BIA Readjustment

During the 1940s and 1950s the United States government developed a new policy toward Native Americans, often known as “readjustment.” Because the increased awareness of civil rights in these decades helped reinforce the belief that life on reservations prevented Native Americans from exercising the rights guaranteed to citizens under the United States the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to convince the Oneida tribe of Wisconsin to accept readjustment.

The culmination of BIA efforts to sway the Oneida occurred at a meeting that took place in the fall of 1956. The BIA suggested that it would be to the Oneida’s benefit to own their own property and, like other homeowners, pay real estate taxes on it. The BIA also emphasized that, the $0.52 annuity guaranteed in perpetuity to each member of the tribe under the Canandaigua Treaty.

The efforts of the BIA to “sell” readjustment to the tribe failed because the Oneida realized that they had heard similar offers before. The Oneida delegates reacted negatively to the BIA’s first suggestion because taxation of Native American lands had been one past vehicle for dispossessing the Oneida: after the distribution of the terms of a treaty might jeopardize the many pending land claims based upon the treaty.

As a result of the 1956 meeting, the Oneida rejected readjustment. Instead, they determined to improve tribal life by lobbying for federal monies for postsecondary education, for the improvement of drainage on tribal lands, and for the building of a convalescent home for tribal members. Thus, by able to survive as a tribe in their homeland.