<i>Indigenous Albuquerque</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Indigenous Albuquerque Andrea Smith (bio) Indigenous Albuquerque. by Myla Vicenti Carpio . Texas Tech University Press, 2011 Myla Vicenti Carpio's Indigenous Albuquerque is more than simply a fine history of the urban Native community in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is a critical intervention in the study of urban Native communities within Native studies. Increasingly, scholars are questioning many of the prevailing presuppositions about urban Native peoples—that they are less "authentic," more "assimilated," and culturally alienated from their home communities. Carpio builds on this work by making her analysis of the political economy, rather than simply identity, a focal point for rethinking the politics of urbanization within Native studies. Carpio challenges the notion that Native urbanization is a recent phenomenon. She argues that this presupposition elides the complex civilizations that existed in Native America prior to colonization: "Indigenous peoples of the pre-colonial Americas thrived in both urban and rural cultures" (xviii). Building on Jack Forbes's work, Carpio argues that Native communities clustered around "urban" areas that became trade centers and places of dense interactions among large numbers of people. In chapter 2, Carpio traces the centuries-long indigenous relationships with the lands now occupied by Albuquerque through trade relationships, boarding school systems, and Spanish and U.S. colonization. Essentially, Carpio suggests, the urbanization of Native peoples marks less a one-way journey to assimilation and more a reclamation of lands that are no less indigenous than our reservations. Throughout this work, she also challenges the assumption that urbanization is the cause of cultural or social breakdown in Native communities. By making urbanization the problem, Carpio argues, we fail to focus on the real cause, which is colonization. Urban Native peoples become an inherent problem of Native sovereignty rather than a response to the colonial conditions under which urbanization is produced. Carpio notes that one reason behind the prevalent narrative of the urban Native as "assimilated" Native is that most studies on urban Native peoples focus on identity. Because of this narrow focus on identity, the question "How do Indians survive the urban environment?" rises to the fore (xxiii). What gets lost in this discussion are the political, economic, and social factors that structure the relationships between Native peoples and local, state, and national governments. Rather, the problem becomes urban Natives, who fail to properly adapt to their urban environment (or who adapt too well and cease to be Native), instead of the logics of settler colonialism that structure the identities [End Page 110] emerging from these contexts. To redress this tendency, Carpio provides an extended analysis of how urbanization impacts Native peoples' access to health care, social services, and political representation. She notes, for example, that the current models for delivering health care and social services tend to presume that Native peoples are of concern only when they are reservation based. When Native peoples move to urban areas, they often lose access to vital services. Meanwhile, mainstream services assume Native people are already cared for through tribally based programs and do not make the effort to ensure the needs of Native peoples are addressed. Similarly, she builds on the work of scholars who analyze violence against Native women to assess how the complex jurisdictional issues that face Native communities render Native women legally "rapable." In chapter 3, Carpio assesses how the political economy of Albuquerque relies on the present absence of Native peoples. That is, Native peoples are the most underrepresented communities in terms of political representation on the city level. But the tourist economy deploys "the Native" as one of its primary marketing strategies. At the same time that the economy of Albuquerque is dependent on Native peoples, it simultaneously underserves them through its educational and social service delivery systems. This contradiction plays out in the manner in which Native peoples are deployed to promote tourism. In her analysis of the Oñate Monument commissioned by the City of Albuquerque to celebrate the first governor of New Mexico, Carpio argues that this celebration rests on invisibilizing Oñate's genocidal practices. Despite Oñate's acts of brutality committed against indigenous peoples, the city continued with this project. Essentially, the economy of Albuquerque rests on...