The Animator

The notion that it was time to terminate the wardship status of Native Americans and wind up federal responsibility for their welfare became increasingly popular in Washington in the postwar years. This would mean that BIA could be abolished, the reservations broken up, Indian resources sold off and the profits divided among tribal members. Indians would become just like any other Americans – responsible as individuals for their own destiny. In this context, Collier’s critics could blame his policies, rather than inadequate federal funding, for the economic backwardness of the reservations. The IRA, by returning the land to communal ownership and making it inalienable, had limited the property rights of individual Indians. In the words of historian Kenneth Philp, ‘this well-intentioned [IRA] policy threatened perpetual government supervision over many competent individuals,

made it difficult to secure loans from private sources, and discouraged Indians from developing their land resources’. Furthermore, the wartime migration of many Indians to the cities appeared to suggest that what many Native Americans themselves wanted was participation in America’s booming postwar industrial economy rather than a life of rural squalor on the economically deprived reservations.

Relocation, 1948-61 In 1948 William Brophy, Collier’s successor as Commissioner, began a policy of relocating Indians – initially from two tribes – to the cities where the job opportunities were better than on the reservations. This programme was gradually expanded and by 1960 nearly 30 per cent of Native Americans lived in cities, as opposed to just 8 per cent in 1940. Although the BIA provided some financial support and advice for relocating Indians, it reported as early as 1953 that many Native Americans had ‘found the adjustment to new working and living conditions more difficult than anticipated’. Securing housing, coping with prejudice and even understanding the everyday features of urban life such as traffic lights, lifts, telephones and clocks made the experience traumatic for many Indians. Not surprisingly, many suffered unemployment, slum living and alcoholism. Federal funding for the relocation project was never sufficient to assist Native Americans to cope with these problems, and many drifted back to the reservations.

The Indian Claims Commission The first step towards terminating the reservations came in 1946 when Congress, in part to reward Native Americans for their contribution to the war effort, set up the Indian Claims Commission to hear Indian claims for any lands stolen from them since the creation of the USA in 1776. The Commission was initially supported by the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), a pressure group formed in 1944, because they welcomed a federal initiative to deal with long-standing grievances. However, it was clear that the Commission would provide only financial compensation and not return any land. The federal government regarded the Commission as the first step to ‘getting out of the Indian business’. This was clearly how President Truman saw it: ‘With the final settlement of all outstanding claims which this measure ensures, Indians can take their place without special handicaps or special advantages in the economic life of our nation and share fully in its progress.’ The original intention was for the Commission to sit for five years, but there were so many claims that it remained in existence until 1978.

The Termination of the Reservations In August 1953, Congress endorsed House Concurrent Resolution 108 which is widely regarded as the principal statement of the termination policy: It is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to make the Indians within the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States, to

end their status as wards of the United States, and to grant them all the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship. In the same month Congress passed Public Law 280 which, in California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon and Wisconsin, transferred criminal jurisdiction from the Indians to the state authorities, except on certain specified reservations. Congress also repealed the laws banning the sale of alcohol and guns to Indians. These measures could be justified as merely bringing Indians into line with other US citizens but, as one historian has observed, ‘the states were not as eager to control the reservations as the advocates of termination had expected’. In some Indian areas law and order disappeared altogether.

Many Native Americans were alarmed about the termination policy. One Blackfoot tribal chairman pointed out that, ‘in our language the only trans-lation for termination is to “wipe out” or “kill off”’. But in Washington, it was seen in terms of freedom and opportunity. Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah, the principal Congressional advocate of termination, claimed in a 1957 article that it could be compared to the abolition of slavery: ‘Following in the footsteps of the Emancipation Proclamation of 94 years ago, I see the following words emblazoned in letters of fire above the heads of the Indians – THESE PEOPLE SHALL BE FREE!’ These remarks were, of course, selfinterested. Termination would open up yet more valuable Indian land and resources to white purchasers. This explains why, in the Congressional committee hearings on termination, there was considerable controversy over the future of the first reservations selected, especially those of the Menominee of Wisconsin and the Klamath of Oregon who had large land holdings and valuable forestry and timber resources.

Termination proved very hard to resist. Opponents who stressed the backwardness of the reservations and the inability of individual Indians to cope without continued federal support only confirmed the Congressmen in their conviction that the IRA had failed and that a new policy was necessary. Even the lack of adequate facilities for Native Americans could be used as evidence that termination was necessary. When a Congressman from Texas tried to argue against the termination of the small reservation in his district, he had to admit that the federally-maintained Indian school attended by the Native American children was over 500 miles from their homes, and that it made more sense for them to be educated locally alongside white children. The NCAI was also in difficulties because many Native Americans favoured termination. These were mostly the half-blood Indians who had moved to the cities and, in many cases, adopted the values and lifestyles of the white majority. They stood to gain financially if the valuable land on their reservations was sold and the money divided among tribal members. As Helen Peterson, a member of the Oglala Sioux and a former director of the NCAI, later recalled:

In the NCAI office we did all we could to support, encourage, and back up those people who dared to question termination, but it was pretty much a losing battle. The NCAI was

in a tough spot. We were deeply committed to respecting the sovereignty of a tribe. Did the NCAI want to oppose termination even when the people involved wanted it? We never really came to a final answer on that question. The NCAI was able to prevent the termination of some tribes, including the Turtle Mountain Chippewa, but not the resource-rich Menominee and Klamath. However, the pace of termination slowed in the mid-1950s as it became clear that many Indians had not been properly consulted and few fully understood its implications. In 1958 the Secretary of the Interior, Fred Seaton, declared that ‘it is absolutely unthinkable ... that consideration would be given to forcing upon an Indian tribe a so-called termination plan which did not have the understanding and acceptance of a clear majority of the members affected’. In the 1960s the policy was abandoned.

Conclusion: the Impact of Termination Judged by numbers alone, the impact of termination was small. It affected just over 13,000 out of a total Indian population of 400,000. Only about 3 per cent of reservation land was lost. But it caused huge anxiety amongst Native Americans and had the ironic result of stimulating the formation of the ‘Red Power’ protest movement of the 1960s. It remains an emotive issue among historians sympathetic to Native Americans. Angie Debo called it ‘the most concerted drive against Indian property and Indian survival’ since the 1830s. Jake Page concluded that it had been ‘an utter betrayal of trust responsibilities by the federal government’, and Edward Valandra has claimed that ‘termination increasingly resembled extermination’. However, it is difficult to see what policy, in the context of the early Cold War, could have replaced it. Even today, neither the Native American tribes themselves, nor the federal government, have successfully resolved exactly what the status and identity of the original inhabitants of the north American continent should be.

Questions:

• How successful was the Indian New Deal?

• How important was the Second World War in transforming the lives and status of Native Americans?

• Was the Termination policy merely an excuse to plunder Native American land and resources?

• How similar was the Native American struggle for their rights to the African American civil rights campaign?

• How successful was the Indian New Deal? - terrible the Indians had their land taken away and all resources sold (i think this may be right)

oh and it failed terribly-

god just that won was hard-

I-