Editing Dawes Act (section)

==Effects==
[[File:Indian Land for Sale.jpg|thumb|A 1911 ad offering "allotted Indian land" for sale]]

=== Identity and detribalization ===
The effects of the Dawes Act were destructive on Native American sovereignty, culture, and identity since it empowered the U.S. government to:

# legally preempt the sovereign right of Indians to define themselves
# implement the specious notion of blood-quantum as the legal criteria for defining Indians
# institutionalize divisions between "full-bloods" and "mixed-bloods"
# "detribalize" a sizeable segment of the Indian population
# legally appropriate vast tracts of Indian land

The federal government initially viewed the Dawes Act as such a successful democratic experiment that they decided to further explore the use of blood-quantum laws and the notion of federal recognition as the qualifying means for "dispensing other resources and services such as health care and educational funding" to Native Americans long after its passage. Under Dawes, land parcels were dispersed in accordance with perceived blood quanta. Indigenous people labeled "full-blooded" were allocated "relatively small parcels of land deeded with trust patents over which the government retained complete control for a minimum of twenty-five years." Those who were labeled "mixed-blood" were "deeded larger and better tracts of land, with 'patents in fee simple' (complete control), but were also forced to accept U.S. citizenship and relinquish tribal status."<ref name=":1" />

Additionally, Native Americans who did not "meet the established criteria" as being either "full-blood" or "mixed-blood" were effectively "detribalized", being "deposed of their American Indian identity and displaced from their homelands, discarded into the nebula of American otherness."<ref name=":1" /> While the Dawes Act is "typically recognized" as the "primary instigation of divisions between tribal and detribalized Indians," the history of detribalization in the United States "actually precedes Dawes."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought, 10th Anniversary Edition|last=Grande|first=Sandy|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2015|isbn=9781610489898|pages=164}}</ref>

=== Land loss ===
The Dawes Act ended Native American communal holding of property (with cropland often being privately owned by families or clans<ref>[http://www.thefreemanonline.org/features/property-rights-among-native-americans Terry L. Anderson, Property Rights Among Native Americans]</ref>), by which they had ensured that everyone had a home and a place in the tribe. The act "was the culmination of American attempts to destroy tribes and their governments and to open Indian lands to settlement by non-Indians and to development by railroads."<ref>Kidwell, Clara Sue. [http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/A/AL011.html "Allotment"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100207000614/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/A/AL011.html |date=2010-02-07 }}, ''Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture.'' (retrieved 29 December 2009)</ref> Land owned by Native Americans decreased from {{convert|138|e6acre|km2}} in 1887 to {{convert|48|e6acre|km2}} in 1934.<ref name="Gunn">Gunn, Steven J. [http://www.enotes.com/major-acts-congress/indian-general-allotment-act-dawes-act/print Major Acts of Congress:Indian General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) (1887).] accessed 21 May 2011</ref>

Senator [[Henry M. Teller]] of [[Colorado]] was one of the most outspoken opponents of allotment. In 1881, he said that allotment was a policy "to despoil the Indians of their lands and to make them vagabonds on the face of the earth." Teller also said,

<blockquote>the real aim [of allotment] was to get at the Indian lands and open them up to settlement. The provisions for the apparent benefit of the Indians are but the pretext to get at his lands and occupy them. ... If this were done in the name of greed, it would be bad enough; but to do it in the name of humanity ... is infinitely worse.<ref>Otis, pp. 18–19</ref></blockquote>

In 1890, Dawes himself remarked about the incidence of Native Americans losing their land allotments to settlers: "I never knew a White man to get his foot on an Indian's land who ever took it off."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GyYMAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1|title=Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian|publisher=The Lake Mohonk Conference|year=1890|editor-last=Barrows|editor-first=Isabel C.|pages=87}}</ref> The amount of land in native hands rapidly depleted from some {{convert|150|e6acre|km2}} to {{convert|78|e6acre|km2}} by 1900. The remainder of the land, once allotted to appointed natives, was declared surplus and sold to non-native settlers as well as railroad and other large corporations; other sections were converted into federal parks and military compounds.<ref>Churchill, Ward. ''Struggle for Land: Native North American Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Colonization''. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002. p. 48. Print.</ref>

Most allottees given land on the Great Plains were not successful at achieving economic viability via farming. Division of land among heirs upon the allottees' deaths quickly led to land fractionalization. Most allotment land, which could be sold after a statutory period of 25 years, was eventually sold to non-Native buyers at bargain prices. Additionally, land deemed to be surplus beyond what was needed for allotment was opened to White settlers, though the profits from the sales of these lands were often invested in programs meant to aid the Native Americans. Over the 47 years of the Act's life, Native Americans lost about {{convert|90|e6acre|km2}} of treaty land, or about two-thirds of the 1887 land base. About 90,000 Native Americans were made landless.<ref name="Case">{{cite book|author=Case DS, Voluck DA|year=2002|title=Alaska Natives and American Laws|edition=2nd|pages=104–105|location=Fairbanks, AK|publisher=University of Alaska Press|isbn=978-1-889963-08-2}}</ref>

=== Culture and gender roles ===
The Dawes Act compelled Native Americans to adopt European American culture by prohibiting Indigenous cultural practices and encouraging settler cultural practices and ideologies into Native American families and children. By transferring communally-owned Native land into private property, the [[Office of Indian Affairs]] (OIA) "hoped to transform Native Americans into [[Yeoman|yeoman farmers]] and farm wives through the assignment of individual land holdings known as allotments." In an attempt to fulfill this objective, the Dawes Act "outlawed Native American culture and established a code of Indian offenses regulating individual behavior according to Euro-American norms of conduct." Any violations of this code were to be "tried in a Court of Indian Offenses on each reservation." Included with the Dawes Act were "funds to instruct Native Americans in Euro-American patterns of thought and behavior through Indian Service schools."<ref name=":3" />

With the seizure of many Native American land holdings, indigenous structures of domestic life, gender roles, and tribal identity were critically altered in order to meld with society. For instance, "an important objective of the Dawes Act was to restructure Native American gender roles."<ref name=":3" /> White settlers who encountered Native American societies in the latter half of the nineteenth century "judged women's work [in Native societies] as lower in status than that of men" and assumed it was a sign of indigenous women's "disempowerment and drudgery". As a result, "in evolutionary terms, Whites saw women's performance of what seemed to be male tasks&nbsp;– farming, home building, and supply gathering&nbsp;– as a corruption of gender roles and an impediment to progress." In theory, the gendered tasks "accorded many indigenous women esteem and even rewards and status within their tribes."<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|title=Making Home Work: Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the American West, 1860–1919|last=Simonsen|first=Jane E.|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=2006|isbn=9780807830321|pages=10–11}}</ref>

By dividing reservation lands into [[Private property|privately owned]] parcels, legislators hoped to complete the assimilation process by forcing Native Americans to adopt individual households and strengthen the [[nuclear family]] and values of economic dependency strictly within this small household unit.<ref>Gibson, [[Arrell Gibson|Arrell M. Gibson]]. "Indian Land Transfers." ''Handbook of North American Indians: History of Indian–White Relations, Volume 4''. Wilcomb E. Washburn and William C. Sturtevant, eds. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1988. pp. 226–29</ref> The Dawes Act was thus implemented to destroy "native cultural patterns" by drawing "on theories, common to both ethnologists and material feminists, that saw environmental change as a way to effect social change." Although private property ownership was the cornerstone of the act, reformers "believed that civilization could only be effected by concomitant changes to social life" in indigenous communities. As a result, "they promoted Christian marriages among indigenous people, forced families to regroup under male heads (a tactic often enforced by renaming), and trained men in wage-earning occupations while encouraging women to support them at home through domestic activities."<ref name=":4" />

=== Reduction of sovereignty ===
In 1906, the Burke Act (also known as the Forced Patenting Act) amended the GAA to give the Secretary of the Interior the power to issue allottees a patent in [[fee simple]] to people classified "competent and capable". The criteria for this determination is unclear but it meant that allottees deemed "competent" by the Secretary of the Interior would have their land taken out of trust status, subject to taxation, and could be sold by the allottee. The allotted lands of Native Americans determined to be incompetent by the Secretary of the Interior were automatically leased out by the federal government.<ref>{{cite web |author=Bartecchi D |title=The History of "Competency" as a Tool to Control Native American Lands |url=http://villageearth.org/pages/Projects/Pine_Ridge/pineridgeblog/2007/02/history-of-competency-as-tool-to.html |work=Pine Ridge Project |date=2007-02-19 |access-date=2008-11-06 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081211112424/http://villageearth.org/pages/Projects/Pine_Ridge/pineridgeblog/2007/02/history-of-competency-as-tool-to.html |archive-date=2008-12-11 }}</ref>
The act reads:
<blockquote>... the Secretary of the Interior may, in his discretion, and he is hereby authorized, whenever he shall be satisfied that any Native American allottee is competent and capable of managing his or her affairs at any time to cause to be issued to such allottee a patent in fee simple, and thereafter all restrictions as to sale, encumbrance, or taxation of said land shall be removed.</blockquote>

The use of competence opens up the categorization, making it much more subjective and thus increasing the exclusionary power of the Secretary of Interior. Although this act gave power to the allottee to decide whether to keep or sell the land, given the harsh economic reality of the time, and lack of access to credit and markets, liquidation of Indian lands was almost inevitable. It was known by the Department of Interior that virtually 95% of fee-patented land would eventually be sold to whites.<ref>Robertson, 2002</ref>

In 1926, Secretary of the Interior [[Hubert Work]] commissioned a study of the federal administration of Indian policy and the condition of Native American people. Completed in 1928, ''The Problem of Indian Administration''{{spaced ndash}}commonly known as the [[Meriam Report]] after the study's director, [[Meriam Report#Lewis Meriam|Lewis Meriam]]{{spaced ndash}} documented fraud and misappropriation by government agents. In particular, the Meriam Report claimed that the General Allotment Act had been used to illegally deprive Native Americans of their land rights.

After considerable debate, Congress terminated the allotment process under the Dawes Act by enacting the [[Indian Reorganization Act]] of 1934 ("Wheeler-Howard Act"). However, the allotment process in [[Alaska]], under the separate [[Alaska Native Allotment Act]], continued until its revocation in 1971 by the [[Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act]].

Despite the termination of the allotment process in 1934, the effects of the General Allotment Act continue into the present. For example, one provision of the Act was the establishment of a trust fund, administered by the [[Bureau of Indian Affairs]], to collect and distribute revenues from oil, mineral, timber, and grazing leases on Native American lands. The BIA's alleged improper management of the trust fund resulted in litigation, in particular the case ''[[Cobell v. Kempthorne]]'' (settled in 2009 for $3.4 billion), to force a proper accounting of revenues.

===Fractionation===
{{more references needed section|date=March 2015}}
For over one hundred thirty years, the consequences of federal Indian allotments have developed into the problem of ''fractionation''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=History of Indian Land Consolidation {{!}} Indian Affairs |url=https://www.bia.gov/guide/history-indian-land-consolidation |access-date=2024-05-27 |website=www.bia.gov |language=en}}</ref> As original allottees die, their heirs receive equal, undivided interests in the allottees' lands. In successive generations, smaller undivided interests descend to the next generation. Fractionated interests in individual Native American allotted land continue to expand exponentially with each new generation.<ref>{{Cite web |title=What is Fractionation? {{!}} Indian Affairs |url=https://www.bia.gov/bia/ots/dtlc/fractionation |access-date=2024-05-27 |website=www.bia.gov |language=en}}</ref><ref name=S1721/>{{rp|7}}

In 2004, [[Ross Swimmer]], Special Trustee for American Indians at the [[U.S. Department of the Interior]], stated that there were "approximately four million owner interests in the {{convert|10000000|acre|km2}} of individually owned trust lands, a situation the magnitude of which makes management of trust assets extremely difficult and costly."<ref name=S1721/>{{rp|7}} "These four million interests could expand to eleven million interests by the year 2030 unless an aggressive approach to fractionation is taken."<ref name=":0" /> "There are now single pieces of property with ownership interests that are less than 0.0000001% or 1/9 millionth of the whole interest, which has an estimated value of 0.004 cent."<ref name=S1721/>{{rp|7}}

The economic consequences of fractionation are severe. Some recent appraisal studies{{specify|date=June 2011}} suggest that when the number of owners of a tract of land reaches between ten and twenty, the value of that tract drops to zero.

In addition, the fractionation of land and the resultant ballooning number of trust accounts quickly produced an administrative nightmare. Over the past 40 years, the area of trust land has grown by approximately {{convert|80000|acre|km2}} per year. Approximately 357 million dollars{{citation needed|date=January 2011}} is collected annually from all sources of trust asset management, including coal sales, timber harvesting, oil and gas leases and other rights-of-way and lease activity. No single fiduciary institution has ever managed as many trust accounts as the Department of the Interior has managed over the last century.{{citation needed|date=January 2011}}

Interior is involved in "the management of 100,000 leases for individual [Native Americans] and tribes on trust land that encompasses approximately {{convert|56000000|acre|km2}}. Leasing, use permits, sale revenues, and interest of approximately $226 million per year are collected for approximately 230,000 individual Indian money [(IIM)] accounts, and about $530 million per year are collected for approximately 1,400 tribal accounts. In addition, the trust currently manages approximately $2.8 billion in tribal funds and $400 million in individual Native American funds."<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Testimony of Wayne Nordwall...S. 550, The "American Probate Reform Act of 2003 |url=https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/dup/assets/as-ia/ocla/S.%20550%20testimony%20Final%2005-07-2003.pdf |access-date=May 27, 2024 |website=BIA}}</ref>

"Under current regulations, probates need to be conducted for every account with trust assets, even those with balances between one cent and one dollar. While the average cost for a probate process exceeds $3,000, even a streamlined, expedited process...costing as little as $500 would require almost $10,000,000 to probate the $5,700 in these accounts."<ref name=S1721/>{{rp|8}}

"Unlike most private trusts, the federal government bears the entire cost of administering the Indian trust. As a result, the usual incentives found in the commercial sector for reducing the number of small or inactive accounts do not apply to the Indian trust. Similarly, the United States has not adopted many of the tools that States and local government entities have for ensuring that unclaimed or abandoned property is returned to productive use within the local community."<ref name=S1721/>{{rp|8}}

Fractionation is not a new issue. In the 1920s, the [[Brookings Institution]] conducted a major study of the conditions of the Native Americans and included data on the impacts of fractionation. This report, which became known as the [[Meriam Report]], was issued in 1928. Its conclusions and recommendations formed the basis for land reform provisions that were included in what would become the IRA. "The original versions of the IRA included two key titles; one dealing with probate and the other with land consolidation." Because of opposition to many of these provisions in Indian Country, often by the major European-American ranchers and industry who leased land and other private interests, most were removed while Congress was considering the bill. The final version of the IRA included only a few basic land reforms and probate measures. Although Congress enabled major reforms in the structure of tribes through the IRA and stopped the allotment process, it did not meaningfully address fractionation as had been envisioned by [[John Collier (reformer)|John Collier]], then Commissioner of Indian Affairs, or the Brookings Institution.<ref name=S1721/>{{rp|8}}

"In 1922, the [[General Accounting Office]] (GAO) conducted an audit of 12 reservations to determine the severity of fractionation on those reservations. The GAO found that on the 12 reservations for which it compiled data, there were approximately 80,000 discrete owners but, because of fractionation, there were over a million ownership records associated with those owners. The GAO also found that if the land were physically divided by the fractional interests, many of these interests would represent less than one square foot of ground. In early 2002, the Department of the Interior attempted to replicate the audit methodology used by the GAO and to update the GAO report data to assess the continued growth of fractionation." It found that it increased by more than 40% between 1992 and 2002.<ref name=S1721/>{{rp|8}}

"As an example of continuing fractionation, consider a real tract identified in 1987 in ''[[Hodel v. Irving]]'', 481 U.S. 704 (1987):

{{blockquote|Tract 1305 is {{convert|40|acre|m2}} and produces $1,080 in income annually. It is valued at $8,000. It has 439 owners, one-third of whom receive less than $.05 in annual rent and two-thirds of whom receive less than $1. The largest interest holder receives $82.85 annually. The common denominator used to compute fractional interests in the property is 3,394,923,840,000. The smallest heir receives $.01 every 177 years. If the tract were sold (assuming the 439 owners could agree) for its estimated $8,000 value, he would be entitled to $.000418. The administrative costs of handling this tract are estimated by the [[Bureau of Indian Affairs]] at $17,560 annually.}}

Today, this tract produces $2,000 in income annually and is valued at $22,000. It now has 505 owners but the common denominator used to compute fractional interests has grown to 220,670,049,600,000. If the tract were sold (assuming the 505 owners could agree) for its estimated $22,000 value, the smallest heir would now be entitled to $.00001824." The administrative costs of handling this tract in 2003 are estimated by the BIA at $42,800."<ref name=":0" />

Fractionation has become significantly worse. As noted above, in some cases the land is so highly fractionated that it can never be made productive. With such small ownership interests, "it is nearly impossible to obtain the level of consent necessary to lease the land." "In addition, to manage highly fractionated parcels of land, the government spends more money probating estates, maintaining title records, leasing the land, and attempting to manage and distribute tiny amounts of income to individual owners than is received in income from the land. In many cases, the costs associated with managing these lands can be significantly more than the value of the underlying asset."<ref name="S1721">{{Cite book |last=Resources |first=United States Congress House Committee on |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3dwyMvfho2gC |title=S. 1721, a Bill to Amend the Indian Land Consolidation Act to Improve Provisions Relating to Probate of Trust and Restricted Land: Legislative Hearing Before the Committee on Resources, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Eighth Congress, Second Session, Wednesday, June 23, 2004 |date=2004 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |isbn=978-0-16-074225-5 |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|9}}<ref name=":0" />