Bureaucrats, Budgets, and the BIA: Segmentary Opposition in a Residential School

The search for principles of social organization which satisfactorily explain circumstances and phenomena in a wide range of societies is not new. The following discussion describes the political system which operates in an American Indian school, and discusses the striking analogy between the school's bureaucratic structure and operation and the structure and operation of a segmentary lineage system. Sahlins (1968) sees the segmentary lineage system as an organization for predatory expansion. Such a view is examined in the bureaucratic context, particularly in terms of budgetary "warfare" between segments and the ramifications of such warfare on the fulfillment of the school's stated goals.