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Termination policy was devastating for Native Americans and I was completely in the dark about it before taking this Great Tribal Leaders class. Read what I have to say and let me know what you think.

 

Susannah Krug

October 18, 2006

Great Tribal Leaders

The Effects of Termination as a Policy

            Every one of the tribal leaders we have seen and met has mentioned termination as a policy of the federal government. As we have seen, some of the tribes were terminated and some were not, but the fear and division amongst the tribes relating to this policy caused great stress to all the tribes. I want to examine the policy and give a short overview on the effects of termination because before taking this class, I was only dimly aware of termination at all, much less what it actually meant.

            The Termination Act was passed concurrently with the Relocation Act in 1953. The Relocation Act told Native Americans that if they wished to move to the cities, the government would pay for transportation and training for when they got to the cities. The Termination Act was about terminating the reservations and moving into the cities. Taken together, you can see that the intention was integration into mainstream society. However, there were devastating effects of both acts. Many Native Americans were not ready for life in the city and the training was not enough to prepare them for the culture shock that awaited them in the city.

            Overall, during the termination period from 1954 to 1970, 61 tribes were terminated. Some tribes were just told that they had been terminated, some tribes were confused about the meaning of termination and some tribes were terminated as a result of some pro-termination Native Americans being more vocal about their preferences. Devastating effects followed shortly. The Klamath tribe was terminated in 1961 and was not restored until 1986 over their tribes’ opposition to the policy.

            Obviously, land was the most tangible thing taken from the tribes when they were terminated. Their reservations were sold and in some cases, their ancestral lands (what little they had left) are lost to them for the foreseeable future. In the case of the Klamaths, their reservation of 860,000 acres of ponderosa pine made the government well over 250 million dollars during the time that the tribe was terminated.

            Another tangible effect was the amount of money that the United States would have had to pay out for the services that it had agreed to in the treaties (education, health services) during the time that the tribes were terminated. It is hard to gather a good estimate of those costs across the United States because so few tribes have actually calculated the monetary cost of those services and the time that they did not have them.

            Perhaps more painful than any of the land or benefits losses, was the pain of losing the tribe. First of all, the government was basically saying that they were no longer Indians at all. They were basically instructed to pretend like their heritage did not exist. An international example of that sort of policy is the policy of France to totally ignore any ethnic identifications or celebrations. As the riots of last winter and spring have shown, this sort of policy makes people feel disconnected and lost.  It is a loss of identity. If you define yourself based on an ethnic identification, when you are suddenly told to ignore that, you cannot just pick up and move on. Many Native Americans did take their portion of the payout (if they got any) and moved to the city or other parts of the country. Tribal Governments were disbanded officially in all cases and in most cases was actually stopped. The robbing of a person’s identity has no monetary cost and can therefore never be given back to the Native Americans that it was taken from.

            As you can see, the effects of termination as a policy have been far-reaching. I am glad that most tribes have been recognized again and I hope that in the near future, some sort of restitution plan is worked out to pay them back for the costs that we can measure from the termination period.

This paper was written by my Dad - Bruce Krug. I edited it and I want to see what you think about it. Check it out!

 

The Pacific Northwest, circa 1840, was still a land void of any of the trappings of civilization, home to a few indigenous tribes, the HBC, and other trappers.  Very shortly, the Oregon Trail became a symbol of the American movement west to the Pacific Ocean, and there were only 19 short years until the State of Oregon would become part of the United States.  Although there had been major changes for humans elsewhere in the century preceding this, life here was still wild and full of adventure.  Promontory Point, Utah 1869 marking the completion of a transcontinental link would bring about the transformation into a resource based, transfer and shipping economy.

     As the 18^th Century dawned in the Pacific Northwest, there were few signs of the events that were to come. The Indigenous tribes of the coast and valleys of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia lived as they had for some 6,000 years or more.  About 2 million in number, they lived off the rich land given to them by their Great Spirit with an affluent lifestyle, taking a living from the sea, or living off the bounty of the valley forests. Although still engaging in inter-tribal and clan warfare occasionally, all was relatively peaceful.  This scene would be shattered in a little over a century.

     The coming of the various epidemics of European diseases brought to them by indigenous traders from other tribes of the Southwest and the Spanish that had conquered there, were like ocean waves devastating a coastal village.  By the 1790’s when Cook, Vancouver, and Gray would arrive on the scene, it would be a land emptied of its people and its soul. Smallpox, diphtheria, and measles had taken their toll on the numbers, possibly down to 400,000, and their society.  They were no match for the rugged trappers and explorers that came from an already expanding British Empire.  The HBC set up shop in Vancouver, Oregon, and Victoria, B.C.  These new residents were here to exploit the natural abundance that had supplied the tribes of the Northwest for so long.  For all the change that they brought to the indigenous culture of the region, however, they were not in sufficient numbers to bring about a radical shift in the eco-system or the environment.  Although they trapped out species of fur-bearing creatures, and contaminated the Natives with their ways, had they left permanently, I believe that with time the land could have recovered and their marks would have been erased forever.  This is how the Northwest stood in 1840. 

     The Oregon Trail opened up a new wagon route for adventurous, desperate, hardy, and stubborn settlers that came not to live with the land and the indigenous population, but to conquer it.  With the help of the already established trapping stations of the HBC, Americans came in waves to find the paradise denied them in the east.  Towns began to spring up to service the needs of the new settlers in the inland valleys of California, Oregon, and Washington.  The HBC and Douglass stood as guards at the gate to British Columbia, blocking the sort of free-for-all settling occurring in the lower part of the Pacific Northwest. At first it was just the land that drew the settlers, but then the minerals began to call the fortune seekers.  With the discovery of gold not only in California and Oregon, but also in British Columbia, the pace of change increased even more.  Even the HBC finally had to give in and allow miners to come.  The resources of the Pacific Northwest began to flow outward to the rest of the world.  The volume, however, was relatively small, owing to the expense of trying to ship the resources back to civilization.  With prohibitive costs, development was slow.  Some far-sighted entrepreneurs, however, were about to strip the privacy away and change the Pacific Northwest forever.  

     In Promontory Point, Utah, on a wonderful spring day, a golden spike secured the last rail in place on the line connecting Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, and Atlanta to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland.  Although it was just a spike it signaled the end of a period in history for the Pacific Northwest, and the west in general.  Connected by rail and a few days travel, settlers could land on the east coast and ride the rails all of the way to Oregon Country. 

      Although not a direct route, this railroad junction allowed the state of Oregon and her two children, Washington and Idaho territories to grow rapidly.  People came on the rails from all over the world for their new start in the fishing, lumbering, or mining industries of the wild and crazy Pacific Northwest. 

       Inner region rails made it possible to ship the wheat from Walla Walla to the wharves of Seattle and Tacoma for shipment overseas.  The advent of stock cars and refrigerated cars during the last years of the century enabled cattle ranchers to make Northwest beef available in Seattle, Chicago, Pittsburgh, or even Boston.  Sawmills sprung up everywhere in the western areas of Washington and Oregon and the loggers tried to meet the high demand for Northwest lumber.  So the new age of the Pacific Northwest south of the 49^th parallel was born to the whistles of the railroad and whine of the rails.  In forty short years the Pacific Northwest of the United States had joined the developed world, albeit on the frontier.

     While the American side whirred and puffed its way to life through the transcontinental rails, Canada too had realized the value of the rails.  In Vancouver, B.C. it was realized early on that if the province would ever truly be united to the plains and the maritime provinces that a railway would have to connect them.  When a rail link further connected Vancouver and San Francisco it seemed almost certain to move British Columbia into the American Sphere.  Were it not for England’s desire to turn B.C. over to the Canadian Union, such might have been the case.  The key in the negotiations became the establishment of an intercontinental link between them, and the Canadian Union’s promise to subsidize just such a railway.  In 1871 with just such a promise made, Canada had a new province; British Columbia. 

     When the Canadian Pacific Railway completed the first transcontinental railway on Canadian soil in 1886, the most immediate result was the rise of Vancouver as a major city.  Overnight Vancouver eclipsed Victoria as the major city in the province.  Once East was linked with West, new markets opened up for all products harvested in B.C. and large ports were built to transport Eastern goods to China and the Far East. B.C. was mainly a natural resource economy with timber and mining dominating the scene, as sawmills and mines spewed out the plunder of an untapped natural reserve. 

     As the dawn of the twentieth century loomed over the Pacific Northwest it was truly an altered environment.  Gone were the quiet days with only the animals and natives playing.  In fifty to sixty short years the railroad had transformed this nature sanctuary into a modern world with cities and infrastructure, unions and policemen, politicians and businessmen. Although the HBC had succeeded in slowing down the settling process in British Columbia, by the twentieth century, B.C. was a busy metropolis.  Although the revolution of the automobile has been often heralded as the coming of a new age, it was the railroads that really transformed our world.

So I am having a great amount of frustration with the dog next door. I love dogs - I have one myself, but the dog next door is driving me crazy. I hate to make a complaint without actually giving the owner a chance to resolve the situation, so about 3 weeks ago I wrote them a letter. Now this dog barks incessantly. They put him out on the porch (we live in apartments - their porch is about 10 feet away from my bedroom window) at 6:30 in the morning and then leave. This dog barks and barks and barks until I finally just get out of bed because I cannot possibly continue sleeping with this noise. Anway, I gave them a letter and it got better for a while - they stopped putting him out on the porch which is the right thing to do anyway because it is not allowed to leave a huge dog like that on your porch alone. Well, yesterday and today, he is back on the porch and barking like normal. This disturbs my sleep, my husbands sleep and the kids sleep and when they are napping later in the day. Do you think I should write another letter and give it to them, or complaint to apartment management or make a formal complaint with the city? Maybe I should just go over there and talk to them after they are home at night. Maybe I won't be so angry when I go do that.

Ok guys! I have a new blog at www.susannahsbooks.blogspot.com. It is all about what book I am reading right then and what that book is making me think about. Check it out! I know you will love it.