The Trail of Tears just wasn’t enough.
When Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, they created a ‘legal’ justification for the abrogation of countless treaties the government had signed with Native American tribes. The purpose of the Act was to remove Native Americans from eastern lands which had been ceded to them by treaty, thus opening the land – much of it quite valuable – to development by whites. Among the inevitable results of the Act was the infamous ‘Trail of Tears,’ a forced march of more than a thousand miles that killed thousands of Native Americans.
Having driven most Native Americans onto desolate western reservations, and having waged numerous local wars to keep them there, by the 1900’s the federal government seemed content to let the Native Americans melt away under the mostly incompetent and vigorously corrupt oversight of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
But somehow, the tribes refused to die out, and after World War II, encouraged by western commercial interests that sought access to potential mineral and energy resources that might be lying undiscovered beneath some reservations, Congress decided to take back the reservations and force Native Americans to assimilate into the larger culture. While even Congress was reluctant to make the tribes walk back east – there was nowhere for them to go and they wouldn’t be especially welcome on the way – the government’s policy was crude but effective. They would simply ‘terminate’ the reservations and leave the Native Americans to figure out what was next on their own.
To add the spice of urgency, the Act not only terminated federal recognition of the tribes, a somewhat abstract legal construct that might not have affected daily life on the reservations, but also ended all types of federal support for reservation residents, including health care, education, public safety, employment, and ownership of reservation lands, which transformed a difficult life into an impossible one.
In 1956, to further encourage assimilation, Congress passed the Indian Relocation Act. This Act promised vocational training, assistance in finding work and housing, money for tools that would be needed for apprenticeship programs, medical insurance, and a small stipend intended to cover living expenses for several weeks to Native Americans who agreed to participate. By 1960 more than 31,000 Native Americans had volunteered for the program and moved to specially-designated cities, including Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Denver, Dallas, Cleveland, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Considering the long, baleful history of U.S. and Native American relations, it should surprise no one to learn that many of the Relocation Act’s promises went unfulfilled, leaving thousands of Native Americans adrift in strange cities, unemployed or working at low wage jobs, and enmeshed in a culture they didn’t understand. According to a 1960 Bureau of Indian Affairs report, nearly one third of program participants were not self-supporting in their new cities. Many found that promised jobs and affordable housing did not exist. Virtually all participants faced racial discrimination and segregation and suffered from a lack of community support and their unfamiliarity with non-tribal culture. Many that could return to their reservations did, but some could not, as their reservations had been sold off when their tribe was terminated.
By the mid-1960’s it was apparent even to the government that the loss of federal support was killing Native Americans who remained on former reservation land. By then, federal recognition of 109 tribes or bands had been terminated, eliminating support for nearly 13,000 Native Americans and selling off three percent of all reservation land. By 1968, the government had reversed the termination policy and by 2018 more than 45 terminated tribes have regained federal recognition.
But while the Relocation Act failed to live up to the promises of its supporters, the combination of termination and relocation forever changed Native American life. Between 1950 and the mid-1980’s an estimated 750,000 Native Americans moved to cities, some as part of the relocation program, but most on their own, as conditions on the reservations deteriorated. Today, an estimated 70 percent of Native Americans live in cities, compared to 8 percent in 1940.
“Wherever we went, the soldiers came to kill us, And it was all our own country. It was ours already when the Wasichus made the treaty with Red Cloud, that said it would be ours is long as grass should grow and water flow. That was only eight winter’s before, and they were chasing us now because we remembered and they forgot.”
― Black Elk, from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
Quote from: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/native-americans
November 17, 2018