To understand the mix bag of the Indian Reorganization Act you must first look at the loss before the implementation of it. Over a century the Native American tribes had been pushed back, pinned in, slaughtered over their customs, and, more specifically, their land/resources. The greatest assault on their lands was the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887.
This act was a way to take more land away from the Native Americans under yet another guise of “for their own good”. The hope was to force the members of each tribe to become more “white”. Give them their own land and by doing so it would break up the tribal traditions and influence. Promote “greed” and they will come around. By issuing each family head a plot of land this allowed less land needed for the reservations. The …show more content…
It restored the lands to the Tribes, and allowed for the consolidation of the lands for tribal use. The act also allowed for more self-policing and self-government for the tribes. There are several issues to the approach of self-governing in this act.
The act did not take into account the traditional tribal ways of leading (not truly governing) their people. The democratic, winner takes all, elections and voting was mandated into the act. This was not the way the tribes were run. Even the minority’s views were heard in the tribal system. The Act viewed each of the tribes of the Native Peoples as a unified tribe, when in fact they were many different divisions among even the same “tribe”.
. Some of the tribes had found ways to keep an identity under the Dawes Act. For example, the Navajos had set up a grazing society, and while other reservations where shrinking, theirs actually grew due to the increased population of the tribe and their need for more grazing lands. The Navajos felt betrayed when John Collier, F.D. Roosevelt’s commissioner of Indian affairs, could not make good on his promises to the
This act was a way to take more land away from the Native Americans under yet another guise of “for their own good”. The hope was to force the members of each tribe to become more “white”. Give them their own land and by doing so it would break up the tribal traditions and influence. Promote “greed” and they will come around. By issuing each family head a plot of land this allowed less land needed for the reservations. The …show more content…
It restored the lands to the Tribes, and allowed for the consolidation of the lands for tribal use. The act also allowed for more self-policing and self-government for the tribes. There are several issues to the approach of self-governing in this act.
The act did not take into account the traditional tribal ways of leading (not truly governing) their people. The democratic, winner takes all, elections and voting was mandated into the act. This was not the way the tribes were run. Even the minority’s views were heard in the tribal system. The Act viewed each of the tribes of the Native Peoples as a unified tribe, when in fact they were many different divisions among even the same “tribe”.
. Some of the tribes had found ways to keep an identity under the Dawes Act. For example, the Navajos had set up a grazing society, and while other reservations where shrinking, theirs actually grew due to the increased population of the tribe and their need for more grazing lands. The Navajos felt betrayed when John Collier, F.D. Roosevelt’s commissioner of Indian affairs, could not make good on his promises to the