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Re: The Alternative to CW - Lincoln's Position?

"It certainly was more of an assimulation plan than was offered to the American Indians."

Beginning in 1878, Indian children were taken from their families and sent east to schools, where they were dressed as whites, and encouraged, someties forced, to speak English and lose their cultural identities. (http://www.kporterfield.com/aicttw/articles/boardingschool.html)

There was a plan to break reservations up into individual properties, and have the Indian people become more like white men. "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." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_reservation)

"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 kmĀ²) of land were returned to various tribes. Within a decade of John Collier's retirement (the initiator of the Indian New Deal) the government's position began to swing in the opposite direction. The new Indian Commissioners Myers and Emmons introduced the idea of the "withdrawal program" or "termination" which sought to end the government's responsibility and involvement with Indians and to force their assimilation. The Indians would lose their lands but be compensated (though those who lost their lands often weren't). Though discontent and social rejection killed the idea before it was fully implemented, five tribes were terminated (Coushattas, Utes, Paiutes, Menominees and Klamaths) and 114 groups in California lost their federal recognition as tribes. Many individuals were also relocated to cities only to have a full third of them return to their tribes in the decades following." (ame site.)

America's experience with the Native Americans they found here has not been something to be proud of. Stan

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The Alternative to CW - Lincoln's Position?
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Re: The Alternative to CW - Lincoln's Position?
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Re: The Alternative to CW - Lincoln's Position?
Re: The Alternative to CW - Lincoln's Position?