The California Rancheria Termination Acts refer to three

acts of Congress An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by the United States Congress. Acts may apply only to individual entities (called private laws), or to the general public ( public laws). For a bill to become an act, the text must pass through both house ...

and an amendment passed in the 1950s and 1960s as part of the US

Indian termination policy Indian termination is a phrase describing United States policies relating to Native Americans from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. It was shaped by a series of laws and practices with the intent of assimilating Native Americans into mainstream ...

. The three Acts, passed in 1956, 1957, and 1958 targeted 41 Rancherias for termination. An additional seven were added via an amendment in 1964. Including three previous terminations, 46 of the 51 targeted Rancherias were successfully terminated. Through litigation and legislation, over 30 Rancherias have been restored and at least five are still working to be.

Terminations prior to 1958

The first termination occurred on 29 March 1956 for the Koi Nation of the Lower Lake Rancheria in two laws, Public Law 443 . R. 58570 Stat. 58 and Public Law 751 . R. 1116370 Stat. 595 which amended the description of the property. Lake County purchased the Lower Lake Rancheria property to build an airport and the tribal position was that though they were landless, they had not been officially terminated. Indian Health program records, however, show that the tribe was officially terminated as of 29 March 1956 and no tribal members were eligible for services. After years of attempting to have their status reaffirmed, the Bureau of Indian Affairs "citing oversights in official records,” recognized the tribe on 29 December 2000. The second termination occurred on 10 July 1957 when the

Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians The Coyote Valley Reservation in Redwood Valley, California is home to about 170 members of the Coyote Valley tribe of the Native American Pomo people, who descend from the Shodakai Pomo. They are a federally recognized tribe, who were formerly ...

was displaced with passage of Public Law 85-91 71 Stat. 283 authorizing the sale of the Coyote Valley Rancheria by the Secretary of the Interior to the Secretary of the Army for the Russian River Basin project to build the Coyote Valley Dam. Though this band was relocated a few miles away to the Coyote Valley Reservation, records of the Indian Health program show that it was terminated and all tribal members were ineligible for further services as of 10 July 1957. Like the Koi Nation, this may have been a recording error, as the tribe is a federally recognized entity. One final Rancheria appears to have been terminated prior to the 1958 Act. According to the Indian Health program records,

Laguna Rancheria Laguna (Italian and Spanish for lagoon) may refer to: People * Abe Laguna (born 1992), American DJ known as Ookay * Andrés Laguna (1499–1559), Spanish physician, pharmacologist, and botanist * Ana Laguna (born 1955), Spanish-Swedish ballet dan ...

was terminated effective 4 February 1958.

California Rancheria Termination Act of 1958

On 18 August 1958, Congress passed the California Rancheria Termination Act, Public Law 85-671 (). The act called for the distribution of all 41 rancheria communal lands and assets to individual tribe members. It called for a plan "for distributing to individual Indians the assets of the reservation or Rancheria, including the assigned and the unassigned lands, or for selling such assets and distributing the proceeds of sale, or conveying such assets to a corporation or other legal entity organized or designed by the group, or for conveying such assets to the group, as tenants in common." Before the land could be distributed, the act called for a government survey of land on the rancheria. The government was required to improve or construct all roads serving the rancheria, to install or rehabilitate irrigation, sanitation, and domestic water systems, and to exchange land held in trust for the rancheria. All Indians who received a portion of the assets were ineligible to receive any more federal services rendered to them based on their status as Indians. In 1957–58, a State Senate Interim Committee investigation revealed that little had been done to prepare Indian reserves for termination. In 1958, the Rancheria Termination Act was enacted. A memo from the Department of Interior shows the insufficiency of the notice given the California Indians, which was simply posted on the Rancheria for 30 days. In many testimonies, like that of the

Nisenan The Nisenan are a group of Native Americans and an Indigenous people of California from the Yuba River and American River watersheds in Northern California and the California Central Valley. The Nisenan people are classified as part of the large ...

of the

Nevada City Rancheria The Nevada City Rancheria was the federally recognized land and name of the Nisenan Native American people in Northern California. The Rancheria land was obtained in 1887 by Tribal Chief Charley Cully. When he died in 1911, the land allotment wa ...

, plaintiffs alleged that BIA officials spoke only to whoever was occupying the homestead at the time, rather than consulting with Indians living in the surrounding area.

1964 Amendment

In 1964, an amendment to the California Rancheria Termination Act () was enacted, terminating additional rancheria lands. Overall, then, there were 3 rancherias terminated prior to Public Law 85-671, 41 mentioned in Public Law 85-671, an additional 7 included in the amendment of 1964 and 5 that were never terminated but were listed, correcting the number of California Rancherias terminated from the oft-cited 41 to 46 total terminations. The Bureau of Indian Affairs states that while 41 Rancherias were slated for termination ultimately only 38 were terminated under the Rancheria Act, the source of this discrepancy is unknown.

Restoration

Many tribes expressed dissatisfaction with termination immediately. Federal failures to live up to promised improvements and educational opportunities that were supposed to be part of an agreement to accept termination led eventually to lawsuits calling to reverse terminations. The first successful challenge was for the

Robinson Rancheria The Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California is a Federally recognized tribes, federally recognized tribe of Eastern Pomo people in Lake County, California.

which was 22 March 1977 and it was followed by 5 others: the Hopland Rancheria was restored 29 March 1978; The

Upper Lake Rancheria The Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake is a federally recognized tribe of Pomo Indians in Lake County, California.

was restored 15 May 1979; the

Table Bluff Rancheria The Wiyot Tribe is a federally recognized tribe of Wiyot people. They are the aboriginal people of Humboldt Bay, Mad River and lower Eel River. ''Four Directions Institute.'' Retrieved 29 Sept 2013.Big Sandy Rancheria was restored 28 March 1983; and the

Table Mountain Rancheria The Table Mountain Rancheria is a federally recognized tribe of Native American people from the Chukchansi band of Yokuts and the Monache tribe. It is also the tribe's ranchería, located in Fresno County, California. Reservation Founded in 191 ...

was restored in June, 1983. Each of these decisions only pertained to one reservation. The success of these suits and frustration with unmet promises, caused

Tillie Hardwick Tillie Hardwick (née Myers; 1 August 1924 – 15 July 1999) was a Pomo Indian woman who was instrumental in reversing the California Indian Rancheria termination policy of the U.S. government. Early life Tillie Myers was born 1 August 1924 to ...

in 1979 to consult with California Indian Legal Services, who decided to make a class action case. On 19 July 1983 a U.S.District Court in ''Tillie Hardwick, et al. v. United States of America, et al.'' Case #C-79-1710-SW ordered federal recognition of 17 of California's Rancherias. The Hardwick decision restored more terminated tribes than any other single case in California and prompted the majority of the terminated Rancherias to pursue federal restoration. Of the 46 terminated Rancherias 27 have been restored, one (Coyote Valley) didn't need restoration because it is currently recognized, and at least five Rancherias are still trying to restore their federal status.

Lists of California Rancherias

The ''ACCIP Termination Report: The Continuing Destructive Effects of the Termination Policy on California Indians'', (ACCIP Termination Report) prepared by the Advisory Council on California Indian Policy in September, 1997 lists 7 additional reservations which were terminated as a result of the 1964 Amendments to the Rancheria Act, which did not list them by name.

References