The Urban Indian Experience in America

Abstract

Donald L. Fixico, the director of the Indigenous Nations Studies Program at the University of Kansas, has written a balanced account of the experience of Indians who resettled in cities throughout the United States during the second half of the twentieth century. In this book, Fixico clearly demonstrates how difficult it was for the first generation of migrants from tribal homelands to adjust to urban life. They resided in the ghettos of uptown Chicago, Bell Gardens in Los Angeles, and elsewhere. In these segregated metropolitan areas, Indian children encountered racism and dropped out of school. Their parents also suffered from the evils of alcoholism, found it difficult to obtain adequate health care, and paid high rents for substandard housing. Nonetheless, Indians managed to retain their cultural identities under these difficult circumstances. Fixico shows how extended families and tribal social clubs upheld traditional values in an alien environment. Furthermore, Indians participated in athletic events, powwows, and dances at over forty intertribal urban centers, which helped to forge a new pan-Indian cultural identity. This unexpected development encouraged the political activism associated with the red power movement.