profoundly affected their relationship to non-Indian
society. Indian soldiers who had previously spent
little time outside of reservations were suddenly in
foreign nations, fighting side by side with non-Indian
soldiers against a common enemy.
Such experiences left many Indian service-
men more confident and far less willing to accept
unchallenged white prejudices against them and
their people. For others, the war and its after-
math were more disorienting than empowering—a
situation tragically illustrated by the death from al-
coholism of Pima war hero Ira Hayes in 1955. The
difficulty of many veterans in readjusting to reserva-
tion life after the war later provided the subject of
N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1968)
and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977), two of
the best Native American novels of the postwar era.
In addition to changing Indians’ view of main-
stream America, Indians’ military experiences also
changed how policy makers saw them. In the years
immediately after the war, non-Indians in govern-
ment came to question the special legal status of
Indians and the logistics of the reservation system.
In a complete reversal of Collier’s progressive legis-
lation, the new architects of federal Indian policy
increasingly sought to get out of the “Indian busi-
ness.” This goal was often presented as a means of
eliminating government interference in Indians’
lives, although advocates often had far less benevo-
lent motives. Faced with funding massively expensive
federal programs for veterans, many Washington of-
ficials were eager to save the millions spent annually
to administer reservations and to provide benefits
and services guaranteed to Indians by treaty.
These aims resulted in the two dominant poli-
cies of the 1950s and early 1960s: Termination
and Relocation. Most completely articulated in the
House Concurrent Resolution 108 of 1953, Termi-
nation meant dissolving the reservations of specific
tribes and thereby ending their special tribal status.
In theory, Termination was to be applied only to
relatively affluent tribes that could withstand the
loss of tribal lands and the income they produced. In
fact, few tribes had the resources to cope with Termi-
nation’s economic costs. One of the most notorious
instances was that of the Menominee of Wisconsin,
who were an early target for Termination because
they had more than $10 million of tribal funds
in the U.S. Treasury. However, over the course of
eight years, these funds were nearly depleted by the
U.S. government in the process of implementing the
policy. By the time the Menominee’s Termination
was official in 1961, they were desperately poor.
The Relocation policy was developed to help
returning Indian veterans, who found few oppor-
tunities for employment on reservations or in other
Indian communities. It sought to encourage these
men to move to cities, where employees of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs would help them find jobs
and affordable housing. Some Indians were already
eager to relocate, while others were persuaded by
the promises of the government—promises that
frequently proved empty. Many relocatees, unable
to obtain either work or adequate homes, merely
exchanged rural poverty for urban poverty.
For a large number of Indians, the effects of Ter-
mination and Relocation were devastating. Yet from
these disastrous policies emerged a renewed fervor
in and focus for Indian political activism. Largely
to protest Termination, the National Congress of
American Indians helped to organize the week-long
American Indian Chicago Conference in 1961.
Attended by more than 500 tribal representatives,
the event sparked an increased commitment among
Indian leaders from different tribes to band together
to fight against the mistreatment of all Indians.
By the late 1960s, young Indians in urban
areas also began to embrace a pan-Indian approach
to protesting the government’s policies. Many were
the children of the original relocatees; born in the
city, they often had almost no direct experience with
traditional Indian societies. Gathering in Indian
centers established to help new relocatees, this
new generation of activists were drawn together by
their shared anger at non-Indian authorities. From
their ranks would emerge the American Indian
Movement, the Indians of All Tribes, and other
multitribal groups whose confrontational tactics
and media savvy would draw international support
for American Indian rights during the 1970s.1934 to 1968