1 CHAPTER 1: AMERICAN INDIAN SELF-DETERMINATION AND ...

communities on trust lands were not subject to state
jurisdiction. If the government removed the trust status,
tribal laws in conflict with state laws would be null and
void. In addition, Indian lands would be subject to state
taxes. Once termination had been completed, its advocates
expected that the government agency primarily responsible for
Indian services--the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)--would be
liquidated. In other words, termination was a means of
assimilating or "de-tribalizing" Indians. To facilitate this
policy, the government also initiated a relocation program,
which encouraged Native Americans to leave their home
communities and move to urban areas. 37
To be sure, the termination era had its roots in the
years before and during World War II. It began in earnest,
however, in 1950--during the presidential administration of
Democrat Harry Truman--with the appointment of Dillon S. Myer
as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Myer, a government
bureaucrat who managed the Japanese American internment camps
during World War II, strongly favored assimilation and pushed
for termination. 38 Myer characterized federal trusteeship
diss., Arizona State University, 1995); R. Warren Metcalf,
"Lambs of Sacrifice: Termination, the Mixed-Blood Utes, and
the Problem of Indian Identity," Utah Historical Quarterly 64
(Fall 1996): 322-343; Philp, Termination Revisited.
37 Fixico, Termination, 183. Donald L. Fixico, The Urban
Indian Experience in America (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 2000).
38 Cowger, "'Crossroads,'" 127; Drinnon, Keeper, chs. 8-
11; Clayton R. Koppes, "Oscar L. Chapman: A Liberal at the
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