American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Commenting on the federal government's self-determination legislation of the 1970s, Cecil D. Williams, Chairman of Arizona's Papago Tribe, admitted that the ''BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] still has a lot to say, but the direction now comes from the tribe .... There are still a lot of problems. But self-determination is the best thing that has come along yet, and it should mean a brighter future for Indians." For Williams and numerous other Native leaders, the Seventies was a time of significant reform in Washington's Indian policy and a consequent improvement in the status of their people. Indian judgments were not unanimous. For some the Seventies was an era of frustration and dashed hopes. Testifying before the United States Senate, Joseph De La Cruz, Chairman of the Quinalt Tribe of the State of Washington and head of the National Tribal Chairmen's Association, lamented: I, along with other tribal chairmen, greeted the passage of that [Self-Determination] Act in 1975 with hope that Indian tribes finally would be able to administer their new programs without confusion and conflict. I cannot report to you today that we still have such hope.