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Dawes Act

The Dawes Act 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.

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 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 a 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 that they could move from their present reservation in Southwestern Colorado to a new reservation if a majority of the adult male members wanted so.

Effects

The land granted to most allottees was not sufficient for economic viability, and division of land between heirs upon the 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.

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.

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 sold as protitutes for land and the distribution of allotments proved this point. To receive the full , women had to be married.

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 1936, 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 1993 by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.)

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.

Contemporary Interpretations of the Dawes Act

John LaVelle of the University of New Mexico contends that Ward Churchill's interpretation of a "blood quantum" dimension in the Dawes Act 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 the "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." Addressing the larger issues of "assimilation" under the Dawes Act, Robert Trennert of Arizona State University has described it as an "alternative to extinction."

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"