City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934 by Rosalyn R. Lapier and David R. M. Beck (review)

102 The Michigan Historical Review Although Karibo is able to articulate the myriad of ways the border fostered and attempted to hinder prostitution and drug-trafficking, she is less clear in terms of how people determined ‘who belonged’ in their communities. She spends a great deal of time on the fears of juvenile delinquency and transience along the border, however this lacks an explicit discussion of citizenship. Karibo expertly demonstrates the ways in which images of prostitutes and drug dealers were used in political discourse in Canada and the United States, but her ability to connect these marginalized groups to a larger, changing idea of citizenship is less thorough. Karibo weaves the role of vice economy into the social spaces of those living in the Detroit-Windsor borderland, depending heavily on local newspapers and national debates to challenge the myth of the 1950s as a decade of conformity. In doing so, the author makes a compelling study of community within these informal economies and cultures against the backdrop of Cold War anxiety and containment. The increasing formality of border control sought to create an efficient and safe national boundary, but, as Karibo demonstrates, vice was deeply embedded within the economy and cultures of the region. A great deal has been written on vice economies in the Progressive Era, and Karibo successfully uses that historiography to argue that prohibition laid the foundation for the booming illicit economy in the postwar borderland (p. 5). The historiography of the postwar borderlands is a scarce one, and in orienting itself north, Sin City North complicates a transnational story that is often oversimplified and overlooked. Mikee Ferran University of Utah Rosalyn R. Lapier and David R. M. Beck. City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934 Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Pp. 268. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $40.00. Urban Native histories remain few and far between, despite the fact that most Indigenous people in the United States now live in urban areas. Those studies mostly focus on the post-World War II period, when federal relocation policy (among other things) brought large numbers of Native Americans to major cities such as Los Angeles. Rosalyn Lapier and David Beck take another approach. By focusing mostly on the first half of the twentieth century, and using extensive archival research, they Book Reviews 103 reclaim a genealogy for more recent urban Indigenous histories and offer insights to the ways in which urban Indians wrestled with issues of personal and tribal identity, political strategy, and cultural representation. The story begins with Potawatomi and other Indigenous presences in early Chicago. Both the descendants of local peoples and migrants to the city were present at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. In addition to Indigenous performers at the fair, Potawatomi leader Simon Pokagon used the event to draw attention to racist portrayals of Indians at the exposition and the ongoing land claims of his people to the place that had become Chicago. A chapter about Indigenous middle-class professionals, such as Carlos Montezuma, who shaped spaces, both material and representational, for city Natives is followed by one on Indian performers in the city, highlighting the divisions within the nascent Indian community about how to best articulate their identity and claims to civil rights in a broader culture obsessed with the “vanishing race.” Lapier and Beck also follow closely the rise of Native organizations like the Indian Fellowship League, the First Daughters of America, and the Grand Council Fire of American Indians. While members of these organizations faced many obstacles—including, most noticeably, the simultaneously assimilationist and romantic agendas of non-Indian colleagues who fancied themselves allies—they were still able to assert influence within Chicago’s cultural and political structures. This was perhaps best evidenced by the 1933 Century of Progress exhibition, where Indian activists successfully spoke back to racist representations and even inspired a new law outlawing ethnic impostors. Lapier and Beck end their story in the 1940s when Indians in Chicago began to disappear from a public discourse that was increasingly shaped by non-Indigenous people. This chronology throws later developments in Chicago and elsewhere into sharp relief and adds significantly to our knowledge...