Urban American Indians: Reclaiming Native Space
184
Urban American Indians: Reclaiming Native Space
184Hardcover
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Overview
City-dwelling American Indians are part of both the ongoing ethnic history of American cities in the 20th and 21st centuries and the ancient history of American Indians. Today, more than three-quarters of American Indians live in cities, having migrated to urban areas in the 1950s because of influences such as the Termination and Relocation policy of the federal government, which was designed to end the legal status of tribes, and because of the draw of employment, housing, and educational opportunities. This book documents how North America was home to many ancient urban Indian civilizations and progresses to describing contemporary urban American Indian communities, lifestyles, and organizations.
The book concentrates on contemporary urban American Indian communities and the modern-day experiences of the individuals who live within them. The authors outline urban Indian identity, relationships, and communities, drawing connections between ancient urban Indian civilizations hundreds of years ago to the activism of contemporary urban Indians. As a result, readers will gain an in-depth understanding of both ancient and contemporary urban Indian communities; comprehend the differences, similarities, and overlap between reservation and urban American Indian communities; and gain insight into the key role of urban environments in creating ethnic community identities.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781440832079 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publication date: | 08/29/2016 |
| Series: | Native America: Yesterday and Today |
| Pages: | 184 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Grace Sage (Oneida Nation of Indians of Wisconsin), PhD, is adjunct faculty at the University of Denver.
Azusa Ono, PhD, is associate professor at Osaka University of Economics in Osaka, Japan, and visiting fellow at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan.
Table of Contents
Series Foreword vii
Preface xi
Introduction xv
1 Native Space, Colonial Space, and Cultural Mobility Donna Martinez 1
2 Building Relationships and Mapping Community in the Urban Environment Grace Sage 23
3 American Indian Homelessness in Cities Azusa Ono 43
4 Building an Urban Rez: American Indian Intertribal Organizations in the Twentieth Century Donna Martinez 63
5 Urban Indian Identity: Who Are We Anyway? Grace Sage 85
6 Child Welfare in Urban American Indian Communities Azusa Ono 107
Conclusion 129
Selected Bibliography 139
Index 151
What People are Saying About This
"Native Americans have been relegated to history, while their contemporary stories of survival have been lost. Urban American Indians: Reclaiming Native Space brings to the forefront the struggles that the indigenous community faces today. This work is of utmost importance, as it disrupts the notions of who is a 'real' American Indian."
"From ancient Indian cities like Cahokia to urban Indian areas in the 21st century, this book shows us how broadly indigenous peoples have lived in urban areas. All of America was once Native space, and this volume superbly demonstrates how Indians developed towns and cities with organized infrastructures of families and communities located strategically along water areas and trade routes. In fact, the majority of Indians live in urban areas today, not on reservations, why? This timely book makes us rethink what we know about American Indians and consider the idea that they built an urban Native America."
"Urban American Indians is an important new work that examines the central yet undertheorized experience of American Indian people in urban spaces. Challenging the notion of Native people as solely existing in the past or in the margins, this book carefully examines the spectrum of experiences within urban Native America. In doing so, it and encourages us to rethink Native identity both past and present as we look towards future generations."
"In telling the stories of urban Native Americans, Donna Martinez, Grace Sage, and Azusa Ono remind us that indigenous peoples have a long and complicated relationship with cities. This important book chronicles their multi-faceted journey through invisibility, defiance, and adaptation towards a contemporary identity shaped by their own tribal traditions and experiences shared with other urban Indians."
"Urban American Indians: Reclaiming Native Space is a major contribution to American Indian urban and diaspora studies and is destined to become a seminal text in this burgeoning field. Martinez, Sage, and Ono explode the myth that urbanization entails assimilation and cultural loss, and that away from reservations American Indians lose agency and identity. Rather, readers are forced to grapple with contemporary notions of American Indian identity and envision what Indigenous America will look like over the course of the 21st century. Urban American Indians is indeed the cutting edge of American Indian and Indigenous studies."
"A much needed addition to the scholarship and social history of American Indian urban experience, with an especially illuminating focus on emerging indigenous political geographies within American cities. The book also offers important and critical analysis of the impact of federal policy and law on urban American Indian communities, especially as such policies sparked the need for self-determined community organizing by these communities."
"This publication, which provides a timely analysis of the critical issues associated with the complex challenges facing Native Americans attempting to flourish in several different worlds, is long overdue. It should be required reading in any graduate or undergraduate program claiming currency in cultural sensitivity and awareness."
"Urban American Indians: Reclaiming Native Space works to produce an original narrative about the significance of American Indian urban history to the 20th and 21st centuries. Martinez's account of urbanism situates Indigenous identity as a conceptual problem that operates across spatial boundaries, showing how previous accounts of 'urban' and 'reservation' life don't engage fully enough with the shifting terrain of Indian belonging. In engaging with contemporary history and geography, Martinez, Sage, and Ono demonstrate the crucial significance of the study of urban Indian life to American history, Native history and epistemology, and urbanism."
"Urban American Indians: Reclaiming Native Space is a critical contribution to the literature on understanding and reclaiming the extended history of cultural and political structures of American Indian life on this continent."
"This is a powerful collection that highlights the fundamental value and strength of tribal peoples living in community, whether urban or rural. From the historical to the contemporary, this book engages the truth of the real American Indian experience as occurring both in urban settings as well as in reservation homelands."
"Shaped by research based on primary materials, community interviews and input, and secondary sources, Urban American Indians highlights the visibility of urban American Indians in histories of the United States and, importantly, showcases how their story is about cultural survival and resilience. Paying attention to the major impact that urbanization has had on American Indian communities this book illustrates both historical and contemporary facts concerning Indian activism in response to changes in federal Indian policy to broaden perspectives on both. This book succeeds in highlighting the centrality of urban American Indians' lived experiences pertaining to culture as well as politics to forever influence how readers will think of American Indian history, and for the better."
"This is a powerful collection that highlights the fundamental value and strength of tribal peoples living in community, whether urban or rural. From the historical to the contemporary, this book engages the truth of the real American Indian experience as occurring both in urban settings as well as in reservation homelands."
"The authors of this book have given non-Indian readers a refreshing and informative look at the incredible reality of the fact that traditional cultures still exist even in our urban centers. The authors describe how a culture adapts versus assimilates. The authors explain what happened to the Indians who relocated to the cities, and the reactions to federal policies toward Indians that facilitated the growth of American Indian Activism. This is a book about the positive force of cultural identity, tradition, and human spirit."