page_title: Laura Cornelius Kellogg
section_title: The Lolomi Plan
hierarchical_section_title: Laura Cornelius Kellogg / The Lolomi Plan
caption_attribution_description: Lorategi-hiriaren eskema, 1902.
context_page_description: Laura Cornelius Kellogg, was an Oneida leader, author, orator, activist and visionary. Kellogg, a descendant of distinguished Oneida leaders, was a founder of the Society of American Indians. Kellogg was an advocate for the renaissance and sovereignty of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, and fought for communal tribal lands, tribal autonomy and self-government. Popularly known as "Indian Princess Wynnogene," Kellogg was the voice of the Oneidas and Haudenosaunee people in national and international forums. During the 1920s and 1930s, Kellogg and her husband, Orrin J. Kellogg, pursued land claims in New York on behalf of the Six Nations people. Kellogg's "Lolomi Plan" was a Progressive Era alternative to Bureau of Indian Affairs control emphasizing self-sufficiency, cooperative labor and organization, and capitalization of labor. According to historian Laurence Hauptman, "Kellogg helped transform the modern Iroquois, not back into their ancient League, but into major actors, activists and litigants in the modern world of the 20th century Indian politics".
context_section_description: Kellogg's Lolomi Plan was based the upon the Garden city movement of urban planning initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts", containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and agriculture. While touring Europe from 1908 to 1910, Kellogg developed a particular interest in garden cities in England, Germany and France, and visioned the model adapted to reservations to generate "Oneida economic self-sufficiency and tribal self-governance".
  In short, Kellogg created the Lolomi plan in an attempt to "safeguard the Indian from the horde of white grafters now the bane of Indian existence".  The federal government could offer protection for the Indians' assets  at the state level. Without the federal government, Kellogg likened the Indian peoples to lambs that would be devoured by a lion. It was to be carried out by a federal entity. The federal authority would collect all of the assets of the tribes and individual Indians. The Indians would then "be enrolled as members of this cooperative body " Each member of the cooperative body would have exactly one vote each.  The Lolomi plan would allow the property of the tribes and individuals to be used for "education, health, and commercial development expenses".
  The Lolomi plan would create a self-governing body among the community of Indians. Kellogg's plan also included some societal needs such as health care and recreation centers. According to Kellogg,  homogeneity, or of the same kind or nature, was the most important aspect of the plan. Kellogg explained, "All successful organization is based on likeness of kind. I believe where white communities have co-operative organizations that have failed, the fact that they were composed of all kinds of race elements has counted largely".  The Indian community could resolve issues better than the white communities because of the homogeneity set forth by Lolomi plan.
  In 1911, Kellogg made a tour of Indian reservations across the country to promote interest in transforming reservations into garden cities. Mrs. Russell Sage, J.P. Morgan, Charles William Eliot, former president of Harvard University and Mrs. Harry Pratt Judson, wife of the president of the University of Chicago, were listed as some of the prominent persons interested in forming a national industrial council on Indians.
  Later in October 1911, Kellogg presented a formal paper entitled "Industrial Organization for the Indian" at the Inaugural Conference of the Society of American Indians in Columbus, Ohio. She proposed turning Indian reservations into self-governing "industrial villages" with a "protected autonomy" that would interact with the local economy. The model adapted contemporary Western ideas to traditional Native values. The type of industry would be geared to local needs, skills, and the stage of development of the particular community. Indians could thus adopt beneficial elements of mainstream society while avoiding such evils as the factory system, urban congestion, and class conflict between labor and capital. "We believe the greatest economy in the world is to be just to all men," she wrote.
  In 1914, the Kelloggs moved to Washington, D.C., to devote themselves to lobbying for better Indian legislation. During her career, Kellogg became involved not only in the affairs of the Oneidas and Six Nations, but also those of the Blackfeet, Brothertown, Cherokee, Crow, Delaware, Huron, Osage and Stockbridge Indians. Her crusade and relentless agitation led to trouble with the law and arrests in Oklahoma in 1913 and Colorado in 1916.
  In 1916, Kellogg appeared before Congress and testified that the Bureau Indian affairs was a corrupt and inefficient administration. She advocated a bill introduced by Senator Harry Lane from Oregon that would abolish the Bureau of Indian Affairs and replace it with a commission, under direct control of Congress, to consist of three men selected from among five nominees chosen by a council of Indians.
  The Lolomi Plan
caption: The Garden City, Sir Ebenezer Howard, 1902
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "800", "Image YResolution": "800", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:03:09 17:45:31", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7370", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "339", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "458"}