Developing a Voice: The Evolution of Self-Determination in an Urban Indian Community

More American Indians live in urban areas than anywhere else in the United States, a fact that the larger American population has been slow to comprehend. Over the past half century this demographic shift from reservation to city has been a factor of steadily increasing significance in shaping the modern Indian experience in America. The implications have been broad-ranging at the community level on reservations and in urban centers, and on the individual level for tribal members in both reservation and nonreservation communities.

The American Indian population, despite a significant growth spurt, ¹ has remained below 1 percent of the total U.S. population. Notwithstanding these small numbers, tribes that are federally or state-recognized have been able to advocate with some success for their own needs. They do this based on the semisovereign status accorded to them under the law. Tribes' ability to do this improved markedly in the era of self-determination, which encompasses the last quarter to third of the twentieth century, although gaps still exist among tribes and in terms of definitions of sovereign rights.

"Self-determination" is in the narrow sense a term with legal implications in which the federal government recognizes the authority of tribes to govern themselves under the political and judicial definitions of limited sovereignty. In a larger sense, self-determination means the ability of a people to determine the direction of their own society and community in political, economic, social, and spiritual arenas. In this article, in relation to an urban Indian community, it means that community's ability to define itself and its needs and its ability to advocate for itself in the larger society under its own terms. It implies the development of a voice through which all of these things can be done.

Indians in cities lack the legal protections available to tribes and so have had to develop their own means of self-advocacy. Often urban Indian leaders have done this through the organizations they developed to address specific community concerns. Through these organizations, Indians have created dynamic urban communities in which the focus of leadership is generally advocacy on behalf of those community members in need. The history of such organizations dates back to the early decades of the twentieth century, predating the relocation era of the 1950s to 1970s. In the latter half of the century, their numbers and activities increased dramatically.

The development of organizational and community agendas that clearly reflect an Indian voice occurred in cities throughout the United States in the 1900s, from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, from Seattle to Minneapolis to Dallas to Detroit. Myriad smaller cities such as Albuquerque, Tucson, Sioux City, and Billings saw such development as well. One large urban area, Chicago, provides a valuable case study for several reasons. Chicago is in a state with no Indian reservations but is surrounded by several states that are home to recognized and unrecognized tribes. As such, and due to its industrial and political reputation as "the city that works," as well as being a critical locus for the country's rail and trucking systems, Chicago has attracted American Indians from a broad variety of Indian nations.

Chicago housed an Office of Indian Affairs warehouse in the early 1900s and became one of the federal government's relocation centers in the 1950s. Indians educated at boarding schools who chose to make their way in the white world did so in places like Chicago. Others, who simply desired to leave the reservation for economic opportunity, likewise moved to Chicago. Yet contrary to the commonly held stereotype, many of these urban migrants had no desire to give up their Indian identities or their connections with Indian communities. By the late 1910s, Indians in Chicago began to create organizations and articulate their roles to shape a more positive place in society for Indian people. From the beginning...