Talk:Act for the Government and Protection of Indians

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 11 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): J3nn!f3rros3. Peer reviewers: Jcichoke.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:50, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Peer Revision
The article has a very clear introduction section. One aspect of the article that really stands out was the short table-like brief on the right side that gives the full name, status, dates, sponsors, code, section, and website. This table was extremely informative and caught my attention right away, doing a great job summarizing the relevant content of the article. Another positive of the article was that the sources and citations used to gather the data seem to be reliable. The author relied on documents from a variety of reliable sources such as university press or state documents.

For the introduction, it seems that there is a pretty balanced coverage of the technicalities of the act itself as well as the effects of the said act. With that being said, a change that I might suggest would be to expand upon the erasure of language and culture that is mentioned in the second paragraph. However, I expect that this will be naturally expanded upon as it seems the introduction has been written for now, and the rest of the article will follow suit. As the introduction appears to be pretty balanced, if the author is able to lay it out in a clear structure, I think the article will be great! Lastly, I would say that the author could try to be a little bit more neutral. For example, the sentence “where his hatred and genocidal points of view for native Americans is quite clear” could be reworded to state “where he expresses his view of indigenous Californians being lazy, savage and dangerous”.

The most important thing the author can do to improve the article will be to include a lead section. Including a lead section will add greatly to the article and will allow the author to lay out the rest of the content in an organized manner. Creating a lead section that is easy to understand will undoubtedly set the author on a solid path to writing out the rest of the article.

Lastly, I think the author did a good job of quoting relevant information to her event. They did not overdo it with the quotes nor did they not have any at all. My article does not currently contain any quotes and so following suit to this author (especially in the intelligent manner they did) will definitely strengthen my own article. Geec22 (talk) 15:56, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Second peer review
This article is grounded in a lot of secondary research, is well organized, and effectively introduces the topic. Nonetheless, I have some suggestions which will help it comport with Wikipedia's style and standards. I hope you find them useful. Thanks for your hard work on this article.--Carwil (talk) 03:48, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Lead: The first and second paragraphs should be merged into a single opening paragraph. Generally the second paragraph is more clearly written, but there is some information in the first that could be added. The lead should summarize the impact in terms of total enslavement. This sentence, which I have not independently verified, appears at California genocide: "White settlers took 24,000 to 27,000 California Native Americans as forced laborers, including 4,000 to 7,000 children.[4]" Seek out this and other sources and say how many people were enslaved under this act. Regarding the designation of genocide, attribute the POV to scholarly sources and the current California governor's apology, and keep the compelling quote from Hardemann Burnett, but do show, don't tell on this front. (Per Wikipedia rules, "his hatred and genocidal points of view…" is original research; if a reliable source has come to this conclusion about this speech, cite it instead. A quick Google books search finds that Gregory Smithers has written about this speech in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies.)
 * Tone: The tone is generally encyclopedic, but dips into persuasive essay at times and sometimes includes unnecessary pointers about what's important (like "one point to note is", "having many implications on Indigenous relations"); remove these. See WP:TONE (the whole multipart section) for advice.
 * Scan for POV language and either eliminate, cite, or attribute POV: e.g., "malicious and threatening goals of harassment and murder"—the adjectives are unnecessary.
 * Specify the historical periods of California legality, including under military governors from 1847 to 1850, and statehood from 1850 onward.
 * "monetary incentive … permitting public funds": this feels really indirect. Switch to an active statement if the government appropriated public funds to reward violence.
 * The act…: be judicious about how much of the law to quote directly and consider offering abbreviated summaries. Explain the purpose and context of the amendments before proceeding to the text.
 * End of the effective period of the act: Be clear about the different phases of formal repeal, the implementation of abolition, the last people held in bondage, etc. What exactly did the 1937 repeal mean, or do?
 * A useful source for this:
 * I'd suggest renaming "cultural influence" to "impact." Include both the population figures and estimates for the number of people enslaved. Include what you can about the disintegrating effects of massacres and forced capture.
 * Minor issues: "prior to 18465"; "a few thousand" could be more precise. Who is "lieutenant Sherman"? What were Sutter and Vallejo's offices? Move the book Murder State into the references where appropriate.

Needs support from academic summaries of contemporaneous records or a re-write to remove unsupported commentary
The substance of the article contains strongly worded assertions that either aren’t supported by the text of the act, or are flatly contradicted by it. The supporting references are largely opinion pieces from advocacy groups or dead links. In a nutshell it’s hard to distinguish this article from opinion based advocacy and it needs to be reinforced or re-written.

The word “slavery” particularly needs to be supported by some academic summaries of the contemporaneous records demonstrating that the act was implemented to achieve that result. The plain text of the act doesn’t permit the buying and selling of native americans.

The word “indenture” and the reference to the 13th amendment are likewise rhetorical hyperbole. The provision for adolescent apprentices has elaborate provisions that show a clear emphasis on a voluntary choice by the parent to have the child trained in a craft, and the normal (for the era) protections for minor apprentices. The text of the act allows adult native Americans to contract for their labor but it makes such labor contracts unenforceable against the Native American, and only enforceable against the employer. The act would appear to void the indenture of any native Americans rather than authorize it. The assertion that the act did authorize it would require some scholarly work summarizing records showing that courts were generally enforcing labor contracts against native Americans made under the act by an intentional mis-reading of the provision making them unenforceable.

Likewise the section bidding out the labor of able-bodied indigents is misconstrued. It isn’t part of the modern welfare state, but it was consistent with practice elsewhere for all Americans and it wasn’t slavery as the act was written. It may have functioned that way, but that needs a lot of support and detail that isn’t offered. It’s consistent with how poverty was handled by local relief (of poverty) funds from Anglo-Saxon England until the modern era, whether church or civil.

In colonial America and the early decades of the USA before the rise of the welfare state the care of the indigent (those unable to support themselves, including alcoholic), the infirm (disabled or chronically ill), and those suffering from “idiocy” (the developmentally disabled), was typically authorized by the state legislature to be controlled by a local authority’s general relief (of poverty) fund by contracting with the lowest bidder (lowest subsidy or highest rate of pay for the able-bodied) for each individual.

That the CA act had a 120 day time limit for indigents and provided for the pay to be given to the indigent’s family, if any, before being applied to the relief (of poverty) for native Americans instead of simply reverting to the municipal coffers speaks to good intentions indicating a relief act, not a codex concealing a covert system of slavery. That it wasn’t paid to the indigent was the norm - in general terms, this was an arrangement for a pool of people who demonstrated that they couldn’t provide their own clothing, food, and shelter, whatever profit the town got from the few able-bodied would be spent on the many who were unable to work.

The contact-for-care system fell out of favor after the Civil War because while profiteering by poor care had always been a here-and-there problem it became rampant during the war as commodity prices gyrated. “Poor Houses” or “Poor Farms” owned by the local authority using a paid caretaker replaced the individual annual contracts for care of individuals. The able-bodied were still required to work and the poor farms tried to grow as much of their own food as possible. The modern welfare state began to supplant this system in the 20th century, with the last group closing closer to WWII than any other historical event because it was usually when the last of their aged developmentally disabled residents who could not be expected to adapt to a new location passed away. The subsequent warehousing and institutional abuse of the developmentally disabled by the new welfare state institutions eventually collapsed replaced by local settings under state control.PolychromePlatypus (talk) 17:12, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Repealed in 1866?
1863 (sometimes specifically April 1863 seems to be the more commonly stated date. --Eldomtom2 (talk) 21:58, 11 April 2021 (UTC)