Indian Appropriations Act (1896)

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The Indian Appropriations Act is a US law that was passed on June 10, 1896 by the US Congress . With this law the financial support of Christian Indian schools by the federal government was gradually abolished. The Ministry of the Interior's financial support to Indian schools was, in the opinion of many MPs, in violation of Amendment 1 of the United States Constitution .

history

After the formation of the United States, the Department of Defense, and later the Department of the Interior, signed a large number of treaties with the Indian tribes. Most of the time, the tribes ceded considerable areas of their territory to the United States. These contracts were of Indian agents of the Bureau of Indian Affairs negotiated (BIA) and ratified by Congress. Most of the time, the Indian tribes reserved their own area for their use. This is how the so-called Indian reservations came into being . In addition to payments, the contracts often included free health care, home programs, grocery deliveries, and other services that the United States had to provide to the tribes, often for all time. These agreements still apply today. For example, the federal government still operates the Indian Health Service for the tribes to this day .

A free teaching and training system was often agreed in these contracts. A budget for school facilities and schools was made available to the Indian agents by Congress. In 1819, the BIA, which was still part of the US Department of Defense at the time, was made available for $ 10,000. The BIA later switched to the Ministry of the Interior, which continued to provide funds for the Indian agencies. These distributed the money to existing Christian institutions which operated mission stations in the Indian territories or had boarding schools for Indians. Often these were institutions of the Catholic Church. Reformed churches also operated such institutions or planned to set them up with the help of federal funds. This led to a dispute between the Reformed and the Catholic providers. The Catholic Church was seen as controlled from abroad. It was subordinate to the Pope and therefore did not pursue any nationalist goals. Other reformed denominations called for the complete abolition of Catholic schools in the reservations. The Catholic schools would not raise the Indian children in the interests of American society. The tribal language was often used for teaching. The critics refused, the schools would prevent the integration of the Indians into American society. From 1869 contracts were signed between the federal government and mission societies, which operated Indian schools on behalf of the federal government. The BIA covered the costs. In 1889 Thomas Jefferson Morgan became president of the BIA. He appointed Daniel Dorchester , a Methodist pastor, to be the supervisor of the BIA's school funding. In 1892 negotiations between Dorchester and the Association of Catholic Missions were broken off without success. Instead of a contract with the association, each individual school now had to apply for its own budget. In order to put pressure on the Catholic schools, the few reformed school authorities decided not to call for funds. The Catholic dominance in the educational system in the reservations should be broken.

With the Indian Appropriations Act , Congress abolished support for denominational supporters of Indian schools in 1897. The Congress insisted on the first amendment, which prescribed a separation between church and state. Contracts with non-denominational organizations were also not renewed. The BIA now looked after the schools itself. For this purpose, the Office of Indian Education Programs was set up at the BIA, which has been run as a separate authority since 2006, the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). Today, the BIE operates or services 183 schools on 64 reservations in 25 states.

Not all Indian schools were run by Christian mission societies. The BIA has also operated its own schools and boarding schools since 1860. That year the BIA opened the first boarding school on the Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington State . While the Catholic schools often showed consideration for Indian culture, the aim of the boarding schools and day schools of the BIA was to destroy Indian culture. But there was abuse and suppression of culture in Catholic schools too. Many Catholic schools continued to operate as private schools. They also continued to receive government funding through various BIA funds and federal states. But the power of the mission societies was broken.

References and comments

  1. ^ Middle Tennessee State University Indian Appropriations Act of 1896
  2. ^ Indian Health Service The Federal Health Program for American Indians and Alaska Natives
  3. ↑ US department of Interior Indian Affairs Bureau of Indian Education (BIE)
  4. ↑ [ http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=airc_hist_boardingschools American Indian Releif Council, History and Culture, Boarding Schools
  5. ↑ ühttps: //www.ncronline.org/news/justice/boarding-schools-black-hole-native-american-history National Catholic reporter, Boarding schools: A black hole of Native American history]

See also

Web pages