In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • How has migration affected indigenous cultural and political identities?
  • Julian Brave Noisecat (bio)

United States: New Native Activism

Picture the American city. You can see it and so can I: gleaming post-industrial buildings, businesspeople in suits, working-class people toiling in service jobs, de-industrialization galore. Now, picture Native Americans. Not as illustrations in history books, but alive on reservations, maybe even leading protests, out of sight but somewhere in the American hinterland. These images don’t fit together very well. For many, they are juxtaposed: The former represents the pinnacle of progress, the latter the periphery and past. Yet according to the Census Bureau seven in 10 Native Americans, or 3.7 million people, live in cities. Even among the budding Indigenous intelligentsia, there is often a disconnect between our everyday realities and the way we place and tell our stories.

In 1952, the federal government established the Urban Indian Relocation Program, which pushed Native peoples to leave reservations for jobs in cities. The program was central to “Termination Era” policies from the 1940s–60s, which were designed to undermine tribal sovereignty, open Indigenous lands to capital investment, and assimilate Native people into the laboring classes. Many on this socially engineered diaspora relocated to Oakland, California, where I grew up. In 1955, they established the Intertribal Friendship House, one of the first urban Indian community centers in the country.

Inspired by their brethren in the Chicano Movement and Black Panther Party, plus peoples’ revolutions sweeping the developing world, Indigenous urbanites led the iconic occupation of Alcatraz Island from 1969 to 1971, bringing unprecedented national attention to Native issues. Around the same time, a group of relocation Indians in Minneapolis, Minnesota, founded the American Indian Movement. Ironically, a policy designed to assimilate Indigenous people into the body politic instead brought them together to form new communities of solidarity and resistance, setting the stage for dramatic and influential political movements.

Urban migration created tensions that continue to shape the Indigenous experience. Today, Indigenous people in the United States—like our relatives in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—are demographically urban. Yet our cultural identities and political struggles remain predominantly rural and tribal. This paradox has persisted from the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee to the Dakota Access Pipeline protest at Standing Rock. The cultural and political Indigenous heartland is often distant from where most Indigenous people live. As urbanization accelerates, will frameworks of Indigenous self-determination, rights, and sovereignty urbanize as well? Or will Indigenous people living in cities continue to dream of distant homelands?

From a policy perspective, the history of relocation is worth retelling—especially as Indigenous communities and progressive leaders work to address the enduring legacies and injustices of colonialism. Colonialism has been a devastating force of oppression across the globe. Yet, we should not overestimate colonial might and underestimate Indigenous resilience. Policies engineered to trigger Indigenous social death, like relocation, unwittingly instigated Indigenous [End Page 3] rebirth. Human design cannot govern history and power. Those two twist and turn, writhe and ridicule in unpredictable ways. Perhaps the future of Indigenous resistance, resurgence, and renaissance will be equally curious.

Julian Brave Noisecat

JULIAN BRAVE NOISECAT (Secwepemc/St’at’imc) is a policy analyst at 350.org and an award-winning journalist. His writing regularly appears in The Guardian and other publications.

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