Indian Claims Commission

The Indian Claims Commission was a panel for relations between the United States Federal Government and Native American tribes. It was established in 1946 by the United States Congress to hear claims of Indian tribes against the United States. [Act of August 13, 1946, ch. 959, 60 Stat. 1049]

The commission was conceived as way to thank Native America for its unprecedented service in World War II and as a way to relieve the anxiety and resentment caused by America’s history of colonization of Indigenous peoples. The Commission created a process for tribes to address their grievances against the United States, and offered monetary compensation for territory lost as a result of broken federal treaties. However, by accepting the governments monetary offer, the aggrieved tribe abdicated any right to raise their claim again in the future, and often surrendered their federal status as a tribe after accepting compensation.

Anthropological research conducted for the Commission led towards the foundation of the [http://www.ethnohistory.org/sections/about_ase/ American Society for Ethnohistory] (ASE), when the research and historical reports compiled in evidence for Native American claims was first amassed in 1954 at the inaugural Ohio Valley Historic Indian Conference, the predecessor organization later renamed as the ASE. A collection of the studies was published in the series "American Indian Ethnohistory", by Garland Publishing, in 1974. The methodology and theory of ethnohistorical research in general traces back to the work done by anthropologists and other scholars on claims before the Commission. [See "Introduction" to Shoemaker (2002), vii–ix.]

The Commission was adjourned in 1978 by Public Law 94-465, [90 Stat. 1990] which terminated the Commission and transferred its pending docket of 170 cases to the United States Court of Claims on September 30, 1978. By the time of the Commission's final report, it had awarded $818,172,606.64 in judgments and had completed 546 dockets. [ ]

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