Indian Relocation Act of 1956

In 1947, Secretary of the Interior, Julius Krug, at the request of President Truman, proposed a ten-year program to provide the Hopi and Navajo tribes with vocational training. In 1950, the Navajo-Hopi Law was passed which funded a program to help relocate tribe members to Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Denver and help them find jobs. In 1951 the Bureau of Indian Affairs began expanding the program and assigned relocation workers to Oklahoma, New Mexico, California, Arizona, Utah and Colorado, officially extending the program to all American Indians the following year. In 1955, additional BIA relocation offices in Cleveland, Dallas, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, the San Francisco Bay area, San Jose, Seattle, and Tulsa were added. Relocation to cities, where more jobs were available, was expected to reduce poverty among Native Americans, who tended to live on isolated, rural reservations. Through the first half of the 20th century, the majority of the American population had become increasingly urbanized, as cities were the places with jobs and related amenities. But in 1950, only 6% of American Indians lived in urban areas. The plan of Cultural assimilation that was followed assumed that mainstreaming of American Indians would be easier in metropolitan areas and there would be more work opportunities for them there. Quotas were implemented for processing relocatees. By 1954 approximately 6200 American Indians had been relocated to major U.S. cities. == Settler colonialism ==

The Indian Relocation Act has been characterized as one legislative event in a long series of violence and legislation to get rid of and assimilate American Indians, through a thing called settler colonialism. According to this line of argument, the Indian Relocation Act goes along with the Indian termination policy and land grab in which settler colonialism is intricately tied to. To succeed in occupation of land by the American settlers, it is argued settler colonialism is predicated on the seizure of land of original inhabitants, which in the United States are American Indians. While the beginning of US settler colonialism witnessed physical violence against American Indians, it is proposed later efforts to conquer land were based on legislation. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 broke up communally owned reservation land into smaller, individually owned lots for each tribal member and remaining tribal land not given to tribal members were sold to settlers. The Indian termination policy directly preceded the Indian Relocation Act and is seen by critics as another legislative event under the history of settler colonialism. It terminated Native American reservations which removed legal standing as sovereign dependent nations. It is proposed that this policy directly worsened conditions on reservations and for Native American people. For the Monominees tribes, for example, it is argued this caused a rapidly sinking economy, health and education issues, and skyrocketing tuberculosis rate. Critics described the relocation program as an intentional continuation of settler colonialism to continue assimilation and "get out of the reservation business". While an economic and cultural disaster for many indigenous people of the United States, the act was rationally planned and successful for the US. Native American scholar Vine Deloria Jr. describes the Indian Relocation Act as the "Most disastrous policy outside termination ... meant to get Indians off reservation and into the city slums where they could fade away". ==Text of the law==

The main text of the act empowers the Secretary of the Interior to fund and administer a program for vocational training for eligible American Indians: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in order to help adult Indians who reside on or near Indian reservations to obtain reasonable and satisfactory employment, the Secretary of the Interior is authorized to undertake a program of vocational training that provides for vocational counseling or guidance, institutional training in any recognized vocation or trade, apprenticeship, and on the job training, for periods that do not exceed twenty-four months, transportation to the place of training, and subsistence during the course of training. The program shall be available primarily to Indians who are not less than eighteen and not more than thirty-five years of age and who reside on or near an Indian reservation, and the program shall be conducted under such rules and regulations as the Secretary may prescribe. For the purposes of this program the Secretary is authorized to enter into contracts or agreements with any Federal, State, or local governmental agency, or with any private school which has a recognized reputation in the field of vocational education and has successfully found employment for its graduates in their respective fields of training, or with any corporation or association which has an existing apprenticeship or on-the-job training program which is recognized by industry and labor as leading to skilled employment. Section 2 of the act sets an amount of funding for such programs: There is authorized to be appropriated for the purposes of this Act the sum of $3,500,000 for each fiscal year, and not to exceed $500,000 of such sum shall be available for administrative purposes. It is estimated that between the 1950s and 1980s, as many as 750,000 Native Americans migrated to the cities, some as part of the relocation program, others on their own. By the 2000 census, the urban Indian population was 64% higher than it had been in the pre-termination era of the 1940s. The biggest concern for the federal government with the relocation of American Indians was that the large reservations could not hold them numbers wise. It was no longer that the land was too valuable for the Indians, but that the land was "too small" to hold them. Schools offered vocational or on-the-job training to anyone age 18 to 35 who was at least one-fourth American Indian. More than 3500 persons enrolled in 322 institutions and job placement was reported at 70% by 1966. Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology reported that 91% of graduates were employed after the program. Students entered vocational programs, including study of more than 100 vocations including electronics, nursing, and X-ray technology, with assistance from the act. Students were provided two years of education, along with transportation, room, board, funds for books and tools, and a living allowance. Relocated tribe members became isolated from their communities and experienced homesickness. These children of American Indians would in some scenarios be forced into boarding schools by the government. This was another layer of the plan to integrate Indians into urban life. It was at these boarding schools that the Native American children would have haircuts enforced and be essentially brainwashed against Native culture. The only positive was that at this point, very slowly, the boarding schools were beginning to be phased out. Despite the overly positive declarations made by its supporters, in reality, termination and relocation policy wrought social havoc for Indians generally. Mothers would be terrified to let their children even so much as play in their neighborhood. The Native Americans felt lost in the city where they knew nothing. The groups would often end up living in hotels for long stretches of time upon moving to cities and having no money to afford much else than a room. American Indians were often not allowed to return to their reserves, tearing families apart. == American Indian resistance ==

While people who moved from reservations were initially isolated, American Indians began to form communities through intertribal communities. These community endeavors included cultural centers, pow wows, and general community support. In addition, more politically motivated cross cultural groups began to form with proximity in cities and a pan-Indian consciousness developed. This resulted in inter-tribal marriages and people holding claims to multiple Indian nations. Similarly, coalitions began to form among tribal communities which would not have existed had people stayed on reservations. Though this pan-Indian identity was important to bridge groups together, it is important to note that tribal differences were still important and did not lead to a "melting pot" of a single identity. Pan-Indian political groups were unique to cities. First, these groups had proximity to black civil rights groups and provided support for political efforts, such as protests on Alcatraz. In addition, the American Indian Movement was founded in Minneapolis in 1968. This activism included legal challenges to the termination and relocation policy which eventually succeeded. Overall, American Indian activism had a large advantage in the cities over reservations, with large coalitions, proximity to other civil rights movements, and a distancing from the BIA. ==See also==