assimilation into the 1868 peace treaty that created the Great Sioux Reservation: "The peace commission had built this optimism into the terms of the treaty, limiting the food annuity to four years and ending the rest of the education program after twenty" (Lazarus, 1991, p. 52).
Whites who drafted the 1868 treaty assumed that the Sioux would become self-sufficient farmers; the Sioux regarded the treaty as an indication that they could resume their former way of life, roaming and hunting. Whites failed to understand the tenacity of the Sioux's cultural beliefs. Sioux were never meant by the Great Spirit to work for their living by toiling the earth and building cities. Not only was farming considered disrespectful to the earth, the practice violated the masculine pride of the Sioux warriors: "Taking up the plow meant renouncing the culture, as surely as cutting off the ceremonial braid or giving up the breechclout for pants . . . " (Lazarus, 1991, p. 52).
Hoxie (1984) illuminates the societal mindset that led to the federal government's policy of assimilation, a policy that lasted between 1880 and 1920. In fact, the effects of this policy are still felt as a "major theme" in Indian communities today: "The assimilation campaign has produced a legacy of racial distrust and exploitation we have thus far been unable to set aside" (Hoxie, 1984, p. xi). During the nineteenth century, America's attitude toward its nonwhite population changed radically as the pool of newcomers became more ethnically diverse. Society rejected the goal of assimilating
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