Twenty-five years after the Homestead Act granted free land to thousands of white settlers, all federally recognized Native people are “offered” a plot of land separate from tribal reservations. If they are willing to live separately from their tribal community in this way, they are also given U.S. citizenship.
This strategy is used to break up a Native community's collective right to land stewardship. Over the next 40 years, Native people will lose 60% of their tribally-held land through individual allotments, most of which are then sold to settlers.