Indian Reorganization Act
Encyclopedia
The Indian Reorganization Act of June 18, 1934 (signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)) the Indian New Deal, was U.S. federal legislation that secured certain rights to Native Americans, including Alaska Natives
. These include actions that contributed to the reversal of the Dawes Act
's privatization
of communal holdings of American Indian tribes
and a return to local self-government
on a tribal basis. The Act also restored to Native Americans the management of their assets (being mainly land) and included provisions intended to create a sound economic foundation for the inhabitants of Indian reservation
s.
The IRA was perhaps the most significant initiative of John Collier
Sr., Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA) from 1933 to 1945. He had worked on Indian issues for ten years prior to his appointment, particularly with the Indian Defense Fund. He had intended to reverse some of the worst government policies and provide ways for American Indians to re-establish sovereignty and self-government, to reduce the losses of reservation lands, and establish ways for Indians to build economic self-sufficiency. While being considered at Congress, various interests forced changes to the legislation before passage that reduced protections for Indians and preserved oversight by BIA.
Section 18 of the IRA required that members of the affected Indian nation or tribe vote on whether to accept it within one year of the effective date of the act (25 U.S.C. 478). Approval was dependent on a majority vote. Not only was there confusion about who should be allowed to vote on creating new governments, as many non-Natives lived on reservations, as well as American Indians who owned no land there, but under the voting rules, abstentions would not be counted. In Oglala Lakota
culture, for example, abstention had traditionally equaled a no vote, so there was great confusion about the meaning and process of the voting, and disputes on many reservations about the results.
The act did not require tribes to adopt a constitution
. But, when a tribe chose to do so, the constitution had to:
, who was appointed Commissioner of what is now called the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1933 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had become convinced that federal Indian policies needed to be changed to correct injustices. He had already worked ten years at the Indian Defense Fund and become familiar with many issues.
of Indian-owned lands and made it difficult to manage them holistically. Owing to this Act and to other actions of federal courts and the government, over two million acres (8,000 km²) of land were returned to various tribes in the first 20 years after passage of the act.
In 1954, the US Department of Interior (DOI) began implementing the termination
and relocation phases of the Act, which had been added by Congress and represented the continuing interest in some of having American Indians assimilate to the majority society. Among other effects, termination resulted in the legal dismantling of 61 tribal nations within the United States and ending their recognized relationships with the federal government. This also ended the eligibility of the tribal nations and their members for various government programs to assist American Indians. The IRA was based upon the concept that tribes should be in existence for an indefinite period of time.
over sovereignty
issues, as well as many tribes' establishment of casino gambling on reservations as a revenue source, the US Supreme Court has been asked repeatedly to address the IRA's constitutionality. In 1995, South Dakota challenged the authority of the Secretary of Interior, under the IRA, to take 91 acres (368,264.3 m²) of land into trust on behalf of the Lower Brulé Sioux Tribe (based on the Rosebud Indian Reservation
), in South Dakota v. United States Dep't of the Interior, 69 F.3d 878, 881-85 (8th Cir. 1995). The Eighth Circuit found Section 5 of the IRA to be unconstitutional, ruling that it violated the non-delegation doctrine and that the Secretary of Interior did not have the authority to take the land into trust.
The US Department of the Interior (DOI) sought U.S. Supreme Court review. But, as DOI was implementing new regulations related to land trusts, the agency asked the Court to remand the case to the lower court, to be reconsidered with the decision to be based on the new regulations. The US Supreme Court granted Interior's petition, vacated the lower court's ruling, and remanded the case back to the lower court.
Justices Scalia, O'Connor and Thomas dissented, stating that "[t]he decision today--to grant, vacate, and remand in light of the Government's changed position--is both unprecedented and inexplicable." They went on, "[W]hat makes today's action inexplicable as well as unprecedented is the fact that the Government's change of legal position does not even purport to be applicable to the present case." Seven months after the Supreme Court's decision to grant, vacate, and remand, the DOI removed the land in question from trust.
In 1997 the Lower Brulé Sioux submitted an amended trust application to DOI, requesting that the United States take the 91 acres (368,264.3 m²) of land into trust on the Tribe's behalf. South Dakota challenged this in 2004 in district court, which upheld DOI's authority to take the land in trust. The state appealed to the Eighth Circuit, but when the court reexamined the constitutionality issue, it upheld the constitutionality of Section 5 in agreement with the lower court. The US Supreme Court denied the State's petition for certiorari. Since then, district and circuit courts have rejected non-delegation claims by states. The Supreme Court refused to hear the issue in 2008.
In 2008 (before the US Supreme Court heard the Carcieri case below), in MichGO v Kempthorne, Judge Janice Rogers Brown
of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote a dissent stating that she would have struck down key provisions of the IRA. Of the three circuit courts to address the IRA's constitutionality, Judge Brown is the only judge to dissent on the IRA's constitutionality. The U.S. Supreme Court did not accept the MichGO case for review, thus keeping the previous precedent in place. The First, Eighth and Tenth Circuits of the U.S. Court of Appeals have upheld the constitutionality of the IRA.
In 2008, Carcieri v Kempthorne was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court; the Court ruled on it in 2009, with the decision called Carcieri v. Salazar
. In 1991, the Narragansett Indian tribe bought 31 acres (125,452.7 m²) of land. They requested that the DOI take it into trust, which the agency did in 1998, thus exempting it from many state laws. The state was concerned that the tribe would open a casino
or tax-free business on the land (each possible within American Indian sovereignty rights) and sued to block the transfer. The state argued that the IRA did not apply because the Narragansett did not receive federal recognition as a tribal nation until 1980. The US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not place the Narragansett-owned 31 acres (125,452.7 m²) into trust because the tribe was not recognized federally until after Congress passed the IRA in 1934.
In a challenge to the U.S. DOI's decision to take land into trust for the Oneida Indian Nation
in present-day New York state, Upstate Citizens for Equality
(UCE), New York State, Oneida County
, Madison County
, the town of Verona
, the town of Vernon
, and others argue that the IRA is unconstitutional. Most recently, Judge Kahn dismissed several portions of UCE's complaint, including the failed theory that the IRA is unconstitutional, on the basis of longstanding and settled law on this issue.
Alaska Natives
Alaska Natives are the indigenous peoples of Alaska. They include: Aleut, Inuit, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Eyak, and a number of Northern Athabaskan cultures.-History:In 1912 the Alaska Native Brotherhood was founded...
. These include actions that contributed to the reversal of the Dawes Act
Dawes Act
The Dawes Act, adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey Indian tribal land and divide the land into allotments for individual Indians. The Act was named for its sponsor, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. The Dawes Act was amended in 1891 and again...
's privatization
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
of communal holdings of American Indian tribes
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
and a return to local self-government
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
on a tribal basis. The Act also restored to Native Americans the management of their assets (being mainly land) and included provisions intended to create a sound economic foundation for the inhabitants of Indian reservation
Indian reservation
An American Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs...
s.
The IRA was perhaps the most significant initiative of John Collier
John Collier (reformer)
John Collier was an American social reformer and Native American advocate. He served as Commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the President Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, from 1933-1945...
Sr., Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
Bureau of Indian Affairs
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the US Department of the Interior. It is responsible for the administration and management of of land held in trust by the United States for Native Americans in the United States, Native American...
(BIA) from 1933 to 1945. He had worked on Indian issues for ten years prior to his appointment, particularly with the Indian Defense Fund. He had intended to reverse some of the worst government policies and provide ways for American Indians to re-establish sovereignty and self-government, to reduce the losses of reservation lands, and establish ways for Indians to build economic self-sufficiency. While being considered at Congress, various interests forced changes to the legislation before passage that reduced protections for Indians and preserved oversight by BIA.
Section 18 of the IRA required that members of the affected Indian nation or tribe vote on whether to accept it within one year of the effective date of the act (25 U.S.C. 478). Approval was dependent on a majority vote. Not only was there confusion about who should be allowed to vote on creating new governments, as many non-Natives lived on reservations, as well as American Indians who owned no land there, but under the voting rules, abstentions would not be counted. In Oglala Lakota
Oglala Lakota
The Oglala Lakota or Oglala Sioux are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people; along with the Nakota and Dakota, they make up the Great Sioux Nation. A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the eighth-largest Native American reservation in the...
culture, for example, abstention had traditionally equaled a no vote, so there was great confusion about the meaning and process of the voting, and disputes on many reservations about the results.
The act did not require tribes to adopt a constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
. But, when a tribe chose to do so, the constitution had to:
- allow the tribal council to employ legal counsel;
- prohibit the tribal council from engaging in any land transactions without majority approval of the tribe; and,
- authorize the tribal council to negotiate with the Federal, State, and local governments.
Background
John CollierJohn Collier (reformer)
John Collier was an American social reformer and Native American advocate. He served as Commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the President Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, from 1933-1945...
, who was appointed Commissioner of what is now called the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1933 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had become convinced that federal Indian policies needed to be changed to correct injustices. He had already worked ten years at the Indian Defense Fund and become familiar with many issues.
Implementation and results
The act slowed the practice of allotting communal tribal lands to individual tribal members. It reduced the loss of native holdings that had taken place by land sales to non-members within tribal areas, which had resulted in checkerboardingCheckerboarding (land)
Checkerboarding refers to a situation where land ownership is intermingled between two or more owners, resulting in a checkerboard pattern. Checkerboarding is prevalent in the Western United States due to its extensive use in railroad grants for western expansion, although it had its beginnings in...
of Indian-owned lands and made it difficult to manage them holistically. Owing to this Act and to other actions of federal courts and the government, over two million acres (8,000 km²) of land were returned to various tribes in the first 20 years after passage of the act.
In 1954, the US Department of Interior (DOI) began implementing the termination
Indian termination policy
Indian termination was the policy of the United States from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. The belief was that Native Americans would be better off if assimilated as individuals into mainstream American society. To that end, Congress proposed to end the special relationship between tribes and the...
and relocation phases of the Act, which had been added by Congress and represented the continuing interest in some of having American Indians assimilate to the majority society. Among other effects, termination resulted in the legal dismantling of 61 tribal nations within the United States and ending their recognized relationships with the federal government. This also ended the eligibility of the tribal nations and their members for various government programs to assist American Indians. The IRA was based upon the concept that tribes should be in existence for an indefinite period of time.
Constitutional challenges
Since the late twentieth century and the rise of Indian activismActivism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
over sovereignty
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
issues, as well as many tribes' establishment of casino gambling on reservations as a revenue source, the US Supreme Court has been asked repeatedly to address the IRA's constitutionality. In 1995, South Dakota challenged the authority of the Secretary of Interior, under the IRA, to take 91 acres (368,264.3 m²) of land into trust on behalf of the Lower Brulé Sioux Tribe (based on the Rosebud Indian Reservation
Rosebud Indian Reservation
The Rosebud Indian Reservation is an Indian reservation in South Dakota, United States. It is the home of the federally recognized Sicangu Oyate, also known as Sicangu Lakota, the Upper Brulé Sioux Nation, and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe , a branch of the Lakota people...
), in South Dakota v. United States Dep't of the Interior, 69 F.3d 878, 881-85 (8th Cir. 1995). The Eighth Circuit found Section 5 of the IRA to be unconstitutional, ruling that it violated the non-delegation doctrine and that the Secretary of Interior did not have the authority to take the land into trust.
The US Department of the Interior (DOI) sought U.S. Supreme Court review. But, as DOI was implementing new regulations related to land trusts, the agency asked the Court to remand the case to the lower court, to be reconsidered with the decision to be based on the new regulations. The US Supreme Court granted Interior's petition, vacated the lower court's ruling, and remanded the case back to the lower court.
Justices Scalia, O'Connor and Thomas dissented, stating that "[t]he decision today--to grant, vacate, and remand in light of the Government's changed position--is both unprecedented and inexplicable." They went on, "[W]hat makes today's action inexplicable as well as unprecedented is the fact that the Government's change of legal position does not even purport to be applicable to the present case." Seven months after the Supreme Court's decision to grant, vacate, and remand, the DOI removed the land in question from trust.
In 1997 the Lower Brulé Sioux submitted an amended trust application to DOI, requesting that the United States take the 91 acres (368,264.3 m²) of land into trust on the Tribe's behalf. South Dakota challenged this in 2004 in district court, which upheld DOI's authority to take the land in trust. The state appealed to the Eighth Circuit, but when the court reexamined the constitutionality issue, it upheld the constitutionality of Section 5 in agreement with the lower court. The US Supreme Court denied the State's petition for certiorari. Since then, district and circuit courts have rejected non-delegation claims by states. The Supreme Court refused to hear the issue in 2008.
In 2008 (before the US Supreme Court heard the Carcieri case below), in MichGO v Kempthorne, Judge Janice Rogers Brown
Janice Rogers Brown
Janice Rogers Brown is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She previously was an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, holding that post from May 2, 1996 until her appointment to the D.C. Circuit.President George W. Bush...
of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote a dissent stating that she would have struck down key provisions of the IRA. Of the three circuit courts to address the IRA's constitutionality, Judge Brown is the only judge to dissent on the IRA's constitutionality. The U.S. Supreme Court did not accept the MichGO case for review, thus keeping the previous precedent in place. The First, Eighth and Tenth Circuits of the U.S. Court of Appeals have upheld the constitutionality of the IRA.
In 2008, Carcieri v Kempthorne was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court; the Court ruled on it in 2009, with the decision called Carcieri v. Salazar
Carcieri v. Salazar
Carcieri v. Salazar, No. 07-526 , was a recent case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the term "now under Federal jurisdiction" referred only to tribes that were federally recognized when the Indian Reorganization Act became law, and the federal government could not take...
. In 1991, the Narragansett Indian tribe bought 31 acres (125,452.7 m²) of land. They requested that the DOI take it into trust, which the agency did in 1998, thus exempting it from many state laws. The state was concerned that the tribe would open a casino
Casino
In modern English, a casino is a facility which houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships or other tourist attractions...
or tax-free business on the land (each possible within American Indian sovereignty rights) and sued to block the transfer. The state argued that the IRA did not apply because the Narragansett did not receive federal recognition as a tribal nation until 1980. The US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not place the Narragansett-owned 31 acres (125,452.7 m²) into trust because the tribe was not recognized federally until after Congress passed the IRA in 1934.
In a challenge to the U.S. DOI's decision to take land into trust for the Oneida Indian Nation
Oneida Indian Nation
The Oneida Indian Nation is the Oneida tribe that resides in New York and currently owns a number of businesses and tribal land in Verona, NY, Oneida, NY, and Canastota, NY.- Businesses :...
in present-day New York state, Upstate Citizens for Equality
Upstate Citizens for Equality
The Upstate Citizens for Equality is a group based in Verona, New York that opposes the Indian Land Claim and what they see as flawed Federal Indian Policy. UCE currently has three chapters with a combined membership of around 10,000.-Legal actions:...
(UCE), New York State, Oneida County
Oneida County, New York
Oneida County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 234,878. The county seat is Utica. The name is in honor of the Oneida, an Iroquoian tribe that formerly occupied the region....
, Madison County
Madison County, New York
Madison County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 73,442. It is named after James Madison, fourth President of the United States of America...
, the town of Verona
Verona, New York
Verona is a town in Oneida County, New York, United States. The population was 6,425 at the 2000 census. The source of the town name is unknown, though it's possibly named after Verona, Italy....
, the town of Vernon
Vernon, New York
Vernon, New York may refer to:*Vernon , New York, located in Oneida County*Vernon , New York, located within the Town of Vernon...
, and others argue that the IRA is unconstitutional. Most recently, Judge Kahn dismissed several portions of UCE's complaint, including the failed theory that the IRA is unconstitutional, on the basis of longstanding and settled law on this issue.