What is Wrong With Our World, Native American Assimilation?

Nearly 1,000 Native Children Died at Boarding Schools, Interior Dept. Finds

I started this current series to discuss what is wrong with our country and what we need to do to fix it. I have since expanded this series to not only include the United States but the rest of the world as well. While I have discussed some of the topics that I will be including in this series, they have been included in other articles. In this series I will concentrate on a single topic. This will also mean that some of the articles may be slightly shorter than my readers have grown accustomed to, however they will still be written with the same attention to detail. This series will have no set number of articles and will continue to grow as I come across additional subjects.

An investigative report, which also documents widespread sexual and physical abuse in a program of forced assimilation, calls on the federal government to apologize and “chart a road to healing.”

What was the Dawes Act?

The Dawes Act (sometimes called the Dawes Severalty Act or General Allotment Act), passed in 1887 under President Grover Cleveland, allowed the federal government to break up tribal lands. The federal government aimed to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream US society by encouraging them towards farming and agriculture, which meant dividing tribal lands into individual plots. Only the Native Americans who accepted the division of tribal lands were allowed to become US citizens.

How did the Dawes Act affect Native Americans?

If they accepted the allotment divisions, the Dawes Act designated 160 acres of farmland or 320 acres of grazing land to the head of each Native American family. These acreages were comparable to those promised by the Homestead Act, but there were important differences between the two acts. Tribes already controlled the land that was being returned to them at a fraction of the acreage, Native Americans were not accustomed to a life of standardized ranching and agriculture, and the lands allotted to them were often unsuitable for farming.

In order to receive their allotment, Native Americans were required to enroll with the Office of Indian Affairs, now known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). By enrolling, the individual registered themselves with the office and their name went on the “Dawes rolls,” which assisted government agencies in determining whether or not that individual was eligible to receive their allotment.

Although Native Americans controlled about 150 million acres of land before the Dawes Act, they lost the majority of it due to these allotment divisions and selling of surplus. When tribes were paid for their land, they were underpaid. In addition to scant payment, Native Americans were not used to spending money and quickly spent most of what they received. Many were left with little land and little money. Inheritance also became an issue for many Native Americans who enrolled to receive land from the Dawes Act. When young children received allotments, some did not know how to farm because they had spent their youth in boarding schools. When there were multiple inheritors, the size of the plots was too small to divide among children and still be suitable for farming.

What is assimilation?

Assimilation was a major goal of Native American policies in the late 19th century. Assimilation is the process of taking individuals or social groups and absorbing them into mainstream culture.

After families claimed their allotments, any remaining tribal lands were declared “surplus” land. These lands were then sold off to non-native settlers. Additional legislation like the Homestead Acts further encouraged white settlement of the West, and with that settlement came calls for assimilation. Many settlers viewed native practices as barbaric and primitive, seeing assimilation as the only option for coexistence.

The US government employed a variety of methods in the attempt to assimilate Native Americans, including the Dawes Act. The desired effect of the Dawes Act was to get Native Americans to farm and ranch like white homesteaders. An explicit goal of the Dawes Act was to create divisions among Native Americans and eliminate the social cohesion of tribes.

The Allotment and Assimilation Era (1887 – 1934)

The Allotment and Assimilation Era built upon the goals of the Reservation Era by attempting to control and alter the customs and practices of Native Americans.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) Indian agents played large roles in the “re-socialization” of Native Americans into Anglo-American culture. In addition to providing food rations to tribal members who refused to abandon communal living for independent farming, BIA agents also assisted in the kidnapping of Indian children from their families and their enrollment in military and religious boarding schools. Such institutions were created to “whiten” Native Americans and supplant their culture and language with American ideals and English. Trauma suffered at the boarding schools has made an impact on tribes and has resulted in large loss of Native languages, culture, and traditions.

During this assimilation period, the United States began to further roll back the promises made in its treaties with Native Americans and to erode the reservation land that it previously granted. In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, which provided allotments of land to Native American families. Government officials at this time believed that Native Americans would not make “productive” use of the land (i.e., engage in independent small farming), and resolved to divest them further of the best farm land on reservations to further white, western expansion. In addition to Native Americans losing the most valuable and resource rich land on their reservations, the federal government limited allotments to those who were enrolled in a tribe and featured on a tribe’s rolls. The completeness and accuracy of the rolls maintained by the BIA often depended on a member’s good standing with government officials. Individuals who were troublesome or failed to meet requirements were excluded, despite having apparent tribal affiliation.

The final attempt at assimilating Native Americans came in 1924 with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act. This act provided tribal members dual citizenship in their enrolled tribe and with the United States. The passage of the act was less of a recognition of Native Americans’ contributions to and place in American, but a last-ditch effort to erase Native culture.

Nearly 1,000 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children died while attending boarding schools that were set up by the U.S. government for the purpose of erasing their tribal ties and cultural practices, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Interior Department.

“For the first time in the history of the country, the U.S. government is accounting for its role in operating Indian boarding schools to forcibly assimilate Indian children, and working to set us on a path to heal from the wounds inflicted by those schools,” Bryan Newland, the department’s assistant secretary for Indian affairs, wrote this month in a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that was included in the report.

The report calls on the federal government to apologize and “chart a road to healing.” Its recommendations include creating a national memorial to commemorate the children’s deaths and educate the public; investing in research and helping Native communities heal from intergenerational stress and trauma; and revitalizing Native languages.
From the early 1800s to the late 1960s, the U.S. government removed Native children from their families and homes and sent them to boarding schools, where they were forcibly assimilated.

It spent nearly $25 billion in today’s dollars on the comprehensive effort, according to the investigative report released on Tuesday, including operating 417 schools across 37 states and territories where children were physically and sexually abused. They were also forcibly converted to Christianity and punished for speaking their Native languages.

The report identified by name almost 19,000 children who attended a federal school between 1819 and 1969, though the Interior Department acknowledges there were more.

The accounting of the bodies of Native American children was one of the main goals of a federal initiative begun more than three years ago after Canada discovered the remains of 215 children at the site of a defunct boarding school and announced a similar effort. Ms. Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo citizen and the first Native American cabinet secretary, has led the effort in the United States.

Tuesday’s report, the second and final from the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, found that 973 children died at Indian boarding schools and were buried at 74 sites, 21 of which are unmarked. The Interior Department said it was working with tribes that want the remains repatriated.

Though political support eventually faded for the forced assimilation of children, the effects of the uprooting and abuse are still felt by Native communities, according to the report. Children were left with lasting psychological trauma, and studies funded by the National Institutes of Health have linked poor physical health in Native American adults to their attendance at federally run schools as children.

The department conducted interviews with hundreds of survivors as part of its investigation. Some described widespread sexual abuse at the schools, as well as routine physical abuse. One attendee described newcomers being stripped of their parkas, which were burned in a furnace. Another recalled that many children became “violently ill” from highly processed foods like powdered milk and canned meats, and were then beaten for soiling their bedding or clothing.

“I remember my braids being cut off; washed like we were dirty; talked to us like we were dirty,” one unnamed participant, from South Dakota, said in the report. “We were dressed in uniforms.”

Others described lasting feelings of abandonment and shame from having their family connections severed when they were taken away to attend the schools.

“I think the worst part of it was at night, listening to all the other children crying themselves to sleep, crying for their parents and just wanting to go home,” said another unnamed participant, from Michigan.

A participant from Washington described how her sister, now a grandmother, still could not sleep in the dark and would wake up screaming when the light was turned off because she had been routinely locked in a closet as a young girl.

The report said that aside from experiencing lasting physical and psychological effects, many children learned only agricultural or manual and domestic labor skills, with tribal economies destabilized by their lack of formal education.

The report said that although “a change in our nation’s understanding” had come quickly — with the troubling history of Indian boarding schools now discussed in books, television shows and movies — many communities were far from healed.

“The new report provides critical information that is needed to understand the complete history and impact of the federal Indian boarding school era,” Beth Wright, a lawyer with the Native American Rights Fund who worked on boarding school cases, said in a statement. “The next step is for the Department of Interior to provide resources and funding directly to tribal nations who desire to research, address and tell their own stories of the impact the federal Indian boarding school era has had on their own communities and people.”

Notable Court Cases:

U.S. v. Clapox, 35 F. 575 (1888) – This case ratified the creation of the Courts of Indian Offenses in 1883 and their use as a means to assimilate Native Americans. After a fellow tribal member rescued their friend from jail, both the rescuer and escapee were charged under federal law. The Clapox decision recognized that the Courts of Indian Offenses were “educational and disciplinary instrumentalities” to be used by the United States to control and shape the culture of tribes under the United States guardianship.

Sources

nytimes.com, “Nearly 1,000 Native Children Died at Boarding Schools, Interior Dept. Finds.” By Aishvarya Kavi; nps.gov, “The Dawes Act.”; library.law.howard.edu, “A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States: The Allotment and Assimilation Era (1887 – 1934).”;

Common Sense and Ramblings In America

What is Wrong With Our World, Native American Assimilation?

How did the Dawes Act affect Native Americans?

What is assimilation?

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How did the Dawes Act affect Native Americans?

What is assimilation?

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