The Relocation and Employment Assistance Programs, 1948-1970: Federal Indian Policy and the Early Development of the Denver Indian Community

Abstract

This article examines the relocation and employment assistance program of the Bureau of Indian Affairs conducted in the 1950s and explores how relocated American Indians in Denver survived in an alien metropolitan society. Although a few anthropologists and sociologists have investigated the Denver Indians' experience since the 1970s, no historian has ever examined the relocation program and the experience of the Indian participants. Mainly based on the findings of archival research at the federal archives and other research facilities in the Denver area as well as U.S. government publications, this article investigates the actual operation of the relocation program and the difficulties that the Indian relocatees faced in the mainstream society. A close examination of the relocation program and the lives of the Indians reveals that the BIA's plan for rapid assimilation of American Indians ended as a failure in Denver. The Denver Indians, instead, strengthened their pan-Indian identity and created a support system which would substitute for reservations.