The notion that it was time to terminate the wardship status of NAs and wind up federal responsibility for their welfare became increasingly popular in Washington in the postwar years.
- This would mean that the BIA could be abolished,
- Reservations be broken up,
- Indian resources sold off and profits decided among tribal members.Indians would become just like any other Americans- responsible as individuals for their own destiny.
In this context, Collier’s critics could blame his policies, rather than inadequate federal funding, for the economic backwardness of the reservations.
The IRA, by returning the land to communal ownership and making it unalienable, had limited the property rights of individual Indians.
Furthermore,
- The wartime migration of many Indians to the cities appeared to suggest that what many Native Americans themselves wanted, was participation in American’s booming postwar industrial economy rather than a life of rural squalor on the economically deprived reservations.
