Meriam Report
The Meriam Report (1928) (official title: The Problem of Indian Administration) was commissioned by the Institute for Government Research (IGR, better known later as the Brookings Institution) and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The IGR appointed Lewis Meriam to be the technical director of the survey team to compile information and report on the conditions of American Indians across the country. Meriam submitted the 847-page report to the Secretary of the Interior, Hubert Work, on February 21, 1928. The report combined narrative with statistics to criticize the Department of Interior's (DOI) implementation of the Dawes Act and overall conditions on reservations and in Indian boarding schools. The Meriam Report was the first general study of Indian conditions since the 1850s, when the ethnologist and former US Indian Agent Henry R. Schoolcraft had completed a six-volume work for the US Congress. The Meriam Report provided much of the data used to reform American Indian policy through new legislation: the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. It strongly influenced succeeding policies in land allotment, education, and health care. The report found generally that the federal government was failing at its goals of protecting Native Americans, their land, and their resources, both personal and cultural. Lewis Meriam Lewis Meriam was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1883. He received degrees in English and government from Harvard University, law degrees from the National Law School and George Washington University, and a Ph.D. from the Brookings Institution. He worked for several government bureaus both before and after his work on the Indian Survey, including the bureaus of Census and Children's Welfare. In 1926, Interior Secretary Hubert Work chose Meriam to head a survey team to investigate Indian Affairs because of his experience with the technical study of government operations, as well as his expertise in government administration. Meriam spent three years working on this project, which became known as the "Meriam Commission" or the "Meriam Report". His involvement in Indian affairs ended in 1936 because of his skepticism of the New Deal. In 1946 he was appointed as Vice President of the Brookings Institution. He died in Kensington, Maryland, on October 30, 1972. Survey team Meriam had difficulty choosing a team because many of the prospective members could not leave their jobs. The IGR required team members to be "persons highly qualified as specialists in their respective fields, scientific in their approach, not sensationalists, and free from preconceived views and opinions that would interfere with their impartiality and fairness in gathering and interpreting the facts." He finally gathered a team composed of several specialists in a variety of disciplines: Ray A. Brown (legal aspects), Henry Roe Cloud (Indian adviser), Edward Everett Dale (economic conditions), Emma Duke (Indian migration to urban areas), Dr. Herbert Edwards (physician) (health), Fayette Avery McKenzie (source materials), Mary Louise Mark (family life), W. Carson Ryan, Jr. (education), and William J. Spillman (agriculture). Findings Authorized by the Institute for Government Research on June 12, 1926, at the request of the Secretary of the Interior,