| OCR Text |
Show Years of Trouble, Years of Hope, 1934-1960 151 Business Committee. The full bloods continued to meet with their traditional leaders. There grew a widening rift between the mixed and the full bloods. An expression of the rift is in a 1936 letter from John Duncan, a Uintah leader. He wrote to Commissioner John Collier: We full bloods seem to be losing out to the mixed bloods, and especially to the children of white fathers. When these white fathers exercise the rights to their children, it seems that they are crowding out the full bloods. I do not know what could be done about it, but our own people are very much alarmed at the growing predominance of mixed blood interest. Years ago, when the grandparents were enrolled, they promised that their children would marry INTO the tribe, but they did not carry out that agreement.19 Termination The rift finally resulted in the expulsion of the mixed bloods from tribal membership in 1954. It was provoked by the 1951 land claim award which increased the income available to each Ute family. And it was encouraged by the federal government. There was a shift in federal Indian policy in the 1940s-50s. It was a shift towards termination. This was a policy of ending the relationship between the Indians and the federal government. The policy was to end federal supervision and obligation to Indian people. Termination was another effort to assimilate them into the dominant society. The BIA thus encouraged the expulsion of the mixed bloods from the Uintah and Ouray Tribe as the first step towards termination of all the People. The 450 mixed bloods became the Affiliated Ute Citizens. They took with them twenty-seven percent of the 1951 award and twenty-seven percent of all later claims awards. The termination of the mixed bloods â€" fifty percent and less Ute blood â€" was completed in 1961.20 By that time there was a reaction against the results of the termination policy. Terminated people, such as the Southern Paiutes in Utah, had consequently lost land and resources. Many had become dependent on state and federal aid. Termination proved to be destructive of Indian people, economically and culturally. The plan to end federal supervision of the rest of the Ute People was not enacted. |
