WW1 & 1920s (1914-1929)

Question 1

How many NAI enlisted in WW1

Answer 1

• Estimated 10,000 Indians served in the

military during the war

Question 2

How did WW1 impact those NAI who had enlisted

Answer 2

• The government sponsored some Indian families to move from the
  reservations into the defence industries
• Nearly all Indian school students enlisted
• 90% volunteered, as opposed to 20-40% of the reservation men
• Disease a killer, American Indians were as badly his as the American
  Expeditionary forces as a whole
• Of the 112,000 American soldiers who dies in the great war, 62 thousand
  (roughly 50%) died from diseases

Question 3

What were the post WW1 impacts on NAI

Answer 3

• The NAIs service in WW1 gave them far greater acceptance among the Federal
  Government representatives
• “One Cheyenne typical no-account Indian with long-hair” changed into a “square
  shouldered, level eyed courteous, self-reliant man and talked intelligently”
• 1919 grants citizenship to all men who showed active service
• 1924 – Citizenship extended to all Native Americans in the United States.

Question 4

How did the immediate effects of WW1 impact the NAI population

Answer 4

• Sugar and cattle beat companies managed to persuade the Federal Government
  that they were supporting the war effort
• Native American land was leased cheaply and quickly without the consent of the
  tribal Sioux members
• Up until 1916, the Oglala’s had slowly regained the losses of the late 19th century
• However, their agent forced them to sell all the cattle and land

Question 5

How did WW1 change the attitudes of the NAI themselves

Answer 5

• World War 1 had been their first real exposure to the outside world, and to what
  money could do
• The losses of the families whose sons were killed or handicapped had surely
  weakened the Sioux nation, but the worst damage came with the worldly and
  selfish attitudes the survivors brought back
• Now money was paid for them for compensation and other veterans’ benefits
• The families on the reservations had added their produce to the war effort, been
  paid well for it, and money was desired by them for the first time in their lives

Question 6

What impact had begun to show particular evidence by the 1920s

Answer 6

• By the 1920s, the devastating impact of the allotment policy on those Indians
  remaining on the reservations in the west began to be widely recognised.
• This deteriorating situation led many reformists to become involved aiming at
  helping preserve the Native American culture.

Question 7

What was AIDA

Answer 7

• In 1923, a group of writers and anthropologists formed the American Indian
  Defence association
• Its aim was to campaign for laws protecting the rights of Indians to their lands, their
  beliefs, culture and their arts and crafts.
• The executive secretary of AIDA was a social worker, John Collier, who made it his
  life’s work to vigorously pursue the cause of the restoration of the rights of Native
  Americans to self-determination.
• Aida was successful in blocking the Bursum Bill (1922) which authorised the
  acquisition of Pueblo lands

Question 8

What was the Meriam Report

Answer 8

• The culmination of the new reform movement of the 1920s was the publication, in
  1928, of the Meriam Report, by the Brookings Institute for Government Research.
• The report was partially in response to the further encroachment onto those
  reservation lands where there were likely to be oil fields.
• The report condemned the allotment policy instigated by the Dawes Act in 1887,
  for depriving Native Americans of their land.
• It concluded that the social and economic advancement of Indians so that they
  may be absorbed into the prevailing civilisation at least in accordance with a
  minimum standard of health and decency.
• Within five years of the Report, the policy of allotment was abandoned altogether
• Although it showed greater sympathy towards the NAI population, it did not
  provide an alternative to the policy of assimilation