For a moment it was as if the silence had fallen across the entire planet . . . everyone in front of their TVs rigid, a communal holding of breath.

These include actions that contributed to the reversal of the Dawes Act's privatization of communal holdings of American Indian tribes and a return to local self-government on a tribal basis.

In 1893, the Dawes Act required that the tribal communal holdings in the Indian Territory be divided into individual allotments.

The commission divided large sections of land into household allotments to eliminate the traditional governments of the Cherokee and other tribes, which were based on communal holding of land.

The Huron Cemetery remained part of communal holdings and was used by members in Kansas City.

There was national legislation to extinguish tribal government and to establish individual household allotments of land in place of tribal communal holdings.

Peasants were encouraged to register their communal holdings as private property and to consolidate their scattered strips into coherent farms.

In 1887 Red Cloud opposed the Dawes Act, which broke up communal tribal holdings, and allocated 160-acre plots of land to heads of families on tribal rolls for subsistence farming.

The communal holdings of native groups were also declared corporate property that were to be divided up and parceled out to individuals.

The tribe retained some communal holdings and has resisted continued individual allotments since its reorganization in the 1930s.