The United States Government has been trying
unsuccessfully to register Native American Indians for over a hundred years.
The infamous Dawes Act of 1887 was the first such effort on a large-scale.
The purported aim of the Act was to protect Indian property rights during
the Oklahoma Land Rush. By registering, Indians were told, they would be
allotted 160 acres of land per family in advance of the Land Rush and thus
be restituted for 100 years of genocide against them.
The purpose of the Dawes Act, ostensibly to protect
Indian welfare, was viewed with suspicion by many Indians hurt by
government's clumsy relocation efforts of the past. Indians who had refused
to submit to previous relocations refused to register on the Dawes Rolls for
fear that they would be caught and punished.
To get on the Dawes Rolls, Native Americans had to
"anglicize" their names. Rolling Thunder thus became Ron Thomas and so
forth. This bit of "melting pot" chicanery allowed agents of the government,
sent to the frontier to administer the Act, to slip the names of their
relatives and friends onto the Dawes Rolls and thus reap millions of acres
of land for them.