In this blog post, "I.A.W.," refers to Indians at Work, a publication of the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs that ran from 1933 to 1945. Issues cited here can usually be found on Hathitrust.
Above: The New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA) allotted $350,000 to the Fruitland Irrigation Project in Navajo Nation, New Mexico, 1934. PWA-funded projects on reservation land prioritized the employment of American Indians into general labor, skilled labor, and supervisory positions.
Photo from I.A.W, July 1, 1934, p. 32.
Above: This PWA-funded, Indian-built hospital, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, "has a capacity of 69 beds, with operating facilities and x-ray and laboratory facilities. There are quarters for employees, including provision for twelve nurses and a doctor. This is a general hospital, intended primarily for treatment of Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes."
Quote and photo from I.A.W., June 1938, p. 13.
Above: Another of the many PWA-funded, Indian-built hospitals. This one "opened for patients on June 20, 1938, has room for 136 patients. It is an extremely well-equipped modern hospital, including an out-patient department with treatment rooms and dispensary, an operating suite plus an extra emergency operating room, laboratories and obstetrical department, an x-ray room, rooms which can be isolated for special types of cases, a dental clinic and an eye, ear, nose and throat clinic" (
I.A.W., June 1938, p. 14). This hospital served the area for over 60 years, closing in 2002, and was demolished in 2016-2017 ("
Old Fort Defiance hospital to live on in memories of elders,"
Navajo Times, July 14, 2016).
Photo from I.A.W., June 1938, p. 14.
Above: Another view of Fort Defiance hospital, showing its "Pueblo Revival Style" architecture, 2010. Photo from the
Library of Congress.
Above: The New Deal built or improved many bridges on American Indian reservations.
Photo from I.A.W., November 15, 1934, p. 27.
Above: With $4,000,000 in PWA funding to assist (also see I.A.W., June 15, 1935, p. 8), American Indian workers were able to upgrade many of their roads and bridges. This chart comes from I.A.W., January 1, 1936, p. 39.
Above: The move away from distant, alienating, and sometimes abusive boarding schools began before the New Deal, but the New Deal greatly accelerated the pace of change with substantial PWA funding for "day school" construction. Day schools allowed Indian children to stay close to their families and community. The school above was built by Indian workers under supervision of an Indian foreman.
Photo from I.A.W., March 1, 1935, p. 31.
Above: An interesting statement and statistics from the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs (often called the "Indian Service"), under the New Deal administration, from
I.A.W., May 1937, p. 29.
Above: During the winter of 1933-1934, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) employed somewhere around 3,375 to 4,500 American Indian and Native Alaskan men and women (I.A.W., December 1, 1933, p 5, and I.A.W., December 15, 1933, pp. 4-5). Their projects included: making clothes; improvements to buildings; road construction; the creation of new water supplies; erosion control; sanitary privies; and building homes for the old and the poor (various issues of I.A.W., 1933-1934). Photo above from I.A.W., June 15, 1934, p. 32.
Above: The Works Progress Administration (WPA) also provided funding to employ American Indians to make improvements to their communities. At the dedication of this community building, Robert Stoddard, a 70-year-old Chippewa, said: "My friends: I am a full blood of Chippewa Indian descent and a member of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewas... the dedication of this building shall always be an outstanding event in the history of the Bad River Reservation. The building fills a long-felt want..." Quote and photo from I.A.W., July 1, 1937, pp. 36-38.
Above: A WPA-built school, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota. This newspaper excerpt is from the
The Daily Argus Leader (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), July 15, 1939.
Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.
Above: This WPA worker was likely associated with a home-building project (see
I.A.W., February 1941, front material).
Photo from I.A.W., August 1941, p. 6.
Above: The description for this photograph, taken in May 1936, reads: "Patricia Printup, 12; Iris Blue Eye, 11; Constance Tahamont, 12; three little Seneca girls of the Tonawanda Reservation near Buffalo, with their shiny new bicycles on the way home from school. Their fathers are WPA workers..." WPA jobs, and other New Deal jobs for American Indians, helped families and communities stay happy and healthy.
Photo from the National Archives.
Above: The New Deal hired many Indian artists, such as Julius Twohy, a member of the Ute people, shown here painting a WPA, Federal Art Project mural, "The Legend of the Thunderbird," at an Indian hospital in Tacoma, Washington, 1937.
Photo from the Tacoma Public Library, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes (also see I.A.W., May 1939, p. 40).
Above: The WPA (as well as the National Youth Administration, NYA) helped preserve Indian arts and crafts by employing Indians to produce them. This news summary comes from
I.A.W., June 1940, p. 20. The
Indian Arts and Crafts Board, another New Deal agency, has been promoting and protecting Indian arts and crafts since 1935.
Above: From I.A.W., March 1941, p. 6.
Above: Many American Indians who worked in the NYA and the Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division (CCC-ID)--as well as many Indians generally--worked in the defense industries or served in the military during World War II. And before the winds of war had fully blown over to the U.S., Indians ages 16-24, attending schools in various areas of the country, received student aid jobs from the NYA (
I.A.W., October 1939, p. 16, and "Indians Get Student Aid,"
Arizona Republic (Phoenix, Arizona), August 1, 1939, p. 5). Young Indian men and women also found jobs in the NYA's
out-of-school work program, before the war years, but this does not appear to have been a large source of employment.
Photo above from I.A.W., April 1942, p. 20.
Above: Under the New Deal's
Indian Reorganization Act, American Indians were given preference for new or open positions in the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, the "Indian Service" (see, e.g.,
I.A.W., February 15, 1935, p. 5). The thought was that Indians should be increasingly involved in the government agency committed to their affairs and well-being, the agency with such a large impact on their lives. In 1933, there were a few hundred Indians employed in the Indian Service; by 1940 there were 4,682.
Statistics and photo from I.A.W., February 1941, pp. 17 and 19.
Above: Men in the Civilian Conservation Corps - Indian Division (CCC-ID), Nevada, 1934. The CCC-ID was called "Indian Emergency Conservation Work" (IECW) in the early years. Projects in the CCC-ID were essentially the same types of projects as in the larger and nationwide CCC program--planting trees, soil erosion control, fighting fires, etc.--but there was more flexibility in regulations and procedures, for example, less age restrictions, the possibility of working from home (as opposed to distant camp assignments), and, in the event of a camp assignment, permission to have family accompany them.
Photo from I.A.W., September 15, 1934, p. 26.
Above: An enrollee in the CCC-ID, at a picnic celebrating the 8th anniversary of the program. The description for this photo reads in part: "In recent years, Hopi, like Chaca, have been working through the CCC to break the huge arroyos which, when the rain comes, carry away their good top soil and crops."
Photo from I.A.W., August 1941, p. 27.
Above: The greater flexibility of the CCC-ID even allowed for a crew of women on a CCC project. These CCC women fought a plague of Mormon crickets. Mormon crickets can destroy large amounts of crops--and can even cause serious road hazards by their sheer numbers--and are still a routine threat today (see, e.g., "
Seasonal Mormon cricket swarms spotted in Southeast Idaho,"
Local News 8, July 3, 2025).
Photo and text from I.A.W., November 1938, p. 21.
Above: Though many CCC-ID set-ups and work-site arrangements were customized to meet the particular needs of American Indians, other set-ups were identical to the larger CCC program, such as this CCC-ID camp in Michigan, complete with barracks and recreation and dining halls.
Photo collage from I.A.W., November 1938, p. 34.
Above: As with CCC camps all across the country, baseball was a popular recreation activity for enrollees in the IECW / CCC-ID. Seen here are members of the Quinault Indian Nation in Taholah, Washington. Photo from I.A.W., October 15, 1933, p. 25.
Above: These are members of CCC Company 789, working out of Camp F-3 in Roubaix, South Dakota, ca. 1937. This is not a CCC-ID company, but you will see a few American Indian members anyway (and more are seen in an adjacent photo showing the rest of the company). A roster of the company shows names like "E. Quick Bear" and "John Red Bird." Interestingly, you will also see an African American member and what appears to be war veteran members (many older war veterans served in the CCC, usually together in their own camps). These American Indians may have simply been Indians who lived off reservation. Another possibility is that excess enrollees who could not, for one reason or another, serve in the types of camps they would normally serve in, were integrated into camps that needed extra men. Whatever the case may be, diverse camp demographics can be seen in many other CCC photos. It's unknown how many American Indians served in non-reservation CCC camps.
Photo from: Civilian Conservation Corps, Official Annual, Nebraska-South Dakota District, Seventh Corps Area (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Direct Advertising Company, 1937), used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.
Above: As in the national CCC program, Indian women provided administrative support for the CCC-ID. Here is one such worker.
Photo from I.A.W., March 1942, p. 34.
Above: This
Associated Press article appeared in the
Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1937 edition, p. 13. Between 1933 and 1942, the number of Native Alaskans--which included the Inuit (referred to as "Eskimos" in the article above) as well as other native peoples--in the CCC seems to have ranged from several dozen to several hundred. Their work was varied and substantial, and projects reported in newspaper articles included: roadwork; building firebreaks and eliminating fire hazards; constructing or improving public buildings; construction, improvement, and maintenance of airplane landing fields; trail construction; cleaning streams; building corrals for reindeer; building underground food storage areas; and installing and repairing telephone lines. There were also White Triple C's in Alaska, carrying out similar-type work.
Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.
Above: The CCC employed Native Alaskans to restore totem poles. The description for this 1939 photograph reads, "The 'Sun and Raven Pole' of the Tlingit Indians restored by Indian CCC workers at Saxman Indian Village, Tongass National Forest."
Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Above: In the first 6 years of the CCC-ID program, 1933-1939, about 77,000 different Indians enrolled. This chart shows enrollment numbers by state (note: this does not include Native Alaskans). Image from I.A.W., April 1939, p. 5.
Above: The description for this photograph reads, "Florida Seminoles gather around a camp fire after a strenuous day's work on CCC-ID projects." By the end of the CCC-ID program in 1942, 85,200
different Indians had enrolled. Interestingly, 3,149 Whites, most of them married to Indian women, and presumably living on Indian reservations, also served in the CCC-ID (information and statistics from: Perry H. Merrill,
Roosevelt's Forest Army: A History of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942, 1981, p. 44).
Photo from I.A.W., February 1940, front material.
Above: This appears to be the last photo of a CCC-ID worker in
Indians at Work. By the end of the CCC program, in June 1942, "Work was undertaken on nearly 300 different tracts of land--on reservations, rancherias, and other holdings--under 71 jurisdictions, in 23 states. The program revitalized Indian life; it gave work where and when it was needed. It made possible the building up of reservation resources" (Merrill, p. 45; see previous caption). John Collier, head of the Indian Service, wrote, "The ending of CCC, including its Indian part, now, in 1942, is a heavy, heavy blow to Indian Service, to the Indians, and to social policy in the United States. It is just that: a heavy and undeserved blow" ("The Spirit of the CCC Will Last Forever,"
I.A.W., May-June 1942, back cover).
Photo from I.A.W., April 1942, p. 10.
New Deal Jobs for American Indians and Native Alaskans, and the Public Works Those Jobs Created
With the assistance of PWA funding for roadwork alone, over 20,000 different Americans Indians secured jobs over the course of just two years (see the 5th image from the top of this blog post). Throw in hospitals, schools, irrigation, and other large PWA-funded projects that prioritized Indian hiring, ca. 1933-1941, and the total number is likely a lot higher.
The CWA hired at least 3,375 Indians, the Indian Service about 4,000, and the CCC-ID 85,200 (see images and captions above).
Statistics for other agencies, e.g., WPA, FERA, and NYA, as well detailed statistics for Native Alaskan employment, are less clear. But even without those numbers we can conclude that the New Deal provided more than 110,000 jobs for American Indians and Native Alaskans, and many or most of those jobs were for
different Indians and Alaskans (i.e., not the same people being hired over and over again).
During the New Deal years (1933-1943), about 350,000 American Indians and 30,000 Native Alaskans were under the care or jurisdiction of the Indian Service. This number constituted the vast majority of Indians and Alaskans in the U.S. (see, "The Future of the Indian," in the
Annual Report of the Department of the Interior, 1939, pp. 65-68; Christian Dippel and Dustin Frye, "
Native Americans in the Historical Census: New Data and Applications," Draft of Conference Paper, June 1, 2021, accessed December 20, 2025; and "The Facts Are Very Different,"
I.A.W., January 1942, p. 34).
Applying our 110,000+ jobs to a total population of about 380,000 gives us 29%. This is certainly the highest percentage of New Deal jobs for any demographic in the U.S., and shows how impactful the New Deal was for native peoples (and let's not forget other major aspects of the Indian New Deal, for example, the facilitation of Indian self-governance, the purchase and return of native land, the opening of financial credit on fair terms, the promotion and protection of arts and crafts, the accelerated transition from problematic boarding schools to local day schools, and more.)
Further, these New Deal jobs created thousands of important public works. Recall that in just two years, a PWA road allotment facilitated 5,621 miles of roadwork; 722 projects to build or repair bridges; and the installation of 2,715 culverts (see the 6th image from the top of this blog post). By 1939, the PWA had provided $30 million towards public buildings (including schools); health projects; homes; roads, bridges, and culverts; and "soil conservation, flood control, and irrigation" (about $690 million in 2024 dollars) (Public Works Administration, America Builds: The Record of PWA, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939, p. 109).
The first two years of the CCC-ID saw the creation of 1,042 miles of firebreaks; wildfire fuel reduction on 19,000 acres; 3,600 miles of truck trails (permitting faster fire response time, among other benefits); 4,400 sources of water developed (springs, wells, reservoirs); 52,000 soil erosion dams (these were usually temporary dams, and installed to reduce water velocity until planted vegetation could take root along the sides of gullies and ditches); and 458 vehicle bridges (I.A.W., June 15, 1935, p. 17).
A full calculation and evaluation of all New Deal work done on American Indian and Native Alaskan land--CWA, FERA, WPA, NYA, PWA, CCC-ID, the Resettlement Administration, etc.--has never been done, should be done, and would be utterly jaw-dropping.
