Unearthing Indian Land: Living with the Legacies of AllotmentUnearthing Indian Land offers a comprehensive examination of the consequencesof more than a century of questionable public policies. In this book,Kristin Ruppel considers the complicated issues surrounding American Indianland ownership in the United States. Under the General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act,individual Indians were issued title to land allotments while so-called ÒsurplusÓIndian lands were opened to non-Indian settlement. During the forty-seven yearsthat the act remained in effect, American Indians lost an estimated 90 millionacres of landÑabout two-thirds of the land they had held in 1887. Worse, theloss of control over the land left to them has remained an ongoing and insidiousresult. Unearthing Indian Land traces the complex legacies of allotment, includingnumerous instructive examples of a policy gone wrong. Aside from the initialcatastrophic land loss, the fractionated land ownership that resulted from theactÕs provisions has disrupted native families and their descendants for morethan a century. With each new generation, the owners of tribal lands grow innumber and therefore own ever smaller interests in parcels of land. It is not uncommonnow to find reservation allotments co-owned by hundreds of individuals.Coupled with the federal governmentÕs troubled trusteeship of Indian assets,this means that Indian landowners have very little control over their own lands. Illuminated by interviews with Native American landholders, this book isessential reading for anyone who is interested in what happened as a result of thefederal governmentÕs quasi-privatization of native lands. |
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Contents
Nations Indivisible | 11 |
Appropriating the Trust | 36 |
Ambivalent Allottees | 69 |
Continuance | 104 |
One More Arrow | 129 |
Encounters | 145 |
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Common terms and phrases
Agency Allotment Act allottees American Indian Probate Babbitt Ben Nighthorse Campbell BIA's blood quantum Bureau of Indian Carmody chapter Chief co-owners Cobell Cohen colonial Congress economic Ernee Ernee Werelus escheat federal government federal Indian law federal Indian trust FHLA fractional interests fractionated ownership Georgia Hall Indian Reservation Hall Landowners Alliance heirship Helen Sanders Idaho Idaho State University Indian Affairs Indian Land Consolidation Indian land ownership Indian Probate Reform Indian Reorganization Act indigenous individual Indian landowners Individual Indian Money inheritance Interior Judge Sally Willett Land Consolidation Act Land Working Group landowner advocates lease Lemhi County Lemhi Valley logs M'Intosh Marshall Marshall's McQuillan ment Mitchell Mitchell II Native Native American non-Indian owners percent Pocatello Pocatello Chiefs Probate Reform Act problem Quinault Quinault Indian Reservation Senate Shoshone-Bannock terra nullius timber tion treaty tribal governments tribal members tribal sovereignty tribes trust land trust relationship United Youpee
Bibliographic information
| Title | Unearthing Indian Land: Living with the Legacies of Allotment |
| Author | Kristin T. Ruppel |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | University of Arizona Press, 2008 |
| ISBN | 0816527113, 9780816527113 |
| Length | 227 pages |
| Subjects | › › Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |