The PlowBoy Interview Rolling Thunder

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It's also still quite common for Indian children to be "kidnapped" out of their own homes, usually under the guise of some sort of child care program, and sent far away from their birthplaces. Any excuse for taking the youngsters seems to be acceptable, provided some white family wants a child, or someone else wants to work to convert the "heathen" youngster. Such people will get together with the welfare agents and the sheriffs and the Indian agents, and they'll come to a reservation and take a child. The kidnappers might say they're doing so because the family is on welfare or has too many children, or for any other reason they can think of . . . and often no court papers are served at all. The young people then grow up far away from their own families, and lose all touch with native culture . . . many of them become adults without knowing a word of their tribe's language!

PLOWBOY: Can't Indian leaders take some sort of legal action against such injustices?

ROLLING THUNDER: No, because—as far as I can see—there really is no justice under law on the reservations. Off the reservations, a pretense of some kind of trial is occasionally made . . . but even then our people have no legal representation whatsoever. For instance, lawyers in Elko and other small towns in this part of Nevada are often "bought" by the big ranchers and the mining interests. Most of the attorneys don't care about poor clients . . . especially Indians, who are usually the poorest of all. And if the lawyers aren't independents who were bought out, they're sometimes actually appointed by the government. That's unique, I think, for a person's lawyers to be picked by his or her opponent . . . but we don't have any choice! Our people are dragged into the courts, and then they have to endure something that's more like a stage farce than an actual trial.

If an Indian is accused of a crime, for example, he or she is usually advised to plead guilty with the promise of a reduced sentence. And, the Indian is almost always convicted. Just a few years ago, a young man who was thrown in jail wasn't allowed to choose his own attorney . . . he was not permitted to see his mother before being tried . . . and his three witnesses weren't even allowed to appear in court. No one except the agency officials and the Bureau of Indian Affairs' puppet council was permitted to attend the trial. And this man's only real "crime" was that he had had the nerve to run for a position on the government-controlled tribal council!

Worse yet, many of our young people have been found dead in the towns and on the reservations. Sometimes they're murdered in jail . . . and we can't convict or investigate anybody, even when we know full well who's to blame. Then, to top it all off, there are rigged elections to get the "right" Indians—those we call "white man's Indians"—into positions of power on the tribal councils. Once they're in office, the "Uncle Tommyhawks" will agree to whatever the government wants: They'll sell the land for a few cents an acre, give away our oil rights and hunting rights, and so forth. So the Indians get cheated out of their land . . . and if any traditionalists decide to fight, they're ridiculed, put in jail, or worse. It's really kind of a hopeless situation.

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