17.4 The Assault on American Indian Life and Culture

U.S. government policies led to massive displacement of Native Americans. The Indian Removal Act, reservation system, and broken treaties forced tribes from ancestral lands. Violence, including Indian Wars and massacres, further pushed Native Americans onto reservations.

Assimilation efforts aimed to erase Native American cultures. Boarding schools stripped children of their heritage, while the Dawes Act broke up tribal lands. These policies caused intergenerational trauma and cultural loss that tribes still grapple with today.

U.S. Government Policies and Native American Displacement

Impact of U.S. policies on tribes

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• Indian Removal Act (1830) authorized the president to negotiate removal treaties with Native American tribes, leading to the forced relocation of thousands from their ancestral lands (Trail of Tears, 1838-1839)
• Reservation system confined tribes to designated areas with limited resources and poor living conditions, disrupting traditional hunting and gathering practices and ways of life
• U.S. government violated or renegotiated treaties (Treaty of Fort Laramie 1851 vs 1868) to acquire more Native American land as westward expansion progressed
• Concept of Manifest Destiny justified the displacement of Native Americans and expansion of U.S. territory

Role of violence in displacement

• Indian Wars (1850s-1890s) were a series of conflicts between tribes and the U.S. military resulting in forced relocation and confinement to reservations
• Sand Creek Massacre (1864) demonstrated the brutality used against Native Americans when U.S. military attacked a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho village in Colorado Territory
• Wounded Knee Massacre (1890) marked the end of the Indian Wars and completion of displacement when U.S. military killed hundreds of Lakota Sioux including women and children

Assimilation Efforts and Cultural Impacts

Effects of assimilation efforts

• Government-funded boarding schools (late 19th-early 20th century) aimed to assimilate Native American children into white American culture by forcing them to abandon native languages, customs, and beliefs, eroding cultural identities and family structures
• Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual Native Americans to encourage farming and private ownership
  • Surplus land sold to white settlers further reduced Native American landholdings
  • Led to fragmentation of tribal communities and loss of traditional communal land use practices
• Native American religious practices, ceremonies, and languages were often banned or discouraged
  • Traditional knowledge and skills lost as younger generations forced to adopt white American ways of life
• Intergenerational trauma and loss of cultural identity are long-term impacts
  • Ongoing struggles for tribes to maintain sovereignty, land rights, and cultural heritage

Cultural Genocide and Assimilation

• Forced cultural assimilation policies aimed to eradicate Native American cultures and ways of life
• Allotment system disrupted traditional communal land ownership and pushed for individual property rights
• Tribal sovereignty was undermined through government policies and court decisions
• Cultural genocide resulted from systematic efforts to destroy Native American cultures and identities