Wardship and the Welfare State:

Native Americans and the Formation of First-Class Citizenship in Mid-Twentieth-Century America

My first book, Wardship and the Welfare State was published in June 2024 and is now available from University of Nebraska Press!

The book examines the ideological dimensions and practical intersections of public policy and Native American citizenship, Indian wardship, and social welfare rights after World War II. By examining Native wardship’s intersections with three pieces of mid-twentieth-century welfare legislation—the 1935 Social Security Act, the 1942 Servicemen’s Dependents Allowance Act, and the 1944 GI Bill—I trace the development of a new conception of first-class citizenship.

Wardship and the Welfare State explores how policymakers and legislators have defined first-class citizenship against its apparent opposite, the much older and fraught idea of Indian wardship. Wards were considered dependent, while first-class citizens were considered independent. Wards were thought to receive gratuitous aid from the government, while first-class citizens were considered responsible. Critics of the federal welfare state’s expansion in the 1930s through 1960s feared that as more Americans received government aid, they too could become dependent wards, victims of the poverty they saw on reservations. Because critics believed wardship prevented Native men and women from fulfilling expectations of work, family, and political membership, they advocated terminating Natives’ trust relationships with the federal government. As these critics mistakenly equated wardship with welfare, state officials also prevented Native people from accessing needed welfare benefits.

But to Native peoples wardship was not welfare and welfare was not wardship. Native nations and pan-Native organizations insisted on Natives’ government-to-government relationships with the United States and maintained their rights to welfare benefits. In so doing, they rejected stereotyped portrayals of Natives’ perpetual poverty and dependency and asserted and defined tribal sovereignty. By illuminating how assumptions about “gratuitous” government benefits limit citizenship, Wardship and the Welfare State connects Native people to larger histories of race, inequality, gender, and welfare in the twentieth-century United States.

About Me

I am an adjunct lecturer in the department of Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, where I teach classes in Native American history and Indigenous worldviews. I love teaching and believe adjuncts are valuable and innovative educators who deserve respect and fair compensation. I have been adjuncting since 2017 and have previously taught in the history departments at San Diego Miramar College, Cuyamaca College, San Diego Mesa College, and UC San Diego.

I am passionate about digital pedagogy, ungrading, and social annotation, and work to support faculty as they create accessible, inclusive, and student-centered learning environments through technology.

I also work as a freelance writer, editor, researcher, and consultant for public history projects. This Fall 2024, I am working as a member organizer with my union, UC-AFT, to organize lecturers as we start our new contract campaign. Support your local adjuncts’ union!

My research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the American Association of University Women, the Coordinating Council for Women in History, the Harry S. Truman Library, the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University, the UC San Diego Center for the Humanities, and the UC San Diego Department of History. 

More about Wardship and the Welfare State

Interview with Faculti, August 2024

“Without Giving Us a Guilty Conscience,” Study Marry Kill, August 2024

“Who Is To Gain? Wardship and Indian Citizenship after the Indian Citizenship Act,” University of Nebraska Press Blog, June 2024

Find me on Twitter: (@mcklann)