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Word Origin:

reservation


Origin: 1790

A seemingly routine use of the familiar word reservation in 1789 led to its acquisition of a new meaning a year or two later. Attempting to clear up questions of federal and state authority with regard to Indians, the First Congress of the United States under the new Constitution stipulated, "The reservation, in the treaty with the [Iroquois] Six Nations, of six miles square round the fort at Oswego, is within the territory of the State of New York, and ought to be so explained as to render it conformable to the Constitution of the United States."

That was the beginning. Soon reservation became an everyday word for the places to which Indian tribes were assigned to get them out of the way of onrushing settlers.

The new concept of reservation provided Americans of European descent with a legal justification for depriving Indians of most of the continent and confining them to remote areas considered less desirable by whites. Formerly Indians exercised sovereignty on lands to which the colonial governments made only minimal claims. Now the ultimate authority over all the land belonged to the United States. The reservations were often arranged by treaty, but the U.S. government retained the right to renegotiate treaties, and it almost never renegotiated them to benefit Indians. While some tribes were collected onto shrinking remnants of their traditional lands, many others were removed from their homes to a patchwork of reservations in the so-called Indian territory, now part of Oklahoma.

At the end of the nineteenth century the government passed laws that broke the reservations into individual homesteads, encouraging impoverished occupants to sell their property. As a result of this and other policies, Indian reservations shrank dramatically and now comprise roughly 2 percent of their original holdings.

Nevertheless, many Indian peoples have adapted to living on reservations and learned to see them as sanctuaries for their traditional culture and self-determination.



 
 
US History Encyclopedia: Indian Reservations

Reservations have been a fundamental aspect of Native American existence for more than two centuries. For some, reservations are a living reminder of Euro-American colonialism and nation building exacted against indigenous people. Others insist that reservations today are the last remaining stronghold of sovereignty and cultural traditions, a reservoir that insures the perpetuation of Native American survival.

While the competing European colonial powers evolved political and legal mechanisms to deal with questions of Native American land title, the United States essentially followed the British model. The core principle was that Native American societies possessed a natural right to the soil as its original occupants. Thus, indigenous lands must be acquired by purchase, primarily negotiated through treaties and agreements. In addition to the treaties, the United States government used the concept of discovery, the rite of conquest, and military force to incorporate indigenous lands into the national fold.

In both the colonial period and the years that followed the American Revolution, reservations were an outgrowth of government land acquisition. Before the Revolution, various colonies created reservations that were subsequently recognized by legislatures as Indian reserves. The Second Continental Congress in 1775 established an Indian Department to deal with Indian affairs. After independence, the United States adopted a national policy of Indian administration by Constitutional mandate. The Constitution granted Congress plenary powers over Indian affairs in trade, treaties, warfare, welfare, and the right to take Indian lands for public purposes.

After 1778, Congress established federal Indian reservations by federal treaty or statute, conferring to the occupying tribe(s) recognized title over lands and the resources within their boundaries. Despite government promises of protection in exchange for land cessions, Secretary of War Henry Knox in 1789 lamented, "that all the Indian tribes once existing in those States, now the best cultivated and most populous, have become extinct … in a short period, the idea of an Indian on this side of the Mississippi will only be found in the page of the historian." Policy makers in the early republic believed that the attrition of Native Americans and the extinguishing of their reservations was an inevitable consequence of civilization's progress.

Indian Removal, 1816–1846

After the War of 1812, increasing conflicts between Native Americans and expanding Euro-American settlements demanded a solution. In 1830, Congress acted to create a policy of removal that would relocate Native Americans to "reserved lands" west of the Mississippi. President Andrew Jackson was the principal advocate of this policy, declaring in 1830 that "Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country,… but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. … What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranges by a few thousand savages to our extensive republic… occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?"

Between 1828 and 1838, more than 80,000 Native Americans, particularly from the Southeast and the Old Northwest, were removed west of the Mississippi River. After relocation, the U.S. government acquired 15,355,767 acres of Indian lands for its citizens. Tribes suffered population losses when they were forced west and many tribal governments were weakened and disrupted as they attempted to create new governments on their western territories. The removal of Native American societies continued until 1877, although most relocations occurred before 1846.

Reservation Period, 1851–1880

While the removal created temporary space between "American civilization" and Indian Territory, that space quickly disappeared. As Euro-America pushed beyond the Mississippi river, policy makers had to devise new ways of alienating indigenous societies from their lands. To accomplish this task, on 3 March 1849 Congress created the Department of the Interior to manage public land, Indian land, and Indian affairs. The Indian Office moved quickly to address the "Indian problem." Under pressure from an expanding American population and American industry's demand for more natural resources, the new department took direct administrative responsibility for reservations. Beginning in 1851 and continuing for three decades, federal bureaucrats developed a series of policies for the final solution to the "Indian problem." Using treaties, coercion, and military force, the government actively consolidated Native American societies. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Luke Lea set forth the doctrine in 1851 by calling for the Indians' "concentration, their domestication, and their incorporation." Reservations came to be seen as instruments for the achievement of this goal. In a new flurry of treaty making, the United States acquired millions of acres of Indian land and assigned the tribes to reservations on a portion of their former territory.

In the years following the publication of the Origin of Species (1859), the desire to "domesticate" and "incorporate" Indians into American society was driven by the application of Darwinian evolutionary principles to the development of social life. Native Americans, like all non-Europeans, were believed to be intellectually, emotionally, and culturally inferior, but social evolution predicted that it might be possible to push Native Americans along the societal hierarchy toward civilization if they were forced to adopt Euro-American ways of life. For the remainder of the nineteenth century, this reasoning encouraged further acquisition of tribal land and the creation of additional reservations.

Although treaties were the primary mechanism for creating reservations, Congress suspended formal treaty making in 1871.Thereafter, federal reservations would be established by executive order, congressional act, or any legal combination recognized by the federal government. Before the turn of the century, 56 of 162 federal reservations were established by executive order. After 1919, however, only an act of Congress could establish reservations.

Forced Assimilation, 1880–1934

The rationale behind the twentieth-century reservation system was two fold: Native American resources could be further exploited with a minimum of cost and effort and, the controlled environment of the reservation would provide for a laboratory in social engineering. The reservation was conceived as a refuge for a declining race that could be elevated from their inferior status by assimilation. The Indian Office promoted these objectives by breaking up the "habits of savage life" by instilling "civilized" values through forced education, by insisting on agricultural labor, and by pushing the notion of private property and the development of monetary funds. To this end, the reservation was conceived as a controlled society where the habits of civilization could be molded under the direction of the Indian agent and agency personnel. From 1880 to 1934, ethnocide became an officially sanctioned policy.

The principal legal instrument for these new policies was the General Allotment Act, passed in 1887. After the law's passage, more than one hundred reservations saw their lands fragmented into individual tracts of 160 acres or less. In 1906, the Burke Act granted local Indian Office officials the power to transfer land from trust status to fee patent status through application. The act expedited the transfer of Indian lands into Anglo hands. Over the next fifty years, the U.S. government was able to divest Native Americans of about 90 million acres. Indian lands decreased from 136 million acres in 1887 to about 48 million acres in 1934, when the act was finally repealed.

Despite oppressive government policies and actions, Native Americans were not passive victims of this new authoritarian reservation system. Native Americans continued to practice their cultural traditions and invent new ones. The Ghost Dance and the Native American Church stand as examples of Native American cultural persistence during this bleak period. In addition, the boarding school experience brought together young from various tribes who laid the seeds for the emergence of a pan-ethnic identity that cut across tribal lines. Some tribes also resisted government policies in court or before Congress.

Federal officials pressed their assimilationist agenda through the first decades of the twentieth century. The 1910 Omnibus Act, for example, though designed to solve heirship problems, authorized the Secretary of Interior to lease Indian lands, whether allotted or unallotted, and sell Indian resources. Between 1916 and 1920, Commissioner Cato Sells encouraged Indian Office personnel to force fee patent status of trust land of all competent Indians. By the 1920s, most tribes had lost the ability to control their resources and were in danger of losing valuable reservation resources.

As the federal government was dismantling Native American lands and societies, it also pressed them to volunteer for military service and to become U.S. citizens. After World War I, Indian veterans were granted U.S. citizenship under the Act of 1919. Five years later, all American Indians would be granted citizenship after the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act. Both pieces of legislation were intended to undermine Indian ties to their tribes.

Tribal Reorganization, 1928–1945

By the mid-1920s Native American leaders, sympathetic Indian rights organizations, and even some federal officials began to question the effectiveness of forced assimilation policies. In 1928, the Meriam Report, a nationwide study sponsored by the Indian Office, found that federal legislation injured American Indian progress. The report also noted that reservation life was plagued by endemic poverty, ill health, poor education, and social and economic dependency. The failures of allotment, forced assimilation, and deplorable living conditions on reservations outlined in the Meriam Report led to the passage of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. The legislation repealed the General Allotment Act, affirmed certain Native

American cultural traditions and practices, and authorized a political mechanism for strengthening self-government for federally recognized tribes. Two years later, the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936 restored tribal governments (but did not reestablish reservations) to Oklahoma tribes. Alaskan Natives achieved similar reforms under the 1936 Alaskan Native Reorganization Act. One hundred and seventy-four tribes, bands, and communities incorporated themselves by this legal mechanism. While such legislative acts held the potential for economic and social development, the most important portion of the act suspended allotment and returned formerly ceded lands that remained in the public domain to trust status. Between 1935 and 1937, over 2 million acres of land reverted back to Indian holdings. Tribes also regained control of 7 million acres of leased grazing lands.

Termination, 1945–1961

Many policies strengthening Native American reservation societies were reversed following World War II. In addition to general hostility to all New Deal reforms, there was a growing belief among federal officials that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had outlived its purpose because it actually kept Indians from assimilating into American society.

To "get out of the Indian business," Congress passed the Indian Land Commission Claims Act of 1946, a measure designed to settle outstanding legal claims as a prelude to severing the government's ties to tribal nations. The desire to withdraw federal trusteeship for federally recognized tribes also led to a series of legislative acts that undermined reservation life. House Concurrent Resolution 108, adopted in 1953, declared Congress's intent to make the Indians subject to the same laws and entitled them to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other U.S. citizens. Soon thereafter Congress passed Public Law 83-280 transferring civil jurisdiction and criminal control of certain reservations to local state authorities. The next year, the Indian Health Service Branch was transferred from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the U.S. Public Health Service. At the same time, the Bureau of Indian Affairs launched a relocation program to move Indians from reservations to target urban centers.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Congress acted to abolish (or "terminate") about 120 reservations. These included the Alabama-Coushatta of Texas, several California rancherias and reservation tribes, the Klamaths and the scattered tribes of Oregon, the Menominees of Wisconsin, and three Oklahoma tribes. For those terminated tribes the impact of the policy was devastating.

Although Congress did not officially reverse its termination policy until 1973, the program effectively ended in the early 1960s. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Phileo Nash, an anthropologist, introduced new programs to strengthen reservation political and economic development by building an economic infrastructure, promoting education, and on-the-job-training programs. By 1965, approximately fifty-six industrial plants were located on or near reservations.

Self-Determination, 1961 Through the Early Twenty-First Century

From 1961 through the early 2000s, Native American political and legislative policies moved toward the general principle of self-determination on Indian reservations. Native American reaction against termination, combined with a growing sense of an indigenous pan-ethnic consciousness led to a reassertion of treaty rights among a number of tribes. Reservation-based tribes demanded greater authority over their affairs and urban Indians began to form organizations to bring attention to indigenous issues, including the need for strong reservation governments. The most successful urban protest group was the American Indian Movement, an organization that called for tribal sovereignty on reservations.

At the federal level, Lyndon B. Johnson's administration developed the War on Poverty to improve conditions in neglected areas of the country. Several tribes used these programs to take control of their own social welfare programs and to strengthen the administrative structure of their governments. The Bureau of Indian Affairs routinely opposed these efforts.

On the legislative front, congressional leaders grew increasingly sympathetic to tribal rights and reservation governments. The termination policy was officially renounced and several previously terminated tribes (most prominently the Menominees and Klamaths) were returned to tribal status. In 1975, Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which established the principle that reservation governments could administer their own education and social service programs. While resisted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, this new law opened the possibility that tribes could function as autonomous governments within the boundaries of their reservations.

Other pieces of legislation were passed to address social and cultural issues. In 1978, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act with the intent to provide constitutional protection of indigenous religious freedom under the First Amendment. That same year, the Indian Child Welfare Act ended the practice of placing Indian children in non-Indian households and gave tribal courts a prominent role in adoption proceedings involving tribal members.

While reservation policies changed little in the 1980s, Congress approved two important pieces of legislation. The 1982 Indian Tribal Governmental Tax Status Act that permitted tribal governments to issue tax-exempt revenue bonds and the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act permitted gaming on reservations.

During the Clinton Administration the government-to-government relations between reservations and the United States was affirmed. President Clinton acknowledged that reservation communities were still plagued by poverty, poor health care, and unemployment, but he outlined a program for improvement that included greater tribal control over education, health care, and economic policy. Despite these declarations, throughout the 1990s, political attacks against Native American tribal sovereignty on reservations increased. Efforts were made to weaken the Indian Child Welfare Act and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. Amendments were made to the Clean Air Act to dissolve tribal authority over water policies on tribal lands. Funding for legal services and health care were cut. Proposals were made by states to tax gaming revenues.

It was discovered that billions of dollars held in trust by the federal government had been grossly misused and mismanaged. Many reservations and culturally sensitive sites off reservation were being targeted again for natural resource development. The federal government's relationship with tribes wavered between respect for tribal sovereignty and rights and attempts to extinguish tribal existence. The administration of George W. Bush was in the process of "downsizing" in order to meet balanced budget promises. Despite these attacks, reservation communities continued to persist into the twenty-first century.

The Reservation Situation in the Early Twenty-First Century

Census data since the 1960s reveals that the Native American population is growing at a tremendous rate. According to the 2000 census, there are 2,475,956 Native Americans in the United States, but only a portion of those individuals are citizens in one of the 510 federally recognized Native American tribes. Of that number, 437,079 American Indians, 182 Eskimos, and 97 Aleuts resided on 314 reservations and trust lands. About 50 percent of the 437,358 American Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts reside on the ten largest reservations and trust lands.

A total of 56.2 million acres of land are held in trust by the United States for various tribes and individuals. About 82 percent of trust lands are owned by tribes, with 140 reservations entirely owned by tribes; approximately 17 percent are held by individuals; and less than one percent is held by the federal government. The largest reservation is the sixteen-million-acre Navajo reservation. It is home to about 269,202 Navajos. The Navajo reservation is unique in that since its establishment in 1868, it has progressively grown in size by executive orders and Congressional acts. In stark contrast, California rancherias and smaller reservations, primarily in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, are less than 1,000 acres each.

The number of Native Americans living on reservations and trust lands vary substantially. According to the 2000 census, only ten reservations had a resident population of more than 7,000. These were the Navajo, Fort Apache, Gila River, Papago, Rosebud, San Carlos, Zuni Pueblo, Hopi, and Blackfeet reservations. Most had fewer than 1,000 residents. Since most reservation and trust lands are in the West, more than one-half of American Indians reside in Oklahoma, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Washington.

Indian reservations in the early 2000s, despite progress in health care and socio-economic development, remained a contradiction across the U.S. landscape. As reservation tribes struggled toward greater sovereignty and self-determination, they had to contend with numerous issues on a number of fronts. Many reservation communities struggled with a fragmented land base because of allotment, a growing hostility from non-Indian residents living on or near reservations, the need for greater economic self-sufficiency, and the task of building stronger cultural identities. Despite these challenges, many Native Americans continued to live on reservations. Reservations offered a strong sense of place and cultural identity. There is, across native North America, a new pride in tribal identity and a renaissance of traditions. Reservations have emerged as the focal point for the retention of unique cultural identities and for issues of sovereignty and self-determination, even for Indians who live in cities far from their tribal homelands. Across the Americas, indigenous people are recognizing that political struggle is essential to their basic right to exist as sovereign nations. Resistance and struggle are a part of daily existence for Native American people. A part of that resistance is not only surviving but also building a secure future for coming generations by enforcing basic human rights within a secure reservation land base. Reservations provide a geographical and political platform to expand their rights on a number of fronts.

Bibliography

Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr. The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. New York: Knopf, 1978.

Bureau of the Census. We the … First Americans. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1993.

Bureau of the Census. "American Indian Reservation Households Crowded in 1990." Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1995.

Champagne, Duane, ed. Chronology of Native North American History: From Pre-Columbian Times to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994.

Debo, Angie. The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941.

Dippie, Brian W. The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1982.

Drinnon, Richard. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980.

Foreman, Grant. Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953.

Green, Michael D. The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

Haller, John S., Jr. Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859–1900. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995.

Hoxie, Fredrick. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

Jorgensen, Joseph B. "A Century of Political Economic Effects on American Indian Society, 18801980." The Journal of Ethnic Studies 6, no. 3 (1978): 174.

Marino, Cesare. "Reservations." In Native America in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Mary B. Davis. New York: Garland, 1994. 544557.

Meredith, Howard. A Short History of the Native Americans in the United States. Malabar, Fla.: Kreiger, 2001.

Passel, Jeffery S., and Patricia A. Berman. "Quality of 1980 Census Data for American Indians." Social Biology 33, nos. 3–4 (1986): 163182.

Pearce, Roy H. Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1965.

Rosenstiel, Annette. Red and White: Indian Views of the White Man, 1492–1982. New York: Universe Books, 1983.

Stuart, Paul. The Indian Office: Growth and Development of an American Institution, 1865–1900. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1979.

Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.

Trigger, Bruce G. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Ubelaker, Douglas H. "Patterns of Demographic Change in the Americas." Human Biology 64, no. 3 (June 1992): 361379.

U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs. American Indians Today: Answers to Your Questions. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1991.

Wissler, Clark. "The Rebirth of the 'Vanishing American.'" Natural History 34, no. 5 (1934): 415430.

 
WordNet: indian reservation
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a reservation set aside for the use of indians


 
Wikipedia: Indian reservation
For the song, see Indian Reservation (song)
BIA map of reservations in the United States.
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BIA map of reservations in the United States.
Tribal sovereignty: Map of the United States, with non-reservation land highlighted.
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Tribal sovereignty: Map of the United States, with non-reservation land highlighted.

Indian reservation is a land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Reservations were established when White Americans began to forcibly take land from the American Indians, who had lived in the Americas for thousands of years. Because the land is federal territory and Native Americans have limited national sovereignty, laws on tribal lands vary from the surrounding area. These laws can permit legal casinos on reservations, which attract tourists.

There are about 300 Indian reservations in the United States, meaning not all of the country's 550-plus recognized tribes have a reservation — some tribes have more than one reservation, others have none. In addition, because of past land sales and allotments, discussed below, some reservations are severely fragmented. Each piece of tribal, trust, and privately held land is a separate enclave. This random mixing of private and public real estate can create significant administrative difficulties.

The collective geographical area of all reservations is 55.7 million acres (225,410 km²), representing 2.3% of the area of the United States (2,379,400,204 acres; 9,629,091 km²).

There are 12 Indian reservations that are larger than the state of Rhode Island (776,960 acres; 3,144 km²) and nine reservations larger than Delaware (1,316,480 acres; 5,327 km²). Reservations are unevenly distributed throughout the country with some states having none.

The tribal council, not the local or federal government, has jurisdiction over reservations. Different reservations have different systems of government, which may or may not replicate the forms of government found outside the reservation. Some Indian reservations were laid out by the federal government, others were outlined by the states.

At the present time, a slight majority of Native Americans and Alaska Natives live somewhere other than the reservations, often in big western cities such as Phoenix, Arizona and Los Angeles, California.

History

Reservation beginnings

See also: Indian Removal

In 1851, the United States Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act which authorized the creation of Native American reservations in modern day Oklahoma. Relations between settlers and natives had grown increasingly worse as the settlers encroached on territory and natural resources in the West.

Grant pursued a stated "Peace Policy" as a possible solution to the conflict. The policy included a reorganization of the Indian Service, with the goal of relocating various tribes from their ancestral homes to parcels of lands established specifically for their inhabitation. The policy called for the replacement of government officials by religious men, nominated by churches, to oversee the Indian agencies on reservations in order to teach Christianity to the native tribes. The Quakers were especially active in this policy on reservations. The "civilization" policy was aimed at eventually preparing the tribes for citizenship.

Reservation life has often been a blend of the traditional and the contemporary. In 1877, this Lakota family living at South Dakota's Rose Bud Agency had both teepees and log cabins.
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Reservation life has often been a blend of the traditional and the contemporary. In 1877, this Lakota family living at South Dakota's Rose Bud Agency had both teepees and log cabins.

In many cases, the lands granted to tribes were not ideal for, and in some cases resistant to agricultural cultivation, leaving many tribes who accepted the policy in a state bordering on starvation.

Reservation treaties sometimes included stipend agreements, in which the federal government would grant a certain amount of goods to a tribe annually. The implementation of the policy was erratic, however, and in many cases the stipend goods were not delivered.

Controversy

The policy was controversial from the start. Reservations were generally established by executive order. In many cases, white settlers objected to the size of land parcels, which were subsequently reduced. A report submitted to Congress in 1868 found widespread corruption among the federal Indian agencies and generally poor conditions among the relocated tribes.

Many tribes ignored the relocation orders at first and were forced onto their new limited land parcels. In many cases, the policy required the continuing support of the United States Army in the West to restrict the movements of various tribes. The pursuit of tribes in order to force them back onto reservations led to a number of Indian Wars. The most well known conflict was the Sioux War on the northern Great Plains, between 1876 and 1881, which included the Battle of Little Bighorn. Other famous wars in this regard included the Nez Perce War.

By the late 1870s, the policy established by Grant was regarded as a failure, primarily because it had resulted in some of the bloodiest wars between Native Americans and the United States. By 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes began phasing out the policy, and by 1882 all religious organizations had relinquished their authority to the federal Indian agency.

Most Indian reservations, like the Laguna Indian reservation in New Mexico (pictured 1943), are in the western United States, often in arid regions unsuitable for agriculture.
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Most Indian reservations, like the Laguna Indian reservation in New Mexico (pictured 1943), are in the western United States, often in arid regions unsuitable for agriculture.

In 1887, Congress undertook a significant change in reservation policy by the passage of the Dawes Act, or General Allotment (Severalty) Act. The act ended the general policy of granting land parcels to tribes as-a-whole by granting small parcels of land to individual tribe members. In some cases, for example the Umatilla Indian Reservation, after the individual parcels were granted out of reservation land, the reservation area was reduced by giving the excess land to white settlers. The individual allotment policy continued until 1934, when it was terminated by the Indian Reorganization Act.

The Indian New Deal

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, also known as the Howard-Wheeler Act, was sometimes called the Indian New Deal. It laid out new rights for Native Americans, reversed some of the earlier privatization of their common holdings, and encouraged self-government and land management by tribes. The act slowed the assignment of tribal lands to individual members, and reduced the assignment of 'extra' holdings to nonmembers.

For the following twenty years, the U.S. government invested in infrastructure, health care, and education on the reservations, and over two million acres (8,000 km²) of land were returned to various tribes. The Indian Reorganization Act also provided for termination and relocation of certain tribes. This eventually resulted in the legal dismantling of 61 tribal nations.

Life and culture

Many Native Americans who live on reservations deal with the federal government through two agencies: the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service.

Some Indian reservations offer a quality of life that is among the poorest people found in the world, the people who live on the streets. Life qualities in reservations are sometimes so poor that they're easily comparable to the quality of life in the developing world. Shannon County, South Dakota, home of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, is routinely described as one of the poorest counties in the nation.

Gambling

In 1979, the Seminole tribe in Florida opened a high-stakes bingo operation on its reservation in Florida. The state attempted to close the operation down but was stopped in the courts. In the 1980s, the case of California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians established the right of reservations to operate other forms of gambling operations. In 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act which recognized the right of Indian tribes to establish gambling and gaming facilities on their reservations as long as the states in which they are located have some form of legalized gambling. Today, many Indian Casinos are used as tourist attractions to draw visitors and revenue to reservations.

See also

External links


 
 

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Word Origin. America in So Many Words, by David K.Barnhart and Allan A. Metcalf. Copyright © 1997 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Indian reservation" Read more

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