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On June 2, 1924, Congress passes the Indian Citizenship Act which grants to all Native Americans U.S. citizenship. Congress is grateful for service by Native Americans during World War I and is inspired by their assimilation into U.S. society. Until this time, Native Americans qualified for citizenship if the lands they held were removed from trust status and the protection of the U.S. Government.

The law did little to change the lives of Puget Sound Indians. The mechanism of wardship continued, with Indian agents controlling the management and disposition of tribal lands and allotments. Citizenship did not relieve Native Americans from racial discrimination and they continued to experience state regulation of their treaty rights to fishing off-reservation.

Sources: Alexandra Harmon, Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities around Puget Sound, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 174; Leonard A. Carlson, "Government Policy," Native America in the Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), 215.

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