Federal Fathers Mothers

Established in 1824, the United States Indian Service (USIS), now known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was the agency responsible for carrying out U.S. treaty and trust obligations to American Indians, but it also sought to "civilize" and assimilate them. In Federal Fathers and Mothers, Cathleen Cahill offers the first in-depth social history of the agency during the height of its assimilation efforts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cahill shows how the USIS pursued a strategy of intimate colonialism, using employees as surrogate parents and model families in order to shift Native Americans' allegiances from tribal kinship networks to Euro-American familial structures and, ultimately, the U.S. government.

"Published in association with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University."

Presents the full text of "America's Fathers and Public Policy: Report of a Workshop," edited by Nancy A. Crowell and Ethel M. Leeper. Lists committee members and workshop participants and notes acknowledgments. Remarks that the Board on Children and Families convened the workshop, "America's Fathers: Abiding and Emerging Roles in Family and Economic Support Policies," held in Washington, D.C., on September 26-28, 1993. Notes that the main topics of discussion centered around child support, teenage fathers, fathers of disabled children, and inner-city poor fathers. The Report from the workshop examines such topics as economic support, barriers and incentives to involvement, and public policy regarding fathers' rights. Contains a bibliography, a list of references and suggested directions for research, and the workshop's agenda. Links to the home pages of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Academy Press (NAP), as well as to other reports.