• termination and relocation: 1945-1970

Postwar Years

• U.K debts incurred towards the U.S.; imperialism of the U.K shattered, and imperialism of the U.S. grown; technological, economical boom and migrations towards a “future” in more ways than one
• 1885: Major Crimes Act; federal prosecution of Indian-Indian and intertribal crimes
• 1938: Kansas Act: federal jurisdiction over Potawatomi, Sac and Fox, Kickapoo, and Iowa tribes
  • 1948: Act to Confer Jurisdiction on the State of Iowa over Offenses Committed by or Against Indians on the Sac and Fox Indian Reservation”
  • 1948/1950: New York Acts
  • 1949: California Act
  • violations of tribal treaties and tribal sovereignty
• 1946: Indian Claims Commission: file all claims necessary with regard to federal land seizure and treaties within the next 5 (extended to 10) (extended to 1970s) (to 1978) (2006 on the US Court of Claims) years
  • coercion to monetize claims of land loss rather than address cultural and life loss
  • democracy was not encouraged, but forced; majority rule and market capitalism; absorbption into mainstream government and principles
• 1950–1951: Navajo-Hopi Law, Southwest; job-training program and relocation program
  • expanded in 1951 to Oklahoman, Arizona, and New Mexico tribes and cities
  • further expanded to more urban cities in later years
• 1953: Termination Act
  • 1946: arthur vivian watkins, senator for utah
  • suggestion of “freeing of the Indian from wardship status”
  • fix the “Indian problem” by making Indians “legally, culturally, and economically no longer Indians at all”
    • already passively enforced in some tribes (Little Shell Band; formerly of Pembina Ojibwe, Old Crossing Treaty)
    • 1953, Menominee: personally visited by Watkins; 8.5mil in federal court coercion for termination
      • 1961 dissolution and transfer to a private business; reservation not returned until 1970s

Even though reservations have been characterized by Indians and non-Indians alike as places where hope goes to die, as a kind of final resting place for Indian lives and cultures, they are clearly much more than that. They have functioned as a home base, as a home, for Indians and have preserved—in ways both positive and negative—a kind of togetherness that has been vital to the continued existence of Native people. All of this was painfully obvious in the 1940s and 1950s, but the government did its best to unsee it.

• 1953: Public Law 280
  • tribes were defederalized; no tribal sovereignty; states prosecuted for many tribes within their state borders
    • Minnesota (except for Red Lake Reservation), Wisconsin (except for the Menominee Reservation), California, Washington, Oregon (except for Warm Springs Reservation), and Alaska (upon statehood)
    • Nevada, South Dakota, Florida, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Arizona, Iowa, and Utah adopted
  • law-and-order; levied as a regulatory directive over tribes until corrected by the 1980s Supreme Court
    • excesses still being limited in modern day
• 1953: House Concurrent Reeolution 108 / “Act to Free Indians from Federal Supervision”
  • dewarding of Indians under the government; “death of Indians as Indians” and “rebirth” as citizens
• 1956: Public Law 959
  • vocational training programs and relocation to urban areas
• 1970: urban pop of Indians had gone from sub 6% to half of all Indians in U.S.
  • 1.4mil acres removed from trusteeship
  • 12,000 Indians lost tribal affiliation
• 1970: official end of termination in Nixon presidency
  • Indian diaspora, intertribal strength
• “Federal policy isn’t abstract unless you’re rich. If you’re not, it is something that affects your life and your blood and your bones.”