The Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division

The federal public works program known as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was founded in 1933 in response to rising unemployment rates during the Great Depression. Native American communities faced deeper poverty and hardship than many others, prompting the BIA to create a CCC division that could bring jobs and skills training to reservations. It was first called the Indian Emergency Conservation Work program (IECW), but was eventually renamed the Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division (CCC-ID).

From 1933 it started Ojibwe And Dakota work crews in Minnesota signed a CCC ID to provide income for themselves and their families. The BIA led the program and awarded federal funding for the CCC-ID for approximately nine years. The Consolidated Chippewa Agency (serving White Earth, Nett Lake, Grand Portage, Fond du Lac, Mille Lacs, Leech Lake) and the Red Lake Agency both registered Ojibwe people in the program with the assistance of Ojibwe social worker and CCC-ID employee Isabella Robideau. The Minnesota Sioux Agency recorded Dakota men from Eggleston, Prairie Island, Shakopee, Granite Falls, Morton, Pipestone and Prior Lake.

Men seventeen and older and some women worked on CCC-ID projects that were important to their communities, both on and off reservations. Their work was subject to fewer military-style rules than those in the rest of the CCC, and some Ojibwe employees spoke Anishinaabemowin in addition to English. Men held positions as camp managers, assistant foremen, draftsmen, transportation operators, mechanics, machine operators, blacksmiths, and laborers. They sometimes worked all winter and in bad weather.

The CCC-ID offered classes on topics such as fighting forest fires and using construction tools. In July 1935, the Consolidated Chippewa bureau offered classes in forestry, accounting, art, English and history. Nett Lake’s offerings included science, mechanics, choir, art, English, drama, shorthand and tap dancing.

Consolidated Chippewa crews cleared trails such as the Blacklock Trail – described as “largely uphill” – for transporting fire personnel and horses. They laid telephone cables, built watchtowers and even fought forest fires directly. They also cleared brush in white pine forests to prevent blister rust.

Chippewa’s consolidated workers took on two of the CCC-ID’s largest projects. For the first, completed on Grand Portage between 1939 and 1940, they rebuilt the historic site’s stockade and collected archaeological artifacts for donation to the Cook County Historical Society. Thanks in part to their efforts, the nine-mile Grand Portage Trail, a place of cultural and historical importance to the Ojibwe, later became Grand Portage National Monument.

For the second project, a thirty-five-person unit from White Earth made a wild rice site at Rice Lake more accessible by constructing a log walkway, constructing docks and canals, clearing five ten-acre campsites, and adding restrooms. A crew from Nett Lake also worked on a rice camp project. The workers left projects when necessary to gather wild rice with their families.

The blister rust work at Red Lake involved cutting, clearing and burning brush and stumps to protect the white pines from the ruts of berry bushes. Crews there also did fire prevention work, and one project at Ponemah Camp included the construction of a tree nursery. Workers grew trees in the Experimental Plot project, made maple syrup, and surveyed and mapped 80,000 acres of the Red Lake forest. The Red Lake Agency offered classes in first aid, forestry, communications and current events.

The Minnesota Sioux Agency’s projects varied. From 1934 to 1936, one Dakota crew worked in the Pipestone Quarry to create picnic areas and a visitor shelter, laying the foundation for Pipestone National Monument. Another dug wells and installed water pipes for the local community. Workers also cut down trees around a school and erected a post-and-wire fence to mark the boundaries between reserve and non-reserve areas.

The CCC-ID was disbanded in 1943 when the federal government shifted attention and funding to World War II. By this time, Native Americans from multiple communities in Minnesota had gained wages, work experience (including management experience), and some improvements in living conditions.

For more information on this topic, see the original input on MNopedia.

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