Allotment And Assimilation Era

Throughout the history of the United States, there have been several policy changes directed towards Native Americans. These policy changes have been separated into the different eras of Native American federal policy. One such era is the Allotment and Assimilation Era, which lasted from 1887 to 1934. During these years, the American Indians were subjected to two devastating policies: allotment and boarding schools. As explained by David Willkins, the United States became very coercive in its attempt to assimilate the Indians (Wilkins, 2002). At the time the policies were implemented, the boarding school policy had a greater impact on the tribal communities. ¬¬The policy of allotment has had a very significant lasting legacy to the Native Americans, …show more content…
The head of a household received 160 acres, single people over age 18 received 80 acres, and people under 18 received 40 acres (Wilkins, 2002). The Native Americans were then forced, however, to live like that of a Euro-American (Wilkins, 2002). This entailed being a private landowner and farming on this land (Wilkins, 2002). As explained in lecture, the United States’ motivation for creating this policy was to speed up assimilation of the Native Americans; it was their belief that the transition from communal lands to private land ownership would help the Indians become civilized in the Anglo-American style. The lands received by each person were held in trust for 25 years and could not be sold. This was intended to force the Indians to assume the ways of a farming lifestyle. At the end of the 25 years, if the Indians had abandoned their …show more content…
A young Dakota girl explained, “I no longer felt free to be myself, or to voice my own feelings” (Devens, 2001, 284). This quote shows the feelings that Zitkala-Sa experienced as she left her mother to go to a boarding school. At this boarding school, she was taught how the Anglo-American culture and history was superior to her own Native culture (Deven, 2001). As a result of the children being removed from their own culture and being taught about the Anglo-American culture, they often had distinct differences from the other members of their community. Many Native American children that went to boarding schools found that they did not fit into their Native community, but nor did they fit into the white community. The largest impact of the boarding school policy resulted from these differences; the generations no longer had a transmission of traditions and behaviors. The children that were forced into boarding schools were not exposed to their Native culture and traditions. As discussed in lecture, this led to a sense of shame connected with a person’s culture and language. In addition, the generation of boarding school children was not parented in the traditional way and thus did not have the parenting skills of previous generations. These impacts of the boarding school policy also continued