Urban Indians

"Urban Indians were the generation born in the city. We've been moving for a long time, but the land moves with you like memory. An Urban Indian belongs to the city, and cities belong to the earth." --There There, p. 11

Paulson, Steve & Tommy Orange. "The Unheard Stories of the 'Urban Indian.'" To the Best of Our Knowledge, Wisconsin Public Radio, 25 Jan 2019.
In this interview, Tommy Orange describes to Steve Paulson how he hopes his novel better represents modern Native Americans living in cities.

Oakland, California

Image: Johnson, Aran. Oakland California Skyline. 2005.

"Urban Indians feel at home walking in the shadow of a downtown building. We came to know the downtown Oakland skyline better than we did any sacred mountain range, the redwoods in the Oakland hills better than any other deep wild forest." --There There, p. 11

"Indigenous Populations in the Bay Area." Bay Area Equity Atlas.
"It is critical to recognize the Bay Area’s Indigenous populations, past and present. Despite the atrocities of colonization and genocide, Native communities persist today and are active in efforts to preserve and revive the culture. According to the U.S. Census, the Indigenous population in the Bay Area is 18,500 strong and is projected to grow over the next few decades."
Intertribal Friendship House
"Intertribal Friendship House (IFH) located in Oakland, CA was established in 1955 as one of the first urban American Indian community centers in the nation. It was founded by the American Friends Service Committee to serve the needs of American Indian people relocated from reservations to the San Francisco Bay Area."
Whittle, Joe. "Most Native Americans Live in Cities, Not Reservations. Here are their Stories." The Guardian, 4 Sep 2017.
"This summer, Joe Whittle decided to document the experiences of some of the 140,000 Native Americans who call the Bay Area home."

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Gertrude Stein & Oakland

The story lines in There There converge on a powwow in Oakland, California. The novel's title is drawn from a quote from Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), a writer who lived in Oakland when she was a child:

“...what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or any- thing if I like but not there, there is no there there.” --Gertrude Stein, Everybody's Autobiography

Image: Van Vechten, Carl. [Portrait of Gertrude Stein, New York]. 1934, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Books in Adams Library

Real Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood by Bonita Lawrence
ISBN: 9780803204195
Publication Date: 2004-01-01
In Real Indians and Others Lawrence draws on the first-person accounts of thirty Toronto residents of Native heritage, as well as archival materials, sociological research, and her own urban Native heritage and experiences. She sheds light on the Canadian governments efforts to define Native identity through the years by means of the Indian Act and shows how residential schooling, the loss of official Indian status, and adoption have affected Native identity. Lawrence looks at how Natives with Indian status react and respond to nonstatus Natives and how federally recognized Native peoples attempt to impose an identity on urban Natives.
Our Elders Lived It: American Indian Identity in the City by Deborah Davis Jackson
ISBN: 0875802818
Publication Date: 2001-12-01
More than half of all Native Americans live in cities, yet urban indians have not received the same attention as "traditional" indians who dwell on reservations. This groundbreaking anthropological investigation shatters stereotypes of what it means to be an ndian in America, arguing that the transition to an urban lifestyle requires a reshaping and reconceptualizing of self-identity. One of the most pressing concerns facing urban Native Americans today is the question of what constitutes a legitimate claim to Native identity. The importance of identity emerges in such practical matters as participation in tribal functions, entitlement to community aid, and political representation. The appropriation of indian symbols and lifeways by nonIndians has further blurred notions of identity. Explaining that ethnic identity is constructed and maintained through social interaction, Jackson demonstrates the importance of community in indian culture. Our Elders Lived It is the result of extensive fieldwork in an Upper Great Lakes midsized city, where life has been complicated by economic misfortune and social deprivation. Informed but not dominated by identity theory, Jackson's sensitive interviews and personal narratives allow the indian community to speak for itself and to present its own vision of the challenges facing urban Native Americans.
The Urban Indian Experience in America by Donald Lee Fixico
ISBN: 0826322158
Publication Date: 2000-10-01
As the first ethnohistory of modern urban Indians, this perceptive study looks at Indians from many tribes living in cities throughout the United States.
Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-75 by James B. LaGrand
ISBN: 0252072960
Publication Date: 2005-09-07
American Indians urbanized more quickly in the second half of the twentieth century than any other racial or ethnic group in the country. This dynamic social history, the first of its kind, focuses on Chicago during a thirty-year period of remarkable demographic growth that saw the city's American Indian population increase twentyfold.
Indigenous Cities by Laura M. Furlan
ISBN: 9781496202727
Publication Date: 2017-11-01
In Indigenous Cities Laura M. Furlan demonstrates that stories of the urban experience are essential to an understanding of modern Indigeneity. She situates Native identity among theories of diaspora, cosmopolitanism, and transnationalism by examining urban narratives--such as those written by Sherman Alexie, Janet Campbell Hale, Louise Erdrich, and Susan Power--along with the work of filmmakers and artists. In these stories Native peoples navigate new surroundings, find and reformulate community, and maintain and redefine Indian identity in the postrelocation era. These narratives illuminate the changing relationship between urban Indigenous peoples and their tribal nations and territories and the ways in which new cosmopolitan bonds both reshape and are interpreted by tribal identities. Though the majority of American Indigenous populations do not reside on reservations, these spaces regularly define discussions and literature about Native citizenship and identity. Meanwhile, conversations about the shift to urban settings often focus on elements of dispossession, subjectivity, and assimilation. Furlan takes a critical look at Indigenous fiction from the last three decades to present a new way of looking at urban experiences, one that explains mobility and relocation as a form of resistance. In these stories Indian bodies are not bound by state-imposed borders or confined to Indian Country as it is traditionally conceived. Furlan demonstrates that cities have always been Indian land and Indigenous peoples have always been cosmopolitan and urban.
Immigration and the Political Economy of Home by Rachel Buff
ISBN: 0520923928
Publication Date: 2001-03-25
Rachel Buff's innovative study of festivals in two American communities launches a substantive inquiry into the nature of citizenship, race, and social power. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork as well as archival research, Buff compares American Indian powwows in Minneapolis with the West Indian American Day Carnival in New York. She demonstrates the historical, theoretical, and cultural links between two groups who are rarely thought of together and in so doing illuminates our understanding of the meaning of home and citizenship in the post-World War II period. The book also follows the history of federal Indian and immigration policy in this period, tracing the ways that migrant and immigrant identities are created by both national boundaries and transnational cultural memory. In addition to offering fascinating discussions of these lively and colorful festivals, Buff shows that their importance is not just as a form of performance or entertainment, but also as crucial sites for making and remaking meanings about group history and survival. Cultural performances for both groups contain a history of resistance to colonial oppression, but they also change and creatively respond to the experiences of migration and the forces of the global mass-culture industry. Accessible and engaging, Immigration and the Political Economy of Home addresses crucial contemporary issues. Powwow culture and carnival culture emerge as vital, dynamic sites that are central not only to the formation of American Indian and West Indian identities, but also to the understanding modern America itself: the history of its institution of citizenship, its postwar cities, and the nature of metropolitan culture.
The Urbanization of American Indians: A Critical Bibliography by Russell Thornton; Harold G. Grasmick; Gary D. Sandefur
ISBN: 9780253362056
Publication Date: 1982-01-01
The urbanization of American Indians is typically considered as a migration over the last few decades from rural areas and reservations to the present large cities of the United States and Canada. But this is only part of the phenomenon.