Native Americans practiced self-government long before colonizers made it on to the shores of the eastern coast. Though they had a governance system, Native Americans faced centuries of oppression and struggles before gaining United States citizenship and the right to vote in their own country. Native Americans have taken collective action and formed interest groups in order to fight for their rights, however, policies in place make it difficult for them to participate in our nations democratic process and civic duty. Andrew Jackson’s “Indian Removal Policy” constructed a path for other policies to easily build oppression and hinder Native American rights while also giving official politicians the dominant voice in policies directly concerning Native Americans.
In 1828 the people’s president, Andrew Jackson was elected and during this Jacksonian era, many of his policies were centered on Majoritarian Electoral Democracy with emphasis on federalism as he embarked to eliminate impediments for voting and created opportunities for the 'common man' (Library of Congress, 2003). Andrew would face something else diverting him from his other campaign issues as white settlers wanted to expand further than the Mississippi River crossing many Native American tribe’s (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole) land. “Pressure for relocation grew in Georgia after it gave up its land claims to the west. In exchange, the U.S. government promised to acquire the Cherokee heartland and turn it over to the state for white settlement. But by the 1830s, land-hungry Georgians looked with alarm at the “civilized” Cherokees were successfully adopting American ways and showing every sign that they meant to stay on their land” (Costly, p.1, 2004). With pressure from southern states, the scope of conflict as defined by Schattschneider (1960), was largely influenced by the audience and determined how Jackson would react to the situation and what policy he would create, thus leading to the Indian Removal Policy. According to Washburn (1975), Andrew Jackson identified closely with the Indian Removal Policy of 1830 as he had the power to negotiate the treaties and ultimately forced the tribes to leave. The Indian Removal Act offered tribes in the eastern lands an area west of the Mississippi. The U.S. government promised to compensate the tribes for the property they would have to abandon. According to The Costly (2004), although removal was supposed to be voluntary, Jackson cut off payments to the tribes for previous land deals until they moved to the West. He also agreed with Georgia and other Southern states that their laws controlled tribal land as Georgia passed a law in 1881 stating the tribes had no right to govern themselves. This led to the brutally forced migration known as the “Trail of Tears”. The Indian Removal Policy of 1830 was the basis for a path dependent evolution and made a status quo bias in the policy setting that negatively affected the Native Americans.
After Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Policy, a landmark Supreme Court case for Native Americans passed in 1882, known as Worcester v. Georgia (Garrison, 2004). The Supreme Court constituted that the Cherokee Tribe held distinct sovereign powers and struck down on Georgia’s extension laws. Georgia, however, chose to disregard the Supreme Courts ruling and started to send missionaries into the tribes and many white settlers who wanted to move beyond the Mississippi started to destroy Cherokee home’s making it hard for them to stay (Costly, 2004). By 1838 policy drift had allowed the federal government to remove most tribes from their land as the New Echota treaty had been ratified, giving Cherokees two years to leave with compensation. Since there was such strong political contestation from the tribe, many did not leave and newly elected president, Martin Van Buren, ordered the general to round up those who refused to give up their land. By the summer more than 15,000 Cherokees were arrested and taken away from their homes (Anderson & Wetmore, 2006). Many Cherokees died during this move and by 1839 the Cherokee tribe had been relocated. These first policies would lead to critical junctures and allow room for other policies to build from them.
With the Indian Removal Act using language inciting the removal of Native American rights and to relocate them, the Indian Appropriation Act of 1851 effectively builds from the 1830 policy and creates the reservations system (Elliot, 2015). This law not only embodied the same relocation language but also added a new, oppressive language that shrunk the already decreasing land of the Native Americans. This new policy also implemented an organizational strategy for assimilation by creating boarding schools for Native American children. “ On top of being separated from their families and communities for long periods of time, the schools forbade the children from speaking their tribal languages, required them to wear American-style dress and hairstyles, and encouraged them to abandon their native religion for Christianity” (Elliot, p.1, 2015). Slowly, tribes’ younger generations began to lose their culture, traditions, and their indigenous identity. Another policy was passed in 1887 known as the Dawes Act, which further assimilated the Native American Tribes. “Now, reservation land could be divided into allotments for individual Indians and families. The law also changed the legal status of Native Americans from tribal members to individuals subject to federal laws and terminated many tribal affiliations” (Elliot, p.1, 2015), using completely contradicting language in terms of the Supreme Court ruling in 1832 that allowed Native American to have sovereign power. This Act left them with no legal rights, as they were yet to be citizens with voting rights, unless they accepted individual plots, which was capped at 160 acres per head of family, 80 acres per adult single person (Library of Congress, 2003).
On account of the policies being made by official actors without much consideration for Native America, interest groups take form and social justice progressivism takes effect in the 20th century.
Even though the 15th amendment passed in 1870, guaranteeing voting rights regardless of race, Native Americans did not truly receive the right to vote until 1921(since they were not seen as citizens from previous policies), with help from the Snyder Act. According to Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illnes (1999), Congress authorized the expansion of funds for Native American health care and improved the living conditions for those on reservations and in the boarding schools created in the 1851 Appropriation Act. This Act not only expanded the scale of the national governments’ role in policy concerning Native Americans but was an act rooted in retrenchment, as defined by Hacker & Pierson (2018), since it sought to reform social programs. Building off the Snyder act, the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 ensured all Native Americans, born in the United States, citizenship (Native American Rights Fund).