Page 4-Friday, March 2, 1979--The Michigan Daily
te ibitgan aitI
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Etgui- f fi ' Years of Editorial lreedjomu
Vol. LXXXIX, No. 127
News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
Another trail of tears
IN THE LATE summer of 1817, hun-
dreds of Native Americans cane to
Fort Meigs, a sprawling military camp
on the Miami River just south of the
Michigan-Ohio border. After a week of
deliberation, the chiefs and warriors of
the major tribes which inhabited the
area signed a seemingly insignificant
treaty with the United States gover-
nment. It effectively linked Michigan
and Ohio, leaving the Native Ameri-
cans with virtually no place to go but
west. Some of the Michigan Indians,
the Potawatomis in particular, were
driven from their native soil by forced
marches; others were herded onto
worthless reservations. The new'
Americans settled and built cities,
churches, and eventually, universities
to educate their children. The Native
Americans suffered in ignorance.
On Wednesday, the State of Michi-
gan added insult to injury to those
Native Americans who have been for-
ced to live in misery and alienation.
Washtenaw Circuit Judge Edward
Deake decided that the 1817 Fort Meigs
Treaty does not require the University
to provide an education to the descen-
dants of those Native Americans who
conveyed land to the fledgling college.
The judge's ruling brought an end to
a seven-year court battle initiated in
1971 by the children of the three major
.igan Indian tribes, the Chippewa,
Ottawa, and Potawatomi. Represented
by Paul Johnson, a Unmversity gradu-,
ate and Native American, the descen-
dants of the Michigan Indians who
conveyed their land to the University
in 1817, the year the University was
founded, claim that a trust was
established in Article 16 of the treaty.
Article 16 states, in part: that "some
of the Ottawa, Chippew a, and Potawa-
tomi ... believing they may wish
some of their children hereafter
educated do grant . . to the cor-
poration of the college at Detroit (the
forerunner of the University of
Michigan) for the use of the said
college to be retained or sold . . three
sections of land."
Judge Deake sated in his strongly
worded, 16-page opinion that "by no
stretch of the imagination" could he
construe that the language of Article 16
implies a trust.
While the actual word "trust" is not
mentioned in Article 16, neither is the
word "gift.'' So there is little if any-
thing in the 1817 treaty which, with
reasonable historical certainty. sup-
ports the University's claim that the
land conveyed to the school was an
outright gift. Yet it is clear, although
the treaty language is vague, that the
Native Americans conveyed land to
the University with the intention of
procuring education thereafter for
some of their children.
This case ultimately comes down to
a question of inferpretation. Did the
chiefs and warriors who signed the
treaty intend to create a trust? Did
they even understand the concept of
trust? The answers to these questions
are unclear; what we do know, how-
ever, is that the chiefs wanted
education for their children.
THe Supreme Court has ruled that
when a party to a treaty is illiterate,
ambiguities in the treaty language
must be construed against the party
who drafted the document. Therefore,
the benefit of the doubt, which appears
slight, must be given to the descendan-
ts of the tribes. The University should
be forced to at last fulfill the terms of
the agreement and provide the chil-
dren of the tribes with complete educa-
tion.
This is not to say, however, that the
University has made no effort to
educate Native Americans. When the
University kicked off a campaign to at-
tract private. donations in 1932, it also
initiated a scholarship to commemor-
ate what the University terms its first
"gift" - the same 2,000 acres that the
three Michigan Indian tribes handed
over in the Fort Meig's treaty.,
Originally, this scholarship fund
provided for free education for up to
five Native Americans - from
anywhere in the country - during any
one year. The fund has expanded and
the University now-says it will educate
for free just about any qualified Native
American who applies. The money for
the scholarships is provided by the
Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and
by the University. This year there are
64 beneficiaries. The University has
made an admirable effort to educate
some Native Americans, but do these
scholarships meet the obligations of
the treaty? Is the University doing
enough to educate the children of the
Michigan Indians who had inhabited
the land in question?
According to the best available esti-
mates, there are over 50,000 Native
Americans in Michigan and less than
half have or are expected to graduate
from high school. These Michigan In-
dians have such a poor academic
'record mostly because the setting in
which they live does not particularly
encourage scholarship. Take, for ex-
ample, the conditions at the Isabella
County reservation, which is owned by
the Saginaw Chippewa tribe.There, the
median income per family was a scant
$5,000 and unemployment ran at 34.7
per cent during 1976.
If the University were to fulfill its
obligations to educate these Michigan
Indians, merely providing free school-
ing at the college level would not be
sufficient. In order to comply, the Uni-
versity would have to proceed along
the lines suggested by Johnson and
establish supplementary tutoring
programs both for Michigan Indians on
campus and to upgrade the standards
of the school systems that Michigan
Indians attend. Though such a pro-
gram would be costly, it is a necessary
step; anything less is an abrogation of
the Fort Meig's treaty.
It is unfortunate that the University
refuses to meet its obligations. It is
even more unfortunate that Judge
Deake, after hearing all the evidence,
refuses to recognize those obligations.
The triumph of the Ayatollah
Ruholla Khomeini in Iran
dramatically highlights an
Islamaic revival affecting the en-
tire Moslem world extending
from Northwest Africa to
Southeast Asia and comprising
over 600 million people, one-sixth
of the human race.
To many Moslems today, this
revival offers an alternative
social system to both capitalism
and communism, which they see
as coming from common Western
roots.
IN THE SOVIET Union, the
revival of the Moslem faith is so
strong in certain areas of the
Caucasus that the Communist
Party has been forced to relax its
anti-religious policies, and local
atheists are obliged to hide their
lack of fath from their neighbors.
Somie 7,000 miles away in In-
donesia, the U.S.-backed gover-
nment of President Suharto
currently regards the opposition
Moslem party as a greater threat
than the communists, who come
close to seizing power in the mid-
1960s.
In Pakistan, General Zia ul-
Haq is in the process of replacing
the country's British-style laws
with new regulations based on the
Koran, and in Malaysia, students
are the spearhead of a campaign
to align civil law more closely
with Islamic religious law.
IN EGYPT, the greatest threat
to president Sadat's peace efforts
with Israel is not communism or
Nasserism, but Moslem fun-
damentalistsbdemanding the
abolition of all foreign influences,
whether they derive from the
capitalist West or the Marxist
countries.
Itis quite a change from the
days when Islam was conidered
a relic of the feudal past, and
newly-independent nations'stret-
ching from Indonesia to Morocco
were supposed to face an
either/or choice between com-
munism and the American Way
of Life.
Today Islam is winning many
more converts in Africa and Asia
than either Marxism or
Christianity. Far from being a
superstition from the past, it in-
creasingly resembles a wave of
the future.
WHY SHOULD Islam-which
Moslems consider the final per-
fect expression of God's word as
previously sent down in the im-
perfect forms of Judaism and
Christianity, and Muhammad,
the last in a series of God's
prophets from Abraham to
Jesus-have such a powerful ap-
peal in so many Third World
countrires?
Why should the five essential
aspects (or pillars) of
Islam-belief in the unity of God;
prayer five times a day; fasting
during the holy month of
Ramadan; the giving of alms;,
and the haj or pilgrimage to Mec-
ca-prove more attractive to
millions of western-educated
Third World youths than the
tenets of either Moscow of
Washington?
Unlike both Christianity and
Marxism, Islam is more than a
creed or an ideology.
IT IS A TOTAL way of life,
uniting political andweconomic
life, as well as the life of the
spirit, into a single community
bound by one law, the Shari'a,
dervied ultimately from the
Koran.
Unlike Communism, Islam
does not divorce religious
fulfillment from revolutionary
activism, and unlike Christianity,
Islam erects no barriers between
spiritual belief and political ac-
tion here on earth.
So while Islam provides a
means for reaffirming traditional
values and expressing
disillusionment with the moral
tone of the secular West, it also
provides a means for political ac-
tivism-even revolutionary
change-in Third World coun-
tries whose communism so far
has promised much more than it
has delivered.
THE RESULT is that, more
Islamic rebirth
rejects moral,
decadence of West
By David Knights
religious teaching and reform
movement. By the Second World
it had developed into a political
movement and for several years
in Egypt it carried out a cam-
paign of violence.
Despite having been frequently
banned, the Brethren have suc-
cessfully withstood such
repression and remain a poten-
tial alternative to several Arab
regimes.
Neither is thee an automatic
sympathy between Islam and
socialist governments. The
Ayatollah Khomeini has frequen-
while Islam provides a
means for reaffirming traditional
values
and expressing
disillu-
sionment with the moral tone of
the secular West, it also provides
a means for political activism-
even revolutionary
Third World coun
change-in
Soviet Union-where
secularism's inability to provide
a satisfying alternative to faith is'
becoming increasingly con-
spicuous.
Nearly 50 million Moslems live
in the Soviet Union, the fifth
largest Moslem country in the
world-mostly in the southern
provinces in Central Asia and the
Caucasus bordering Turkey, Iran
and Afghanistan. Despite the ef-
forts made by the Soviet gover-
nment over the pat 60 years to
suppress religious belief;.
adherence to Islam remains
strong.
The Russians are apprehensive
about the effects that an Islamic
revival might have on their own
Moslem population. When the
Soviet Union recently asked for
an additional consulate in Libya,
the Moslem Libyan leader;
Muammar Qadafi consted if, in
return, a Libyan consultate
might be opened in Tashkent, the
largest city in Soviet Central
Asia, and in the heart of a
strongly Moslem area. The
Russians promptly dropped the
request.
OFFICIAL anti-Islamic ac-
tivity within the Soviet Union has
recently been relaxed, partly to
improve Russian standing in the
Middle East but partly to come to
terms with Moslem awareness
inside the country.
More money and effort is now
being spent on preserving and
restoringthe faded architectural
splendors of Bukhara and.
Aamarkand, and if this ismainly
for the tourists, it is nevertheless
a remarkable reversal of former
official neglect.
Significantly, Islamic fun-
damentalism has enjoyed its
greatest political success recen
tly in two countries that are not
typical of the Moslem world:
Neither Pakistan nor Iran are
Arab countries. And in both
states, Islam plays a role rather
different than in most other
Moslem countries. The Iranians
follows the more politically ac-
tive historically non-conformist
branch of Islam, the Shi'ite sect.
And while the Pakistanis belong
to the larger, less politically ac-
tive Sunni sect, Islam has been
the dominant factor in the
Pakistani national identity since
the days of partition from Hindu-
majority India.
The challenge all
Moslems-not just the Ayatollah
in Iran and General Zia in
Pakistan-now face is to convert
the tremendous power of Islamic
faith from a vague concept
capable of differing inter-
pretations into aseries of social,
political and human solutions for;
their peoples that imported
beliefs so far have failed to
provide.
What is happening in many
parts of the Moslem world today
indicates above all, that Islam is
very much a living religion
capable of responding to new
developments and pressures. It
would be well not to dismiss the
Islamic Revival as mere
religious reaction, but to
recognize it as an effort by a
crucial sector of mankind to deal
with the world on its own ter-
ms-not those the West has tried
to impose since the days of
colonialism.
David Knights monitors
Mideast affairs for the Lot#-
don-based Gemini News Ser-
ice. He wrote this article fcr
the Pacific News Service.
tries
whose
communism so far has promised
much more -than it has de-
livered.
than any other doctrine, Islam
today offers millions of people in
Third World countries the mans
not only to reject the -moral
decadence of the West-but also a
way to bring about fundamental
change in their own societies.
The poitical component in the
current Islamic revival has
manifested itself most
dramatically in Iran. But the
Shah was not the first-nor is he
likely to be the last-leader to
find imported weapons, a secret
police and secular development
(on- either the American or
Communist models) no match for
the strength of a revived Islamic
faith among his own people.
Eighteen months ago a similar
movement overthrew the gover-
nment of Zulfikar Ali Bhultto in
Pakistan and enabled the Army
to seize power. Today General
Zia ul-Haq is still in control,
having taken steps to establish
his goal of an Islamic society.
Most notably these consist of a
more extensive application of
religious law, including Islamic
punishments such as public
floggings and the probhibition of
alcohol.
THE MOST significant of the
Islamic fundamentalist groups
opposing Sadat-style arab
secularism is the Ikhwan or
Moslem Brethren, an
organization founded in 1927 as a
tly declared his dislike of Com-
munism and of Iran's Communist
party, Tudeh. Nominally socialist
governments in Moslem coun-
tries like Libya, Iraq, Algeria and
Syria are careful to not challenge
Islamic social customs.
MEANWHILE, in the largest
Moslem country of all, Indonesia,
where Moslem religious groups
played a significant part in the
nationalist movement against the
Dutch, there have been signs of
revived Moslem politicala ac-
tivism as well.
The recent elections in In-
donesia gave the Moslem party 30
per cent of the vote, and tension
between Moslem organizations
and the government has in-
creased following official
recognition of Kepercayaan, an
old tribalistic Javanese sect that
Islam replaced in the sixteenth
century.
The issue is particulary con-
troversial because when the non-
Moslem Jajapahit kingdom was
crushed by the Moslems in 1520, it
was prophesized that it would
rise again after five centuries
and destory the Moslems them-
selves. According to the Keper-
cayaan moon calendar, 500 years
will be up in 1979-80.
THE MOST important country
affected by Islam's powerful
mixture of faith and politics,
however, is without doubt the
MOM
Letters
Palestinian group ignore
Afghanistan aid still needed
P RESIDENT' CA RVTRES recent
decision to susl ani i ally cut
economic aid to ,gh:nistin is an un-
fortunate example ot this country's
tendency to give ass 'iance only when
political strings ar a ttached.
Carte,- said his dec son to cut the
country's aid by :e rly two-thirds was
due, in part, to the mish;ndling of the
abduction of the U, S. m b o to
Afghanistan Adolph Dubs. Dubs was
kidnapped two wecks ago by Moslem
terrorists and hold in a hotel in the
capital city of Kabul Despite pleas
from the Amer'ie iixC mhassy to
negotiate with the k'idappers, the
Afghan police stormed the hotel and
Dubs was killed in th crosstre bet-
ween the terror1istLs a d he police.
n u;r , I , .' -(, ,'.f
the Afghan police had followed the ad-
vice of the Americans, and not that of
Soviet advisors who were present at
the scene. But to withdraw aid sub-
stantially, because of this isolated,
though deplorable, terrorist incident is
little more than an excuse to pull out
American money because of U.S.
disfavor with the current Afghan
government.
The real issue is determining this
country's purpose in giving aid.
Powell has said the administration
plans to leave $3 million of the $17
million originally slated for
Afghanistan. The remaining funds will
be used for "humanitarian develop-
ment assistance." But the U.S. is still
cutting expected aid by two-thirds -
an action which will hurt the Deople
To the Daily:
The "Palestine Human Rights
Committee," whoever may stand
behind this appealing name, cer-
tainly has the right to express its
views-a right they seem reluc-
tant to grant others. But surely
even fighters for human rights
should have a modicum of
respect for the facts, however
unpleasant they might be.
The Committee claims that
"Palestinian spokespersons have
never received an official in-
vitation to speak on our campus."
Though I do not keep track of the
political views of campus
speakers, as the Committee
seems to do (however inac-
curately), I distinctly recall the
appearances of Clovis Maksoud
and Edward Said, both sponsored
by the University's Center for
Near East and North African
Studies. Both gave lectures on
questions relating to
Palestinians. Mr. Maksoud is an
official of the Arab League and
as the Committee states, but
Eqbal Ahman did. Mr. Ahmad,
though he publicly stated that he
was drunk, did present a position
which the Committee no doubt
identifies with, and he too cast
the net wide enough to include
South Africa, Nicaragua, etc.
(though he failed to mention the
Samoff case). For this Mr. Ah-
mad received a handsome
honorarium from the University.
Who the faculty "Zionists" are
and who the "outspoken Arab
nationalists" are I do not know,
but I presume that even faculty
have the right to political views
and self-proclaimed "Human
Rights Committees" least of all
should deny that right. As for the
"university's commitment to a
pro-Zionist perspective," it is
presumably public knowledge
that the University has accepted
funds from Libya and another
Arab government to support
teaching and research programs,
that a member of the history
department has travelled several
times to Arab countries in an at-
tively reduce unemployment,
President Carter has already
started back peddling on the
jobless problem, declaring that
inflation is now capitalism's chief
worry. On October 24th, finally
admitting the obvious, President
Carter declared, "Inflation has
been a serious problem for me
ever since I became president.
We have tried to control it, but we
have not been successful. If there
is one thing I have learned
beyond doubt, it is that there is no
single solution for inflation. We
must face a time of national
austerity."
But austerity for whom? Cer-
tainly not for the capitalist class
which raked in record profits last
year, nor for the corporate
executives who pull down six-
figure salaries. On the contrary,
President Carter's anti-inflation
program is aimed at imposing
austerity on only one class-the
working class. Soaring prices for
the necessities of life are almost
driving the average worker "up
the wall." Workers must strive
.sfacts
Fraternities
To The Daily:
It seems to me that Daily
editors have an incredible
resemblanceto athletic referees
Not since the Michigan-U.S.d
Rose Bowl game have I seen such
a blind miscarriage of justice
The knife in my back? I of course
refer to Tom O'Connell's
"cashing in on Animal House." It
irks me to no end that this "for-
mer" Daily Magazine Editor is so
blind and ignorant that he can
voice such a vehement attitude
towards fraternities based totally
on ,a movie and television series.
Instead of striking out against
the show, he hits below the belt
against all fraternities (par-
ticularly the ones on his own
campus).
I can see from here that Tom's
future in journalism is unboun-
ded. This is denoted by his abun-
dant use of the descriptive adjec-
tive "ASSHOLE".
Hardly in the scope of respor-
sible journalism can Tom, or the