Charles Henry Burke (April 1, 1861 – April 7, 1944) was a Republican Congressman from South Dakota and Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1920s. Biography He was born near Batavia, New York, in 1861, and attended the public school there. He moved to the Dakota Territory in 1882 and settled on a homestead in Beadle County of what is now South Dakota, moving on to Hughes County in 1883. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1886. He also engaged in the real estate investment business in the area of Pierre, South Dakota. He was elected to the South Dakota House of Representatives in 1895 and 1897. He ran for the United States House of Representatives in 1898, won election, and remained in that position through 1907, losing the nomination for the 1906 election, although he won again in 1908 and remained in the House through 1915, serving as Minority whip from 1913 through 1915. In 1914, he received the nomination for the United States Senate seat from South Dakota and chose not to run for reelection to the House. He lost that Senate race. He was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1921 and served in that capacity until his resignation in 1929. He died in 1944, in Washington, D. C. Burke and Native Americans In 1934 Congress approved the Wheeler-Howard Bill (Indian Reorganization Act) hailed by its advocates as the Indian Magna Carta. Its adoption marked the climax of a bitter contest waged throughout the 1920s between Indian protectors and reformers—led by John Collier and Gertrude Bonnin—and obscurantists and exploiters of Indians—led by Albert B. Fall and Charles H. Burke. The reformers had been able to reduce some of the power of the exploiters, which centered in an insensitive Congress and an uncaring bureaucracy, during the 1920s wringing from a reluctant national administration a few modest improvements in Native American welfare. Then in 1934, they won their signal victory through passage of the Indian Reorganization Act, their cause riding on the momentum of the New Deal commitment to transform the nation. During the early 1920s, Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall was principal spokesman for the obscurantist element. The former senator from New Mexico was a staunch advocate of the business community's unhindered access to mineral and petroleum resources on reservations. Fall choice for Commissioner of Indian Affairs was Charles