Date of Award

Fall 2013

Document Type

Thesis

Terms of Use

© 2013 Abigail R. Lipnick. All rights reserved. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may only be used for non-commercial, educational, and research purposes. For all other uses, including reproduction and distribution, please contact the copyright holder.

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

History Department

First Advisor

Bruce Dorsey

Second Advisor

Farid Azfar

Abstract

This paper questions the supposed linkage between Native Americans’ military service in World War 1 (1914-1918) and the Native American Citizenship Act of 1924 that granted citizenship to the remaining 125,000 noncitizen Native Americans living within the territorial limits of the United States. Historians tend to cast the Citizenship Act as a ‘boon,’ a legislative move that advanced Native Americans’ social and political rights and rewarded them for their courageous acts on the battlefield. Within the Native American context, however, citizenship was fraught with far more complex and conflicted meanings than the secondary literature often suggests. Despite Native Americans’ outward displays of U.S. patriotism via wartime service, the Act of 1924, in many ways, cemented Native Americans’ status as an ‘inferior’ race.

Download

Included in

History Commons

Share

COinS