The Dawes Act (1887)
Tue Feb 08, 1887
Image: U.S. Department of the Interior advertisement offering ‘Indian Land for Sale’. The man pictured is a Yankton Sioux named Not Afraid Of Pawnee. [Wikipedia]
The Dawes Act, passed on this day in 1887, authorized the U.S. to divide indigenous tribal land into allotments for heads of families and individuals, leading to a loss of 2/3rds of land (~100 million acres) over the next 50 years.
The law converted traditional systems of land tenure into a state-imposed system of private property by forcing Native Americans to “assume a capitalist and proprietary relationship with property” that did not previously exist in their cultures, according to historian Kent Blansett. The act declared remaining lands after allotment as “surplus” and available for sale, including to non-Natives.
Between 1887 and 1934, indigenous people lost control of about 100 million acres of land, or about two-thirds of the land base they held in 1887, as a result of the act.
The loss of land and the break-up of traditional leadership of tribes had such devastating consequences that many scholars refer to the Dawes Act as one of the most destructive U.S. policies for indigenous people in history.
- Date: 1887-02-08
- Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.history.com.
- Tags: #Indigenous.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org
This is a real advertisement from an Israeli property development firm advertising their plans to develop and sell land in the Gaza Strip to Israeli settlers after the Israeli military evicts or kills off the current residents.
This is the heart of the evil of these Israeli settlements. It gives the people of Israel an incentive to oppose justice for displaced Palestinians. After all, if the Palestinians regain control of their territory, what will happen to these settlements? Is the land going to be returned to the people it was taken from? Oh, no no no! You can’t allow that to happen! You paid hundreds of thousands of shekels for this house!
Say what?? The Palestinians want compensation to those whose lands and houses were taken from them? Oh, no no no! You can’t allow that to happen either! Your taxes will go up! Why should you, an innocent taxpayer, have to foot the bill?
And even to the Israelis to whom none of this directly applies, they probably know someone to whom it does, or at least the sympathise more with their fellow countrymen than with Palestinians, who for decades their government has been describing as less-than-human savages who would kill them and their family and grind their bones to make their bread. Someone’s going to be losing a million shekels either way, better those Palestinian terrorists than a fellow Israeli, right? Or so the thinking seems to go.
Propaganda and decades of indoctrination and dehumanisation are a powerful thing. Is it any surprise why even seemingly normal Israelis hold such extreme views regarding Palestinians?