Intergenerational Placemaking and Cultural Identity: The Klamath Tribes’ Responses to the Termination Policy and Its Effects on Their Community

Xenophobia and McCarthyism saturated political concerns in post-World War Two America.  These ideologies informed the development of the federal Indian policy known as termination in the late-1940s and early-1950s.  Pro-terminationists hoped this legislation would complete the process of assimilating American Indians into mainstream American culture.  In 1961 the termination policy transferred nearly one-million acres of land out of the Klamath Tribes’ ownership.  As an agent of change, the policy overlaid new meanings to places on the tribal reservation, encouraged many Klamaths to relocate to urban centers, led to an increase in alcohol abuse and pre-mature deaths among tribal members, and limited the Klamaths’ access to cultural places within their homeland in southeastern Oregon. 

 This paper explores the Klamaths’ place-making process and how this process is linked to the formation and maintenance of cultural identity.  The Klamaths participate in intergenerational placemaking through social relationships, storytelling, and cultural experiences within the physical landscape.  The central questions of this paper are “What implications did the termination policy have on Klamath tribal placemaking and cultural identity, and how did the Klamaths respond to the changes this policy imposed on their community and homeland?”  I will analyze tribal and federal documents and Klamath elders’ oral testimonies in order to answer these questions.  Despite policymakers’ attempts to erase the Klamaths’ cultural identity and disenfranchise the tribes, the Klamaths re-emerged in the political sphere in the mid-1970s as a strong, politically-active community.  The Klamaths’ counter narrative of native cultural resilience parallels the larger social transformations occurring in America during the 1960s and 1970s, including the emergence of the Red Power and Civil Rights movements, the rise of pan-Indianism, and the federal government’s shift toward treaty rights protection and Indian self-determination.