Indian Removal Act
Trail of Tears legislation
The Indian Removal Act was an 1830 U.S. law authorizing the federal government to negotiate treaties that exchanged Native American lands east of the Mississippi River for territory in the West.
Signed by President Andrew Jackson, it led to the forced relocation of tens of thousands of Native Americans, most infamously the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears.
The term appears in discussions of American expansion and indigenous rights: The Indian Removal Act set the legal framework for ethnic cleansing.
- Andrew JacksonSeventh U.S. president
- forced migrationInvoluntary mass relocation
- Mississippi RiverLongest North American watercourse
- broken treatiesAgreements no longer honored
- treaty violationsFailures to honor accords
John Marshall · intergenerational trauma · human rights violations · legal precedents · Georgia · Cherokee Nation · Alabama · Supreme Court rulings · westward · colonialism · cultural assimilation · land grab · dispossession · Oklahoma · Manifest Destiny · death march · suffering · Florida
- discriminationracism, systemic discrimination, Jim Crow laws, sexism, racial harassment
- 1830sAndrew Jackson, Trail of Tears, Texas Revolution, Republic of Texas, Alamo
- Government Programswelfare program, Great Society, healthcare reform, Medicare, Medicaid
- Historic LawsHomestead Act, Fugitive Slave Act, Missouri Compromise, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chinese Exclusion Act
- Indian RemovalTrail of Tears, forced relocation, Andrew Jackson, forced migration, Martin Van Buren
- Jacksonian EraAndrew Jackson, Democratic Party, spoils system, Trail of Tears, kitchen cabinet
Indian Removal Acttribal sovereignty
Indigenous peoples' governmental independence
land restoration · treaty rights · reservation system · repatriation · tribal recognition
Indian Removal ActCivil Rights Act
Law prohibiting discrimination
emancipation · Voting Rights Act · amnesty · naturalization · asylum policy
Indian Removal Actright of return
Legal claim to homeland
freedom of movement · homesteading · self-determination · asylum