Roots of the Native American Urban Experience: Relocation Policy in the 1950s

Abstract

N 1970 FOR THE FIRST TIME the population of Native Americans in cities surpassed that in rural areas.' This was the capstone of a process that has contributed to some of the most significant developments in the recent history of Indian affairs. For example, by the 1950s and 1960s Indian enclaves of unprecedented size appeared in America's inner cities. This made Native Americans and their problems more visible than on isolated and remote reservations. Indians have always lagged behind other social groups in all categories of economic statistics, suffering from poverty, underdevelopment of people and resources, alienation, and hopelessness. But they now found themselves in the midst of the urban underclass at a time when other minority groups with similar problems were becoming increasingly active politically. The example of other civil rights movements and the multi-tribal and concentrated nature of the new urban Indian population encouraged the rise of the Red Power movement and the self-determination drive among Native Americans in the 1960s and 1970s.2 Indian urbanization was not a new phenomenon in post-World War II America but rather had a long history. In fact, the rate of farmto-city movement among Native Americans before the 1930s was roughly the same as for the whole United States population at comparable levels of industrialization.3 The famous investigation of conditions on reservations and critique of federal Indian policy published in 1928 and known as the Meriam Report acknowledged the trend, predicted more of the same, and urged the government to help Indians in making the transition.4 The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) took no action until shortly after the war when it began actively encouraging Native American migration into cities. The program was known as relocation and would be largely responsible for inducing at least 30,000 Indians to move in the 1950s and almost three times that number during the 1960s and 1970s. Relocation changed in both purpose and provisions during the three decades after World War II, evolving in response to the different federal Indian policies of various presidential administrations. Its initial inspiration and development resulted in a version of relocation that found fullest expression in the 1950s during the Dwight Eisenhower