The achievement of John Collier, commissioner of Indian Affairs under Franklin DelanoRoosevelt and father of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), has been increasingly ignored or denigrated by the anthropological profession, upon whose advice Collier relied to reverse the nation's Indian policy and resuscitate the inherent powers of Indian tribes. I assert that but f o r the I R A , Indian tribal governments would probably not exist today. I also attempt to refute those cntics who assert ( I ) that the U.S. government imposed elective systems on the Indians against their will; (2) that even though Indian voters may have voted to accept the I R A , the uust majority indicated their rejection of the act by not voting at all; (3) that I R A governments are '?uppet "governments; and (4) that Indians have lost independence and freedom as a result of the I R A . The tribal structures created or revived by the I R A are now vigorow and growing in power and authority, and I postulate that with the growth among anthropologists of a "resistance model" of Indian-White relations and the gradual repudiation of the assimilationist model held by most anthropologists 50 years ago, Collier's policy of locating tribal autonomy within the federal system of government rather than in resistance to it came to be seen as a "cop-out" by anthropologists who failed to realixe that without the policy Indian tribal governments would probably soon have ceased to exist.
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