Indigenous Memory, Urban Reality

Contemporary accounts of urban Native identity in two pan-Indian communitiesIn the last half century, changing racial and cultural dynamics in the United States have caused an explosion in the number of people claiming to be American Indian, from just over half a million in 1960 to over three million in 2013. Additionally, seven out of ten American Indians live in or near cities, rather than in tribal communities, and that number is growing.In Indigenous Memory, Urban Reality, Michelle Jacobs examines the new reality of the American Indian urban experience. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted over two and a half years, Jacobs focuses on how some individuals are invested in reclaiming Indigenous identities whereas others are more invested in relocating their sense of self to the urban environment. These groups not only apply different meanings to indigeneity, but they also develop different strategies for asserting and maintaining Native identities in an urban space inundated with false memories and fake icons of “Indian-ness.” Jacobs shows that “Indianness” is a highly contested phenomenon among these two groups: some are accused of being "wannabes" who merely "play Indian," while others are accused of being exclusionary and "policing the boundaries of Indianness." Taken together, the interconnected stories of relocators and reclaimers expose the struggles of Indigenous and Indigenous-identified participants in urban pan-Indian communities. Indigenous Memory, Urban Reality offers a complicated portrait of who can rightfully claim and enact American Indian identities and what that tells us about how race is “made” today.

Why is racial formation theory insufficient to explain the complexities of urban Indigenous identity today? Sociologists have been far too slow to engage theories of settler-colonialism or to take seriously the experiences of Indigenous peoples in their own terms. Drawing on detailed interviews and observations and situating her analyses across multiple vectors of historical experience, Jacobs presents a view of the complexities of contemporary Indigenous identity that beautifully bridges key conversations in sociology and Indigenous studies., Jacobs writes on the erasure of Indigenous Peoples and Urban Indians from deeply informed research and personal experience that shows us how settler discourse and dominant paradigms still operate to marginalize and silence Native voices and perspectives, particularly on mascotry issues, identity claims and internal politics….Jacobs reflects the diversity of Native people and Indigenous identity issues with professional accuracy and intercultural awareness., Through narration and sociological analyses, Jacobs offers the reader fascinating accounts of both Indigenous memories and urban realities for Native people living in Northeast Ohio. The voices in Jacobs’ accessible and informative book speak to the importance of ancestry, spirituality, homelands, powwows, and organizations in contemporary Indigenous America which she shows in all of its complexity, contradictions, and community.

Michelle R. Jacobs is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wayne State University.