"When the U.S. Congress began terminating American Indian tribes during the 1950s -- ending the special relationship between formerly sovereign tribes and the federal government -- many Indians thought they would be better off without the Bureau of Indian Affairs meddling in their lives. They didn't understand the consequences of "termination" until it was too late.
"Tribal land was sold off," writes Charles Wilkinson in The People Are Dancing Again: The History of the Siletz Tribe of Western Oregon, "and individual allotments ... passed from Indian hands. Communities broke up and dispersed. Economic and social conditions worsened." The Siletz people and the members of 108 other terminated tribes lost hunting, fishing, gathering and water rights. The search for employment scattered family groups, further decimating language, social and cultural traditions that had somehow survived the long Indian Wars of the 1800s as well as the government assimilation programs of the early 20th century.
Worst of all, as Wilkinson discovered, people from terminated tribes were no longer considered Indian -- by either whites or Indians. "I felt like I lost my identity," Agnes Pilgrim, a Siletz, told Wilkinson. Termination also affected tribal members far from Oregon. "One woman lost her teaching job at Haskell Indian School in Kansas," Wilkinson writes, "because she was no longer a member of a 'recognized' tribe.""
Get the Story:Regaining identity through restoration (High Country News 3/7)
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