Burke Act, also known as the Forced Fee Patenting Act, amended the Dawes Act of 1887, under which the communal land held by tribes on the Indian reservations was broken up and distributed in severalty to individual households of tribal members. It required the government to assess whether individuals were "competent and capable" before giving them fee simple patents to their allotted land. Because the federal government believed that many Indians were not prepared for United States citizenship, the act further provided that citizenship not be granted to Native American individuals until at the time of the final validation of their trust patents instead of upon the receipt of the trust patents, as stated in the Dawes Act. Those who were issued fee simple patents were granted citizenship upon receipt. Those whose land remained in trust status were to be granted citizenship at the conclusion of the twenty-five year trust period. It was named for U. S. Congressman Charles H. Burke.
Background
Competence
The Burke Act amended the GAA to provide for the Secretary of the Interior to assess individual Native Americans as ‘competent and capable.’ before issuing any person receiving a land allotment a patent in fee simple. Receiving a fee simple patent meant that the land of the allotee would be removed from federal trust status and made subject to taxation. The allotee would be able to sell it on the private market. The act reads: Studies have shown that Bureau of Indian Affairs officials tended first to classify people as 'competent and capable' if they were of mixed-race. These allottees were deemed ‘competent’ because BIA officials believed that their European ancestry made them mentally superior, that they were more likely to be assimilated culturally, and therefore they were able to take responsibility of their land. Allowing officials to assess competence made administration of the act more subjective, increasing the exclusionary power of the Secretary of Interior and inviting corruption among those with an opportunity to profit by gaining Indian-owned land. Although the act gave power to the allotee to decide whether to keep or sell the land, provided the harsh economic reality of the time, and lack of access by many Native Americans on reservations to credit and markets, liquidation of Indian-owned lands was almost inevitable. The Department of Interior officials associated with this program expected that virtually 95% of fee patented land would eventually be sold to whites. The following passage from the 1913 annual report from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reveals that the supervisor of the reservation expected eventual dispossession of land after individual Lakota people had been issued fee patent. The Bureau of Indian Affairs reservation superintendent characterized this result as a ‘valuable lesson.’ The Burke Act had other consequences. In some cases, individual Indians deemed "competent" were not notified of the status and were not informed that their land's status had shifted from trust land to fee patent. As a result, individual owners did not realize the land was subject to taxation. After a period of taxes being unpaid, local or state jurisdictions could sell the land without the owner's consent to pay past taxes. This process was known as the "forced fee patent process." In this way, the Burke Act contributed to the ongoing fractionation of lands within reservation boundaries and overall loss of Tribal or Indian-owned lands.
