In weeks seven and eight of the semester, coursework pertained to the treatment of Natives through post-war federal policy. These policies followed countless Native contributions to World War II which elevated the United Statesβ position as other empires suffered. The fourth chapter of Treuerβs (2019) book, βMoving On Upβ, establishes the backdrop of post-war American policy: its historical text begins describing the successful mobilization of academic knowledge, production and technology, and the American people. This vigor lead into a 15-year rapid push to handle βthe Indian problemβ through all-encompassing federal policy. These policies could be largely categorized into two forms, though both influenced the other: direct termination of the Native wardship identity, and their identity as Native at all; and forced assimilation through the relocation and urbanization of Natives in American society.
Termination and relocation are discussed as one in both Treuer (2019) and Ulrichβs (2013) work. Treuerβs follows historical context with a detailed, chronological account of the termination and relocation policies. First, major states passed acts which reinvented the 1885 Major Crimes Act for their respective tribes. It began with Kansas in 1938; then, between 1948 and 1949, Iowa, then New York, then California passed laws which relocated jurisdiction over tribal issues from the tribe to the federal government. Simultaneously, land and the presence of those on it became the next issue to resolve. In 1946, the government created the Indian Claims Commission (ICC) to handle all Native claims of federal land seizure and treaties. This commission went hand-in-hand with the Navajo-Hopi Law in 1950: many sections of federal government utilized the ICC and the Navajo-Hopi Law to coerce Natives to monetize their loss, then to use this capital, learn a new vocation, and leave ancestral land behind for rapidly expansive cities. It also entwined with senator Arthur Vivian Watkinβs Termination Act and the Public Law 280 in 1953, which dissolved Nativesβ status as wards of the state and transferred the majority of jurisdiction rights for Native cases to state courts. For tribes like the Menominee, money from ICC-won land claims was locked behind agreeing to termination. Termination incorporated Menominee people and resources into a Wisconsin county led by private industries. Many Natives followed suit when Public Law 959 passed in 1956, coerced into relocating to urban cities and undergoing vocational training. They lost their tribal status and trusteeship over their lands, and they suffered higher rates of unemployment and poverty as urban Americans than they had before.
Ulrichβs (2013) chapter details the cultural backdrop and ideology which fueled the laws which followed. She addresses termination and relocation as both a pre- and post-war tactic beginning as early as 1850 that re-emerged with both Native and congressional criticism of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. To remove the Native problem for once and for all, the government integrated the 1953 and 1956 laws into the United Statesβ progressive post-war ideology. Popular reasons included tribes would be better off without wardship; that termination would βreduce big governmentβ; that tribally-owned property was representative of Communism; and the heightened criticism from both Native and congressional parties towards the bureau. Despite all this, the tribes that were targeted for termination were cut regardless of how well-off, how dependent they were on bureau support, or how established with property and resources they were prior; termination and later relocation were both done to relieve the government of the Native burden, to re-incorporate them to benefit the burgeoning, wholly American citizenship, and to attempt to erase Native culture once more.
Several would detail the fallout and consequences of termination through the policyβs end in 1970. Ulrich (1999), Barber (2005), and Dougherty (2013) all retell the effects of termination, relocation, and exponential Americanization for the Pacific Northwest, particularly the Celilo and Nez Perce by Columbia River. When the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest approached its limits, it turned to the commercial fishing industry and the hydroelectric energy industry. The Columbia River and thus Celilo and othersβ Native fishing rights were one of many cases subject to the industrial boom, and government attempted to remove their fishing rights and access to the river to expand both industries and utilize the land for themselves. Dougherty (2013) details the fishing wars which followed, contesting Native fishing rights and treaties against the explosive fishing industry of Washington and Oregon. Natives utilized βfish-inβ protests at the Columbia River and Washington stateβs Puget Sound, a critical act that helped them gain popular and political support. The fishing wars ended in the recession of post-war growth and a new presidencyβs support towards βself-determination without terminationβ: the court upheld the fishing rights and treaties, and two decades after its formal inception, the government would revert Native statuses under termination.
Although previous weeks have accounted for other attempts to erase Native identity, I feel that these weeks embodied acculturation most. It is baffling to me to say this because these readings regard the same government that attempted to exterminate Native peoples or Native identity through war, boarding schools, and coerced government restructuring, but this is the concept that springs to mind. In this era, the government attempted to erase Native identity from federal records and through readjustment to urban life. Although that sounds identical to the boarding school project, I would consider this a more intense form of acculturation due to the people it affected directly. David Schildtβs account exemplifies it: when his father moved to learn mechanical work, his entire familyβeleven children and another parentβmoved, too. Not all of them might have been able to attend boarding school in that period of time; with relocation, however, all thirteen were forced to adapt to a new culture and isolate from the one before.