Changing the Border of the Federal Trust Obligation: The Urban Indian Health Care Crisis
![handle is hein.journals/nyulpp8 and id is 135 raw text is: CHANGING THE BORDERS OF THE
FEDERAL TRUST OBLIGATION: THE
URBAN INDIAN HEALTH CARE CRISIS
Caryn Trombino
INTRODUCTION
A. Urban Relocation
Lured by the promise of jobs, education, and economic security,
an estimated 100,000 to 160,000 American Indians moved off reserva-
tions and into urban areas between 1953 and 19721 via the urban relo-
cation efforts of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Dillon Myer.2
Native Americans slowly but steadily migrated from rural reservations
to urban areas between 1920 and 1950. World War 113 and relocation
policies developed by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
proved tremendous catalysts. The experimental BIA relocation pro-
gram secured volunteers from reservations and provided them with
bus tickets, $50 checks, and little else.4 Rather than an escape from
rural poverty, this misguided relocation program ultimately offered
nothing more than an exchange of one form of poverty for another.5
As urban American Indians were isolated from their reservation coun-
terparts, their connections to tribal cultures and histories withered
1. Urban Indians and Health Care in America: Hearing on the FY 2004 Presi-
dent's Budget for Indian Programs before the S. Comm. on Indian Affairs, 108th
Cong. 4 (2003) [hereinafter 2004 Budget Hearings] (testimony of Kay Culbertson,
President, National Council of Urban Indian Health); Thomas W. Mitchell, From Re-
construction to Deconstruction: Undermining Black Ownership, Political Indepen-
dence, and Community Through Partition Sales of Tenancies in Common, 95 Nw. U.
L. REV. 505, 531 n.155 (2001).
2. 'Urban Voices' Makes a Great Contribution, INDIAN CouNTRY TODAY, Apr. 2,
2003, at www.indiancountry.com/?1049318409. Note that Myer was also the archi-
tect behind the Japanese-American internment camps during World War HI. He served
as Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1950-1953. RICHARD DRINNON, KEEPER OF
CONCENTRATION CAMps: DILLON S. MYER AND AMERICAN RACISM 166 (1987).
3. During World War II, 65,000 Indians left reservations to join the armed forces
or to work in war-related industries. Betty Pfefferbaum et al., Learning How to Heal:
An Analysis of the History, Policy, and Framework of Indian Health Care, 20 AM.
INDIAN L. REV. 365, 379 (1996) [hereinafter How to Heal].
4. Deborah Norman, The Urban Indian Experience, 28 ORAL. HIST. REV. No. 2,
169 (2001) (book review).
5. Chicago's Urban Indians, at www.wttw.com/chicagostories/urbanindian.html.
129
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Changing the Border of the Federal Trust Obligation: The Urban Indian Health Care Crisis
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