The Indians Claims Commission In 1946 Congress established the Indian Claims Commission to review tribal grievances over treaty enforcement and management of resources and to resolve lingering disputes between Indian tribes and the U.S. government The period also saw a growing call in Congress to end federal services to Indian tribes and remove the government’s trust relationship established by treaties and the Constitution House Concurrent Resolution 108 (1953)

Public Law 280, transferring jurisdiction over tribal lands to state and local governments Between 1953 and 1966 Congress passed laws terminating 109 tribes: it ended the trust relationship between the federal government and the tribes, withdrew federal services from the communities, required the tribes to distribute property among their members, eliminated the tribes’ reservations, and rendered tribal members and their lands subject to state laws and taxes The case of the Menominee and Klamath tribes

Relocation & Urban Indians After the war, endemic unemployment on the reservations and new social and economic opportunities in the cities prolonged the trend all across the country The Voluntary Relocation Program – initiated in 1952, BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) provided incentives and assistance to American Indians who left the reservation to the cities Los Angeles, Seattle, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Denver, Minneapolis, and Chicago contained large composite Indian communities

The government encouraged Indians to move to cities, where relocation centers were supposed to help with housing, job training, and medical care Even though Indians were moved far from their reservations, about one-third returned Most who stayed in cities faced racism, unemployment, poor housing, and the loss of their traditional culture

As part of its new emphasis on assimilation in the late 1940s and 1950s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs distributed this leaflet to entice Native Americans to move from their reservations to cities. Thousands of Indians relocated in the years after World War II The percentage of Indians living in urban areas grew from 13.4% to 44% in 1970

American Indian Movement The government’s termination and relocation policies largely backfired, generating increased resistance and organizing among may American Indian groups Thanksgiving Day 1970, protest on Mount Rushmore (1971), fishing rights in the Great Lakes (1972) “Trail of Broken Treaties,” in which a caravan of Indians traveled across the U.S. form the West Coast, via Minneapolis, to Washington, D.C., arriving there in November 1972 with more than 500 protesters

In the 1960s, Indian people in the Northwest openly asserted their rights to fish despite harassment from state authorities and non-Indian neighbors Here, Indian fishermen stage a “fish-in” on the Nisqually River in Olympia, Washington

Tuscarora Wallace Mad Bear Anderson burns an injunction issued by the state of New York prohibiting demonstrations against road construction on the Onondaga Reservation Anderson wears a gustoweh, the traditional headdress of Iroquois men

Twenty point document proposing the federal government reestablish a treaty-making relationship with Indians The new strategies of direct confrontation on the part of the militant pan-Indian leaders also produced strains and divisions within Indian society Siege at Wounded Knee (1973) The legacies of Wounded Knee In 1974 the International Indian Treaty Council was organized, with the goal of bringing the struggles of indigenous peoples around the globe to the attention of the world community

Russell Means and Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kent Frizzell sign an agreement. Frizzell smoked a sacred pipe with AIM leaders, but the peace settlement failed. Means said “the government broke it before the ink was dry”

The “Native American Embassy” – Members of the American Indian Movement stand ready to defend their occupation of the BIA building – here renamed the Native American Embassy (November 1972)

Social worker Ada Deer lobbied in Washington against the Menominee Termination Act. In 1973 President Nixon signed the Menominee Restoration Act. Deer served as chairperson of the Menominee Restoration Committee from 1973 to 1976 and became the first Native American women to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs