A/HRC/21/47/Add.1 21. Subsequent to the end of the treaty-making era, United States law and policy was characterized by a series of steps aimed at acculturating indigenous peoples in the ways of the dominant society and diluting or eliminating their sovereignty and collective rights over lands and resources. In the late nineteenth century, a vast government bureaucracy emerged under a United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs to consolidate and manage the system of reservations, pueblos, rancherias and settlements that were home to the surviving indigenous peoples in the country. 22. Under the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887, tribal landholdings were broken up into individual plots that could become alienable, which eventually resulted in a substantial further loss of Indian land and a complex system of interspersed Indian and nonIndian titled land that now characterizes tenure within many reservations. The Dawes Act resulted in even greater impoverishment and social upheaval among the tribes, and thus, after conferring United States citizenship on all Indians in 1924, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 as a major reform measure. 23. The Indian Reorganization Act included provisions to secure the Indian land base from further erosion and provided for establishing reservation-based governments akin to local municipalities under the authority of the Secretary of Interior of the federal Government, on the basis of model constitutions that were developed by the Secretary. While providing a degree of self-government, the Act was considered a transitional measure to prepare the Indians for, in the words of its chief architect, United States Indian Commissioner John Collier, “real assimilation.” 2 Many Indian tribes today continue under the IRA regime. 24. In the 1950s the United States Government attempted to complete its programme of assimilation with Congress’s adoption of a formal policy of “termination,” 3 which involved steps to end the special status of Indian tribes and convert their lands to private ownership. The termination policy was eventually abandoned, but not before several tribes lost federal recognition and their self-governing status, and saw their landholdings dissipate, with invariably devastating social and economic consequences that are still apparent today. C. The contemporary federal legislative and policy regime 25. In the face of past federal programmes of assimilation and acculturation, Native Americans continued to make clear their determination, as they still do, to hold on to and recover their own distinctive cultures and institutions of self-government as a basis for their development and place in the world. With this resolve eventually came a change in federal policy, as it moved to reflect, if not entirely accommodate, indigenous peoples’ own aspirations. In 1970, the President of the United States advanced this change in a message to Congress, in which he affirmed, “The time has come to break decisively with the past and to create the conditions for a new era in which the Indian future is determined by Indian Acts and Indian decisions.”4 26. The contemporary thrust of federal policy is marked by several pieces of major legislation, including the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, by which tribes are able to assume the planning and administration of federal programmes that are devised for their benefit; the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, which favours indigenous custody of indigenous children; the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 2 3 4 8 House Committee of Indian Affairs, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., Hearings on Readjustment of Indian Affairs (1934), p. 21. H.Cong.Res. 108, 3d Cong., 1st Sess., 67 Stat. B137 (1953). H.R.Doc. No. 91-363, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. (July 8, 1970).