UCLA

The relocation policy began in the early 1950's and ended in the 1970's. The policy was created to move reservation Indians into cities by providing relocation assistance in the form of housing, job placement, training, etc. This policy, and Federal Indian policies like it, present logics of assimilation. Existing scholarship has shared these views and has discussed the response to Urban Indian Identity in a variety of ways. In this thesis I will use the oral history accounts of eight relocated Indians in Los Angeles in conjunction with previous scholarship to discuss the experience of relocation. This thesis will pose the narratives of the eight interviewees within the context of settler colonial structures and will explore how these eight relocatees re-envisioned Indian identity.