From my understanding of the Native Americans’ involvement in World War One, it was their belief that participating in the war would help them either achieve sovereignty or gain citizenship. To some extent they were correct. After the First World War, all Native American veterans were awarded citizenship, and shortly after that citizenship was awarded to all Native Americans. One thing I do find interesting is that even though some Natives were not seen as citizens yet they were still drafted into the war. Or did this only happen to those who already had citizenship? Although they did receive the citizenship many of them were after when joining the war, this citizenship came with some complications. I found it not very surprising that this citizenship was seen as another way for the government to assimilate the Natives. It also seems like this citizenship did not stop the mistreatment of natives as seen on multiple occasions. One example of this is seen through the murders of the Osage people for their rights over the oil mined on their land.
The only instance of a group of Natives even having some sovereignty that I can think of is the Osage people. They were able to control the ownership of the minerals and oil being taken out of their reservation and even received shares and royalties from this ownership. I think that this was very cool, that they were able to control this part of their land, and that this had benefited them in many ways. Although this did the Osage people a lot of good for a while, after the war this changed. Because of this large amount of oil found on their reservation and the amount of money they were making out of it, the white people wanted to take it from them. They did this when the federal government did not allow the Osage people without any white ancestry to hold any power over the financials gained by this oil rigging. When I first heard this I automatically knew that this would lead to corruption and the Osage people losing their money to the White people overseeing it. Overall I think that while it seemed like the Native Americans gained a lot of things from this war, in the end, it did more harm for them than good. Yes, they were able to achieve citizenship, but that citizenship led to complications, and they were not really able to achieve any sovereignty like they hoped because it is seen that many communities are still fighting for that to this day. So one might argue that citizenship and false hope were the only things the Natives received for their efforts in the war