 Rather than the act empowering Native Americans economically, it seems like the opposite happened. So give us an idea of the scale and scope of change. Okay, so before the Dawes Act, Native Americans controlled about 150 million acres of land. The government stripped over 90 million acres of tribal land from Native Americans and sold the land to non-Native U.S. citizens. And when tribes were paid for their land, they were systematically underpaid.