John Toledo, American Indian from Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, who relocated to Cleveland Toledo came to Cleveland in 1962 in a quest for job training. The Center, founded in 1969, offered job assistance, counseling, and help in preserving Indian identity for support, American Indians in town turned mainly to the Center rather than the BIA, which expected them to assimilate successfully but provided limited assistance in doing so. But loneliness, homesickness, and cultural isolation brought Indians together and in the 1960s they developed a cohesive urban community that coalesced around activities organized by the Cleveland American Indian Center. Indians were pressured to abandon their cultural identities, cultural expression was absent, mainstream stereotypes dominated, and Indians ventured into a society that regarded them with fascination and astonishment. In Cleveland, as elsewhere, no distinct, self-determined urban American Indian community was possible during the early phase of relocation. The names of the men in the photo-on the left an American Indian and on the right a representative of the BIAвЂ™s employment assistance program-are not given.В Credit: Bernie Noble for Cleveland Press, July 16, 1964. The BIA Employment Assistance Program This photo is one of many that the Bureau of Indian Affairs produced to promote the Relocation program to Indians on reservations. President Richard Nixon renounced the program in 1970. Christiansen, ClevelandвЂ™s BIA agent, said that вЂњIf weвЂ™ve done our job properly, after 12 months a family will be fully assimilated into the community.вЂќ The cost to relocated Indians was often steep: some adjusted but many others suffered economic hardship and overt discrimination after being abruptly disconnected from their cultures and plunged into an urban society that knew little about them. This program was to facilitate an end to government supervision of rural Indian reservations, in part by relocating Indians to urban areas, where they were to assimilate into mainstream society. Credit: Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 20, 1957. As elsewhere in the country, local reporters-including the Cleveland Plain DealerвЂ™s prize-winning Wilson Hirschfeld in this front-page story-often did not mention nationally published criticisms of the Relocation program. вЂњReal IndiansвЂќ move to Cleveland The Bureau of Indian Affairs solicited local newspapers to introduce Relocation to their readers.

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