What Happened?
A CHRONICLE OF THE RESERVATION SYSTEM - Many Native Americans resisted the imposition of the reservation system, sparking a series of conflicts known as the Indian Wars. Through a series of bloody massacres and victories in battle, the US Army ultimately succeeded in relocating most Indian tribes onto the reservations. For most Native Americans, life on the reservation was difficult. Although tribes were allowed to form their own tribal councils and courts, and thus retain their traditional governing structures, Indians on the reservations suffered from poverty, malnutrition, and very low standards of living and rates of economic development.
Government officials who oversaw Indian affairs were replaced with Christian clergy in order to convert Indians to Christianity. This policy led to violent resistance on the part of many Native American tribes and was ultimately abandoned leaving Native Americans with tradition vs assimilation; which ended the reservation system by authorizing the federal confiscation and redistribution of tribal lands. The aim of the act was to destroy tribal governing councils and assimilate Native Americans into mainstream US society by replacing their communal traditions with a culture centered on the individual. To this end, tribal lands were parceled out into individual allotments, and only those Indians who accepted the individual plots were allowed to become US citizens.
In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraged the passage of the US Indian Reorganization Act, which instituted a “New Deal” for Native Americans, authorizing them to reorganize and form their own tribal governments. The act ended the land allotments created by Dawes Act and thereby resurrected the reservation system, which remains in place today. While this was a step in the right direction, it came at a great price. Historical trauma is described as collective emotional and psychological damage throughout a person's lifetime and across multiple generations. The American Indian have higher rates of substance and alcohol abuse deaths than the general population as a by-product of reservation gentrification.
