In the 1950s and 60s, the official U.S. policy towards the Native Americans was "Indian Termination." That's exactly what they meant: no more tribes. In 1970 President Richard Nixon had some (okay, many) ideas about how to start changing that and repairing the relationship with Native Americans on reservations. He wanted to solve some of the economic issues that stemmed from the legislation creating such places.

In a lengthy speech he gave to Congress, he outlined some of these ideas, which we'll do our best to summarize for you without making you go cross-eyed. (Excuse any typos, as we still haven't recovered from reading the speech ourselves.)

Basically, he starts out by acknowledging that he is not a crook. No, wait, wrong speech. Let's see here…oh right, he starts by outlining what the problem is:

The first Americans - the Indians - are the most deprived and most isolated minority group in our nation. On virtually every scale of measurement - employment, income, education, health - the condition of the Indian people ranks at the bottom.

This condition is the heritage of centuries of injustice. From the time of their first contact with European settlers, the American Indians have been oppressed and brutalized, deprived of their ancestral lands and denied the opportunity to control their own destiny. Even the Federal programs which are intended to meet their needs have frequently proven to be ineffective and demeaning (source).

He couldn't be referring to the Dawes Act, could he? Well…not directly. But he'd be right if he was including it in the long list of Federal programs that were supposedly in the Native American's best interests but ended up failing them miserably.

He then goes on to list all the ways in which some of these programs could be improved. He coins the phrase "Self-Determination Without Termination", which means that he wants the Native Americans to be able to make more decisions for themselves, without the fear of much-needed Federal grants fading into oblivion.

His speech was definitely a step in the right direction, and launched several legislative successes that improved life on the reservation. It didn't solve all their problems (far, far from it), but it's a vast improvement over the patronizing speeches that were written in the 19th century.