From Removal to Relocation: Native American People Return to Illinois

Obviously, we see a huge increase in Illinois’s Native American population in the decades following World War II.

There are many explanations for this marked increase. In part, this is due to the fact that American Indians were probably undercounted in earlier censuses. The most recent dramatic increase (which occurred between 1990 and 2000—when Illinois’s Native population increased from 21,836 to 73,161) can be explained in part by a change in policy which allowed individuals to identify themselves as belonging to multiple races.

There were, however, some other very real factors that brought massive numbers of Native Americans to the state:

World War II : The onset of war brought many Native people to work in Chicago—for patriotic, economic and family reasons. Some 25,000 American Indian men and women served in the armed forces. Others worked in Chicago factories, which produced at higher-than-normal capacities to support the war effort. This provided economic opportunities not available on reservations—especially during the Great Depression. Still other Native people came to Illinois, and to Chicago in particular, to be closer to family members who came looking for work.

Federal Relocation Program: A “voluntary” program that provided a one-way ticket to an urban center and assisted young Native people to find work and housing. The program was “voluntary” in that no one physically forced American Indians to relocate (This was, after all, nearly a century after Andrew Jackson’s “Removal” policy had ended). Individuals were, however, coerced in that the U.S. government funded relocation programs while they withheld funds for economic development on reservations. Government officials and bureaucrats led by Senator Arthur Watkins (R-Utah) saw relocation as a means of solving the “Indian Problem”. This created a situation in which relocation was often the only option for poverty-stricken Native men and women.

Between 1950 and 1970, an estimated 100,000 Indians relocated to urban areas. Chicago was one of the first—and began acquiring relocated Indians in 1952. Between 1952 and 1968, some 12,000 Native people moved to Chicago. It was common for men to come first, find a job and adequate housing, and then send for their wives and children.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs often placed people into low-paying, low-skilled jobs and many relocated Indians encountered great difficulty in adjusting to city life—and the loneliness, homesickness, noise, towering buildings, and uncaring, unfamiliar people that came along with it. Alcoholism was (and remains) a major problem for urban Indians as well as those living on reservations.

1954 Termination Act: A step backward in U.S. Indian policy, the goal of termination was to end Indian tribes’ status as sovereign nations. When John Collier left his position as head of the BIA in 1945, many congressmen and federal bureaucrats who disagreed with his programs felt they could reverse his policies and finish assimilating Indians into mainstream American society. Termination was a program championed by many federal policy makers between the late 1940s and early 1960s. The new reform program had many parallels to programs that existed before Collier’s arrival, but there were also some important differences. Reformers of the post-1945 era did not talk about “civilizing” the Indians but spoke instead of “freeing” and “emancipating” Indians from federal control.

The goals of Termination included repealing laws that discriminated against Indians and gave them a different status from other Americans as well as disbanding the Bureau of Indian Affairs and transferring its duties to other federal and state agencies or to the tribes themselves. The act also was designed to end federal supervision of individual Native people and ending federal supervision and trust responsibilities for Indian tribes.

On the face of it, the program seemed innocuous, and perhaps even benevolent. Post-1945 Indian reformers saw the trust relationship between the federal government and Native tribes not as something that protected Indians but rather as a manipulative obstacle to personal and economic freedom. The Indian-federal trust relationship had come into being in the early 1800s when the U.S. government undertook the duty of protecting Indians’ rights and tribal property. The government had not always done a very good job at this, but by withdrawing its trust responsibility entirely, Indian right—and especially Indian lands—became vulnerable. For this reason, Indians and non-Indians concerned about Indian affairs were leery of the termination policy almost from its inception.

The strongest proponent for termination was Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah, who called his pet policy the “freeing of the Indian from wardship status” and equated it with the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves during the Civil War. Watkins was the driving force behind termination, and his position as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs gave him tremendous leverage in determining the direction of federal Indian policy. His most important achievement came in 1953 with passage of House Concurrent Resolution No. 108, which stated that termination would be the federal government’s ongoing policy.

By the time the policy was overturned in the 1960s, several tribes had been terminated and their members found themselves forced to petition the federal government to regain their former status.

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