Native Americans: In-depth studies and debates

Education

• 2 off-reservation boarding schools (Virginia, Pennsylvania) provided boys with vocational training, girls with skills for domestic service 
• gave some NA opportunity of better jobs= Indian agency offices, nterpreters or scouts

Reservations

• opportunity to establish farming communities 
• opportunity for better healthcare- rates of life expectancy, death, disease 
• enabled tribal life to continue, supported their culture

Navajo tribe

• acreage of land increased 4 million to 10.5 million
• number of sheep and goats rose 15,000 to 1.7 million
• population rose

Dawes Act – turned some NA into landowners, gained full rights of American citizenship 

Reservations

• failure, NA lost freedom, denied civil rights
• Harsh life on reservations, land given often poor – hard to farm
• Gov subsidies insufficient, cut further when there were other demands on gov resources 
• Size of reservations significantly reduced so NA had less land 

Education on reservations

• poor quality
• often found no employment opportunities post-eduucaton – returned to reservation life
• taken away from culture – felt alienated when returned, regarded as ‘untrustworthy’

Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890) final destruction of Sioux “A people’s dream died there.”

Allotments

• unable to adapt -sold land – spent money gained from sale of land, fell into poverty 
• Women in tribes that had matriarchal structure lost status as land given to male head 

Indian Reorganization Act (Wheeler-Howard Act) 1934

• gave NA greater role in administration of reservations 
• Corporations established to ensure that resources on reservations were better managed 
• right to practice their own religion, assert their cultural identity 
• use of peyote, hallucinatory substance, allowed
• Children allowed to attend local schools/learn about NA culture
• stopped sale of NA lands/recovered large amounts of unallocated land, then used to expand/create reservations 
• Training in farming provided/better medical services established 

Reforms helped create greater respect for NA culture 

Allotment policy – brought poverty/hardship, abandoned, further loss of land prevented 

Tribes that still lived on reservations were again led by tribal councils, helped to encourage tribal loyalties

Poverty of NA so great that measures did little to relieve situation 

75 out of 245 tribes rejected measures 

Use of secret ballot among tribes to see if they accepted Act was unpopular as saw concept of democracy as alien/part of ‘white man’s culture’

Preferred to continue traditional tribal councils, discussed matters openly, did not have secret ballot

Improvements not maintained in period after WW2, only short term benefits

Policy of assimilation continued, not what NA wanted 

Policy of termination introduced after war, limited impact of changes 

Idea of separate federal court for NA issues abandoned

Insufficient federal funds to buy back former reservation lands 

Miitancy

• Militant protests from groups e.g. AIM followed period of militant activity in CR mvmnt
• Young NAs abandon more peaceful methods of legal cases (too slow/inefficiant)
• Similar change response from NA who saw NCAI as limited in its appeal 

Unity

• forget tribal differences- unity of Black Power movement

Mass movement

• popular appeal of Black Power movement to pressure government

Name/ identiy

• ‘Red Power’ term taken from ‘Black Power’ 
• Empowering racial identity

Groups

• NA pressure groups
• gov bodies e.g. Indian Claims Commission

Militancy

• National Indian Youth Council
• militancy inspired from Black Power would deny developments already occurring with NA
• can be seen as response to wider developments in US society- urban conditions

Attitudes to range of groups in society changing

• Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ and ‘War on Poverty’ - belief in change

Unity

• Ghettoization and alien conditions encountered in cities
• WW2/ termination