Community Self-Determination

American Indian Education in Chicago, 1952-2006

John J. Laukaitis

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781438457703
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Native American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

After World War II, American Indians began relocating to urban areas in large numbers, in search of employment. Partly influenced by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, this migration from rural reservations to metropolitan centers presented both challenges and opportunities. This history examines the educational programs American Indians developed in Chicago and gives particular attention to how the American Indian community chose its own distinct path within and outside of the larger American Indian self-determination movement. In what John J. Laukaitis terms community self-determination, American Indians in Chicago demonstrated considerable agency as they developed their own programs and worked within already existent institutions. The community-based initiatives included youth programs at the American Indian Center and St. Augustine's Center for American Indians, the Native American Committee's Adult Learning Center, Little Big Horn High School, O-Wai-Ya-Wa Elementary School, Native American Educational Services College, and the Institute for Native American Development at Truman College. Community Self-Determination presents the first major examination of these initiatives and programs and provides an understanding of how education functioned as a form of activism for Chicago's American Indian community.

1

Relocation and Urbanization

American Indians in Uptown Chicago

After the end of World War II, the migration of American Indians from rural reservations to urban centers began as some 25,000 American Indian veterans found few employment opportunities upon returning to their home communities and moved to cities across the United States for improved livelihood. In addition to the many American Indian veterans who moved to cities, an estimated 40,000 American Indians who served the war effort in off-reservation defense plants also found the economic conditions of reservations deplorable as they returned with little hope for continuous work. Those American Indians who sought to move from rural reservations and begin new lives in urban areas did so largely because of the allure of a better life afforded by urban employment. By 1950, the number of American Indians living in cities was 56,000 or 13.4 percent of the total American Indian population. Economic conditions, however, were not the only catalyst for this internal migration.

The American Indians who served their country—whether in the theaters of World War II or wartime production plants—experienced in many instances life beyond their reservations for the first time. As such, they often found a greater level of confidence moving to areas beyond their accustomed tribal societies and cultural environments. Furthermore, a dominant post–World War II mindset viewed American Indian segregation on reservations as being in conflict with the American ideals of assimilation and individual prosperity. A growing consensus that federal Indian-trust status was un-American mounted throughout the 1940s and early 1950s and changed the course of federal Indian policy.1

A substantial turning point for Indian federal policy in the United States was underway and began reversing the policies of the Indian New Deal. Led by John Collier, who served as Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945, the Indian New Deal had resolved to end the land allotment policy, return land to tribal ownership, restore tribal sovereignty through Indian self-government, and preserve Indian culture through BIA educational programs.2 Most Indian New Deal reforms ended with Collier’s resignation in 1945, and critics viewed him as a sentimentalist who attempted to restore an American Indian way of life in opposition with modern conceptions of progress. It should be noted that criticism of the Indian Reorganization Act, considered the most indicative legislation of the Indian New Deal, came from American Indians, too. Collier largely ignored input and resisted direct consultation with the American Indians over the legislation that imposed structures for self-government. Consequently, some historians have marked the era as being nothing more than another form of BIA paternalism. Viewed in its historical context, however, the Indian New Deal undoubtedly ushered in a reversal of long-held federal policy measures constructed to end tribal sovereignty and promote the full assimilation of American Indians. Once Collier resigned in 1945, American Indian affairs began to return to the policy of promoting assimilation and ending tribal sovereignty.3

The Relocation Program

With the appointment of Dillon S. Myer as Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1950, a new era of federal Indian policy was fully initiated. Myer had previously served as the director of the War Relocation Authority (WRA) from 1942 to 1946, overseeing the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals.4 Under his leadership, the BIA began its official relocation program in 1951 as an outgrowth of the relocation efforts it already provided for American Indians in six states.5 Through the relocation program, the BIA offered modest financial assistance, transportation costs, and vocational training as incentives for American Indians to move to urban centers in twenty different states. Between 1951 and 1952, BIA relocation offices opened in Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago to increase the efficiency and efficacy of the program.6 Referred to as “Operation Relocation” by Myer, the relocation program sought to reduce and ultimately end the federal government’s treaty-based obligations and role in Indian affairs by drawing American Indians away from reservations to urban centers.

When Glenn Emmons replaced Dillon S. Myer in 1953, the relocation program began to take hold with more vigor as another strong supporter of ending tribal sovereignty pushed for the expansion of the BIA’s plan. By the mid-1950s, additional offices opened in Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, and St. Louis with more offices established soon thereafter in urban centers in Texas, Oklahoma, and Ohio. Funding for the relocation program tripled by 1956 as the BIA convinced Congress that the program was succeeding.7

Part of the reason the relocation program attracted thousands of American Indians was the BIA’s recruitment efforts that promised increased livelihood in cities and contrasted life on largely poor rural reservations with the prosperity available in cities. The BIA, however, cloaked the realities of urban life, and its plan lacked the adequate support and structural foundation for a successful transition for most American Indians.8 As former Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash noted, “Myer’s relocation program was essentially a one-way bus ticket from rural to urban poverty. Relocation was an underfunded, ill-conceived program.”9 Under the veil of benevolence, the BIA formed an “imagined landscape” of urban life that was nothing short of propaganda.10 From 1951 to 1973, more than one hundred thousand American Indians moved from rural reservations to urban centers through this federal program, with even more relocating on their own without federal support.11

As one of the initial cities selected for the relocation program, Chicago represented the industrial might of a post–World War II America, and the BIA promoted Chicago as a city of abundant opportunity. On reservations across the United States, the words “Chicago Welcomes American Indians” prominently appeared on posters advertising “steady jobs,” “further education,” and “good living conditions.”12 In addition to posters, the BIA highlighted the wide range of benefits Chicago had to offer in its publications. A November 18, 1954, issue of the Fort Berthold Agency News Bulletin, for instance, explained that Chicago had 13,500 factories, 168 public parks, 340 elementary schools, and 39 high schools. Furthermore, an explanation of why Chicago was termed the “Nation’s Bread Basket” conveyed how the city was a land of plenty.13 At 608 South Dearborn, the Chicago Relocation Office sent promotional flyers to reservations to further recruit American Indians. One flyer dated September 30, 1954, was included in an issue of the Fort Berthold News Bulletin with the message “329 STEADY JOBS were found for Indians in Chicago in the last six months.”14 The flyer showed sketches of workers with the titles “Office,” “Welders,” “Television and Radio,” “Hospital,” “Steel,” “Book Binders,” and others.15 BIA agencies and area offices also published newsletters specific to the relocation program. In a September 16, 1954, issue of the Rosebud Relocator, a description of the array of support through the Chicago Relocation Office and cultural activities at the All-Tribes American Indian Center at 411 North LaSalle presented Chicago as a welcoming and hospitable place.16

The BIA and its Chicago Relocation Office falsely promoted the opportunities available in Chicago for the sake of the success of the program and disregarded the well-being of American Indians. At the same time that the BIA was publicizing the economic opportunities available in Chicago across reservations, the Chicago Relocation Office knew that the job market in the city was waning. In a report from October 1953, Kurt Dreifuss, the Chicago placement and relocation officer, wrote, “There have been no field trips to interpret the job resources in Chicago for a good many months.”17 In the same report, Dreifuss reported that one of the major problems affecting the relocation program was the “tightening of the job market.”18 The next month, Dreifuss sent a letter to American Indians who relocated to Chicago that said,

We want to take this opportunity to share with you our own knowledge of changing conditions in the job market because we think it will be of help to you to have this information.

During the past few months, there has been a definite tightening of employment, not only in Chicago but even more so in many other parts of the country. It is more difficult to find employment than some months ago. For this reason, we want to pass on a little advice to everyone who is working: Hold on to your present job if at all possible. You may have real trouble finding another one.19

The BIA, however, did not communicate this information in publicizing the relocation program on reservations. Instead, the BIA persisted that “splendid opportunities” existed in Chicago and, moreover, that “[o]ffices maintained by the government render unlimited services to people who are entering a different phase of life.”20 The support for American Indian relocatees, however, was minimal.

The lack of BIA support for American Indians relocating to Chicago caused many hardships. In the early 1950s, Sol Tax, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, emerged as an advocate for American Indians and presented concerns to Kurt Dreifuss.21 As the BIA continued to promote the relocation program in the in the late 1950s amidst a recession, Tax made it clear that the lack of employment, substandard housing, and deficient support by the BIA led to “urgent and prominent problems.”22 Tax criticized the true intent and structure of the entire relocation program.23 In his view, the relocation program was “a one-way ticket situation where bureaucrats filled their quotas.”24 As someone who witnessed the effects of the relocation program, Tax wrote,

When Indians came to Chicago, they received relocation assistance for about six weeks. Indian families came on a train with a one-way ticket. Once they arrived, they had no place to go. They were met by somebody in the Bureau of Indian Affairs who took them to a rental house and found them a job. When Indians returned to the relocation office to say they had a problem, which they all did, they were told we do not have any more jurisdiction over you. We have rented you a home; if you want to move to another one, that is your problem. If you do not like your job, that is also your problem.25

The BIA—despite criticism—continued to move forward with the relocation program.26 By 1953, more than one thousand American Indians had relocated to Chicago.27 The number of American Indians who came to Chicago by 1955 reached between three thousand and 3,500.28 In 1957, the number of American Indians relocating to Chicago reached approximately four thousand.29 This internal migration—from reservations to Chicago—was concomitant with the end of the postwar boom in Chicago. In an era of deindustrialization and urban decline, the BIA’s promises of a better life rarely materialized, and American Indians often experienced the worst Chicago had to offer.30

Even as American Indians struggled to subsist in Chicago throughout the 1950s, the BIA continued to romanticize the benefits of the city in the 1960s. In one promotional pamphlet, the BIA shared,

Mr. and Mrs. Sam and their family came to Chicago on August 27, 1963. … The Sam family is representative of many Mississippi Choctaw families in Chicago. They have found Chicago ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. American Indian Education as Community Self-Determination
• Chapter 1. Relocation and Urbanization: American Indians in Uptown Chicago
• Chapter 2. The Heart of the Community: The American Indian Center in Chicago
• Chapter 3. A Matter of Mission: St. Augustine’s Center for American Indians
• Chapter 4. The Promise of Empowerment: The Native American Committee
• Chapter 5. Bright Stars of Hope: Little Big Horn and O-Wai-Ya-Wa
• Chapter 6. Education for a Credentialed Leadership: NAES College
• Chapter 7. Education for Opportunity: Truman College and INAD
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover