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Description

This speech, delivered April 25, 1944 in the United States House of Representatives by US Representative Usher L. Burdick, is titled "What Can Be Done for the American Indian." Burdick begins by noting that "the Indian tribes were in possession of this country when the white man landed," and catalogues many injustices against them, including dispossession through repeated violations of treaties and other examples of bad-faith dealings, eventually arriving at the current situation in which tribes have been placed under the guardianship of the US Government.

Burdick goes on to explain that tribes have been denied justice in US courts due to the need for an act of congress to allow them to go before the US Court of Claims, and that the scope of their claims is unreasonably limited by the language of the jurisdictional act. In rare cases where tribes are actually able to establish their claims, Burdick says, they are subjected to "set-offs" and "counterclaims" that cancel out or even exceed their established claims, so that despite winning their suit, they receive nothing or, worse yet, owe the government.

Burdick mentions the Wheeler-Howard act of 1934 and the fact that it is supported by some Indians and opposed by others, and that "the attempt to force this act on all Indians has created bad blood and ill-feeling and generally has disrupted the peace and quiet of more than one reservation."

In conclusion, Burdick calls for all the claims of Indians against the US government to be "rounded up and finally settled," and when this is accomplished for the "Indian Bureau" to be abolished and for Indians to "take their proper place among other citizens of their State with all the rights, privileges, responsibilities, and duties of any other citizen."

Date of Work

4-25-1944

Keywords

US Wheeler-Howard Act, Indian Claims Commission, Indian Country, Oklahoma, Black Hills, gold, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Mikinaakwajiw-ininiwag, Three Affliliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation (North Dakota), Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, MHA Nation, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Oglala Lakota Nation, Oglála Lakhóta Oyáte, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation (South Dakota), Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, Sisíthuŋwaŋ Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ oyáte

Organizations Referenced

Indian Claims Commission, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Mikinaakwajiw-ininiwag, Three Affliliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation (North Dakota), Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, MHA Nation, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Oglala Lakota Nation, Oglála Lakhóta Oyáte, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation (South Dakota), Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, Sisíthuŋwaŋ Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ oyáte

People Referenced

Usher L. Burdick, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lynn J. Frazier, James F. O'Connor

Speech by Representative Usher Burdick,

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