“We were the statistics. We were the unemployed and the disenfranchised and we were the ones that really were just trying to survive termination and relocation and you know, we were the statistics. We were the ones that had the problems with alcohol or we had come from divided families, and we had just come out of this meat grinder that’s called democracy.”
- John Trudell, creator of Radio Free Alcatraz
"Most Native Americans lived in extreme poverty, and few had access to electricity and running water. The death rates from diseases such as diabetes, pneumonia, and strep throat were higher than the rest of the U.S. population." [1] |
“In 1943, the United States Senate conducted a survey of Indian conditions. The living conditions on the reservations were found to be horrific, with the residents living in severe poverty. The Bureau of Indian Affairs and the federal bureaucracy were found to be at fault for the troubling problems due to extreme mismanagement. Thus began the era of the government's efforts to eradicate the Indian tribes of North America. The U.S. government called this their ‘Termination Policy.’” [2] |
"Billed as vehicles to integrate Indians into the wider nation and protect them from racial discrimination... termination policies dismantled trust relationships, relocated Indians to urban centers, and stripped tribes of land and sovereignty.” [3] |
“From 1953-1964, 109 tribes were terminated and federal responsibility and jurisdiction was turned over to state governments. Approximately 2,500,000 acres of trust land was removed from protected status and 12,000 Native Americans lost tribal affiliation. The lands were sold to non-Indians the tribes lost official recognition by the U.S. government.” [4] |
"The Bureau of Indian Affairs, under a new commissioner, Glenn Emmons, developed a two-pronged plan of encouraging relocation but at the same time encouraging industry to locate on the reservations by various schemes such as tax breaks. The last termination bill was passed in 1962." [5] "Termination had a far more potent and widespread symbolic impact. It was the ultimate put down, an utter betrayal of trust responsibilities by the federal government." [6]
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