Between the early 17th century and the early 20th, nearly all U.S. land was transferred from American Indians to whites. Banner argues that neither simple coercion nor simple consent reflects the complicated legal history of land transfers--time, place, and the balance of power between Indians and settlers decided the outcome of land struggles.

This book is a critical study of the laws regulating landownership patterns. Land and land law are woven into the fabric of our society and are therefore integral to the substantive questions of equality and developmental ideologies of the state. This volume uncovers the socio-economic realities that surround land and approaches the law from the standpoint of the marginalized, landless and the dispossessed. This book: Undertakes an extensive survey of existing legislations, both at the union and state level through a range of analytical tables; Discusses the issues of land reform; abolition of intermediaries and tenancy reform; need for redistribution; ceilings on agricultural holdings; law of land acquisition; legal construction of public purpose and displacement, dispossession, compensation, and rehabilitation to construct a case for redistribution; Inquires into the phenomenon of landlessness that widely prevails in India today and lays bare its causes. An invaluable resource, this volume will be an essential read for all students and researchers of law, political studies, sociology, political economy, exclusion studies, development studies, and Asian studies.

The Oneida Indians, already weakened by their participation in the Civil War, faced the possibility of losing their reservation—their community’s greatest crisis since its resettlement in Wisconsin after the War of 1812. The Oneida Indians in the Age of Allotment, 1860–1920 is the first comprehensive study of how the Oneida Indians of Wisconsin were affected by the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887, the Burke Act of 1906, and the Federal Competency Commission, created in 1917. Editors Laurence M. Hauptman and L. Gordon McLester III draw on the expertise of historians, anthropologists, and archivists, as well as tribal attorneys, educators, and elders to clarify the little-understood transformation of the Oneida reservation during this era. Sixteen WPA narratives included in this volume tell of Oneida struggles during the Civil War and in boarding schools; of reservation leaders; and of land loss and other hardships under allotment. This book represents a unique collaborative effort between one Native American community and academics to present a detailed picture of the Oneida Indian past.

Created by the California Research Bureau at the request of Senator John L. Burton, this Web-site is a PDF document on early California laws and policies related to the Indians of the state and focuses on the years 1850-1861. Visitors are invited to explore such topics as loss of lands and cultures, the governors and the militia, reports on the Mendocino War, absence of legal rights, and vagrancy and punishment.

Unearthing Indian Land offers a comprehensive examination of the consequencesof more than a century of questionable public policies. In this book,Kristin Ruppel considers the complicated issues surrounding American Indianland ownership in the United States. Under the General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act,individual Indians were issued title to land allotments while so-called ÒsurplusÓIndian lands were opened to non-Indian settlement. During the forty-seven yearsthat the act remained in effect, American Indians lost an estimated 90 millionacres of landÑabout two-thirds of the land they had held in 1887. Worse, theloss of control over the land left to them has remained an ongoing and insidiousresult. Unearthing Indian Land traces the complex legacies of allotment, includingnumerous instructive examples of a policy gone wrong. Aside from the initialcatastrophic land loss, the fractionated land ownership that resulted from theactÕs provisions has disrupted native families and their descendants for morethan a century. With each new generation, the owners of tribal lands grow innumber and therefore own ever smaller interests in parcels of land. It is not uncommonnow to find reservation allotments co-owned by hundreds of individuals.Coupled with the federal governmentÕs troubled trusteeship of Indian assets,this means that Indian landowners have very little control over their own lands. Illuminated by interviews with Native American landholders, this book isessential reading for anyone who is interested in what happened as a result of thefederal governmentÕs quasi-privatization of native lands.

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