Arthur Vivian Watkins was a Republican U.S. Senator from Utah, serving two terms from 1947 to 1959. He was influential as a proponent of terminating federal recognition of American Indian tribes, in the belief that they should be assimilated and all treaty rights abrogated. In 1954 he chaired the Watkins Committee, which led to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had made extensive allegations of communist infiltration of government and art groups. Watkins voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Indian termination is a phrase describing United States policies relating to Native Americans from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. It was shaped by a series of laws and practices with the intent of assimilating Native Americans into mainstream American society. Cultural assimilation of Native Americans was not new; the belief that indigenous people should abandon their traditional lives and become what the government considers "civilized" had been the basis of policy for centuries. What was new, however, was the sense of urgency that, with or without consent, tribes must be terminated and begin to live "as Americans." To that end, Congress set about ending the special relationship between tribes and the federal government.