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Contemporary accounts of urban Native identity in two pan-Indian communities
In 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.
"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."
"Jacobs (Wayne State Univ.) has written a splendid analysis of contemporary urban Indigenous and Indigenous-identifying residents in the area around Cleveland, OH, living under the conditions of white domination . . . Jacobs combines sociological categories and vignettes of over 30 people to examine the complexity of these two groups’ identities."
"Indigenous Memory, Urban Reality richly documents identity formation, social boundaries, and the processes of 'making' race as they unfold in one Midwestern urban Indigenous community. The book does so with vital attention to settler colonialism’s role in forming, maintaining, and reproducing Indigenous identity. We can never discount settler colonialism’s impact on Indigenous lives, nor experiences of marginalization more generally. Jacobs opens the door for many different lines of inquiry across cultural sociology, urban studies, and race and ethnicity.""
"A rich, qualitative exploration of the experiences of urban Indians in Northeast Ohio, specifically their struggles maintaining Native identities, Indigenous practices, and connections to their tribes of origin in the face of settler-colonial constructed understandings of Indianness ranging from invisibility to racist caricatures."