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The Termination Act Explained: Ep 14 of Crash Course Native American History

YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=GYw7BrIhWtg
Previous: The Indian Reorganization Act Explained: Ep 13 of Crash Course Native American History
Next: The Native Civil Rights Movement: Ep 15 of Crash Course Native American History

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Duration:12:08
Uploaded:2025-09-02
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MLA Full: "The Termination Act Explained: Ep 14 of Crash Course Native American History." YouTube, uploaded by CrashCourse, 2 September 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYw7BrIhWtg.
MLA Inline: (CrashCourse, 2025)
APA Full: CrashCourse. (2025, September 2). The Termination Act Explained: Ep 14 of Crash Course Native American History [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=GYw7BrIhWtg
APA Inline: (CrashCourse, 2025)
Chicago Full: CrashCourse, "The Termination Act Explained: Ep 14 of Crash Course Native American History.", September 2, 2025, YouTube, 12:08,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=GYw7BrIhWtg.
Termination and relocation might seem like totally unrelated policies—but they were part of the same disappearing act. In this episode of Crash Course Native American History, we’ll learn how terminating federal recognition for more than a hundred Native nations while encouraging Native people to move to cities served the same goals.







Introduction: The Menominee 00:00



Historical Context 0:38



The Urban Indian Relocation Program 3:03



The Termination Act 3:56



Terminating the Menominee 5:10



Effects of Termination 6:03



Effects of Relocation 7:54



Restoring the Menominee 8:57



Review & Credits 10:58











Sources:



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 (00:00) to (02:00)


Che Jim: Things were looking upfpr the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin, and that’s exactly what made them a target.

It was 1952.

The Menominee had just won a 16-year legal battle over the U.S. government's mismanagement of their forest, and they had been promised $8.5 million. They now had control over how that forest was logged.

And even though the average tribal member isn't well off financially, the Menominee had a safety net. 

But it was about to break. 

Hi, I'm Che Jim, and welcome to Crash Course:Native American History. 

[Theme music]

Over the years, the US government's policies towards Native nations have swung between marginally supporting their right to exist and trying to erase them.

In episode 12, we covered the Allotment and Assimilation Era, when the U.S. broke up Native nations, split their lands, and tried to make Native people live like white Americans. 

And in episode 13, we talked about the Reorganisation period when the government reversed course and tried to fix the terrible results of those earlier policies. 

But by the 1950s, the pendulum was swinging back the other way and federal Indian policies were about to enter a new era, the Relocation and Termination Era, a period marked by pushes for new assimilation tactics, or ways to absorb distinct cultures into a dominant culture. 

This of course had happened before, and it would happen again. 

In the Assimilation and Termination Era, assimilation involved pushing Natives to live and work in cities. 

That's the relocation part. 

At the same time, the government was terminating its nation to nation relationship with tribes. 

In other words, it no longer wanted to treat tribes as if they were their own sovereign nations with their own governments. And it wanted out of treaties. 

That's the termination part. 

We’re getting to both in detail, but first I'll set the scene. 

In the wake of World War II, a debtstrapped US government was looking for ways to cut costs. That meant slashing budgets for federal programs. 

 (02:00) to (04:00)


And policy-makers soon zeroed in on the Bureau of Indian Affairs,  or BIA, the agency that funds basic services on or near reservations, like schools, roads, and healthcare. 

Surely Native folks didn't need funding for all that, right?

Except there was a problem. The federal government had previously agreed to provide these services to Native nations, agreements that dated back to treaties they'd signed in the 19th century in exchange for Native land.

That support was supposed to be permanent. But the government started to wonder, what if it wasn’t?

Che as president on the phone: Hey guys, big idea came to me in a dream.

Okay, listen. What if you all left reservations? All right, and then you moved to cities to live like white people, right?

Then, then, and here's where it gets good. Then we, the government, can then tax and then sell your land to pay our own bills, right? I mean it sounds absolutely incredible.

And oh, listen, I got to go. I got to put a lot of things in jello. All right. You think about it. Let me know what you think. OK. Love you. Bye.

Che Jim: Enter the Urban Indian Relocation Program of 1952, which through the BIA encouraged tribal members to move to major cities with the promise of good jobs, housing, education —

Free pizza! 

OK, maybe not that last part, but you get the idea. 

And they offered government assistance in getting all of the above, minus the pizza. 

A few years later, the Indian Relocation Act even promised to pay for tribal members moving cost, job training, and health insurance if they relocated to cities. 

Sounds like a sweet deal, right? 

But it also meant Native Americans were leaving behind their communities and their cultures. Behind the glossy posters, relocation looked a lot like assimilation 2.0.

The government hoped that Native people would disappear by blending into the crowd, and so would Native governments, reservations, the BIA, and the need to maintain those pesky treaties.

 (04:00) to (06:00)


Then in 1953, Congress passed part two, the Termination Act, which stated that Native Americans would be "subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States..."

Which sounds great to some people, even ahead of its time. 

But in practice, "freedom" meant the end of federally recognized sovereignty, the right to self-govern by breaking up Native nations one by one, dissolving reservations, ending tribal governments, cutting off federal support. 

The logic was that if there is no Native nations, there would be no responsibility to provide services to them. 

Now, some native organisations like the National Congress of American Indians saw right through this ruse and fiercely opposed the new policy.

Instead, proposed a government assistance program that could eventually return Native nations to self-sustainability —which to be clear, Native nations were self-sustainable before colonisation, but after the wreckage we've seen in the last few episodes, some repair would be necessary. 

Unfortunately, despite widespread media coverage, this plan never went anywhere. And along with relocation, termination became the new dominant federal Indian policy. .

Which brings us back to the Menominee, one of the first Native nations to be targeted for termination. 

Remember, they were thriving at the time. Their lumber mill was profitable. They had successfully sued the government for over $8 million. 

Unfortunately, it was because of this perceived success that the tribe was deemed "ready" to be cut loose. 

But before that could happen, the Menominee first had to agree to it. So in 1954, Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah visited the tribe personally to persuade them. 

Well, maybe persuade is the wrong word. 

It was more of bait and switch. See, tribal members had the opportunity to vote to get the settlement money they were owed. And by a show of hands, most people voted in favour. 

But Watkins had attached a provision that was essentially termination. And once it became clear that the vote meant the end of their government and reservation, it was too late. 

 (06:00) to (08:00)


The actual process of termination proved to be a difficult and destructive task. 

Tribal property was transferred to a newly created corporation, Menominee Enterprises, Inc., with tribal members controlling a small stake in the company, and the reservation became Menominee County, which immediately made it one of the poorest and least populated in Wisconsin. 

Things quickly went from bad to worse.

Without federal funds or a strong tax base to keep the lights on, the county's only hospital shut down. Many schools, utilities, and other basic services deteriorated. 

The new white superintendent of the lumber mill fired about 150 Menominee employees. Then the mill needed renovations that the Menominee couldn't afford. 

It was one thing after another, and within 7 years, the newly formed corporation was on the brink of bankruptcy. Many people sold their land to stay afloat. 

The same story played out in 1958 with the termination of 44 tribes in California. Congress made promises to help those tribes improve roads, water, and sanitation before termination became official. 

But then it didn't keep those promises. I'm shocked, shocked!

And the state of California didn't help either, reasoning that this was the federal government's responsibility because, well, it was. 

Once again, many tribes were forced to sell or give up their lands, like the United Auburn Indian Community of the Auburn Rancheria. Their 40 acre holding dwindled to just 2.8 acres with a church and a park. 

All told, 109 Native nations were terminated during the 1950s and 60s.

This policy wiped away federal protections for 1.3 million acres of Native land. 

And it cut off 11,000 people, or 3% of the American Indian population from the benefits of being recognised as citizens of their nation. 

No more tribal government, no more reservations, no more funding for basic services for their community. 

And termination only sped up relocation. 

As tribal members relocated to cities, fewer people were left on the reservations to fight termination. 

 (08:00) to (10:00)


Then after termination, tribes had fewer resources to help their members. So more people moved to the city to try to make ends meet. 

Between 1950 and 1968, more than 200,000 took up the federal government's offer of a one-way ticket to a city. Others moved on their own dime, but often the big promises didn't pan out.

Instead, Native folks commonly found scarce, low-end jobs, housing discrimination, racism, social isolation, homesickness. 

Many couldn't afford a ticket back to the reservation. 

And for members of the terminated tribes, the reservation no longer existed. For many, this was poverty with a change of scenery. 

Well talk much more about relocation and its long-term effects in a future episode. 

But you know what else failed? The plan to disappear Native nations and Native people. We're still here, and thats because of native-led efforts. The Menominee weren't done yet. 

Technically, when the Menominee were terminated, the Menominee Indian Tribe was terminated, too. But in 1962, they created a non-profit organisation just to preserve the name Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin Incorporated. 

Two years later, nearly 800 Menominee petitioned President Johnson to repeal termination. He did nothing. 

Then in 1970, a group called DRUMS, Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Stockholders, organised to get federal recognition back.

Nobody had ever done that before until the group's leader, Ada Deer, and James Washinawatok, devoted years of their lives to making it happen. 

And it worked. In 1973, nearly 20 years after termination, Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin was restored by an act of Congress. 

Deer went on to become the first woman to lead the Menominee, and later the first Native woman to lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

In 1993, she said, "Against all odds, we invented a new policy, restoration.

 (10:00) to (12:00)


"Now again, I would like to emphasise this. We, the Menominee, invented a new policy, restoration. This is the possibility. This is the challenge that indigenous peoples in the hemisphere and across the world can exert and expect. You don’t have to accept the policies. You can work to change them."

And that work hasn't stopped. 

For example, the Klamath Tribe, who lost federal recognition during the termination era, got it restored in 1986, though they didn’t get back all their former reservation lands. 

And despite federal termination, other tribes have gained recognition within their states, like the Gabrielino-Tongva Indian Tribe, one of two state recognised tribes in California. 

Still, many tribes terminated throughout the 1950s and 60s remain without state or federal recognition in 2025, even though they fought for decades to get it back.

Though they started as a way to cut costs for the federal government, relocation and termination served the same end goals: blend Native Americans into mainstream culture, break up Native nations, cut costs by getting out of the promises they made to them. 

They were new moves from an old playbook. 

Relocation separated Natives from their cultures and communities while failing to uphold the promises of a better life, and termination was devastating for the nations affected, leaving scars felt to this day. 

And although many Native nations fought hard to get their federal recognitions restored, many are still fighting. 

Next time, we'll talk about how the pendulum of federal Indian policy swung again, and the dawn of a new era, self-determination. And I will see you then. 

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course: Native American History, which was filmed at our studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was made with the help of all these nice people. If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join our community on Patreon.

 (12:00) to (12:08)


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