Disowned by the Ownership Society: How Native Americans Lost Their Land

Abstract

Over the past five centuries, Europeans have enclosed the global commons and, in the process, incorporated whole continents of aboriginal land. Some scholars argue that Indians in North America were spared the ravages of compulsory enclosure, having sold their land to non-Indians through willing-seller transactions and benefited from federal government trust and treaty policies. Moreover, where enclosure existed, it is widely believed to have ended as Indians converted to agriculture, thereby internalizing hard work, sedentary life styles, and allotted ownership. This study disputes such historical accounts and suggests a wave of new enclosures in accordance with recent U.S. Department of Agricultural minority lending policies. By discriminating against Native American farmers and ranchers, the federal government has enabled the erasure of title, livelihood opportunities, and cultural identity among Indian farming and ranching communities. Evidence from the Fort Berthold Reservation of North Dakota reveals the complex complicity of the federal government in Indian land erasure and points to a changing reservation geography that, even now, makes castaways of agrarian Indians.

Race, Ethnicity, and Twenty‐First Century Rural Sociological Imaginings: A Special Issue Introduction*

“…3 For some notable exceptions, see Brown and Larson (1979), Chavez (2005), Duncan (1996), Geisler (2014), Perry (1980), and Ward (1998), among others. 1971-2020.…”

“…Native American, Latinx, and African American communities have long maintained an active and vital presence in rural America, despite enduring patterns of exclusion, displacement, and disenfranchisement (Brown 2018;Chavez 2005;McKay, Vinyeta and Norgaard 2020;Smith 1991;Ward 1998). Similarly, popular debate over non-white immigrants obscures how race-making in the rural United States has been tied to global projects of expansion and state-led labor migration, in which U.S. national identity was defined in opposition to a foreign or non-white "other" (Geisler 2014;Mize 2006). As the arrival of new immigrants has made the rural United States less racially and ethnically homogenous, demographic change has also challenged and reshaped community identities (Donato et al 2007).…”

Changes in Farmland Ownership in Oregon, USA

“…The ownership model was implemented, beginning in the 16th century and continuing up until today, through the enclosure of land once stewarded by Native Americans. Prior to the enclosure of the land, Native American peoples practiced a wide range of ownership and land management strategies, ranging from communal management and open access to more restricted kin-group ownership [1,2].…”

“No Beggars amongst Them”

“…Recently, Geisler (2013) writes about the process of Native American dispossession in his article “Disowned by the Ownership Society: How Native Americans Lost Their Land.” 3 He argues against the view of legal historian Stuart Banner (2005) that Indians lost their land mostly through purchase and market forces than through violence and coercion. Geisler (2013) instead proposes “Indians in America lost their land through coercion muted by market-like negotiations on some occasions and coercion without pretense on others” (p. 3). The present study intervenes in this discussion by offering an in-depth historical case study of an early North American settler colony.…”

“… 3. Geisler (2013) analysis begins much later in the historical process of settler-colonial invasion. …”