Roosevelts New Deal, when Washington politics was

awash in a sea of liberal reform. He spent six years as the Washington correspondent

for Colliers Magazine prior to joining NBC during World War II, where he served as

war correspondent and chief of NBC News Central Pacific Bureau, covering action for

radio which included the battle of Iwo Jima. Following the war, he became head of

NBCs Washington TV News Bureau in 1949, on the ground floor of the TV news

industry. In this role, he was reported (in 1958 literature) to have introduced and

pioneered many innovations in TV news presentation which have since been

universally adopted. In 1951, NBC sent McCormick to Europe as coordinator of NBC

News television films, and also headed the Bonn News Bureau for the network,


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returning to Washington in 1955. He covered both national political conventions for

NBC in 1956, and became a fixture in reporting government, particularly State

Department, matters for NBC-TV as well as appearing on NBC News Specials. In

addition to his television work, McCormick continued to pursue his original calling in

broadcasting--radio news announcing--appearing on NBCs Monitor, Nightline and

News on the Hour radio programs.

In its historical context as an investigative documentary of contemporary social

concerns, The American Stranger aired in a gap in which very little else of its type was

seen on television. It follows the reign of Edward R. Murrow and See It Now, which

ended its run earlier the same year on CBS, and is a precursor to the investigative

social documentaries of the early 1960's epitomized by Harvest of Shame and

broadcast in what became institutionalized series such as CBS Reports, NBC White

Paper and ABC's Closeup. Precedents in documentary programming at NBC prior to

this time had been set by series such as Victory at Sea and Project 20, which focused

on non-controversial cultural, arts and historical information.

A GATHERING OF REGIONAL VOICES Intrigued by the complex regional and intercultural politics of the termination

situation--a political conflict of which most white Americans were unaware and which

had never before been explicated to the public on national television--McCormick


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sought the permission of his NBC superiors to prepare an extended news

documentary. He had many choices as to how to proceed, since the perspectives of

competing interest groups converged around these issues; he chose to investigate

localized reservation conditions to search for an angle that would be both visually

captivating and politically riveting. Through an inside connection (Helen McMillan

Meyers, the public information officer for the Association for American Indian Affairs,

who was married to NBC's News Director Joe Meyers), he gained a great deal of

information about the inside politics of the Indian Affairs subculture, as demonstrated

in a letter from Helen Meyers dating from June, 1958:

As Joe says you are snooping around the Bureau of Indian Affairs these days,

I am hastening to send you a couple of things from our Association files which may be

useful to you. . . . I hope I am not overwhelming you with information you don't want or

need. . . . There is a good deal more to the Indian story than Klamath or Menominee,

but it is so complex that no one person has ever tried to put it together, before this . The

Indians certainly are stirring--the other day we had another of several phone calls from

an Algonquian leader of a prosperous Indian group up in Bennington, Vermont where

they have a dairy and timber tract that was ceded to them by the crown and deeded to

them later by the state. Alarmed at the possibility of future attacks by Government

even on their safe property, they are asking, 350 strong, to join our Association and

want to bring in 450 Penobscots with them. This is absolutely unprecedented, as we

have never had group Indian membership before.

It appears to us to be an evidence of how much the wind is up in these Indians

over what they think is going to be wholesale termination of all the reservations in the


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end, without regard for the Indians' preference to preserve their own culture and their

own land. People like the Omahas up in Macy, Nebraska, who have been about the

most downtrodden and sick and despairing of all the tribes, have recently risen from

their lethargy to try to start a community development plan which will help them to be

self-sufficient. They were refused this chance once, by the Interior Department, but

are stubborn and are continuing, trying to enlist the help of the University of Nebraska

for specialist in agriculture, education and political government so that they can learn

to manage their own affairs. They are afraid they will be terminated before they can

get to the point of standing on their own feet.

If you show any interest in this, Meyers continued, I shall send you a report,

just to be published this month, on the Omahas, which reads like a good novel. Our

Executive Director, who works out on the reservations with these Indians, wrote it and

did a remarkable job of simplifying for the layman just exactly what problems the

Indians are up against under present BIA policies. [italics added] 15

The pro-Indian interest group provided the television journalist with copies of

correspondence and literature relevant to the issues at hand. One such item was a

letter from the Chief of the Choctaw Tribe of Oklahoma, who was engaged in a power

struggle with the Indian Bureau over who had the authority to appoint or elect the

Chief; the letter also refers to the broader political context of termination issues and

contestation over control of tribal land: Our experience with the powers in

Washington through the last ten years has been most unhappy and has been

devastating to Choctaw confidence. . . . We know, by galling experience, how


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conniving the politicians are, and how easily a defenseless people can become

victimized by those of mercenary mind. The Chiefs letter continued:

The Choctaws are taking off the kid gloves, and if Mr. Ernst really wishes

to receive some letters from the interested Choctaw, he will certainly get

his wish. We have tried to handle this thing without a fight and the

attendant uproar that is concomitant of a public fight. . . . This should

give us time to get our plea before the people of this country and to point

up the ignominy with which the smug bureaucrats disregard the

pleadings of a people already reduced to plebianism through the

ruthless greed that has marked the dealings of these bureaucrats

through the centuries in the unending struggle for possession of the

Indians birthright--[our] land. 16

Encouraging the journalist to go into the field and talk with Indian people on

their own turf, AAIA leaders also supplied McCormick with letters of introduction to

several tribal leaders, such as this one addressed to Lloyd Eaglebull of the Pine Ridge

(South Dakota) Tribal Council:

A National Broadcasting Company (New York and Washington) radioand television news reporter is touring some of the Indian reservationsduring his vacation in mid-July and has asked us for a letter ofintroduction to the tribal council at Pine Ridge in the hope of talkingquietly to a few of the key Indian leaders on land sales, termination, andother government policies. He is Mr. Robert McCormick, he is a goodfriend of ours, and sincerely anxious to get at the truth of how wellIndians are being served by present legislation on their behalf.

The letter of introduction continued:

This is just to tell you that you may be frank with him, and that if yourequest it, he will respect any confidences you may make to him. The


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broadcasting company is exploring material for a news report on bothtelevision and radio that will giv e a faithful picture of just what ishappening to the Indians today. 17

With these letters of introduction in hand, but no camera, McCormick traveled

throughout Western reservations the summer of 1958 to talk face-to-face with local

tribal leaders, whose voices rarely reached a national audience, and to get a first-hand

view of socioeconomic conditions. LaFarge later characterized McCormicks process

of information-gathering:

Mr. McCormick spent weeks of his vacation on reservations in the Plainsand North Central States to find out how Indian citizens were doing inthe year 1958 in the United States. Before he went he prowledWashington for Congressional opinion; read official documents; lent earto the "official" administration line about federal Indian policy; andweighed all this against what Indian interest organizations like our ownhad to say. On location in the West, he talked to Indian leaders,tribesmen, churchmen, politicians, and ot her s, and came back withmore material than he could possibly use. 18

The conditions and issues McCormick confronted in the field were overwhelming, and

his story took shape around the existing debates about the economic aspects of

termination, framed by tribal perspectives as they were presented to him.

Based on his extensive on-site interviews with tribal leaders and their allies

around the nation, McCormick prepared a series of extended memoranda, which

were actually in-depth assessments and status reports regarding the history of a

number of tribal groups affected by threats of termination: an overview of their social

and economic conditions, and their feelings about the threat of termination and their

relationship with the federal government. These reports for his superiors at NBC

summarized the situations he encountered and observed in his travels through Indian

country and in his interviews with tribal and local leaders. They consisted of lengthy


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detailed overviews of the termination saga of the Klamath Tribe of Oregon and the

Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin (both in the process of being terminated), the Flathead

Tribe of Wisconsin, and the Colville Tribe of Washington State. He also prepared an

overview concerning the land pressures being felt by the tribes of the northern Plains

states (the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska and Montana), including the Three Affiliated

Tribes, the Sioux, the Omaha, the Chippewa, the Winnebago, the Northern

Cheyenne, the Crow, the Arapaho and Cheyenne, the Flathead and the Blackfeet

Nations. In many cases, he asked tribal leaders and other experts to read over and

revise his reports to ensure accuracy in interpretation and presentation. From these

reports, he culled what he considered the major issues and constructed a 15-page

overview which would form the basis for his broadcast commentary. 19

McCormick decided to focus his television report primarily on the contrasting

conditions of two Montana tribes, whose reservations were geographically separated

only by the range of the Northern Rockies but which were culturally distinguished by

extreme differences in cultural history, modes of economic production, degrees of

prosperity and adaptation to "mainstream" American cultural life. The Confederated

Salish and Kootenai tribes occupied the lush Flathead Valley, between Kalispell and

Missoula, with fertile farmlands, thick pine forests, the abundant Flathead Lake, and

an economy built around agriculture, forestry and tourism. A group of Northern

Montana tribes had been confederated as the Flathead Nation under the provisions of

the 1855 Hell Gate Treaty, which established a reservation in the Bitter Root Valley

south of Missoula prior to the forced removal northward into the Flathead Valley south

of Kalispell in 1889. This land was subject to allotment and non-Indian settlement


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starting in 1904, resulting in approximately half of the original reservation land being

owned by non-Indians by the 1950s. 20 The most economically-viable natural

resources were the water resources (hydroelectric power sites) and timber stands,

especially the Christmas tree farming industry (which netted the Tribe over half a

million dollars in income in 1952). A hundred miles away, sandwiching Glacier

National Park on the east, was the Blackfeet reservation, occupying the more arid and

harshly desolate northern plains--land more amenable to grazing than to agriculture,

with hidden stores of oil beneath its rolling, windswept hills. The Blackfeet Indians had

been dependent upon buffalo culture until the abrupt decimation of the buffalo by

white hunters in the late 19th century; the tribe in the 1950s was still seeking to find

and adapt to a new economic and cultural lifestyle. The land of the Blackfeet

Reservation was coveted by the oil and gas industry, which desired to control oil and

gas rights should the land be taken out of federal control. 21 Both reservations had BIA

Agencies which boasted programs "to aid in developing natural resources, such as

land management, ranching, irrigation, forestry, etc., as well as others to provide

educational opportunities, law and order, relocation services . . . and welfare

services." 22 Both reservations had been heavily influenced by Catholic missionaries,

and the St. Ignatius mission on the Flathead reservation housed a school and a

resident Jesuit priest, Father Cornelius Byrne.

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on the Flathead reservation had

been scheduled for termination in the first wave of bills in response the 1953 passage

of HCR 108 by the 83rd Congress. Letters to tribal members in the Fall of 1953 from


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the BIA Area Director and Superintendent had notified them of the impending bill to

terminate federal supervision over the property (644,015 acres of trust lands,

including the Flathead Forest, one developed hydropower dam site, and two potential

dam sites) and individual members (4,213) of the Confederated Tribes, noting that

plans to comply with Congressional policy should determine the manner in which both

the interests of the Tribe can best be served and protected as well as the special

needs of individual Indians can most satisfactorily be met. A meeting was held with

the Tribal Council in early October, and responses and reactions were requested by

the first of November, 1953. This bill provided for the issuance of fee patents for

individual interests in lands (thereby losing trust status), the transfer to the

Tribe/corporation of all trust land, the disposal (at the discretion of the Interior

Department, with costs deducted from tribal funds) of federally-owned or administered

property, and the transfer of the supervision of the Flathead Irrigation Project to an

irrigation district organized under state law. Tribal members would also be given an

opportunity to decide whether Tribal assets should be transferred to a corporate

organization which would be established under state laws or should be converted into

cash to be distributed on a per-capita basis. The distribution of property would not be

taxed; however, the property and any subsequent income would be fully taxable upon

removal of federal restrictions. Finally, the provisions of all other statutes of the U.S.

applicable to Indians because of their status as Indians shall no longer apply to the

members of the tribe; and thereafter such Indians shall have all the rights, privileges,

immunities, and obligations possessed by all other citizens. 23


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The fight against termination of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes,

the first Montana tribe to be affected by termination legislation, engaged many of the

Montana civic and intertribal groups in the campaign, and records indicate that it was

this original skirmish which strongly vitalized the pro-Indian, anti-termination advocacy

efforts of groups throughout the state such as the Montana Farmers Union, the

Cascade County Community Council and the Business and Professional Womens

Clubs. 27 The Flathead termination crisis also forged coalitions between Indian and

non-Indian interests working toward a common goal--or rather, united in unison

against a common enemy. Crow tribal leader Robert Yellowtail wrote to Oliver

LaFarge that in February of 1954, the fireworks of liquidation for the Flatheads

begins. We--that is, many of the Indian leaders from all over the West--will be there. I

hope to see you sitting among us when that struggle begins. I wish to ask that you

arrange for a wide coverage by the press so that people will know what is being

attempted and how. 28 A spokesman for the Montana Farmers Union testified at the

hearing about the Kerr Dam site, which the Confederated Tribes leased to Montana

Power Company, an asset which brought them an annual income of about $200,000:

If the tribal properties should be liquidated and sold, there would be onlyone bidder. Under what terms would a value be placed on Kerr Dam. . .? The proposed legislation provides for no protection whatsoever butleaves the Indians of the Flathead Reservation entirely on their own. Ineffect, it instructs them to form themselves into a corporation underMontana State law or be liquidated. The best corporation the FlatheadIndians could devise will never be an even match for the Montana PowerCompany.

He continued:

As far as the Flathead Indians are concerned, sudden removal of theseprotective features will be the whistle signal for chaos. The golden ball


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will have been thrown into the air, and the free-for-all grab will begin.Indians will be pitted against Indians b y s hrewd whites. . . . The endresult will be poverty and degradation. 29

After extensive and fiery hearings, efforts to terminate the Flathead reservation tribes

were successfully stalled in Congressional committee in 1954.

McCormick had also been provided with a letter of introduction to Sister

Providencia, well-known for her outspoken regional activism. A member of the

Montreal-based Sisters of Providence order, Sister Providencia was a professor of

sociology and anthropology at the College of Great Falls and a self-proclaimed

rabble-rouser on behalf of human rights and political self-determination for Indian

tribes. In her many letters, circulars, and other documentations (which she willingly

shared with McCormick), Sister Providencia articulated in written form many of the

concerns and discourses which circulated among the pro-Indian reformers in

Montana, including one possible rationale for the intensity of the regional grassroots

political involvement in the anti-termination movement:

The local Montanans want to see a halt to land sales, not only becausethey are ashamed of the pressures that are forcing Indians to sell forfood, but because of reasons important to the eventual assimilation ofthese people. Out West an Indian without land is nothing. The old-timechiefs made sure that the young tribesmen were impressed with thislesson, and I think that it carried over to the white men who lived inIndian country. Even today, a landless Indian has no status, no place, nofuture. 30

Sister Providencia was well-connected with many of the Montana tribes, and was

intimately involved with a number of Great Falls citizens groups, especially the Friends

of Hill 57. Hill 57 was a barren hillside on the margins of the city which had been

occupied for over a generation by a group of several hundred "landless" Indians.


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Although there was some transiency and migratory labor, Hill 57 also had a core of

long-term resident families, who at this time were living in desperate conditions, and

were the subject of continuing controversy between local, state and federal agencies

about who had responsibility for providing social services to them. As with Indians in

many urban areas, the Bureau of Indian Affairs disclaimed responsibility since they

were not affiliated with any reservation. 31 The residents of Hill 57 were members of

several tribes, including the Rocky Boy Cree and the Little Shell Band of the Turtle

Mountain Chippewa, who had been separated from their land by various means.

By early Fall, McCormick was satisfied that his research was adequate, and he

was ready to begin thinking about how he could use the medium of television to

convey the message he wanted to express on behalf of the tribal peoples he had

encountered. In a long letter written in September of 1958, McCormick candidly filled

in his supervisor, Joe Meyers, on the progress made toward the show, including some

preliminary ideas for visualization:

Here is the last of these memos--and in many ways, the most interesting. I'm

not doing one on the Navajos and other Four Corners tribes but I did want to explain to

you that they are excellent examples of tribes that will not be terminated. Too many

people are making too much money from their reservations now; also, while the

individual Indians are poor, the tribes are rich (as a result of oil, uranium, coal, etc) and

can fight any termination attempt. The Tribes have been smart enough to save many

millions of dollars for war-chests, to defend their holdings. The situation thus is such

that the more powerful politicians in the area--Senators. Anderson, Chavez and


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Goldwater, particularly--won't let the Indian Bureau or anybody else lay a hand on the

Navajos, the Lagunas or the Jicarillos.

If anybody is interested in this whole mess, I would like to try to describe in

person the television possibilities. I do think Sister Providencia would be a star. She is

the sister of former Rep. Jack Tolan of California; she is a handsome, bright, tough gal

who spent part of her life in Washington politics. 32 She is a fanatic on the subject of her

poor Indians--but she knows the subject. Not only does she work at the Columbus

Hospital in Great Falls, but she teaches Indian history, sociology etc at the University

of Great Falls. She is simply adored by the Indians themselves, and has been made

an honorary member of number of tribes. Some of what she says must be

discounted--but not as much as I had been led to believe. As a matter of fact, the

deeper I got into the matter, the more convinced I became that she was 95% right in

her rather violent views. I believe she would be willing to tour the Blackfeet reservation

for our cameras, interviewing Indians if we wish. And the Blackfeet area now seems to

me to be one of the best for television, if we decide to do anything.

Otherwise, I have informal permission to film Tribal Council meetings. I have

the minutes of a number of such meetings, if you'd like samples. They discuss

everything from the technical problems of water flooding dormant oil wells, to the

question of whether Mrs. Elk Two Horns should get $15 from the Tribe for doctors'

expenses in connection with her broken arm. Some of the talk is very impressive--the

Indians are smart as hell, so far as the leaders are concerned--and some of the

discussion is just pathetic.


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I did not get permission to film any of the real rituals, including dances. With

negotiation and some money, we probably could get such permission but I didn't see

where it fit particularly, and I didn't want to push the issue until I knew whether

anybody would be interested. We could, however, cover one of the political

campaigns in a tribe, for the election of tribal councilmen. The Navajos especially have

real dirty campaigns. Most of it is in the Navajo language, but we would also get it in

English. Many times the politics ties-in with the rituals. The Navajos, for example, start

talking campaign politics during the Squaw Dances this fall. The Squaw Dances are

highly sacred, though somewhat informal. We might conceivably find a Medicine Man

who would let us film at least part of one of the dances, although the technical

problems would be formidable. Anything more than truly in conspicuous lights would

be taboo--and the dances are held in the evenings. Tri-X, campfire light, and a few

additional lights might do it, however. The Tribe would be in favor of it, because it is

trying to make a tape-and-film record of the ceremonial rituals. Even the Tribe hasn't

got much of anywhere, however, because the Medicine Men won't permit pictures. For

a couple of hundred bucks, or maybe even less, they might be persuaded.

In conclusion, McCormick wrote to his boss, I think I have enough additional

information to write perhaps another forty pages of notes, but I'm sure you're not that

interested. Indians, schmindians, have they got the H-bomb? 33 In this letter,

McCormick drew upon those things with which he himself had been most fascinated

as he began to think about images which might be powerful and appealing to the

non-Indian audience. His discourses reveal his own ambivalent positioning, as a

non-Indian male journalist who is culturally sensitive to a point--but who still has


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cars, women, booze and clothes, usually getting took in each deal. They have no idea

of intelligent investment, largely because theyve never been allowed to learn . Thanks

partly to Colliers well-meaning but misty-eyed approach, they are even more remote

from the unpleasant realities of a booming economy than they formerly were.

This applies only to the Indian masses. The Tribal leaders are, for the most

part, as smart a bunch of operators as Ive ever seen . Most of them are also honest,

and proud. . . . They do defend and protect their people, which is more than can be

said for men that are badly needed around the White House.

Anyhow, if the efforts to separate the Indians from their lands are successful,

these people will become terrible drains upon society. Various studies show that most

of them become relief charges; they add enormously to social problems of an area,

once they are abruptly removed from the traditional restraints imposed upon them by

tribal atmosphere. [italics added] 34

I present such lengthy segments to provide insights into the private, internal

discourses within the network about these issues--discourses which McCormick

apparently realized were (what today would be termed) politically incorrect or

culturally insensitive, but which were at that time acceptable behind closed doors and

in private correspondences between white men of privilege in certain professions. As

evidenced by the occasional slips in the rhetoric of McCormick, Collier, LaFarge and

even Sister Providencia, well-meaning white liberals could still be racist, paternalistic

and condescending, if not misty-eyed or angrily cynical, in their discourses about

those of a different race, class or ethnicity from themselves--even as they eloquently

defended their rights and their common humanity.


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During the final stages of the documentarys pre-production phase, however,

an indication of a possible policy shift by the Department of the Interior gave

temporary pause to McCormick as he prepared his brief against the federal agency. In

a radio broadcast from Window Rock, Arizona, on September 13, Secretary of the

Interior Fred Seaton made a speech which was heralded as a possible "sea change"

in Indian policy. Many skeptics interpreted Seatons strategy as a mere softening of

the termination rhetoric while stumping on the campaign trail for Barry Goldwater in

Goldwaters home state of Arizona, heavily populated by Indian people. Seaton

attempted to reinterpret the termination mandate of the 1953 Congressional

termination bill, HCR 108, which had been directed at ending the wardship status of

Indian tribes as rapidly as possible; the Interior Secretary felt that the press and

media had twisted their interpretation of this bill to ascribe its intention as an

abandonment of Indian groups. Seaton confirmed that, in his opinion, the stated

intentions of the Congress to free the Indian tribes from Federal supervision, and to

eliminate the need for the special services should be understood as merely "an

objective, not an immediate goal." After a discussion with Senator Goldwater, he

explained, Seatons own position was that no Indian tribe would be terminated unless

the tribe demonstrated that it understood the plan, concurred in and supported the

plan. He quoted the rhetoric of Glenn Emmons regarding the desire of the federal

government to foster the advancement of, and the attainment of equal opportunities

for freedom and responsibility by, American Indian citizens so that they would be on

equal footing with other American citizens:


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True enough, Indian groups can continue to exist as cultural islands inthe midst of our national population, isolated from the main group bylanguage and custom, and living at standards far below those of the

average American citizen. They can do this. In fact, many of them havedone so for many years. But . . . does the majority of the population ofsuch tribes prefer to live in that manner, or does it do so because thereseems to be no other choice, . . . there is no general awareness of thealternatives?

Seaton continued:

I believe the majority of our Indian citizens are as desirous and capableof exercising all the duties and responsibilities of citizenship as are therest of us, provided they have equal opportunities with their fellowcitizens. . . . [However, ] it is the intention of the Federal Government tofulfill its complete responsibility toward the Indian people throughout thenation. No Indian, of whatever tribe, need have any fear about that. 35

Responses to Seatons speech were generally cautious and cynical.

Handwritten in the margins of a copy of the speech she sent to Senator Mike

Mansfield, Sister Providencia wrote, Bunk! It is the John Q. Public limitation of

alternatives that must be reckoned with! She also emphasized to Mansfield the

problem of the immediate implementation of the Congressional termination directives

by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 36 Helen Meyers of the AAIA commented in a

handwritten note to NBC journalists McCormick and Meyers that even though it "looks

as though the Interior Dept has suffered a sea-change in policy" since "miraculously, it

seems to be modifying its policy, . . . past experience has proven that local

interpretation by Area BIA's, covertly or otherwise, seeks to push the Indians into

termination action against their will. Don't think this affects your story, for the Interior

Department's reform will not stick unless public attention is called to past

performance." 37 After a local speech by Assistant Interior Secretary Roger Ernst,


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Friends of Hill 57 activist Max Gubatayao wrote Father Byrne regarding the "change in

the tone of Indian policy":

This change is a cause for rejoicing among Indians over here and theirhard-working friends. It is perhaps significant that this change wasrevealed in Montana, which, as you know, has been hard hit by thetermination beach head. From the beginning Montana has been at theforefront with its protest and its warning. . . .

Yet he noted with caution that such policy shifts at the national level would take time to

be implemented locally. This sentiment of bureaucratic lag was later reinforced by a

Congressman Berry of South Dakota, who commented that Seaton and Ernst "have

very little chance of getting [changes] accomplished with what seems to be a vast

body of Civil Service employees down below." In a memorandum to their tribal clients,

the law firm which represented the AAIA and many tribes remarked:

These words constitute a clear endorsement of the Indian consentprinciple. Heretofore the Interior Department has taken a position that itwould agree to legislation providing for Indian consultation but not forIndian consent. Secretary Seatons statement can certainly not besquared with this Departmental policy. It remains to be seen whetherfuture Departmental reports on legislation wi ll demonstrate that a policychange has actually been carried into effect. 38

Because of continuing doubts about the local effects of this proposed reform,

McCormick continued with the documentary project as planned. 39

In mid-September, tribal representatives from over fifty tribes across the United

States gathered in Missoula, Montana for the 15th annual week-long convention of the

National Congress of American Indians. The central focus of this convention was the

rallying of tribes and their allies against termination, and keynote speakers included

Father Byrne, who urged the Indians to say no to the federal government until the

time they had something to say yes to, and U.S. Representative from Montana Lee


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Metcalf, who pledged war on the Bureau of Indian Affairs and on HCR 108 and to put

an end to the subtle and devious ways that the Eisenhower Administration has

applied termination pressure. Tribal delegates, such as Dr. Paschal Sherman of the

Colville Tribe, expressed the sentiment that Indians are tired of being policy and are

fighting, through NCAI, for their very survival as a distinct ethnic group in this nation. 40

The speaker garnering the most avid attention, however, was Assistant Interior

Secretary Roger Ernst, noted by NCAI President Joseph Garry as the first ranking

Interior Department representative to ever address the convention, who reiterated the

sentiments expressed earlier in the week by Interior Secretary Fred Seaton pledging

full federal responsibility to the Indian people. These words were cautiously hailed by

NCAI members and leaders, who collectively wondered if the indications of a policy

change by the federal government would be carried out. As one observer put it: The

Indian delegates applauded the announcement of policy change uneasily; they were

like tired front-line soldiers, grenades in hand, suddenly hearing that an armistice has

been declared and fearful of being taken in my an enemy rumor. 41 Garry in turn

expressed the earnest pleading of this organization that the Department move with all

possible speed to make this [change in policy] clear throughout the Bureau of Indian

Affairs and to the last employee of the Bureau, and asked that Ernst personally

convey to Seaton our respectful urging that your personnel . . . cease direct and

indirect pressures on the Indian people to agree to termination by administrative

actions, land sales, press releases, circulars--persuasions of any kind whatever to

agree to termination or to ask for it, to stop telling the Indian tribes that the handwriting

for termination is on the wall. In their first resolution, convention delegates charged:


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The Congress of the United States and the Commissioner of IndianAffairs have repeatedly indicated a desire not to bring about terminationfor any group of Indians until the people in such group were prepared to

take their place in American society, but . . . in spite of such indications,the Congress and the Commissioner have moved rapidly to terminateIndian groups whose people are in dire and desperate straits from thestandpoint of health, education and economic opportunity. . . . Suchmovement toward termination has been carried on not only directly butindirectly through regulations and administration practices designed todivest the Indian people of their lands, thereby aggravating further theireconomic status. . . .

The resolution concluded, Such premature termination can only lead to tremendous

suffering by the Indian people and will result in substantial and continued expense to

the various states and counties which will be required to assist such people. . . .

Delegates adopted this resolution urging increased Indian involvement, advising and

consent in policymaking and that a concentrated effort be made to retain, rather than

dispose of, Indian lands so that tribal groups could have a sufficient resource base for

economic development. 42

Such was the political atmosphere in which McCormick found himself as he

headed back to Montana a few weeks later to begin shooting the documentary. In

early October, a Metcalf staffer wrote key regional tribal leaders and other

contacts--Walt McDonald (Tribal Chairman of the Salish and Kootenai Tribes on the

Flathead reservation), Iliff McKay (Tribal Secretary, Blackfeet Tribe), Sister

Providencia and Knute Bergen (head of Indian Affairs for Montanas Department of

Public Education)--to encourage them to participate in the NBC project:

Bob McCormick just checked in. NBC has approved his Indian show. . .. His crew--camera man, sound man and engineer, coming fromChicago; producer, his assistant and McCormick from here--aretentatively to meet in Great Falls Sunday. They plan to see Lee in


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Helena Monday. . . . As you know from having met him, he is out to do a job. I know you'll help him all you can . [italics added] 43

On the Flathead reservation, the crew filmed panoramic landscapes, shots of Kerr andHungry Horse Dams (a major source of tribal income from fees paid by Montana

Power Company) and interviews with Father Byrne of St. Ignatius Mission and with

Tribal Chairman Walter McDonald and others on his ranch. 44 A crew had also gone to

Wisconsin to shoot some footage of the timber and sawmill industry on the

Menominee Reservation, but no interviews were conducted there, and this footage

was later edited into a visual montage, as was the Flathead reservation footage.

However, the interview with the outspoken Jesuit anti-terminationist Father Byrne

became a rhetorical centerpiece of the program, as did the interview with Metcalf, who

represented Western Montana. 45

In the communities of Heart Butte and Browning on the Blackfeet reservation,

the NBC crew filmed scenes of rural poverty in family living conditions, scenes of

children at a rural government-run Indian school, Indian cowboys herding cattle at a

roundup, and a tribal council meeting in which tribal leaders discussed their need for

funding for welfare programs. McCormick also conducted an interview with tribal

administrator Meade Swingley on his cattle ranch and extended interviews with two

tribal leaders, Iliff McKay and Walter Wetzel, about the reservation's oil potential and

the history of federal relations with the tribe.

Records indicate that McCormicks perspective was strongly influenced by the

rhetoric of the national pro-Indian interest groups, especially the AAIA. However, in


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light of later charges that he was only a mouthpiece for the organization, the AAIA

explained:

Although Mr. McCormick obtained and used all his initial interestarousing material from the Association, which regularly sends Indianinformation to radio-television news commentators and desk men, hemade it a point to remain detached from both the Indian-interestorganizations' and the Bureau of Indian Affairs' point of view, and todraw his own conclusions from his own extensive reading and from whathe saw and heard. The Association, however, was invited to therough-cut film showing and saw much, though not all, of the script finallyused.

The organization also reported that, contrary to later charges, McCormick did

approach Interior Department personnel in his final stages of production:

Toward the end of the work of putting the story together, Mr. McCormickcalled on Commissioner Emmons in Washington and was received byhim and his staff. He told them what he had learned on his field survey,and in general how it would be handled. He believed the story to be ofsufficient importance to merit a statement coming from an official ofcabinet rank, and offered Secretary Fred A. Seaton the opportunity tomake a statement which w ould be worked into the finished script.Secretary Seaton refused. 46

The air date was set for November 16, and The American Stranger was

scheduled as part of the Kaleidoscope series, a Sunday afternoon variety showcase

based upon the concept of Robert Saudek's critically-acclaimed Omnibus (and

alternating in its time slot). The description of the upcoming documentary to potential

advertisers by NBCs publicists provides insights into the perception of the show by

the network. Subtitled Portrait of a Forgotten People, the program was described

through an invocation of the stereotypical discourses about the fall of the once-noble

savage:

Even when the American Indian roamed the vast prairies and forests ofthis continent, free and proud possessor of all the lands his eyes


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surveyed, he had to fight hunger, disease . . . and the encroachments ofthe white man upon tribal hunting grounds. His battle to hold these landsagainst overwhelming odds constitutes one of the grimmest chapters in

American history. When the war drums finally fell silent, the red manfound himself a virtual ward by treaty of the United States, temporarilysaved from annihilation by the establishment of federal Indianreservations.

The description continued:

This is the story of how the descendants of this once mighty race ofwarriors and hunters are living in the age of atomic fission and theturbo-jet. Appropriately titled THE AMERICAN STRANGER, it wasfilmed by the veteran NBC News reporter-camera team of RobertMcCormick and Tom Priestly, who spent two weeks on location in theBlackfoot and Flathead reservations in Montana, and by NBC Newsteams who visited Menominee, Navaho and Pechange reservations inWisconsin, New Mexico and California.

In the course of putting this filmed report together, McCormickinterviewed Indians and their tribal chiefs; missionaries, doctors andbusinessmen who work or deal with the Indians; and governmentofficials close to the Indian situation. Out of the 45,000 feet of film he andhis NBC News teams shot has emerged a revealing portrait of thecontemporary American Indian and the reservation system under whichhe lives.

Another section, subtitled The Indian Way of Life, describes the process of research

through which McCormick conducted his inquiry. To bring today's red man into

perspective for the television audience, the promotion explained, a series of

questions was formulated based upon research conducted by reporter-editor

McCormick prior to going on location. These questions were designed to cover all

aspects of Indian life on the reservations. The first inquiry was, "How do reservation

Indians earn their livelihood?":

This question has a variety of answers depending on the principalnatural resources available on or near the reservations. The Blackfeet,for example, are located on rich, oil-producing lands, and the


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Menominees hold some of the most valuable timber land in the nation.Some of the other tribes are less fortunate.

Next, the NBC News team concerned itself with the question, "What isthe status of the reservation Indians' health, religion and education?"Again, the answers elicited by the skillful interviewing of newsmanMcCormick varied according to locale. Because ofgovernment- supported medical assistance, bolstered by importantcontributions from medical missionaries, the Indians' health is, ingeneral, improving. It is still, however, well below national standards,and malnutrition is a factor in some instances.

The issue of religion entered into even the promotion of the documentary, even

though the information provided was not directly relevant to the content of the

broadcast:

In the matter of religion, the majority of the Indians have been convertedto Christianity. The Menominees, for example, are almost solidlyCatholic. The old Indian beliefs have not disappeared, however. TheDream Dance cult, now known as the Native American Church, hasgained new favor among some of the tribes. This sect, which originatedwith the plains Indians during the time of the Indian wars, is built arounda ceremony which involves the consumption of a harmless,vision-inducing drug found in the "button" of the peyote cactus.

The promotion also discussed aspects of Indian education, blindly invoking

discourses of infantilization and paternalism even while seeming to criticize the history

of federal paternalism:

The educational facilities available to reservation Indians are, in far toomany cases, less than adequate. Under the paternalistic attitude whichthe government has maintained toward the red man over the years, themajority of Indians appear to be poorly equipped for assimilation into theoff-reservation population. Forbidden to handle their own affairs exceptin very limited areas, they are generally childish in their approach tomoney, often squandering it on such items as fancy automobiles andclothing.

Yet the promotion also indicted white society:


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Despite this situation, McCormick's inquiries disclose that the federalgovernment, through congressional termination of reservations,continues to push toward the absorption of the reservation Indian into a

society which appears to be as poorly prepared to assimilate him as heis to cope with the complexities of modern life. The Indians presentprotected status is further threatened by the shrinkage of reservationareas as a result of federal court decisions permitting state governmentsto acquire valuable tribal lands for power projects and other publicdevelopments through condemnation proceedings.

The promotion continued:

Thought of by many as a relic of the bygone past, the American Indian isplaced in true contemporary perspective in Robert McCormicks filmedreport. From it he emerges as a real-life person with real-life problemswhich deserve the attention of those who now occupy the once tracklessforests and plains that served as hunting grounds for his forebears. 47

Through the use of such standard and stereotypical modes of conceptualizing

American Indians in the promotional literature, NBC prepared its advertisers and its

potential audience for a profile of contemporary Indian issues which would be safely

anchored in the imperialist discourses and attitudes through which middle America

had long conceived of their noble but downtrodden and childlike wards, with only a

hint of a progressive approach which promised to personalize the Indians and make

them seem real to the presumably white audience.

Two weeks prior to the air date, the BIAs Information Officer distributed a

memorandum to all Bureau employees alerting them to the upcoming television

program: On Sunday, Nov 16, the new television program Kaleidoscope will take a

look at the present Indian situation, particularly on the Flathead and Blackfeet

Reservations in Montana." 48 The Great Falls-based Friends of Hill 57 distributed a

circular to its supporters, entitled "Indian Information," also announcing the broadcast:


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Recently Edward R. Murrow gave an address [to the Association ofRadio and Television News Directors] . . . [in which] he said: "IfHollywood were to run out of Indians, the program schedules would be

mangled beyond all recognition. Then some courageous soul with asmall budget might be able to do a documentary telling what, in fact, wehave done--and are still doing--to the Indians in this country. But thatwould be unpleasant. And we must at all costs shield the sensitivecitizens from anything that is unpleasant."

Building their promotion upon Murrow's cynical charge, the regionally-distributed

circular continued,

Such a courageous soul exists--Robert McCormick of NBC--and such afine documentary TV film has been done right here in Montana beforeour eyes. . . . If your TV station has not scheduled [the show] on Sunday,then write immediately to the National Broadcasting Company in NewYork requesting a kinescope permanent film for the program so that itmay be scheduled at another date. We know that you are a courageousviewer of TV, able and willing not only to t ake raw facts, but to dosomething about them in the coming year. 49

At the Blackfeet Tribal Council meeting the week before the broadcast, Tribal

Chairman Wetzel officially informed theTribe about the scheduling of the upcoming

profile in which they had participated, and endorsed the documentary on behalf of the

Tribe. 50

The controversy over The American Stranger began before the show was even

broadcast. Less than a week before the scheduled air date, Sister Providencia wrote

Mansfield:

We are not getting the program in Great Falls right now. A call from youto NBCs New York office might help us get a kinescope copy. It is aterrific job! Copies of this notice [Friends of Hill 57's Indian Information,dated 10 November] went to all your languid Democrat s in Congress.Maybe a dose of victory will energize them come 1959. 51


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Records indicate that Madigan also sent the same letter to the managing editors of the

Billings Gazette and The Missoulian. Hours later, she received a reply from R. D.Warden of the Great Falls Tribune:

PLEASE FORWARD SCRIPT OR MAIL STORY ON NBC NOV 16MONTANA INDIAN PROGRAM FOR SUCH USE AS WE MAY BEABLE TO DEVELOP. THANKS. 55

It is unclear from the existing records exactly how the American Civil Liberties

Union became involved, though it is likely that they were contacted by a

representative from one of the pro-Indian advocacy groups. Helen Meyers later hinted

at the AAIAs involvement in alerting the ACLU, in a letter she wrote to Walter Wetzel

a few weeks after the broadcast:

Perhaps you did not know that some of the pressure which was put onthe local stations to carry the network show came from the AmericanCivil Liberties Union which has about 100 members out your way.Jeffrey Fuller went to a great deal of trouble to send out special lettersasking these people to kick up a fuss on behalf of hearing the showlocally. He is sure they did so, as they have been effective on otheroccasions. As he will soon want to make a year-end report to his Boardof Directors, he will want to include this incident, and I have told him thatI shall try to find out from you something about the general response. Iunderstand from my husband at NBC news that some four local stationscarried the show. Do you know of an y other developments which Mr.Fuller might find useful in his report? 56

In any account, the same day that the telegrams were burning up the wires between

New York and Montana, Jeffrey Fuller of the ACLUs Indian Civil Rights Committee

distributed the following letter to ACLU members in Montana:

This Sunday afternoon, November 16, at 4:00 P.M. E.S.T. (presumably6:00 P.M. Mountain Time) the National Broadcasting Company willpresent an hour-long documentary entitled The American Stranger, thethird in its new Kaleidoscope series. This program deals with AmericanIndians, and most of it was filmed on the Blackfeet Reservation in


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Montana. In the course of it, Indian tribal leaders will discuss some oftheir problems, Father C.E. Byrne of the St. Ignatius Mission will presenthis views, and a Mission doctor will talk about polio among Indian

children. Charles van Doren will be the narrator, and Bob McCormick ofNBC's Washington news staff will report.

Fullers letter continued:

This program has been offered to NBC affiliates across the country, butfor some reason not one of NBC's six stations in Montana now plans toshow it. While the ACLU is not prepared to charge any of these stationswith an act of censorship (generally we encourage local stations topresent local programs in place of the usual fare offered by networks)and cannot rule on the merits of this particular program as opposed towhatever the Montana stations offer in its place, we do feel that thisdocumentary will constitute an important contribution to publicunderstanding of a problem vital to all Montana citizens.

Fuller added:

Each ACLU member in Montana can help in this situation by phoning hislocal NBC affiliate to ask whether it plans to show this program--and ifnot--urge lt to do so. The stations involved, we understand, are: KGHL,Billings; KXLQ, Bozeman; KX LF, Butte; KXLX, Great Falls; KXLJ,Helena; and KXLL, Missoula. 57

The next day, a follow-up telegram from McCormick to Sister Providencia indicated

that efforts were beginning to paying off in terms of coverage:

INDIAN STORY SCHEDULED KFBB GREAT FALLS AND KXLFBUTTE SUNDAY FIVE PM EST. WOULD APPRECIATE YOURCOMMENT ON IT AND TH ANKS FOR ASSISTANCE IN ARRANGINGMONTANA BROADCASTS. 58

Also, the AAIA reported that

In the meantime, the Blackfeet officials, learning that their show was not

to be seen locally, were able to drum up a great deal of community

pressure through their non-Indian friends, and later sent out a


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triumphant report that their pressure campaign had "pushed over the

showing of The American Stranger." 59

In a letter to McCormick following the broadcast, Sister Providencia speculated:

It is still an unresolved puzzle why KFBB here [a CBS affiliate]consented to order the program. Three weeks ago they were adamant:"We don't have the time." Then Tuesday the Friends of Hill 57 sent out .. . 200 letters putting the pressure upon New York NBC to make akinescope.

Wednesday night, KFBB phoned me and said crossly, "We are puttingon your Indian show--had to cancel two programs. Idaho Falls canceledprograms." Then unexpectedly the Great Falls Tribune consented to runa news item and Billings TV came in so that with Butte and Helena allMontana sa w it. Idaho saw it too, thanks to Great Falls--and so didWyoming. 60

A regional pressure blitz by the Montana ACLU, local Catholic activists, the AAIA, and

Great Falls citizens groups had resulted in four of the five Montana television stations

agreeing to carry the broadcast signal, even though not all were NBC affiliates.

Almost simultaneously with the broadcast, and perhaps strategically timed to

coincide with it as well as following upon the recent Democratic-dominated elections,

the NCAI mailed letters to leading Congressional Democrats (such as Senator Lyndon

Johnson) and sent press releases to 300 newspapers as well as tribal publications

across the nation. In the letters, the NCAI urged that the new overwhelmingly

Democratic majority press for a new statement of Indian policy to supersede HCR 108

on the grounds that it directs, authorizes or permits the abrogation of treaties,

abandonment of Federal responsibilities, alienation of Indian lands, and destruction of

tribal governments and the Indian way of life. Time has proven the Indians fears about


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HCR 108 justified. The letter also reminded legislators of the Indian plank in the 1956

Democratic Platform, which had pledged:

Prompt adoption of a federal program to assist Indian tribes in the fulldevelopment of their human and natural resources, to advance thehealth, education and economic well-being of Indian citizens, allpreserving their traditions without impairing their cultural heritage; Noalteration of any treaty or other federal-Indian contractual relationshipswithout the free consent of the tribes involved; Reversal of the presentpolicies, which are tending toward erosion of Indian rights, reduction oftheir economic base thro ugh alienation of their lands, and repudiation offederal responsibility. . . . 61

The letter and press release from the all-Indian organization were timed to hit the

attention of the public on Monday, November 17--the day following the broadcast of

The American Stranger.

A few days prior to the documentarys air date, the Blackfeet Tribal Council held

a special session, at which Wetzel announced the upcoming television special which

featured the tribe. According to the minutes:

Mr. Wetzel informed the Council that the TV program recently made onthe Blackfeet Indian reservation will be telecast over a national hook-upNovember 16th at 3:00 P.M., MST. He said, "This will be the first timethat people all over the United States can see for themselves the actualconditions that exist on our reservation. It will deal with the Bureau ofIndian Affairs's attempt to liquidate other reservations as well as to showhow they are forcing the Blackfeet to liquidate themselves. . . . Theprogram also brings out that the Blackfeet Indian reservation Indianfarmers need increased wheat acreage allotments in order to stay onthe farm and be able to farm profitably. The program also shows thatsome of the school children of our reservation actually receive one goodmeal a day thru the hot-lunch program during the school terms." Mr.Wetzel further stated that the telecast would be made over KFBB-TV inGreat Falls, Montana and that this station was being picked up in th e CutBank area and he urged every one to see it if they possibly could. 62

Through the mobilization of grassroots publicity movements and political forces

by local groups, a regional audience for the broadcast was swiftly and effectively


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created. To gain additional viewership, NBC also advertised the show in television

sections of Sunday newspapers across the country, with a bold close-up portrait of the

weathered face of an elderly Native American man of indeterminate tribal affiliation,

wearing a full feathered headdress. Beneath the large photograph, the ads copy read:

"A mighty race of warriors and hunters has become a stranger in its own land. This

grim paradox--the result of one of the most violent chapters in our history--is the story

of the "American Stranger." 63


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BROADCASTING THE AMERICAN STRANGER

(see full transcript of broadcast in Appendix A)

Stylistically, The American Stranger was constructed as a hosted news report,

introduced by the reporter live on-camera, followed by a pre-produced filmed insert

which was the core of the broadcast. Unlike the previous documentaries (the

observational Whole Town's Talking and the apolitical and celebratory Wide Wide

World), this 1958 broadcast directly confronted both the politics of Indian affairs and

the socioeconomic conditions of Indian communities through the mediating presence

of a polemical white journalist-advocate. McCormick positioned himself implicitly as an

anthropological ethnographer: listening to, learning from and, ultimately, speaking "on

behalf" of the tribal subjects he represented and interpreted to the (white) television

audience. Yet, in contrast to other white advocates of Indian rights, such as LaFarge,

McCormick created a space in his rhetorical argument through which he allowed and

encouraged tribal leaders to speak for themselves.

The broadcast is structured as a sandwich--an inner piece bracketed by the

Kaleidoscope series opening and closing segments and by series host Charles Van

Dorens introductory and closing remarks, which serve to situate this issue of the

series within the series at large. The Kaleidoscope series, an umbrella cultural series

which featured a number of topics and genres ranging from serious documentaries to

theatrical plays to light backstage with the Rockettes features, was signified by an

awkwardly-turning gyroscope-type open metal structure, vaguely scientific-seeming

and invocative of discourses of the atomic age. The series musical theme likewise


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Documents

Chapter 3, "Disputable Truths: The American Stranger, Television Documentary and Native American Cultural Politics in the 1950s." Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1996, Pamela