The Indian Reorganization Act was signed into law by Franklin Roosevelt on June 18, 1934, and was considered the Indian New Deal. The act was initiated by John Collier, the Bureau of Indian Affairs reformist commissioner from 1933 to 1945, who proposed sweeping reforms to the federal Indian policies. For nearly 300 years white Americans, in our zeal to carve out a nation made to order, have dealt with the Indians on the erroneous, yet tragic, assumption that the Indians were a dying race - to be liquidated, he wrote in his annual report for 1938. We took away their best lands; broke treaties, promises; tossed them the most nearly worthless scraps of a continent that once had been wholly theirs. But we did not liquidate their spirit. The vital spark which kept them alive was hardy.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 12:55:34 +0000