How are Indian reservations doomed to failure?
The Indians own the land in common. No Indian owns land individually. Personal initiative is crushed. Why then do we stick with Indian land ownership in common? Because of the failure of the 1887 Dawes Act. That federal law tried to give Indians privately owned land, but the program didn’t work. Now everyone’s afraid to try something similar, even with improvements and safeguards. The sick system. What about today’s 300 American Indian reservations condemns their 1.6 million residents to failure? Here’s a round-up of some of the factors that guarantee the reservations will remain hopeless death traps unless sweeping, desperately needed changes are made: * On most reservations, the land is owned in common by the tribe and held in trust by the U.S. government. On these reservations, no American Indian has real estate — a house, a shop or land — that he truly can call his own. * Some Indian reservations have tried to establish the equivalent of ownership, using 50-year land leases or la
