Federal policy on the part of the United States in regards to Native Americans has always been complicated at best, with an often confusing web of treaties, federal policies, department programs and state agencies all contributing to the difficult relationship Native Americans have had when interacting with American society at large throughout history. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act) is no different.
The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934 serves as one of the most recent examples of a significant change in how the American federal government would address Native Americans within the borders of the United States. As the centerpiece of the “Indian New Deal," the IRA has been hotly debated among historians and public officials for the better part of a half-century over whether or not it was a net positive or negative legislation for Native Americans.
The Act itself attempted to undo over a half-century of assimilation policy that disrupted Native American life, by providing a complex framework for chartering new governing bodies on reservations that would handle economic matters from one day to the next. On top of this, the Act created new definitions on who was and was not a Native American, while also establishing a revolving credit fund to allow for Native American tribes and the newly created chartered corporations to develop their economies on reservations.
In terms of its results, the IRA succeeded in reversing the previously disastrous policy of allotment and assimilation, making it an crucial landmark decision towards treating Native Americans more equitably when compared to other policies throughout history. Despite this, the Act failed to fully achieve its objective of significantly bolstering reservation economies and bettering the lives of the Native Americans that lived on them. As a result, the Act did not live up to the expectations envisioned by its creators. The Act itself suffered due to the contradiction between the federal government’s desire for independence for Native Americans and the style of paternalistic governing undertaken by policy makers and officials at the same time, creating a severe sense of dissonance that existed within federal- and state-level agencies. Alongside this, the Act did not provide what many Native Americans actually desired at the time, which resulted from the failure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to include Native Americans in the legislation-making process in any significant way.