President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) into law in 1934. The IRA ended allotment as the government’s official policy and returned to tribes the surplus land they lost during the allotment years. The act also afforded more protections for Indian land, since it extended trust protection indefinitely and established a fund to be put toward the purchase of Indian land that had been lost during allotment. King sees the IRA as a positive shift in national policy regarding the country’s Native population; however, because of the onset of World War II not many years after the act became law, the government lacked the attention and resources necessary to put the act into practice adequately, and Native peoples were unable to benefit from many of the protective measures the law was supposed to afford them.
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Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) Term Timeline in The Inconvenient Indian
The timeline below shows where the term Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) appears in The Inconvenient Indian. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6. Like Cowboys and Indians
Allotment continued in the U.S. until 1934, when Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act . When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, his administration created programs designed to...
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Collier instituted the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act, in 1934. The act signified a positive shift...
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