ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the early development of representative government on Pine Ridge Reservation and land use and control patterns in the 1920s and 1930s in order to assess the validity of those contentions. It aims to understand conflicts that swirled around the controversial 21 Council, a kind of precursor to the longer lived representative tribal government established under the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934. The chapter explores the controversial first IRA administration, and land tenure arrangements and the reservation economy before and after the IRA. At stake was the question of the growth of central authority versus community control, of “representative democracy” along the lines of the US model, versus a continuation of Oglala modes of organization that were rooted in community, in tiospaye, in kinship. Representative government under the IRA had the potential to be a tool for supporting commercial ranching interests against cooperatives and subsistence use.
