Meriam Report
1928 report
The Meriam Report (1928) (official title: The Problem of Indian Administration) was commissioned by the Institute for Government Research (IGR, better known later as the Brookings Institution) and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The IGR appointed Lewis Meriam to be the technical director of the survey team to compile information and report on the conditions of American Indians across the country. Meriam submitted the 847-page report to the secretary of the interior, Hubert Work, on February 21, 1928.
The report combined narrative with statistics to criticize the Department of Interior's (DOI) implementation of the Dawes Act and overall conditions on reservations and in Indian boarding schools. The Meriam Report was the first general study of Indian conditions since the 1850s, when the ethnologist and former US Indian Agent Henry R. Schoolcraft had completed a six-volume work for the US Congress.
The Meriam Report provided much of the data used to reform American Indian policy through new legislation: the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. It strongly influenced succeeding policies in land allotment, education, and health care. The report found generally that the federal government was failing at its goals of protecting Native Americans, their land, and their resources, both personal and cultural.
Lewis Meriam
Lewis Meriam was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1883. He received degrees in English and government from Harvard University, law degrees from the National Law School and George Washington University, and a Ph.D. from the Brookings Institution.
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