At the request of Commissioner of Indian Affairs John C. Collier, Oliver La Farge, the board president of the Eastern Association on Indian Affairs (see entry for OCTOBER 1922), merges his organization with another Indian rights advocacy group, the American Indian Defense Association (see entry for MAY 1923), to form the American Association on Indian Affairs (later renamed the Association on American Indian Affairs.) La Farge will serve as the association’s president until his death in 1963.
The Johnson-O’Malley Act reforms Indian education.
The first piece of legislation to emerge from the reformist campaign of Commissioner John C. Collier (see entry for 1933), the Johnson-O’Malley Act allows the federal government to enter into contracts with states to offer various benefits to Indian groups, specifically education, health care, agricultural assistance, and social services. The act will have its greatest impact on Indian education. With the redirection of educational funds, Indian students will increasingly leave Indian schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to attend public educational institutions.
The Indian Reorganization Act reforms federal Indian policy.
Perhaps the most important legislation affecting Indians in the 20th century, the Indian Reorganization Act sets forth a comprehensive plan to reform federal Indian policy and reorganize the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The IRA is the brainchild of John C. Collier, a longtime Indian rights activist and the new commissioner of Indian affairs. Because the act reflects the progressive agenda of the Roosevelt administration, it is popularly known as the Indian New Deal. (It is also called the Wheeler-
Howard Act, after its sponsors, Senator Burton K. Wheeler and Congressman Edgar Howard.)
The IRA’s most significant provision calls for the end of the Allotment policy, which in the past 50 years has dispossessed Indians of some 90 million acres of land. The act also requires the U. S. government to return to tribes all unsold surplus lands on allotted reservations, establishes a fund to purchase additional land for Indian groups, and creates a program to conserve and rehabilitate tribal lands.
In addition, the IRA offers guidelines by which tribes can write constitutions and reorganize their governments. To promote economic and community development, tribes are also permitted to incorporate and to request loans from a fund set up for this purpose. Individual Indians may take out loans from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to finance their educations, and they are to be given preference in hiring for BIA jobs.
Before passing the IRA, Congress adds a provision that tribes must vote on whether to accept or reject the act’s provisions. Eventually, more than two-thirds of Indian nations will accept the IRA. (A notable exception will be the largest U. S. tribal group, the Navajo [Dineh], who resent Collier’s efforts to prevent erosion of reservation lands by reducing their sheep herds [see entries for 1933 and for 1935]). Thirty-six percent of tribes will write new constitutions based on IRA guidelines, while 28 percent will incorporate for business purposes.
The American Indian Federation is formed.
Formed in Gallup, New Mexico, by several wealthy Indian conservatives who advocate Assimilation, the American Indian Federation is founded to speak out against the views of the new commissioner of Indian affairs John C. Collier (see entry for 1933), a political liberal who wants to revive Indian tribalism. The AIF’s ultimate goal, however, is to bring about the dismantling of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Although it receives support from several right-wing organizations (including the Daughters of the American Revolution), the
AIF will fall into disarray in the mid-1940s after the group’s repeated efforts to destroy the BIA fail.
World History
