Indian Relocation Act (Adult Vocational Training Act)

What happened

Public Law 959, approved August 3, 1956, is known as the Indian Relocation Act, but its text is narrower than the name suggests. It is titled "An Act Relative to employment for certain adult Indians on or near Indian reservations." Section 1 authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to run a program of vocational training, including counseling, institutional training in a trade, apprenticeship and on-the-job training for up to twenty-four months, with transportation to the place of training and subsistence during it.

The program was open "primarily" to Indians between eighteen and thirty-five who lived on or near a reservation. The Secretary could contract with government agencies, private schools or companies with apprenticeship programs. Section 2 authorized $3.5 million for each fiscal year, with no more than $500,000 for administration. The Act does not mention moving people to cities.

The National Archives places it inside a larger policy. It says the government in the late 1940s and early 1950s began encouraging Native people to leave rural reservations for cities as part of termination, which aimed to assimilate them and end federal supervision. The BIA opened a Branch of Placement and Relocation in 1951, with field offices first in Denver, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. The Archives says many who relocated faced discrimination, unemployment or low-paying jobs, and, because the BIA paid only one-way trips, often could not afford to return home. It says Native activists organized against relocation and termination, including the founding of the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis in 1968.

Good to know. Despite its name, the Act funded vocational training; the relocation program to cities began earlier under other authority.

Summarized with AI assistance from 5 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error