For many Indian families, tribal per capita payments help meet their most basic needs. They buy food, pay heating bills, make car payments, and open savings accounts. As a Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians leader explains, per capita monies have given historically impoverished Indian communities “cause to hope and dream and plan.” But systemically, “per caps” are causing harm to tribes as independent political entities.

Ho-Chunk, Inc., CEO Lance Morgan has indicted per capita dollars as a “new form of welfare [that] is just the latest in a cycle of dependency that Indian Country has been trying to break out of for the last 100 years.” Socioeconomic dilemmas aside, per capitas have become an indomitable force in tribal policy and governance, to the detriment of Indian political stability and self-governance.

The per capita system dictates tribal election results and causes recalls and referendums. It shapes tribal fiscal policy and directly impacts tribal budgeting. It causes tribal program reorganization and reductions in force. It defines modern Indian citizenship and sparks mass disenrollment, or what Professor David Wilkins refers to as the epidemic of Indian “dismemberment.” It starts civil wars within tribes, and between tribes.

Tribal per capita payments are a creature of the United States and its Indian termination policies. In 1907, Congress passed the Lacey Act so that tribal trust funds could be “apportioned and allotted” on a “pro rata” basis to any Indian “capable of managing his or her own affairs.” While Congress ended allotment in 1934, it superimposed Indian “membership” upon tribes at the same time.

By the mid-20th century, Congress reauthorized tribal cash apportionment to tribal members on a “per capita” basis as a mode of tribal termination. The convergence of federal Indian membership and per capita constructs—and resultant tribal disenrollment, community division and political unrest—have plagued Native America ever since.