1 August 1953
House Concurrent Resolution 108 announces termination policy
United States; targeted Native nations
On August 1, 1953, Congress adopted HCR 108, urging an end to federal supervision for tribes in four states and several named nations. It called for closing relevant Bureau of Indian Affairs offices after release from supervision and requested legislative recommendations from the Interior Secretary. Later termination measures ended recognition, services and trust protections for affected tribes, as the National Archives explains.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
This was a sense-of-Congress policy resolution, not a law that immediately terminated every listed nation or conferred citizenship for the first time. Its targets and later outcomes must be distinguished; the broad claim about resulting land loss is not independently established here. Dunbar-Ortiz’s chapter 9 and underlying source trail were not rechecked.
Sources
- Primary resolution: H. Con. Res. 108, passed August 1, 1953, 67 Stat. B132, preamble and resolved paragraph ↗
- Later institutional context: National Archives, BIA Records: Termination, Historical Overview (effects of subsequent termination measures) ↗
- Book provenance, not rechecked: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014), chapter 9; underlying source trail unresolved