The Indian Rights Association (IRA) was a social activist group dedicated to the well-being and acculturation of Native Americans in the United States.
The organization was founded in 1883 by Herbert Welsh and Henry Spackman Pancoast after they traveled with an Episcopal mission to the Dakota Territory in 1882 and spent four weeks with the Sioux agencies.
The management of early Indian Rights Association's programs fell almost entirely to five men, all of whom had lengthy careers with the IRA: Herbert Welsh, Matthew Sniffen, and Lawrence E. Lindley, active in Philadelphia; and Charles C. Painter and Samuel M. Brosius, agents and lobbyists in Washington, D.C.
The Unitarian minister and journalist Jonathan Baxter Harrison was an influential observer, publishing several books and articles detailing his findings in the late 1880s.
The Indian Rights Association in BC was a coalition of Indigenous leaders fighting to protect Aboriginal titles.