Native American Civil Rights Key Points

Civil Rights:

           Native Americans

Political, Social, Economic

Political

·       Many treaties made between government and Native Americans but all were brokenby the government.

·       Government aim is to do everything they can to assimilate the Native Americans.

·       Government pass the decision on general reservation issues(setting up reservations, relocating tribes and redrawing reservation boundaries) from Native Americans to Congress 1871 > leads tothe Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 where NAs defeat and kill General Custer and his 200 men.

·       1887 Dawes Severalty Act

·       1903 Lone Wolf vs Hitchcock> government gain the right to revoke all treaties made with NAs > stated NAs are “an ignorant and dependent race” and therefore had no rights.

·       After WW2,tribes join together > The NCAI (National Congress of American Indians) founded in 1944 > unity makes them stronger – separate tribes were more prone to government manipulation > put pressure on the government and so they established the Indian Claims Commissionwhich was meant to return native lands.

·       New Deal period sees some improvements > Wheeler-Howard Act 1934> can extend political rights to women > New Deal agencies build school and hospitals on reservations.

·       Urbanisation exposed them to the AA Civil Rights Movement which inspired them >‘Red Power’ > 1968 formation of AIM (American Indian Movement) which was militant.

·       1969-1992 regain their recognition and rights.

Social

·       1862 Homesteads Act> government determined to control the West (Westward expansion) and so gave farmers a 160-acre plot of land for free as long as they farmed it for five years (until 1967) > free land fits in with the Native American (NA) belief of the Great Spirit > 20,000 people settled on the land which had serious negative consequences for the NA way of life.

·       Medicine Lodge Treaty 1867 > wants to relocate NAs to reservations away from American settlement > broken

·       Railways > further westward expansion > wanted to develop a coast-to-coast railway > this went through the Plainsand rail companies encouraged more settlersto live on the land > railway also disrupted the buffalo herdswhich meant the NA way of life was harmed once again > dependent on buffalo for food and other things (e.g. water storage) > much of the NA population declined through starvation.

·       Assimilation > want to destroy the tribal lifestyle and bonds of the Natives through:

-      Education > (1886) two boarding schools set up in Virginia and Pennsylvania where students were forced to attend and were not allowed to speak their own languageand they had to renounce their traditional tribal beliefs.

-      Conversion to Christianity

-      Making NAs farmers

-      Creating reservations for NAs

·       1887 Dawes Severalty Act> gave NAs the full rights of citizenship (civil rights) and made them landowners > undermined…