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Native American Land Rights

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Native American Land Rights
The land rights of the American Indians versus The Rights of the White Man.

Zoe R. Murphy
University Of Phoenix, Axia

As the Native population continues to grow and create an abundance of resources such as casinos, the White Man has found ways to take the land needed to sustain such growth away. The Native American population always has inhabited the land we now live on and we the Americans have come on to that land pushing them into reservations and controlled situations. With the growing flow of residents the American government has forced the American Indians to uproot themselves repeatedly causing the loss of several lives, as well as the loss of land that they had possessed for centuries. Over the years this tribulation caused friction between the American Indians and the American government to the extent that one tribe, the Sioux Indians hosted the invasion of Wounded Knee.

Over the years the White Man has come onto Native lands and gradually pushed them out, using the land for whatever they have need to. In the 1800’s the White Man has taken several rights from the American Indians and tried to keep them under control under the guise of creating harmony, and putting them on reservations as an act of control. With the creation of the Dawes Act American Indians the American government gave land to the Indians on the reservations and noted it as creating harmony, but without the knowledge of Native Americans. In the mid-1900’s with the growing populations and the continuing need the American government came into reservations and took youth off the reservations and placed them in homes to educate and intergraded them into the civilized world creating less on the reservations to be responsible for. With the idea of work and a new life away from the hardships of life on the reservations the government offered to help integrate them into city life by giving them housing and education as well as the opportunity to work. When the Indians who chose to

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