Trump Transition Team Summary

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Recommended: Impact of Dawes Act on Indian tribes

Valerie Volcovici was reporting on the Trump proposal regarding the privatization of Indian Reservations. She did not express her personal views on the matter, and simply relayed what she had learned about the reasoning behind the proposal during her investigation of the topic. During the course of the interview, Volcovici briefly outlined the Trump Transition Team's proposal and their arguments in favor of it, with approximately equal amounts of time spent on each part of the story. Going from what she reported, it appears that the Trump Transition Team is acting in what they believe to be the best interests of Native Americans. According to Volcovici, the Trump Transition Team proposal to privatize the reservation land refers to a fundamental …show more content…

Volcovici briefly focused on this in her interview when she reported about the past history of privatization efforts regarding Native Americans, and mentioned the Dawes Act of 1887 explicitly. The Dawes Act provided for the partitioning and distribution of Indian land among both Native Americans and white settlers as private property. This resulted in the loss of well over half of all remaining territory controlled by Indians in the continental United States. This past act of privatization by the U.S Federal Government, and the disaster that ensued for Native Americans, is probably the source of much of the opposition to this. Volcovici also reported that the current Secretary of the Interior raised concerns regarding the use of the term “privatization” for this reason in particular; the word has some very ugly connotations when used in regard to Indian …show more content…

The use of the word “privatization” is common in conservative circles, and it seems likely that they simply failed to appreciate the negative historical connotations of the word when applied to Native Americans. Furthermore, the information reported by Volcovici indicates that this might in fact restore some further sovereignty to Native Americans regarding their ability to exploit any resources contained on it. There also is a near certainty that allowing Native Americans to tap into energy reserves will inject large quantities of capital into the Reservations, which would likely have a similar effect on their local economies so long as corrupt practices do not siphon the money off as has occurred in the

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