This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling. You can assist by editing it now. A how-to guide is available. (May 2007)

Also known as the Dawes Severalty Act, the Dawes Act authorized the President of the United States to have Native American tribal lands surveyed and divided into plots for individual Native American families. It was enacted on February 8, 1887 and named after its sponsor, U.S. Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. The act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906 by the Burke Act. The act remained in effect until 1934. Image File history File links Acap. ... Federal courts Supreme Court Circuit Courts of Appeal District Courts Elections Presidential elections Midterm elections Political Parties Democratic Republican Third parties State & Local government Governors Legislatures (List) State Courts Local Government Other countries Atlas  US Government Portal      For other uses, see President of the United States (disambiguation). ... is the 39th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1887 (MDCCCLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... The United States Senate is the upper house of the U.S. Congress, smaller than the United States House of Representatives. ... Henry Laurens Dawes (October 30, 1816 - February 5, 1903) was a United States Senator notable for the Dawes Act. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Burke Act (1906), was designed to correct certain defects in the Dawes Act of 1887, under which the land in the Indian reservations was to be broken up and distributed in severalty to the individual Indians. ...

• Section One authorizes the President to survey Native American tribal land and divide the arable area into sections for the individual. It says that a Native American family may receive 160 acres (0.65 km²) if they are to farm, 80 acres if they are to raise cattle and 40 acres for any normal living purposes.

• Section Two states that each Native American will choose his or her own allotment and the family will choose for each minor child. The Native American agent will choose for orphan children.

• Section Three requires the U.S. American agent to certify each allotment and provide two copies of the certification to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs one to be kept in the Indian Office and the other to be transmitted to the (United States Department of the Interior/Secretary of the Interior) for his action, and to be sent to the (General Land Office).

• Section Four provides that Native Americans not residing on their reservation and Native Americans without reservations will receive the equal allotment.

• Section Five provides that the Secretary of the Interior will hold the allotments "in trust" for 25 years. At that time, the title will belong to the allotment holder or heirs. It also allows the Secretary to negotiate under existing treaties for the land not allotted to be purchased on "terms and conditions as shall be considered just and equitable between the United States and said tribe of Indians."

• Section Six states that upon completion of the Land Patent process, the allotment holder will become a United States citizen and "be entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of such citizens".

• Section Seven addresses water rights on irrigated land.

• Section Eight exempts the Five Civilized Tribes and several others from the act.

• Section Nine appropriates the funds to carry out the act.

• Section Ten asserts the Power of Eminent Domain of the Congress over the allotments.

• Section Eleven contains a provision for the Southern Ute Native Americans.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is an agency of the United States Federal Government within the Department of the Interior charged with the responsibility is the administration and management of 55. ... A land patent is the right of ownership to a tract of land, usually granted by the federal or state government to an individual or private company. ... Water Rights refers to a legal system for allocating water from a water source to water users. ... Irrigation is the artificial application of water to the soil usually for assisting in growing crops. ... The Five Civilized Tribes is the term applied to five Native American nations, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, considered civilized by white Anais because they had adopted many of the colonists customs (including the ownership of plantations and black slaves) and had generally good relations with their neighbors. ... Eminent domain (United States), compulsory purchase (United Kingdom, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Australia) or expropriation (Canada, South Africa) in common law legal systems is the inherent power of the state to seize a citizens private property, expropriate property, or rights in property, without the owner... The Utes (; yoots) are an ethnically related group of American Indians now living primarily in Utah and Colorado. ...

Effects

The land granted to most allottees was not sufficient for economic viability, and division of land between heirs upon allottees' deaths resulted in land fractionation. Most allotment land, which could be sold after a statutory period of 25 years, was eventually sold to non-Native buyers at bargain prices. Additionally, land deemed to be "surplus" beyond what was needed for allotment was opened to white settlers, though the profits from the sales of these lands were often invested in programs meant to aid the American Indians. Native Americans lost, over the 47 years of the Act's life, about 90 million acres (360,000 km²) of treaty land, or about two-thirds of the 1887 land base. About 90,000 Indians were made landless.^[1]

The Dawes Act, with its emphasis on individual land ownership, also had a negative impact on the unity, self-government, and culture of Indian tribes.^[2] The tribal belt of north-west India includes the states of Rajasthan, Ghujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka. ...

By dividing reservation lands into privately-owned parcels, legislators hoped to complete the assimilation process by forcing the deterioration of the communal life-style of the Native societies and imposing Western-oriented values of strengthening the nuclear family and values of economic dependency strictly within this small household unit (Gibson, 1988).

In 1906 the Burke Act (also known as the forced patenting act) further amended the GAA to give the Secretary of the Interior the power to issue allotees a patent in fee simple to people classified ‘competent and capable.’ The criteria for this determination is unclear but meant that allotees deemed ‘competent’ by the Secretary of the Interior would have their land taken out of trust status, subject to taxation, and could be sold by the allottee. The allotted lands of Indians determined to be incompetent by the Secretary of the Interior were automatically leased out by the Federal Government (Bartecchi, 2007). The act reads:

“..the Secretary of the Interior may, in his discretion, and he is hereby authorized, whenever he shall be satisfied that any Indian allottee is competent and capable of managing his or her affairs at any time to cause to be issued to such allottee a patent in fee simple, and thereafter all restrictions as to sale, encumbrance, or taxation of said land shall be removed.”

The use of competence opens up the categorization, making it much more subjective and thus increasing the exclusionary power of the Secretary of Interior. Although this act gives power to the allottee decide whether to keep or sell the land, provided the harsh economic reality of the time, lack of access to credit and markets, liquidation of Indian lands was almost inevitable. It was known by the department of interior that virtually 95% of fee patented land would eventually be sold to whites (Robertson, 2002).

The new policy ruined the land, ending their traditional ways of life as a means of subsistence. According to Victorian ideals, the men were forced into the fields to take on the woman's role and the women were domesticated. This Act imposed a patrilineal nuclear household onto many traditional matrilineal Native societies. Native gender roles and relations quickly changed with this policy since communal living shaped the social order of Native communities. Women were no longer the caretakers of the land and they were no longer valued in the public political sphere. Even in the home, the Native woman was dependent on her husband. Before allotment, women divorced easily and had important political and social status for they were usually the center of their kin network. With this act, women were deprived title to land and the distribution of allotments proved this point. To receive the full 160 acres (0.65 km²), women had to be married and even then, her husband received title to the land.

In 1926, Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work commissioned a study of federal administration of Indian policy and the condition of Indian people. Completed in 1928, The Problem of Indian Administration — commonly known as the Meriam Report after the study's director, Lewis Meriam — documented fraud and misappropriation by government agents. In particular, the Meriam Report found that the General Allotment Act had been used to illegally deprive Native Americans of their land rights. After considerable debate, Congress terminated the allotment process under the Dawes Act by enacting the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ("Wheeler-Howard Act"). (However, the allotment process in Alaska under the separate Alaska Native Allotment Act continued until its revocation in 1971 by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.) The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act or informally, the Indian New Deal, was a U.S. federal legislation which secured certain rights to Native Americans, including Alaska Natives. ... For other uses, see Alaska (disambiguation). ... The Alaska Native Allotment Act of 1906, 34 Stat. ... The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was signed into law on December 18, 1971, and the largest land claims settlement in United States history was concluded. ...

Despite termination of the allotment process in 1934, effects of the General Allotment Act continue into the present. For example, one provision of the Act was the establishment of a trust fund, administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to collect and distribute revenues from oil, mineral, timber, and grazing leases on Native American lands. The BIA's alleged improper management of the trust fund resulted in litigation, in particular the ongoing case Cobell v. Kempthorne, to force a proper accounting of revenues. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the Department of the Interior charged with the administration and management of 55. ... Cobell v. ...

Contemporary Interpretations of the Dawes Act

Ward Churchill has argued that the Act "imposed a formal eugenics code," by setting a "blood quantum" requirement for tribal citizenship. John LaVelle of the University of New Mexico contends that Churchill's interpretation is "sorely lacking in historical/factual veracity and scholarly integrity." LaVelle contends that the Act contains no blood quantum requirement, and that such requirements were adopted voluntarily by tribes, and not imposed by the US government. LaVelle asserts that "[t]he main flaw of this federal/tribal conspiracy theory is that it rests on — and propagates — demonstrably false information concerning the contents and impact of the General Allotment Act." Other scholars have relied in their work on Churchill's assertion that the General Allotment Act contained a blood quantum requirement.^[3] Ward LeRoy Churchill (born October 2, 1947) is an American writer and political activist. ... Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Eugenics Conference [10], 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ... Blood Quantum Laws is an umbrella term that describes legislation enacted to define membership in Native American groups. ... The University of New Mexico (UNM) is a public university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. ...

See also

• Alaska Native Allotment Act
• Indian Reorganization Act
• Cobell v. Kempthorne
• Americanization (of Native Americans)

The Alaska Native Allotment Act of 1906, 34 Stat. ... The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act or informally, the Indian New Deal, was a U.S. federal legislation which secured certain rights to Native Americans, including Alaska Natives. ... Cobell v. ... Americanization refers to the policies of the United States government and public opinion that there is a standard set of cultural values that should be held in common by all citizens. ...

References

• Case, David S. and David A. Voluck. (2002). Alaska Natives and American Laws, 2nd ed. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press.
• Olund, Eric N. (2002). “Public Domesticity during the Indian Reform Era; or, Mrs. Jackson is induced to go to Washington.” Gender, Place, and Culture 9: 153-166.
• Stremlau, Rose. (2005). “To Domesticate and Civilize Wild Indians”: Allotment and the Campaign to Reform Indian Families, 1875-1887. Journal of Family History 30: 265-286.
• Pine Ridge Project Blog Bartecchi, David (2007). "The History of "Competency" as a Tool to Control Native American Lands"

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Dawes Act

• Dawes Act of 1887 fulltext from the Native American Documents Project
• Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act) 1934

§ Image File history File links Wikisource-logo. ... The original Wikisource logo. ... This article is about the people indigenous to the United States and their history after European contact, chiefly in what is now the United States. ... Holding The Supreme Court did not have original jurisdiction under Article III of the Constitution to hear a suit brought by the Cherokee Nation, which as an Indian tribe, was not a sovereign nation. ... Holding States were not permitted to redraw the boundaries of Indian lands or forbid residence in those territories, because the Constitution granted sole authority to Congress to regulate relations with sovereign Indian tribes. ... Standing Bear Standing Bear (1834(?) - 1908) was a Ponca Native American chief who successfully argued in U.S. District Court in 1879 that Native Americans are persons within the meaning of the law and have the rights of citizenship. ... Cobell v. ... The 1896 United States Supreme Court case Talton v. ... The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (commonly abbreviated to AIRFA) is a 1978 United States federal law and a joint resolution of Congress which pledged to protect and preserve the traditional religious rights of American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians. ... Burke Act (1906), was designed to correct certain defects in the Dawes Act of 1887, under which the land in the Indian reservations was to be broken up and distributed in severalty to the individual Indians. ... The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (or NAGPRA) is a United States federal law passed in 1990 requiring that Native Americans cultural items be returned to their respective peoples if and when they have been excavated, and allows archeological teams a short time for analysis before the remains... The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (often abbrivated as ICWA) (25 U.S.C. § 1901 et. ... The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted full U.S. citizenship to Americas indigenous peoples. ... The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (Pub. ... The Indian Intercourse Acts were several acts passed by the United States Congress regulating commerce between American Indians and non-Indians and restricting travel by non-Indians onto Indian land. ... The Indian Removal Act, part of a U.S. government policy known as Indian Removal, was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830. ... The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act or informally, the Indian New Deal, was a U.S. federal legislation which secured certain rights to Native Americans, including Alaska Natives. ... The Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936, also known as the Thomas-Rogers Act, was an extension of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 which sought to return some form of tribal government to the many tribes in Indian Territory. ... Public Law 280 is a method whereby States may assume jurisdiction over reservation Indians, as stated by Arizona Supreme Court Justice Stanley G. Feldman. ... The National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) is a United States federal regulatory agency charged with oversight of Native American gambling enterprises. ... // Native American gambling enterprises comprise gambling businesses operated on Indian reservations or tribal land, which have limited sovereignty and therefore the ability to exist outside of direct state regulation. ... The Dawes Rolls were created by the Dawes Commission. ... The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the Department of the Interior charged with the administration and management of 55. ... There are a number of federal wildlife laws pertaining to eagles and their feathers (e. ...