"Indian Relocation Act ... Indian Termination Policy"

​... Analyzing Tommy Orange's There There

Orange's elder characters come from the 1950s - 1960s Indian Termination Era, which included Urban Relocation. The younger cast of characters were born in urban cities as a result of the relocation of their ancestors. Orange is making a point that Urban Indians are Indians too.

​Tribal Termination and Relocation (1940s-1960s)

​American Indian Politics and the American Political System (2018) novel by David Wilkins and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark

The ending of World War II and the cost-cutting measures that ensued in Washington, D.C., John Collier’s resignation in 1945, the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946 (which allowed Indians to sue for monetary compensation from the United States), a sense among conservatives in Congress and the BIA that the IRA period’s policies were “retarding” the Indians’ progress as American citizens, and a sense among liberals that Indian were still experiencing racial discrimination in the BIA’s still overly colonial relationship with tribes all fueled a drive to abandon Tribal reorganization goals and terminate federal benefits and support services for tribes.

The definitive statement of the termination policy was House Concurrent Resolution 108, adopted by Congress in 1953. This resolution declared that "at the earliest possible time” the Indians should “be 

freed from all Federal supervision and control and from all disabilities and limitations specially applicable to Indians. Between 1945 and 1960 the government processed 109 cases of termination “affecting a minimum of 1,362,155 acres and 11,466 individuals.”

Along with the termination resolution, Congress, just a few days later, also enacted Public Law 280, which conferred upon five states (California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, and Wisconsin) full criminal and some civil jurisdiction over Indian reservations (with certain reservations being exempted) and consented to the assumption of such jurisdiction by any other state. 

The final part of the termination policy trilogy was relocation, a federal policy aimed at the relocation of Indians from rural and reservation areas to designated urban “relocation centers.” In 1956 alone, the federal government spent $1 million to relocate more than 12,500 Indians to cities. The relocation policy was a coercive attempt to destroy Tribal communalism.

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Work Cited
Wilkins, David. American Indian Politics and the American Political System 4th Edition 2018 Rowman & Littlefield pp. 157-158 and (chart) p. 150-151.

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