Land and the many different solutions tested without success.
In 1851, the united statescongress passed the indian appropriations act which authorized the creation of
Indian reservations in modern day Oklahoma. Relations between settlers and
natives had grown increasingly worse as the settlers encroached on territory
and natural resources in the West.
By the late 1860´s, President Ulysses
s. grant pursued a stated "Peace Policy" as a possible solution to
the conflict. The policy included a reorganization of the Indian Service, with
the goal of relocating various tribes from their ancestral homes to parcels of
lands established specifically for their inhabitation. The policy called for
the replacement of government officials by religious men, nominated by
churches, to oversee the Indian agencies on reservations in order to teach Christianity
to the native tribes. The Quakers were especially active in this policy on
reservations. The "civilization" policy was aimed at eventually
preparing the tribes for citizenship.
Reservation treaties sometimes
included stipend agreements, in which the federal government would grant a
certain amount of goods to a tribe yearly. The implementation of the policy was
erratic, however, and in many cases the stipend goods were not delivered.
Controversy
The policy was controversial from
the start. Reservations were generally established by executive order. In many
cases, white settlers objected to the size of land parcels, which were
subsequently reduced. A report submitted to Congress in 1868 found widespread corruption
among the federal Native American agencies and generally poor conditions among
the relocated tribes.
Many tribes ignored the
relocation orders at first and were forced onto their new limited land parcels.
Enforcement of the policy required the united states army to restrict the
movements of various tribes. The pursuit of tribes in order to force them back
onto reservations led to a number of Native American Wars. The most well known
conflict was the sioux war on the northern great plains, between 1876 and 1881,
which included the battle of little bighorn. Other famous wars in this regard
included the nez perce war.
By the late 1870s, the policy
established by President Grant was regarded as a failure, primarily because it
had resulted in some of the bloodiest wars between Native Americans and the
United States. By 1877, President Rutherford B. Haves began phasing out the
policy, and by 1882 all religious organizations had relinquished their
authority to the federal Indian agency.
Most Indian
reservations, like the Laguna Indian reservation in New Mexico, are in the
western United States, often in arid regions unsuitable for agriculture.
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.
The Indian New Deal
The Indian reaorganization 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 km²) of land were returned to
various tribes. Within a decade of John Colliers´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.
Life and culture
Many Native Americans who live on
reservations deal with the federal government through two agencies: the Bureau
of Indian Affairs and the Indian health Service.
Life qualities in some
reservations are comparable to the quality of life in the developing world. For
example, Shannon County, South Dakota, home of the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation, is routinely described as one of the poorest counties in the
nation.
Gambling
In 1979, the Seminole tribe in Florida
opened a high-stakes bingo operation on its reservation in Florida. The state
attempted to close the operation down but was stopped in the courts. In the
1980s, the case of California v.Cabazon Band of Mission Indians established the
right of reservations to operate other forms of gambling operations. In 1988,
Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory act which recognized the right of
Native American tribes to establish gambling and gaming facilities on their
reservations as long as the states in which they are located have some form of
legalized gambling. Today, many Native American casinos are used as tourist
attractions to draw visitors and revenue to reservations.
The Canadian Indian story.
Indian Reserve (19630).In Canada, an Indian reserve
is specified by the Indian act as a "tract of land, the legal title to
which is vested in Her Majesty, that has been set apart by Her Majesty for the
use and benefit of a band." The Act also specifies that land reserved for
the use and benefit of a band which is not vested in the Crown (for example, Wikwemikong
Unceded Reserve on Manitoulin Islands) is also subject to the Indian Act
provisions governing reserves. Superficially a reserve is similar to an American
Indian reservation, although the histories of the development of reserves and
reservations are markedly different. Although the American term reservation
is occasionally used, reserve is normally the standard term in Canada.
The terms Native reserve, First
nations reserve and First Nation are also widely used instead of Indian
reserve. Strictly speaking, however First Nation more properly
designates a group which may occupy more than one reserve. For example, the Munsee-Delaware
nation in Ontario is only one of three reserves in Western Ontario occupied by
members of the Munsee-Delaware First Nation. In all, there are over 600
occupied reserves in Canada, most of them quite small in area.
The Indian Act gives the Minister
of indian Affairs the right to "determine whether any purpose for which
lands in a reserve are used is for the use and benefit of the band." Title
to land within the reserve may only be transferred to the band or to individual
band members. Reserve lands may not be seized legally, nor is the personal
property of a band or a band member living on a reserve subject to
"charge, pledge, mortgage, attachment, levy, seizure distress or execution
in favour or at the instance of any person other than an Indian or a band"
(section 89 (1) of the Indian Act. As a result reserves and their residents
have great difficulty obtaining financing. Canada Mortgage and Housing
Corporation (CMHC) has, however, created an on-reserve housing loan program in
which members of bands which enter into a trust agreement with CMHC and lenders
can receive loans to build or repair houses. In other programs loans to
residents of reserves are guaranteed by the federal government.
Provinces and municipalities may
expropriate reserve land only if specifically authorized by a provincial or
federal law. Few reserves have any economic advantages, such as resource
revenues. The revenues of those reserves which do are held in trust by the
Minister of Indian Affairs. Reserve lands and the personal property of bands
and resident band members are exempt from all forms of taxation except local
taxation. Corporations owned by members of First Nations are not exempt,
however. This exemption has allowed band members operating in proprietorships
or partnerships to sell heavily taxed goods such as cigarettes on their
reserves at prices considerably lower than those at stores off the reserves.
Most reserves are self-governed, within the limits already described, under
guidelines established by the Indian Act.
LAND LAWS AND THE ISSUE OF LAND OWNERSHIP
LAND LAWS AND THE ISSUE OF LAND OWNERSHIP (RIGHT) is definitely a global issue for indigenous people. The few success stories generally arise from a determination within communities to gain land titles, increased public awareness both at the national level as well as internationally and get the crucial exposure to other groups involved in similar struggles.
Some of the miss represented solutions to similar problems and given media coverage as solved but in the actual sense, far from it. The establishment of the Indian protection service (s.p.i), which was a government agency, commissioned to protect the Indian lives in the amazon. As a result of the deculturing and destruction through disease and genocide (supported and contradicted by the constitutions) employed (perpetrated by the frontiers of development invading the lands used by the indigenous people, Hiring of professional ways tactics) of killing the people. The same (s.p.i) like most of the government supported organizations started to see into the well-being of the maasai (indigenous) was found guilty of gross abuse of the people they were meant to protect. In 1967 an investigation carried found officials guilty of corruption amongst officials, revealing shocking testimonies of undesired ,cruelty, ranging from massacre of whole tribes to child slavery and further indictments included the deliberate introduction of infectious diseases and poison in the form of "gifts" of sugar laced with arsenic, Evidence implicated (s.p.i) workers in murders. Sexual perversions, embezzlement of funds, robbery and fraudulent sale of Indian lands (same as what the councils are currently doing in Kenya).
The above events led to the formation of the FUNAI, which still exists to this date. In this we have seen similar problems arising, one official (Antonio cotrin) one of brazils most dedicated Indian agents, resigned from FUNAI announcing that he could not continue and was tired of being a grave digger of the Indians "I do not intend to contribute to enrichment of economic groups at the expense/cost of the extinction of the "primitive" cultures, the denunciation of pacification techniques employed by FUNAI agents served as a turning point, publicizing what contrim claimed were orchestrated and brutal tactics against all recently contacted tribes during that time.
The question we ask is how genuine are we in up holding human rights?
From our historical backgrounds most of the governments concerned harbor hidden agendas and operate back-stage and work as spies for what we are against, thus defeating the whole purpose of our organisations(the only unifying body that we were hopeful of but now going on a different direction being led by the whims of few Super war powers.