Editing Dawes Act (section)

=== Reduction of sovereignty ===
In 1906, the Burke Act (also known as the Forced Patenting Act) amended the GAA to give the Secretary of the Interior the power to issue allottees a patent in [[fee simple]] to people classified "competent and capable". The criteria for this determination is unclear but it meant that allottees deemed "competent" by the Secretary of the Interior would have their land taken out of trust status, subject to taxation, and could be sold by the allottee. The allotted lands of Native Americans determined to be incompetent by the Secretary of the Interior were automatically leased out by the federal government.<ref>{{cite web |author=Bartecchi D |title=The History of "Competency" as a Tool to Control Native American Lands |url=http://villageearth.org/pages/Projects/Pine_Ridge/pineridgeblog/2007/02/history-of-competency-as-tool-to.html |work=Pine Ridge Project |date=2007-02-19 |access-date=2008-11-06 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081211112424/http://villageearth.org/pages/Projects/Pine_Ridge/pineridgeblog/2007/02/history-of-competency-as-tool-to.html |archive-date=2008-12-11 }}</ref>
The act reads:
<blockquote>... the Secretary of the Interior may, in his discretion, and he is hereby authorized, whenever he shall be satisfied that any Native American allottee is competent and capable of managing his or her affairs at any time to cause to be issued to such allottee a patent in fee simple, and thereafter all restrictions as to sale, encumbrance, or taxation of said land shall be removed.</blockquote>

The use of competence opens up the categorization, making it much more subjective and thus increasing the exclusionary power of the Secretary of Interior. Although this act gave power to the allottee to decide whether to keep or sell the land, given the harsh economic reality of the time, and lack of access to credit and markets, liquidation of Indian lands was almost inevitable. It was known by the Department of Interior that virtually 95% of fee-patented land would eventually be sold to whites.<ref>Robertson, 2002</ref>

In 1926, Secretary of the Interior [[Hubert Work]] commissioned a study of the federal administration of Indian policy and the condition of Native American people. Completed in 1928, ''The Problem of Indian Administration''{{spaced ndash}}commonly known as the [[Meriam Report]] after the study's director, [[Meriam Report#Lewis Meriam|Lewis Meriam]]{{spaced ndash}} documented fraud and misappropriation by government agents. In particular, the Meriam Report claimed that the General Allotment Act had been used to illegally deprive Native Americans of their land rights.

After considerable debate, Congress terminated the allotment process under the Dawes Act by enacting the [[Indian Reorganization Act]] of 1934 ("Wheeler-Howard Act"). However, the allotment process in [[Alaska]], under the separate [[Alaska Native Allotment Act]], continued until its revocation in 1971 by the [[Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act]].

Despite the termination of the allotment process in 1934, the effects of the General Allotment Act continue into the present. For example, one provision of the Act was the establishment of a trust fund, administered by the [[Bureau of Indian Affairs]], to collect and distribute revenues from oil, mineral, timber, and grazing leases on Native American lands. The BIA's alleged improper management of the trust fund resulted in litigation, in particular the case ''[[Cobell v. Kempthorne]]'' (settled in 2009 for $3.4 billion), to force a proper accounting of revenues.