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UNIT 17: Federal Indian Policy Series

Termination Era

From 1953 to 1968, Congress tried to end its legal relationship with Tribal nations entirely. 109 nations lost federal recognition. This unit, you research the Termination Era and the movement that ended it.

📜 7 Stages
ðŸŠķ Intermediate
⏱ïļ 45–60 min per stage
1953 – 1968

Federal Indian Policy Series: Unit 17 of 19

This unit is part of an eight-era series. Each era gets its own research website. When all eight are complete, you will combine them into one multi-page site in Unit 20.

Unit 12 · Treaty-Making Unit 13 · Removal Unit 14 · Reservation System Unit 15 · Allotment & Assimilation Unit 16 · Reorganization Unit 17 · Termination Unit 18 · Self-Determination Unit 19 · Nation Rebuilding

The Big Idea

In 1953, Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108. It stated that federal policy was to end federal supervision over Tribal nations 'as rapidly as possible.' Within fifteen years, 109 nations lost federal recognition, their land was sold, and their members were relocated to cities. The same official who oversaw Japanese American internment ran the Bureau of Indian Affairs during this era.

In this unit, you'll build a research website about the Termination Era. The new CSS pattern is a scroll fade-in using IntersectionObserver - a JavaScript API that watches when elements enter the viewport and animates them into view. As you scroll your page, content appears. It's a subtle effect that makes a site feel professionally built.

AIM was founded in Minneapolis in 1968 - partly in response to what termination had done to urban Native communities. The movement that ended termination started here. This unit connects those threads.

By the end of this unit, you'll be able to say "I can..."

  • Implement scroll fade-in animations using the IntersectionObserver JavaScript API
  • Research the Termination Era and document its scale and mechanism
  • Profile the nations that were terminated and the ones that resisted
  • Connect Termination policy to the urban relocation program and AIM's founding
  • Write your own analysis of termination's long-term effects

What You'll Build

A research website about the Termination Era (1953-1968) - six sections, Prussian blue archival design.

The scale of termination in numbers. Nation profiles including Menominee and Klamath. The urban relocation program. The movement that pushed back. Your research in your own words.

By the time you finish this unit, you'll understand exactly how 109 nations lost federal recognition - and how some of them got it back.

This is one of the most painful eras in this series. Understanding it fully is how we make sure it never happens again.

Your learning path

The 7 Stages

Stage 1 The Foundation Design system + hero Stage 2 The Policy HCR 108 & PL 280 Stage 3 The Scale 109 Tribes, 1.36M acres Stage 4 The Relocation Twin Cities connection Stage 5 The Nations Terminated & restored Stage 6 My Research Source documentation Stage 7 Today Era's living impact
Let's Begin

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Sources

The historical content in this unit draws from federal primary sources, peer-reviewed scholarship, Tribal nation records, and documented oral history. The core scholarly source is Donald Fixico's Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945–1960 (University of New Mexico Press, 1986), the most thorough academic account of both policies. The Twin Cities relocation history draws from documented records of the Minneapolis Indian community and the founding of AIM. The Menominee termination and restoration narrative is drawn from the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin's official history and from Deer and Erdoes' Making a Difference.

Primary Legislative & Government Sources

  • House Concurrent Resolution 108, 83rd Congress (1953). The resolution that declared federal policy was to end federal supervision over Tribal nations as rapidly as possible and subject Native people to the same laws as other Americans. This is the foundational legislative document of the Termination Era. Available via the National Archives and the Library of Congress.
  • Public Law 280, 83rd Congress (1953). Transferred federal criminal jurisdiction and limited civil jurisdiction over Indian Country in six mandatory states (California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Alaska after statehood) to state governments, without Tribal consent. Minnesota was a mandatory PL 280 state; Red Lake Nation was explicitly excluded from its provisions.
  • Indian Relocation Act (Public Law 959), 83rd Congress (1956). Authorized the BIA's formal Urban Relocation Program, establishing relocation offices in major cities and providing one-way transportation, limited job training, and temporary housing assistance to Native people who relocated from reservations. Minneapolis and St. Paul were among the designated relocation cities.
  • Menominee Restoration Act, Public Law 93-197 (1973). Restored federal recognition to the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, the first major restoration of a terminated nation. The Menominee termination in 1961 and subsequent restoration in 1973 became the template for understanding both the consequences of termination and the path to restoration. Available via the National Archives.
  • Bureau of Indian Affairs: Tribal Government Services, bia.gov. BIA records of Tribal constitutional governments, including documentation of which nations were terminated and the conditions under which restoration was granted.

Academic & Scholarly Sources

  • Fixico, Donald L. Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945–1960. University of New Mexico Press, 1986. The essential scholarly account of both the termination policy and the relocation program. Fixico documents the policy origins, the legislative process, the economic and cultural consequences for terminated nations, and the specific mechanics of the relocation program in cities including Minneapolis. Written by a Shawnee/Sac and Fox/Muscogee/Seminole historian.
  • Wilkinson, Charles F. Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations. W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. Documents the resistance to termination, the restoration movement, and the emergence of the self-determination era. The chapters on Menominee restoration and AIM's founding are directly relevant to Stage 7's Today section.
  • Deloria, Vine Jr. and Clifford Lytle. American Indians, American Justice. University of Texas Press, 1983. Places termination within the longer arc of federal Indian law, analyzing how the policy undermined the legal foundations of Tribal sovereignty that the IRA era had partially rebuilt. Essential context for understanding why restoration was not simply a reversal of termination but a distinct legal process.
  • Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. University of Nebraska Press, 1984. The termination chapters document the congressional debate, the role of Dillon Myer as BIA Commissioner from 1950 to 1953, and the political consensus that made termination possible in the postwar period.
  • Deer, Ada, with Theda Perdue. Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice. University of Oklahoma Press, 2019. Ada Deer's account of leading the campaign to restore Menominee federal recognition. Deer, a Menominee, is one of the central figures in the restoration movement and later served as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs under President Clinton. Her firsthand account of what termination cost the Menominee and what it took to undo is both historical record and primary source.

Tribal Nation & Community Sources

Student Research Resources

Educational Standards

This unit aligns with computer science, social studies, and Indigenous education standards across MN, ND, and SD. Click a panel to expand.

  • OSEU.SS.H.2, Federal Policy and Self-Determination (All Grades): Students will analyze how federal policies affected the sovereignty, land base, and self-determination of Tribal nations over time. (Termination is the most direct expression of this standard in the curriculum sequence: the explicit federal policy goal was to end Tribal sovereignty. HCR 108 did not use vague language. It stated that the federal government would end its trust responsibilities over Tribal nations "as rapidly as possible." Students in Stage 2 read the actual language of both HCR 108 and PL 280. They document not just what the policy did but what it said about its own purpose, which is essential context for understanding the restoration era that followed.)
  • OSEU.SS.H.3, Treaty Rights and Sovereignty (All Grades): Students will understand how federal policy interacted with Tribal sovereignty across different eras. (Termination represents the most aggressive federal challenge to Tribal sovereignty in the postwar period: the federal government argued that sovereignty itself was the problem, that the trust relationship was a form of wardship incompatible with full citizenship. The restoration movement that followed, documented in Stage 7, argued the opposite: that sovereignty is not an obstacle to citizenship but a distinct political status that predates and is not superseded by U.S. citizenship. Students encounter this argument directly in the Today section.)
  • OSEU.SS.C.1, Identity and Culture (All Grades): Students will understand the cultural practices and governance traditions of Indigenous peoples and how federal policy has interacted with them. (The relocation program is documented in Stage 4 through the lens of the community it created in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The urban Indian community that grew from relocation was not simply a displaced population: it developed distinct institutions, cultural organizations, and political movements. AIM is the most visible of these, but the Twin Cities also developed Native health clinics, survival schools, housing cooperatives, and cultural centers. Stage 4 asks students to see this not as the story of what was lost but as the story of what was built under difficult conditions.)
  • OSEU.ELA.W.1, Research Writing (All Grades): Students will produce research-based writing appropriate to task and purpose. (Stage 5's personal research card asks students to document a specific Tribal nation's experience in the Termination Era: Was this nation targeted for termination? Was it terminated? Was it restored? If the nation was not terminated, what was its relationship to the era, including PL 280 jurisdiction changes and BIA relocation? The official Tribal nation websites listed in the sources section are the starting point. For nations that were terminated, the BIA and National Archives records include the original termination legislation as primary sources.)
  • CSTA 2-AP-13 (Grades 6–8): Decompose problems and subproblems into parts to facilitate the design, implementation, and review of increasingly complex programs. (The IntersectionObserver introduced in Stage 7 decomposes into three parts: the CSS transition that defines how elements animate when they become visible, the HTML attribute that marks which elements should animate, and the JavaScript that watches the marked elements and triggers the transition. Students who build each layer understand the separation of concerns: CSS owns the visual behavior, HTML marks the targets, JavaScript connects them. This is the same decomposition principle used for the slider in Unit 15, applied to a different interaction.)
  • CSTA 2-AP-17 (Grades 6–8): Systematically test and refine programs using a range of test cases. (The IntersectionObserver's threshold and rootMargin options control when an animation triggers. Students are directed to test their fade-in at different scroll positions and to adjust the threshold value to see how it changes the trigger point. Testing an animation means observing it across the full scroll range of the page: loading at the top, scrolling slowly through, and verifying that every marked element animates correctly and only once.)
  • ISTE 1c, Empowered Learner: Students use technology to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways. (The scroll animation introduced in Stage 7 is a design choice about how the Today section is experienced. Cards that fade in as you scroll down turn the act of reading into a sequence: you encounter each consequence of the era one at a time, as you move through the page. Students who understand this are not just implementing a visual effect; they are making an argument about how information should be paced for a reader.)
  • ISTE 3b, Knowledge Constructor: Students evaluate the accuracy, perspective, credibility, and relevance of information, media, data, or other resources. (The Dillon Myer connection in Stage 2 requires students to think about source evaluation: the connection between Myer's role running the War Relocation Authority (Japanese American internment) and his subsequent role as BIA Commissioner overseeing termination policy is documented in federal records and in multiple scholarly sources. Students are asked to evaluate what that biographical fact means for understanding termination's design.)
  • MN Social Studies 8.4.4.18.1 (Grade 8): Describe the origin, development, and impact of major federal policies affecting American Indian people in Minnesota. (Minnesota was a mandatory PL 280 state. State criminal jurisdiction was extended over Indian Country in Minnesota with an explicit exception for Red Lake Nation, which maintained federal jurisdiction. This distinction is documented in Stage 2. For Minnesota students, PL 280 is not an abstract federal policy: it directly affected the legal authority over the communities where they live. The BIA relocation program's impact on Minneapolis and St. Paul, documented in Stage 4, is the most directly Minnesota-specific content in the unit.)
  • MN Social Studies 9-12.4.4.18.2 (Grades 9–12): Analyze the legal foundations of Tribal sovereignty and the federal trust relationship, including federal policy eras and their ongoing impact. (Termination tested the legal foundations of Tribal sovereignty more directly than any other policy era in this curriculum. The restoration movement, documented in Stage 7 and central to Unit 17, required affirmative congressional action to reestablish what termination removed. Students who understand this understand why restoration was not simply an administrative reversal: it required Congress to pass new legislation recognizing each nation's Tribal status, because termination had removed that recognition by law.)
  • MN CS K-12 6.2.1 / 7.2.1 (Grades 6–7): Use a development process to plan, design, and iteratively develop computational artifacts. (The IntersectionObserver introduced in Stage 7 is a browser API that runs asynchronously: it fires a callback function when an observed element crosses a visibility threshold, not immediately when the JavaScript runs. Students who have built synchronous event listeners (click, mousemove, keydown) are now working with an asynchronous observer pattern. The entries array passed to the callback, iterated with forEach, applies the loop pattern students have used since Unit 10.)
  • MN ELA 8.3.3.1 (Grade 8): Use technology to produce and publish writing that demonstrates command of the conventions of standard English. (Stage 4's Twin Cities callout and Stage 5's my-nation card are the most locally grounded writing prompts in the Federal Indian Policy Series. For Minnesota students, the relocation program is not a distant policy: its consequences are present in the communities, schools, and families around them. Stage 4 asks students to write about that connection in their own words, within the structure of the site they are building.)
  • ND Indigenous Studies, History and Government (All Grades): Understand the historical and political relationship between the United States government and Indigenous nations of North Dakota, including the Termination Era. (North Dakota's Tribal nations were not among the major terminated nations, but the Termination Era affected them through PL 280 (North Dakota was not a mandatory PL 280 state but could opt in under the law), federal budget cuts to BIA services that accompanied termination policy, and the relocation program that drew community members from reservations to Fargo, Bismarck, and out-of-state relocation cities. Students researching North Dakota nations are directed to official Tribal nation websites for documentation of how each nation navigated this era.)
  • ND SS 9-12.6.2 (Grades 9–12): Analyze the role of federal law and Supreme Court decisions in shaping the political, legal, and economic status of American Indian nations. (The Termination Era produced significant legal precedent about the limits of federal power over Tribal sovereignty. The restoration acts that began with Menominee in 1973 established that termination could be reversed and that Congress had the authority to restore what it had removed. Students who trace this legal history through the curriculum understand that federal Indian law is not a fixed body of rules but a contested field that has changed substantially in response to Tribal political action.)
  • ND CS 6.E.1 / 7.E.1 / 8.E.1 (Grades 6–8): Create artifacts by applying existing knowledge of computing concepts and practices. (The IntersectionObserver in Stage 7 applies event listener knowledge from Units 9 and 10 and the forEach loop from Unit 10 in a new context. Students already know how to iterate over a list of elements and apply a function to each. The IntersectionObserver wraps that familiar pattern in a new structure: instead of firing immediately on click, it fires when the browser detects a visibility change. Understanding this difference is the core concept of Stage 7's JavaScript teaching.)
  • ND CS 9-12.E.3 (Grades 9–12): Design and iteratively develop computational artifacts for practical intent, personal expression, or to address a societal need. (The scroll fade-in implemented in Stage 7 is a design choice about the reader's experience of the Today section. Cards that appear progressively as the reader scrolls down create a different emotional pace than cards that are all visible at once. Students who make this choice intentionally, and who understand the JavaScript that implements it, are designing for experience, not just applying a visual effect.)
  • OSEU Standard 1, History (All Grades): Understand the history of the Oceti Sakowin and other Indigenous peoples, including the Termination Era and its consequences for South Dakota nations. (The Oceti Sakowin nations in South Dakota were not among the major terminated nations, but the Termination Era had specific impacts: BIA relocation drew Lakota and Dakota people from Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Rosebud, Pine Ridge, and other reservations to Rapid City and to out-of-state relocation cities. The urban Lakota and Dakota communities in Rapid City, Sioux Falls, and Denver trace their growth in part to this era. Students researching South Dakota nations are directed to document not just whether their nation was targeted for termination but how the relocation program affected their community.)
  • OSEU Standard 3, Sovereignty and Government (All Grades): Understand the sovereign status of Tribal nations and how federal policy shaped governance structures across different eras. (The Termination Era tested whether Tribal sovereignty was a right or a federal grant that could be withdrawn. The restoration movement, and the legal arguments that produced the self-determination legislation of the 1970s, established a strong counter-position: that sovereignty predates the United States and is not contingent on federal recognition. Students who understand the termination/restoration sequence understand what was at stake in that argument and why it matters for the present status of every Tribal nation.)
  • SD Social Studies 9-12.H.2 (Grades 9–12): Analyze the causes and effects of major federal policies affecting Indigenous peoples of South Dakota. (The Termination Era's effects in South Dakota were primarily through relocation and through the general federal budget posture that termination encouraged: reduced investment in reservation infrastructure, health services, and education. Students who document this in their research are looking at a period when explicit termination was paired with implicit disinvestment. Understanding both layers, the named policy and the budget reality it produced, is essential for connecting the Termination Era to the poverty and under-investment that characterized reservation conditions in the 1950s and 1960s.)
  • SD CS 6-8.AP.M.1 (Grades 6–8): Decompose problems and subproblems into parts to facilitate the design, implementation, and review of increasingly complex programs. (The IntersectionObserver's three-part structure (CSS, HTML, JavaScript) maps cleanly onto the decomposition framework students have used throughout the curriculum. Each part is independent enough to be understood separately and interconnected enough that removing any one breaks the whole. Students who can explain why the animation does not work if the data-fade attribute is missing understand the dependency structure, which is the core competency decomposition practice is building toward.)