The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 assigned individual Indians 160 acres
each, and after the allotments, sixty million acres of "surplus" Indian
lands were given over to homesteaders.  Between 1887 and 1934, two-thirds
of the lands allotted to the Indians, another twenty-seven million acres,
had passed into white ownership.  In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act
ended severalty allotment and the compression of Indian territory, and
began to allow for restitution and expansion.  Despite the land takeovers
in the 1950s for reservoir and dam construction, Indian holdings are
actually greater now than they were sixty years ago.  The Indian protest
movements and the Native American Rights Fund, founded in 1970, have
continued to work for the restoration of India n lands, although an Indian
Claims Limitation Act was put into effect in 1982, which restricted
permission to file new claims not already registered with the Department
of Interior.