Termination the Native American Struggle for Civil

¶ … Termination

The Native American struggle for Civil Rights is perhaps more tragic than that of African-Americans -- particularly when one considers how much land, people, and culture Native Americans lost in myriad wars and armed conflicts against people of European descent in the United States. It is because of these losses that the struggles and the oppressive measures faced by Native Americans were so considerable. Already marginalized from the mainstream of the country and continent that they once inhabited with autonomy, Native Americans had to contend with the latest in the long line of chicanery and deceit propagated against them by the American government after World War II -- the reneging of promises that gave them what few land and cultural resources they had on reservations.

Due to the popularity of the governmental practice of termination, which resulted in the re-appropriation of land and natural resources that previous legislation had implemented, as well as in the egregious infringement upon the right to sovereignty of individual tribes, many Native American groups floundered during the post-war years (Faragher et al., 2009, p. 815). After having their land taken from them again, they were shepherded away from reservations into cities, where they were encouraged to assimilate into mainstream American culture -- intrinsically losing that of their own. Significantly, governmental pressure to practice termination was fueled by the economic greed of a number of groups looking to exploit the lands and resources previously given to Native Americans for monetary purposes.

The defining moment in the Native American struggle for Civil Rights came in the 1960's, when activist organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians implemented a number of political maneuvers to restore the rights of these peoples. The group was able to effectively end the federal policy of termination. Even more significantly, it was able to terminate termination well before the majority of Native American tribes were affected by this insidious policy. This was a huge victory, which could well be considered the turning point or the defining moment in this particular struggle.