Response paper #3 - Americanization

With Indians confined on reservations, attempts by reformers and government officials to transform and assimilate Native people took new forms. Particularly devastating were renewed efforts to impose private property, new work regimens, different gender systems, the English language, and Christianity on American Indians. This social engineering-cultural, social, and economic colonialism-had a devastating impact, not only on Native societies and cultures, but materially on the larger Indian land base, as millions of acres were lost to Native people in the years following the General Allotment Act (or Dawes Act) of 1887. Indians themselves forged new ways to accommodate and resist this colonialism-including new pan-Indian organizations and prophetic movements-but the situation often proved grim during these late 19th-, early 20th-century years. Focus on one of these policies: allotments, boarding schools, denial of religious practices, leadership change. Describe and comment.