It is not possible to talk about Indians in the United States today without reference to reservations. Most Americans are aware that as the European population expanded across the continent Indians were confined to “reserved” areas which were set aside for exclusive Indian use for “as long as the grasses grow and the rivers flow” or until Congress changes its mind. While there are about 324 federal Indian reservations in the United States, these reservations are not all the same: each reservation is unique with regard to its tribal heritage, its relationship to the land, and its legal relationships with the United States.
Before talking about the different kinds of Indian reservations, it is important to point out that not all Indians live on reservations: less than half of the Indians who are enrolled members of federally recognized Indian tribes live on their reservations.
It is also important to point out that not all Indian tribes have reservations. While the federal government has officially recognized nearly 600 Indian tribes, there are several hundred tribes which do not have an official relationship with the federal government. These unrecognized tribes do not have reservations.
One of the stories which is often told by history books and the popular media is the removal of Indian tribes from east of the Mississippi River and their resettlement in what is now Oklahoma. While the stories of removal need to be told, and retold, they lead to the stereotype of Indian reservations as places far from the indigenous homelands. While many tribes were removed from their homelands, many tribes have reservations which include their traditional homes.
Following the Constitution of the United States, the federal government negotiated treaties (international agreements) with Indian nations. These treaties often established Indian reservations that were territories which the Indian nations reserved for themselves (please note that the United States did not “give” reservations to the Indian nations). The treaties indicated these reservations were to be for the exclusive use of the Indians.
Originally, reservations were often areas in which non-Indians were to have only limited access. In the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie which established the Great Sioux Reservation, for example, article 2 states that the reservation:
“set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Indians.”
As with all treaties, the United States refused to enforce treaty obligations against non-Indians. Reservations were often invaded illegally by non-Indian miners, ranchers, and farmers who demanded that the United States government remove the Indians and give the intruders title to the land.
By the 1880s, the federal government was offended by the communal ownership of reservation land, considering it to be uncivilized, un-Christian, and a barrier to civilization. The United States, therefore, began a policy of dividing up the reservations into small, individually owned plots of land. It was felt that individual land ownership would help Indians to assimilate into American society by helping them value the accumulation of wealth. In addition, surplus land could be transferred to non-Indians.
Allotment meant that tribal lands were to be divided among tribal members and this raised the important question: Who was a tribal member? From the viewpoint of land-hungry non-Indians, it would be best if tribal membership were restricted to just a few people based on American concepts of race and patrilineal descent as this would allow more reservation land to be transferred to non-Indians.
As a result of the 1877 General Allotment Act (also known as the Dawes Act), on many reservations today the Indians are a minority on their own land. While the reservation boundaries were unchanged by the infamous Dawes Act, the land within the reservation boundaries could now be privately owned by non-Indians.
The United States government also declared that it could unilaterally change reservation boundaries. Thus, many large reservations, such as that reserved by the Sioux, were broken up into smaller reservations and large areas opened up for non-Indian settlement.
Like many people today, the nineteenth-century government treaty negotiators viewed Indians through a racial lens which simply saw Indian/White. They failed to understand that Indian as a racial construct fails to recognize that there are many very different tribal cultures. While the Anishinaabe, Lakota, Kootenai, and Tohono O’odham are all Indians, they are not the same. In establishing reservations through the treaty process, the federal government often assigned Indians from very different cultural traditions to the same reservations, assuming that all Indians were the same. As a result, many shared reservations today are homes to tribes which do not share the same language and have very different cultural traditions.
Since the United States stopped making treaties with Indian nations in 1871, reservations have been created by Presidential Executive Order, by Congressional Action, and by court actions.
In 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act which allowed tribes to reorganize their tribal governments. However, the federal government took the view that reservation and tribe were the same, ignoring the fact that many reservations contained dissimilar tribes. As a result, those reservations wishing to reorganize their tribal governments had to create confederated governments. As a result of this, some smaller tribes have lost their individual identity and have become a part of a new “confederated” tribe.
At the mid-point in the twentieth century, the United States began a policy known as termination in which the United States terminated or dissolved Indian reservations and tribal governments. Historian Richard Lowitt, in an article in the Chronicles of Oklahoma, writes:
“This new approach was intended to make Indians, as rapidly as possible, subject to the same laws and entitled to the same rights and responsibilities that pertained to all other American citizens.”
In this approach, Indian cultures were considered to be irrelevant at best and anti-American at worst. In his chapter on the Eisenhower administration in The History of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana, 1800-2000, David Miller writes:
“Reservations were considered the product of separate and unequal treatment, with little understanding of what treaties or negotiated executive agreements meant to Indian people.”
Part of the assimilation and termination argument dealt with money: it would be cheaper for the United States, which was now heavily committed to rebuilding the war-torn countries and economies of their former enemies, to do away with treaty rights, tribal governments, and support for Indian programs. According to anthropologist Loretta Fowler, in her book Arapahoe Politics 1851-1978: Symbols in Crises of Authority:
“With termination, reservation lands could be sold and would be subject to local property taxes.”
Former Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, in his chapter in American Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, explains their attitude as:
“If we get rid of ‘tribes,’ we can avoid responsibility to individual Indians and save lots of money.”
Many of the tribes which were selected for termination had valuable timber and mineral resources. With termination, these resources could be privatized—that is, transferred from the public domain to the ownership of large corporations—and then developed.
Between 1945 and 1960 Congress terminated more than one hundred tribes and small bands. This action left these groups with the same legal status as the unrecognized tribes. Since the end of termination, 78 of the 113 terminated tribes have been recognized again by the United States government and 35 now have casinos; 24 of these tribes are now considered extinct; 10 have state recognition but not federal recognition; and 31 are landless.
Within two decades, it was generally recognized that termination had been a failure and, in the 1970s, the federal government’s Indian policy regarding reservations changed once again. Under the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, the Indian policy began to shift and with the formal renunciation of termination by President Richard Nixon, Indian policy formally moved away from assimilation. The new Indian policy focused on Self-Determination and government-to-government relations between federal agencies, state governments and the tribes. Law professor Bruce Duthu, in his book American Indians and the Law, writes:
“The modern era of self-determination represents the first time since the early nineteenth century that Indian tribes have enjoyed sustained support and cooperation from the Congress and the executive branch to engage in meaningful government-to-government relations.”
Most reservations today are no longer areas reserved for the exclusive use of the Indians. Unfortunately, many of the non-Indians living on the reservations, or close to the reservations, have little understanding of the history of these areas, the cultures of the tribes, and the special body of law which governs them.
Indians 101/201
Twice each week Indians 101/201 explores various American Indian topics. Indians 201 is an expansion of an earlier essay.
Indians 201: The Indian Removal Act
Indians 101: Councils and reservations 150 years ago, 1870
Indians 101: The Methodists Run the Siletz Reservation
Indians 101: The Early Years of the Coast or Siletz Reservation
Indians 101: Greed and the Administration of Indian Reservations in the 19th Century
Indians 101: The Creation of the Fort McDowell Reservation
Indians 101: Faith-Based Reservations
Indians 101: American Indian Reservations in 1916
