Countering Colonization: Albuquerque Laguna Colony

Abstract

he federal government's relocation program, coupled with its termination policy, attempted to usurp indigenous lands and indigenous cultures. Beginning in the 1950s, relocation and termination provided a way for the government to withdraw legally from its federal trust responsibility and impose a policy of assimilation on indigenous peoples. Terminating trust responsibilities, borders, and Indianness sent a clear message that the federal government intended for American Indians to cease to exist as cultural and self-determined peoples. The federal government's formula was to get Indians off the reservations and the federal dole-if no one lived on the reservations then there would not be a need for public funds to support social, educam tional, and land management expenditures on those lands. Seeking to : absorb indigenous peoples into mainstream society, the relocation program aimed to send them from reservations to urban areas where they would provide vocational training, a place to live, and a job. As with other policy eras, indigenous people and the federal government had U very different ideas on the meaning of relocation. r 61 No matter the reasons for moving, relocation, with or without the federal relocation program assistance, failed to completely assimi5 late indigenous people into American society. The myriad experiences of those who migrated to the cities and those who stayed on reservations created dynamic relationships between urban life, indigenous identities, and reservation life. Unfortunately, early studies of relocated