Termination Revisited

In this essential contribution to twentieth-century Native history, Kenneth R. Philp reassesses the controversial and ultimately failed federal policy of termination. In the years after World War II, federal policy toward the Indian reservation system changed markedly. Federal policies set during this period strongly encouraged Native peoples to terminate their status as wards of the American government, relocate to prosperous cities, and develop long-range plans to secure greater political and economic power for themselves. Until recently scholars have largely portrayed the termination years as a regressive era in which Indians encountered renewed assaults on tribalism, lost important rights, and were placed on the road to dispossession. Termination Revisited offers a more complex portrait of Native responses to termination. By focusing on the diverse reactions of Native peoples to the concept of self-determination, Philp demonstrates how widely the interpretations of this important concept and the proposed strategy of termination varied.