page_title: Dennison Wheelock
section_title: Society of American Indians
hierarchical_section_title: Dennison Wheelock / Society of American Indians
caption_attribution_description: English: The Society of American Indians, Ohio State University, 1917 Other information No.
context_page_description: Dennison Wheelock was an internationally renowned Oneida band conductor and cornet soloist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; he was also a composer. Wheelock was compared at the time to John Philip Sousa, and nominated to be bandmaster of the United States Marine Band. At the age of 40 he became an American Indian rights activist and attorney, and within several years was arguing cases for Indian nations at the United States Court of Claims and US Supreme Court.
  Wheelock was born in the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. He went to Pennsylvania to be educated at the Carlisle Indian School, returning later for study at Dickinson Preparatory School. Wheelock was appointed as the first Oneida bandmaster of the internationally acclaimed Carlisle Indian School Band, which performed at world fairs, expositions, and presidential inaugurals. While at the school, he composed the Sousa-inspired "Carlisle Indian School March." In 1900 he debuted his three-part symphony, Aboriginal Suite, at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
context_section_description: Wheelock was among the 50 founders in 1911 of the Society of American Indians (1911-1923), the first national American Indian rights organization developed and run by American Indians. The Society pioneered 20th-century Pan-Indianism, the philosophy and movement promoting unity among American Indians regardless of tribal affiliation. The Society was a forum for a new generation of American Indian leaders known as Red Progressives: they were mostly prominent professionals from the fields of medicine, nursing, law, government, education, anthropology, ethnology and ministry. They shared an enthusiasm and faith in the inevitability of progress through education and governmental action. The Society met at academic institutions, maintained a Washington headquarters, conducted annual conferences, and published a quarterly journal of literature by American Indian authors. The Society promoted an "American Indian Day", and led the fight for Indians to have United States citizenship. It lobbied to have U.S. Court of Claims available to hear cases of all tribes and bands in United States.
  The Society of American Indians was the forerunner of modern organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians. It anticipated important Indian reforms: a major reorganization of the Indian school system in the late 1920s, the codification of Indian law in the 1930s, and the opening of the U.S. Court of Claims to all Indian nations in the 1940s.
caption: The first conference of the Society of American Indians, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1911
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