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“Intertribal” Development Strategies in the Global Cold War: Native American Models and Counterinsurgency in Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2020

Jacob Tropp
Jacob Tropp*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Middlebury College
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article bridges the traditionally segregated fields of Native American history and the history of American foreign relations by investigating a series of activities in the late 1960s and early 1970s that interconnected Native American development and American counterinsurgency agendas in the unstable political landscapes of Southeast Asia. A small coterie of American bureaucrats, with careers spanning foreign assistance and Native American development work, saw great potential in selectively showcasing Indian economic “success stories” to serve “hilltribe” development and counterinsurgency programs in Laos and Thailand sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Central Intelligence Agency. One result was a series of “intertribal” development tours arranged for Laotian and Thai representatives in multiple Native American communities in Arizona and New Mexico. Moreover, sharing a sense that Native Americans could offer unique advantages as direct development agents among other “tribes” overseas, the tours’ organizers garnered support from a diverse range of actors—CIA and USAID officials, Laotian and Thai military officers, and Indian political and business leaders—for launching a “tribe-to-tribe” foreign assistance program. Viewed together, these transnational schemes and discussions reveal how the flexible and multivalent meanings of key development concepts at the time—such as Indian achievement, tribal initiative, and “intertribal” understanding—both facilitated and constrained official designs to employ Native American models to support political and military agendas in the “shadow” theaters of the escalating Vietnam conflict.

Keywords

Native AmericansdevelopmentcounterinsurgencySoutheast AsiaLaosThailandCold WarUSAIDCIABIA
Type
Expedient Ethnography
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , April 2020 , pp. 421 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2020

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16 For example, prior to rejoining the BIA in 1961 Fryer had been BIA supervisor of the Navajo Reservation, served in the War Relocation Authority and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, worked on Bolivian state development programs for Indians, returned to the BIA as chief of the Division of Resources, and headed the State Department's Point Four assistance programs in the Middle East and North Africa, after which he did several years of development consultancy work for American companies in Saudi Arabia and beyond. His career is extensively recorded in the E. Reeseman Fryer Papers, Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College (hereafter Fryer Papers).

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31 Ibid.; Si Fryer to Joseph Z. Taylor, 4 Nov. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

32 Fryer, “Laotian Diary,” enclosed in Fryer to Taylor, 17 Nov. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

33 Ibid.; Si Fryer to Joseph Z. Taylor, 4 Nov. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers; Joseph Z. Taylor to Si Fryer, 27 Nov. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

34 Ibid.; Joseph Z. Taylor to Si Fryer, 2 Nov. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

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37 Joseph Z. Taylor to Si Fryer, 2 and 27 Nov. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

38 Ibid.; Wilbur W. Dixon, Public Services Division, Navajo Tribe, to Si Fryer, 6 Dec. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers; Joseph Z. Taylor to Si Fryer, 15 Dec. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

39 Joseph Z. Taylor to Si Fryer, 15 Dec. 1967, and 8 Jan. 1968, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers; Fryer to Taylor, 24 Dec. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

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41 Goldstein, Poverty in Common, 103–6.

42 Both quotes from Si Fryer, “Laotian Diary,” enclosed in Si Fryer to Joseph Z. Taylor, 17 Nov. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

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58 Edward Lansdale to Dale Clark, 9 Oct. 1968, box 2, folder “Clark, Dale, 1968–1974,” Lansdale Papers.

59 Ibid.

60 Joseph Z. Taylor to Si Fryer, 15 Dec. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers; Dale Clark to Donald Goodwin, USAID, 21 Feb. 1973, box 2, folder “Clark, Dale, 1968–1974,” Lansdale Papers; Clark, “New Partnership,” 17.

61 Lobe and Morrell, “Thailand's Border Patrol Police,” 162–64; Hyun, “Indigenizing the Cold War,” 89–90, 209–60; Hyun, Sinae, “Building a Human Border: The Thai Border Patrol Police School Project in the Post-Cold War Era,” Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 29, 2 (2014): 332–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas Luche to Si Fryer, 17 Dec. 1971, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

62 “RASD Monthly Report for October 1967: Chiengmai,” 2 Nov. 1967, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

63 Manas to Thomas Luche, 14 and 21 Nov. 1971, enclosed with Luche to Si Fryer, 17 Dec. 1971, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

64 Thomas Luche to Si Fryer, 17 Dec. 1971, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

65 Si Fryer, “Tentative Itinerary, Jan 3–14/’72, for General Manas of Thailand,” n.d., box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

66 Si Fryer to Joseph Z. Taylor, 22 Jan. 1972, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid.

69 Hapiuk, William J., “Of Kitsch and Kachinas: A Critical Analysis of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990,” Stanford Law Review 53, 4 (2001): 1009–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parsley, Jon Keith, “Regulation of Counterfeit Indian Arts and Crafts: An Analysis of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990,” American Indian Law Review 18, 2 (1993): 487–514CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Si Fryer to Joseph Z. Taylor, 22 Jan. 1972, box 24, folder 5, Fryer Papers. In recent interviews with BPP researcher Sinae Hyun, Manas still favorably recalled his 1972 visit to Native American communities. Hyun e-mail to author, 2 Jan. 2016.

71 Clark, “New Partnership,” and various materials on these efforts in box 2, folder “Clark, Dale,” Lansdale Papers.

72 Deloria, Philip J., Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004)Google Scholar.