Signed into law by President James Monroe on March 3, 1819
The Civilization Fund Act, also known as the Indian Civilization Act, was an Act passed by the United States Congress on March 3, 1819. The Act encouraged activities of benevolent societies in providing education for Native Americans and authorized an annuity to stimulate the "civilization process".[1]Thomas L. McKenney lobbied Congress in support of the legislation. It was originally intended to support schools in native villages and areas, such as those established by religious missions. These were operated by both Protestant and Catholic organizations. In 1891 through the early 20th century, the government used the Civilization Fund Act as authority to establish numerous Native American boarding schools.
The Civilization Fund Act eventually led to the creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in 1824. The BIA was responsible for implementing various aspects of U.S. government policy towards Native Americans, including overseeing the educational programs funded by the Civilization Fund Act.
The benevolent societies were a combination of Christian missions and the federal government.
Federal funds were allocated to schools designed to educate Native Americans in the English language and ways of Anglo-Americans. The goal was to "civilize" Native Americans by teaching them reading and writing in the missionary schools. Later in the century, there was more emphasis on forcing them to give up native religions, culture and languages.[2]
The passage of the Act resulted in development of a new class structure within Native American societies. While often traditional Native Americans opposed the schools, "progressive" ones, including senior leaders, accepted the schools, believing they were a way for their people to learn to negotiate with the increasing number of European Americans they encountered.[citation needed] Some of these young men with education and command of the English language rose to leadership positions within tribes, as in the American Southeast. According to historian William Jeynes, they were influenced to agree to treaties that ceded communal lands to the United States government.[3] Within the tribal communities, some leaders believed that, given the increasing number of American settlers entering their territories, the tribes were going to be forced to cede their lands, and they were trying to gain the best deals for their people.
"That for the purpose of guarding against the further decline and final extinction of the Indian tribes, adjoining the frontier settlements of the United States, are for introducing among them the habits and arts of civilization" annual sum/annuity is ten thousand dollars "and an account of the expenditure of the money, and proceedings in execution of the foregoing provisions, shall be laid annually before Congress."[4]
The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1824 by the federal government and placed under the War Department. This part of government had more facilities and personnel in the frontier areas where most Native Americans were living, and new responsibilities could be assigned to its staff. In some cases, the military supervised trading posts authorized by the government, which were another point of contact with Native American bands. The Bureau was created in order to administer the annuity given to the schools.[5]
↑ Prucha, Francis Paul (2000). "Documents of United States Indian Policy", p.33. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, United States of America. ISBN0-8032-8762-3
Ellinghaus, Katherine. Taking Assimilation to Heart: Marriages of White Women and Indigenous Men in the United States and Australia, 1887-1937ISBN0-8032-1829-X, 9780803218291, 2006.
Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as an independent nation-state. The concept of an Indian territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by the United States government in the early federal period of the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminoles. White Americans classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture.
Zitkala-Ša, also Zitkála-Šá, was a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist. She was also known by her Anglicized and married name, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. She wrote several works chronicling her struggles with cultural identity, and the pull between the majority culture in which she was educated, and the Dakota culture into which she was born and raised. Her later books were among the first works to bring traditional Native American stories to a widespread white English-speaking readership.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), also known as Indian Affairs (IA), is a United States federal agency within the Department of the Interior. It is responsible for implementing federal laws and policies related to Native Americans and Alaska Natives, and administering and managing over 55,700,000 acres (225,000 km2) of reservations held in trust by the U.S. federal government for indigenous tribes. It renders services to roughly 2 million indigenous Americans across 574 federally recognized tribes. The BIA is governed by a director and overseen by the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, who answers to the Secretary of the Interior.
Cobell v. Salazar is a class-action lawsuit brought by Elouise Cobell (Blackfeet) and other Native American representatives in 1996 against two departments of the United States government: the Department of Interior and the Department of the Treasury for mismanagement of Indian trust funds. It was settled in 2009. The plaintiffs claim that the U.S. government has incorrectly accounted for the income from Indian trust assets, which are legally owned by the Department of the Interior, but held in trust for individual Native Americans. The case was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The original complaint asserted no claims for mismanagement of the trust assets, since such claims could only properly be asserted in the United States Court of Federal Claims.
The Sandy Lake Tragedy was the culmination in 1850 of a series of events centered in Big Sandy Lake, Minnesota that resulted in the deaths of several hundred Lake Superior Chippewa. Officials of the Zachary Taylor Administration and Minnesota Territory sought to relocate several bands of the tribe to areas west of the Mississippi River. By changing the location for fall annuity payments, the officials intended the Chippewa to stay at the new site for the winter, hoping to lower their resistance to relocation. Due to delayed and inadequate payments of annuities and lack of promised supplies, about 400 Ojibwe, mostly men and 12% of the tribe, died of disease, starvation and cold. The outrage increased Ojibwe resistance to removal. The bands effectively gained widespread public support to achieve permanent reservations in their traditional territories.
A series of efforts were made by the United States to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream European–American culture between the years of 1790 and 1920. George Washington and Henry Knox were first to propose, in the American context, the cultural assimilation of Native Americans. They formulated a policy to encourage the so-called "civilizing process". With increased waves of immigration from Europe, there was growing public support for education to encourage a standard set of cultural values and practices to be held in common by the majority of citizens. Education was viewed as the primary method in the acculturation process for minorities.
The Red Power movement was a social movement led by Native American youth to demand self-determination for Native Americans in the United States. Organizations that were part of the Red Power Movement include the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC). This movement sought the rights for Native Americans to make policies and programs for themselves while maintaining and controlling their own land and resources. The Red Power movement took a confrontational and civil disobedience approach to inciting change in United States to Native American affairs compared to using negotiations and settlements, which national Native American groups such as National Congress of American Indians had before. Red Power centered around mass action, militant action, and unified action.
The United Auburn Indian Community (UAIC) is a federally recognized Native America tribe consisting mostly of Miwok Indians indigenous to the Sacramento Valley region.
Indian termination is a phrase describing United States policies relating to Native Americans from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. It was shaped by a series of laws and practices with the intent of assimilating Native Americans into mainstream American society. Cultural assimilation of Native Americans was not new; the belief that indigenous people should abandon their traditional lives and become what the government considers "civilized" had been the basis of policy for centuries. What was new, however, was the sense of urgency that, with or without consent, tribes must be terminated and begin to live "as Americans." To that end, Congress set about ending the special relationship between tribes and the federal government.
Federal Indian policy establishes the relationship between the United States Government and the Indian Tribes within its borders. The Constitution gives the federal government primary responsibility for dealing with tribes. Some scholars divide the federal policy toward Indians in six phases: coexistence (1789–1828), removal and reservations (1829–1886), assimilation (1887–1932), reorganization (1932–1945), termination (1946–1960), and self-determination (1961–1985).
The Bureau of Indian Affairs building takeover refers to a protest by Native Americans at the Department of the Interior headquarters in the United States capital of Washington, D.C., from November 3 to November 9, 1972. On November 3, a group of around 500 American Indians with the American Indian Movement (AIM) took over the Interior building in Washington, D.C. It being the culmination of their cross-country journey in the Trail of Broken Treaties, intended to bring attention to American Indian issues such as living standards and treaty rights.
Indian removals in Indiana followed a series of the land cession treaties made between 1795 and 1846 that led to the removal of most of the native tribes from Indiana. Some of the removals occurred prior to 1830, but most took place between 1830 and 1846. The Lenape (Delaware), Piankashaw, Kickapoo, Wea, and Shawnee were removed in the 1820s and 1830s, but the Potawatomi and Miami removals in the 1830s and 1840s were more gradual and incomplete, and not all of Indiana's Native Americans voluntarily left the state. The most well-known resistance effort in Indiana was the forced removal of Chief Menominee and his Yellow River band of Potawatomi in what became known as the Potawatomi Trail of Death in 1838, in which 859 Potawatomi were removed to Kansas and at least forty died on the journey west. The Miami were the last to be removed from Indiana, but tribal leaders delayed the process until 1846. Many of the Miami were permitted to remain on land allotments guaranteed to them under the Treaty of St. Mary's (1818) and subsequent treaties.
Native American self-determination refers to the social movements, legislation and beliefs by which the Native American tribes in the United States exercise self-governance and decision-making on issues that affect their own people.
The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 authorized the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, and some other government agencies to enter into contracts with, and make grants directly to, federally recognized Indian tribes. The tribes would have authority for how they administered the funds, which gave them greater control over their welfare. The ISDEAA is codified at Title 25, United States Code, beginning at section 5301.
American Indian boarding schools, also known more recently as American Indian residential schools, were established in the United States from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries with a primary objective of "civilizing" or assimilating Native American children and youth into Anglo-American culture. In the process, these schools denigrated Native American culture and made children give up their languages and religion. At the same time the schools provided a basic Western education. These boarding schools were first established by Christian missionaries of various denominations. The missionaries were often approved by the federal government to start both missions and schools on reservations, especially in the lightly populated areas of the West. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries especially, the government paid religious orders to provide basic education to Native American children on reservations, and later established its own schools on reservations. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) also founded additional off-reservation boarding schools based on the assimilation model. These sometimes drew children from a variety of tribes. In addition, religious orders established off-reservation schools.
The Winnebago Reservation of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska is located in Thurston County, Nebraska, United States. The tribal council offices are located in the town of Winnebago. The villages of Emerson, south of First Street, as well as Thurston, are also located on the reservation. The reservation occupies northern Thurston County, Nebraska, as well as southeastern Dixon County and Woodbury County, Iowa, and a small plot of off-reservation land of southern Craig Township in Burt County, Nebraska. The other federally recognized Winnebago tribe is the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin.
The Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians is a historic small State of Michigan-recognized band of Indians who live mostly in Emmet and Cheboygan counties. These two counties are located in the northernmost region of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Since 1985, the Burt Lake Band has petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for re-recognition as a federally acknowledged band, a recognition first achieved in the 1830s.
Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter, 567 U.S. 182 (2012), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the United States government, when it enters into a contract with a Native American Indian tribe for services, must pay contracts in full, even if Congress has not appropriated enough money to pay all tribal contractors. The case was litigated over a period of 22 years, beginning in 1990, until it was decided in 2012.
Harry James Watson "Jimmy" Belvin was a Native American educator who served as an Oklahoma State Representative and Senator. He was the first elected principal chief of any of the Five Civilized Tribes in the 20th century, and the longest serving principal chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. He saw his tribe through termination, restoration, and a rebirth of Native Pride. He was a polarizing leader, seen by some as a semi-dictator who held onto the office of principal chief and used his power to advocate for complete assimilation into the dominant society, suppressing Choctaw traditions, language and ceremonial practices as undesirable remnants of an unrefined history. To others, he was a well-liked, populist leader, who went door-to-door talking with tribe members, informing them on issues, and trying to develop the means the alleviate the poverty and unemployment they faced.
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