Editing Dawes Act (section)

=== Identity and detribalization ===
The effects of the Dawes Act were destructive on Native American sovereignty, culture, and identity since it empowered the U.S. government to:

# legally preempt the sovereign right of Indians to define themselves
# implement the specious notion of blood-quantum as the legal criteria for defining Indians
# institutionalize divisions between "full-bloods" and "mixed-bloods"
# "detribalize" a sizeable segment of the Indian population
# legally appropriate vast tracts of Indian land

The federal government initially viewed the Dawes Act as such a successful democratic experiment that they decided to further explore the use of blood-quantum laws and the notion of federal recognition as the qualifying means for "dispensing other resources and services such as health care and educational funding" to Native Americans long after its passage. Under Dawes, land parcels were dispersed in accordance with perceived blood quanta. Indigenous people labeled "full-blooded" were allocated "relatively small parcels of land deeded with trust patents over which the government retained complete control for a minimum of twenty-five years." Those who were labeled "mixed-blood" were "deeded larger and better tracts of land, with 'patents in fee simple' (complete control), but were also forced to accept U.S. citizenship and relinquish tribal status."<ref name=":1" />

Additionally, Native Americans who did not "meet the established criteria" as being either "full-blood" or "mixed-blood" were effectively "detribalized", being "deposed of their American Indian identity and displaced from their homelands, discarded into the nebula of American otherness."<ref name=":1" /> While the Dawes Act is "typically recognized" as the "primary instigation of divisions between tribal and detribalized Indians," the history of detribalization in the United States "actually precedes Dawes."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought, 10th Anniversary Edition|last=Grande|first=Sandy|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2015|isbn=9781610489898|pages=164}}</ref>