By Paul E Vallely, MG US Army (Ret)
This article is for President Trump and his team of advisors to consider transition and closing of the nations’ Indian Reservations. From the Native standpoint, a former US Senator from Colorado Ben Nighthorse Campbell, of the Northern Cheyenne, said of assimilation and termination in a speech delivered in Montana in 2007:
If you can’t change them, absorb them until they simply disappear into the mainstream culture…. In Washington’s infinite wisdom, it was decided that tribes should no longer be tribes, never mind that they had been tribes for thousands of years.
— Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Opening Keynote Address
The policy for termination of tribes collided with the Native American peoples’ own desires to preserve Native identity. The termination policy was changed in the 1960s and rising activism resulted in the ensuing decades of restoration of tribal governments and increased Native American self-determination.
Closing and termination of Indian Reservations is shaped by a series of laws and practices with the intent of assimilating Native Americans into mainstream American society. Assimilation is not new; the assumption that indigenous people should abandon their traditional lives and become what the government considered “civilized” had been the basis of policy for centuries. There was a new sense of urgency that, with or without consent, tribes begin to live “as Americans.” To that end, Congress must work with President Trump and set about ending the special relationship between tribes and the federal government.
The idea that it is time to close the Indian Reservations is assuredly a complex and still a controversial move and decision. One has to consider the impact on the Indian communities and working with them to design an agreeable transition plan.
The History is critical to understand in order to move to a new modernation of the Indian lands for the benefit and assimilation of the American Indian people. The reservations were established as a result of treaties and agreements and were often were made in duress where Indians were forced to cede their controlled lands to the government of the United States. In the 1950s a policy of termination was implemented with the goal of ending Federal recognition of tribes and relocating Indians to urban areas. This was widely criticized and ultimately abandoned. This was not well thought out for the benefit of the American Indians and their respected tribal members.
The Process
Termination began with a series of laws directed at dismantling tribal sovereignty. From June 1940 until September 1950, six laws were passed that gave states criminal or limited-criminal jurisdiction over tribes and reservations within those states. In 1949, the Hoover Commission reports, recommending integration of Native peoples into mainstream society, and the 1952 House Report (HR No. 2503), investigating the Bureau of Indian Affairs, both portrayed termination as cost effective and benign in its effects. House concurrent resolution 108 of 1953 announced the federal policy of termination and called for the immediate ending of the Federal relationship with a selected group of tribes. The resolution established that Congress would pass termination acts on a tribe-by-tribe basis. Most such acts included the cessation of federal recognition and all the federal aid that came along with that designation. Between 1953 and 1964, the government terminated recognition of more than 100 tribes and bands as sovereign dependent nations. These actions affected more than 12,000 Native Americans or 3% of the total Native American population. Approximately 2,500,000 acres (10,000 km2) of trust land was removed from protected status during these years. Much was sold by individuals to non-Natives.
The termination of these tribes ended federal government guardianship of and recognition of those tribal governments and US jurisdiction of tribal lands. In addition to ending the tribal rights as sovereign nations, the policy terminated federal support of most of the health care and education programs, utility services, and police and fire departments available to Indians on reservations. Given the considerable geographic isolation of many reservations and inherent economic problems, not many tribes had the funds to continue such services after termination was implemented. The tribes initially selected for termination had been considered groups who were the most successful in the United States, in some cases, because of natural resources controlled by their reservations.
A few tribes mounted legal challenges to maintain tribal government and the trust relationship with the federal government. Through the Indian Claims Division tribes had the ability to file claims against the government for breaches of treaty or grievances. The five-year deadline for making a claim, August 1951, caused many tribes to file in the months preceding the end of the registration period. In some instances, pending claims cases with complex legal issues aided the tribes in preventing termination, while in others, tribes were taken advantage of again by government agents and their associates.
Some reservations have thriving economies and maintain cultural integrity and tribal history. Others do not and are in many cases are in decay. Sex trafficking, kidnapping, crime, drug and alcohol addiction abuse run rampant. Suicide of the youth has increased significantly.
Reservations have allowed native languages, traditions and cultural practices to exist. Many tribes operate their own separate local governments and organizations to serve the people. It has been reported over the years that the improper transition and closing of the reservations would amount to the continuation of harmful and well not thought-out policies. We know there is new thinking that ending the reservations would provide more freedom of work and education and lead to greater economic development and prosperity for the Native Americans.
Survey of Indian conditions
In 1943, the US Senate commissioned a survey of Indian conditions. It indicated that living conditions on the reservations were extremely poor. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and its bureaucracy were found to be at fault for the troubling problems due to extreme mismanagement. Congress concluded that some tribes no longer needed federal ‘protection’ and would be better off with more independence, rather than having them depend on and be poorly supervised by the BIA. They also thought the tribes should be assimilated to mainstream American society. Goals of termination included freeing the Indians from domination by the BIA, repealing laws that discriminated against Indians, and ending federal supervision of Indians. Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah, the strongest proponent of termination, equated it with the Emancipation Proclamation, which had declared the freedom of all slaves in the territory of the Confederate States of America.
In 1953 House and the Senate announced their support for the termination policy, with House Concurrent Resolution 108:
Whereas 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 of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship.
We are recommending that the Trump team initiate a modernization plan for the Indian lands that will provide an historic benefit for our Native Americans. The plan will include modern cities, towns, plants for manufacturing, financial institutions, education/skill training, technology development, housing (real estate ownership and property rights for all Individuals and families). Innovation and creatively will be the forefront of the plan.
