Congressional Selection of Tribes for Termination

• In Event: Indigenous Politics and Policy

Abstract

Indian termination was U.S. policy formally initiated by Congress via House Concurrent Resolution 108 (HCR-108) and adjacent laws in 1953. It proposed to terminate tribal charters and assimilate Indigenous people in the US into broader American society, once and for all. It was to eliminate all aspects of the special nation-to-nation relationship between Native nations and the US, as well as other obligations of the federal government to American Indians, for example for schools and healthcare. We assess the logic of the order in which Congress proposed to terminate tribes, which it suggested was according to “tribal readiness,” as revealed by four measures: degree of acculturation; economic resources and condition of the tribe; willingness of the tribe to be relieved of federal control; and willingness of the state to assume the tribe. While Congress does not formally account for the details of how they actually selected the first round of proposed terminations (which are specified in HCR-108 and clarified through subsequent hearings), we attempted to approximate this by creating a scored termination readiness index by assigning proxies for the above criteria, calling on data from the US Census and the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports.

The statistical association between our index and which tribes were actually proposed reveals that Congress, on average, selected tribes just better than if chosen at random; if we are going on what we can find regarding the measures that the government suggests, in almost every case we cannot see why the terminated tribe is chosen instead of any from a set of other tribes. Further, we look at which of the originally proposed tribes were ultimately terminated, versus just being proposed for termination, as well as which tribes were later proposed - and then terminated or not. Are tribes that appear more ready, according our index, more likely to ultimately be terminated, or maybe these tribes are better situated to argue the case to Congress that they are not ready? And/or, perhaps better prepared tribes have more bargaining power in Congress and can negotiate via other routes? Do congressional hearings and other activities ultimately bring to light the realities of relative group preparation, or do they mostly advantaged the already advantaged, as some of the literature suggests? Our findings are mixed here; in some cases, relatively higher readiness tribes are able to get out of termination, and in some cases they are not. Importantly, we also compare scores for all tribes (as a group), and each tribe (individually), to relevant national and state average “readiness” scores for the non-Indigenous population. We find that, even with the pre-termination support of the federal government, almost every tribe falls well below the average non-tribal score, suggesting that most likely none were ready for an abrupt rollout of termination. Finally, we use the readiness index, together with knowledge of whether tribes were ultimately terminated, to predict shifts in relative long-term economic outcomes for tribal members. We find that being proposed for termination had an overall negative effect, made worse if termination was executed, and mitigated only minimally if termination was eventually reversed.

Authors

• Sonja Castañeda Dower, University of Chicago

• Scott Cooley, University of Chicago