Political scientist Robert Putnam is famous for the concept ”social capital.” He did not coin the term, but popularized it in his book ”Bowling Alone,” chronicling the diminution of social capital in modern America. Where it exists, social capital keeps us from having to lock our doors and from needing institutions to care for orphans and the elderly. A society that is rich in social capital, as we used to be, can endure shortages of economic capital. My grandmother used to tell me about the Great Depression that few people had anything, but those who did, shared.
Some reservations exist in a permanent depression. There are few jobs and tribal government controls those that exist.
In a society with high social capital, the crime rate would stay low, incomes likewise, and the sick and elderly would lack nothing that could be provided by labor. The able-bodied unemployed would keep the wood chopped and the water hauled and the roof patched with whatever materials could be put together (mashed tin cans will work for shingles in a pinch).
In a society with low social capital, competition for the few jobs is fought by political means and whether you work depends on who you know rather than your skills. Alcohol and drugs pass the time, young people go unsupervised and the crime rate does exactly what you would expect. You have a rural version of the inner city.
If your tribal nation is rich in social capital, good for you.
If not, you have to decide what to do if you don’t want to leave. The United States has plenty of ideas for you.
First, you can ban alcohol and drugs from your community if you believe you are so different from the United States that the result will not be the creation of a new criminal class with money to entice your children outside the law.
Second, you can forget your traditions of restorative justice and adopt the white folks’ idea of retributive justice. After all, retribution has worked so well for the United States that it imprisons more people per capita than any other country.
Those tribes that had no restorative justice traditions had only punishment of the body: torture or death. No Indian nation locked people up for longer than it took to sober up a drunk.
In modern times, banishment is the equivalent of the death penalty and it has the advantage of being reversible if you make a mistake, as you certainly will because every justice system does. Banishment from an Indian community with little social capital is probably a sentence to a big-city neighborhood of the same character. Failure to banish is a judgment call that someone who has offended against the community is ready to contribute social capital rather than expend it. The character of the community is the sum of all individual decisions about who helps and who hurts.
Social capital can be regained. Many tribes have awakened to the links between language retention and their peoplehood, and so they spend money to encourage elders to ”talk Indian” to youngsters. History preservation tends to preserve social capital, too, since most of us have some ordeal in our past that binds us together as long as we have the memory.
Assimilation forces, like so many cultural tsunamis, have hit most East Coast tribes. Most Oklahoma tribes are victims of both removal from lands once considered sacred and then involuntary allotment of reservation lands. When and if they acquire the means, these culturally battered peoples do not hesitate to spend on preserving what is left and regaining what can be regained.
The Mashantucket Pequots, stereotypically ”rich” casino Indians, have spent lavishly on restoration of their roots. Why do they need restoring? Well, if you read ”Moby-Dick,” you might remember the ship was called the ”Pequod.” That is a variant on Pequot and a tip-off to readers of Herman Melville’s time that the ship was doomed, like the Pequots. Or not, if the modern Pequots have their way.
While social capital and economic capital are not the same thing, a strong economy helps. The Cherokee Nation has problems, but we are the strongest employer in northeastern Oklahoma and our minimum wage is higher than Oklahoma’s. We do spend money on language and history, and we do honor Cherokee speakers and craftsmen. I am told that the Eastern Band does the same with resources from Mr. Harrah’s casino.
Then there are lucky tribes like the Navajo Nation. With a large population (which my tribe has), a clan system very much alive (which my tribe does not have) and a reservation that includes their sacred geography (which my tribe, among many, does not have), they are strong in language and customs. As a lawyer, I envy their court system, which has managed to command respect among knowledgeable mainstream legal scholars without forfeiting their customs.
Just as one size has never fit all in federal Indian policy, there are culture-specific limitations on how much tribal policy will transplant to other Indian nations. However, it seems to me just as likely that tribal policies will transplant as federal or state policies will. Those tribal governments that have crime and other social cohesion problems, it seems to me, would do as well to look to their peers for models as to transplant ideas from the colonists.
I could be wrong about all this. Whether the colonists have cures for the ills they brought is open to question by reasonable people. Putnam is, of course, a white man and ”social capital” is an imaginary concept that may have nothing to do with Indian country. Just because Prohibition and prison did not improve white society does not mean they can’t improve Indian society; and they are, after all, as traditional as frybread and at least as good for you.
Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and an associate professor of criminal justice at Indiana University – Bloomington. He is a columnist for Indian Country Today.