– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

You might recognize this famous, fearless lunch.

But did you know that many of those men –

the ones who built New York’s skyline – were Native?

Known as the “skywalkers,” these Mohawk ironworkers

braved the heights to create the Big Apple you know today.

They literally built one of the most famous cities in the world!

So, why do we rarely talk about Natives living in cities?

Hi, I’m Che Jim, and welcome to Crash Course Native American History!

[THEME MUSIC]

In episode 14, we talked about the Relocation and Termination Era:

the period between the 1950s and ‘60s when the U.S. government attempted

to get rid of Native Americans altogether through two main methods:

Relocating Native individuals to cities

where they would assimilate, or disappear into mainstream American culture.

And, ending the federal recognition of over a hundred tribes.

It was… a rough time.

Or “not a vibe,” in Gen Z terms.

Today, we’re gonna grapple with the fallout from that first element—relocation.

And how it created a whole new way to be Indian, for better or worse.

Let’s pick back up in the early 1950s.

Like I mentioned in episode 14, in the wake of World War Two,

the U.S. federal government was looking for ways to cut costs.

All those nukes cost money!

And on the chopping block yet again was fulfilling their agreements to Native people,

this time on reservations.

So, through some complicated maneuvering,

they moved many of us off of reservations and into luxurious beach cabanas.

[record scratch]

Just kidding, they moved us into cities.

The new commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, Dillon S. Myer,

thought reservations were overpopulated and not worth investing in.

So his plan was to offer Native Americans a one-way ticket to the city,

where they could blend into mainstream society.

That would leave their reservation lands ready and available for taxation and sale.

With no reservations and  Natives fully assimilated,

the government would get out of the promises they had made in treaties

and would close the Bureau of Indian Affairs for good.

Goodbye, reservations.

Goodbye, treaty promises.

Goodbye, Indians.

This plan came from the same guy who’d led the forced internment

of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans during World War Two.

So, yeah. Yikes.

Rest assured, the ancestors had a word with him in the afterlife.

The cornerstone of Myers’s plan was a relocation program,

which the Bureau of Indian Affairs launched in 1953.

It offered a paid ride and a month’s stipend 

to any Native person willing  to relocate to a city,

promising they’d find plenty of good jobs, good schools, and good housing—

basically, the stuff of a better life.

Eventually, the BIA added job training to the mix.

So many Natives were willing to relocate

that the BIA got more applications than it could actually accept.

But for many, those big promises weren’t what they were cracked up to be.

Instead of prosperity, many Natives found scarce housing and low-end jobs.

They experienced culture shock and racism—

all without the support of their communities back home.

Many Native people left.

Others wanted to leave, but had no way of getting back to their reservations.

Between 1953 and 1973, it's estimated that at least 100,000 Native Americans

moved to cities like Chicago, Denver, LA, San Francisco, and Cleveland.

Yes, even Cleveland.

Those poor souls.

And the BIA didn’t measure the Relocation Program’s success

by how well people did in those cities,

but by how many people were still in those cities a year later—

whether they wanted to be or not.

Because as long as Natives were off reservations,

to the U.S. government, they were now invisible.

And in some ways, Natives who live in cities are still invisible.

Because, while we know that today, a lot of Native folks live urban lives,

we don’t actually know how many.

Like, the 2020 U.S. Census found that nearly 7 in 10 people

who identify as “American Indian or Alaska Native” live in urban areas.

But three years earlier, researchers at

the Department of Housing and Urban Development

had reported exactly the opposite.

The math ain’t mathing.

It turns out, there are a couple of things going on here.

For one, on the census, the “American Indian” category

includes anyone with Indigenous ancestry from anywhere in the Americas,

not just what’s now the U.S.

Like, two of the most common identities reported in 2020 were Aztec and Maya—

groups that go back hundreds or even thousands of years down in Mexico!

[in an Australian accent] Our brothas down undah!

But second, the census reflects how many people self-identified

as having Indigenous ancestry,

which doesn’t necessarily mean someone is a tribal member.

Like, in 2023, the Cherokee Nation had 450,000 enrolled members,

and the smaller Cherokee bands, the United Keetoowah Band and the Eastern Band,

each had more than 14,000 members.

Nothing to sneeze at!

But over three times that many people had reported Cherokee ancestry on the census!

What is it with the math around here?

Well, some of that discrepancy comes from different definitions of who “counts” as Cherokee.

It’s impossible to know how many of those 1.5 million people who claim Native ancestry

actually meet the requirements for tribal membership…

versus how many of them have heard a family story about their great-great grandma

who was a Cherokee princess.

Cause actually? The Cherokee never had princesses.

The point is: nobody’s 100% sure how many Native people today live in cities.

Not even me. And I usually know everything.

Side note: To this day, Native people living in cities

sometimes get described as “Urban Indians.”

But that can create a kind of false dichotomy between “city Indians” and “rez Indians.”

While “Urban Indians” don’t really exist, Native people experiencing urban life do.

Besides, there are Indians living everywhere.

Even in space!

Who let you up there, chief?! You see ET anywhere?

And you might be like, “Che. Who cares if we don’t know the exact number?

We know it’s a lot. Isn’t that enough? Can’t you just be happy??”

But here’s the thing: not being counted matters!

Policies are only as good as the data they’re informed by.

If we don’t have the data,

then we don’t know how much money to allocate to important programs.

Which is a big deal when Natives living in cities experience poverty and unemployment

at higher rates than other Americans, among other difficulties.

Take the Indian Health Service,

the federally funded healthcare provider for members of federally recognized tribes.

Despite the high population of Native people in urban areas,  

only one percent of IHS’s budget is earmarked for cities,

so urban clinics are few and far between.

Even if a Native person does live in a city with one of these clinics,

lack of time and money can make it hard to get to one.

But urban Indian organizations are striving to change that.

For example, the National Urban Indian Family Coalition, a group of 40 non-profits,

led the #StatisticallySignificant campaign,

which encouraged Natives in cities to respond to the 2020 U.S. Census

so that their numbers could be counted—and their needs met.

And so that maybe one day, the math can math.

And that points to something huge that the BIA didn’t anticipate.

Native people didn’t just disappear in cities.

Instead, these seemingly “invisible” Native people looked for —and found— each other.

Despite their many tribal differences,

they found common ground and used it to voice their collective power.

Intertribal activist organizations like the Red Power Movement—

and its offshoot, the American Indian Movement— sprouted in cities during the 1960s and ‘70s,

promoting Native pride and organizing protests to call attention to injustices.

People from many different Native nations came together to assert their treaty rights,

improve living conditions, and fill in the gaps where the government had failed them.

Like, in the late 1960s, members of the 

American Indian Movement  in Minneapolis, Minnesota,

tried to figure out how to address problems for Native folks like housing discrimination

and isolation from their cultures.

And in 1973, Little Earth was born—

the first and only subsidized housing complex in the U.S. to give preference to Natives.

To this day, Little Earth offers services for Native residents, like rides to school,

food banks, and doctor visits, tutoring, and support groups.

There’s an urban farm that grows medicinal plants like sweetgrass and sage.

A nightly community patrol  to de-escalate conflict.

An arts collective, seasonal ceremonies and pow-wows, and mentorship from elders.

Today, Little Earth is home  to about 1,000 residents 

from more than 30 Native nations.

And it’s just one of many  cross-tribal organizations 

and cultural centers that continue to maintain

Native community in urban areas.

So relocation created a whole new experience for Native people,

one of managing their traditions and cultural identity while in an urban setting.

And it caused Native people from totally different tribes to come together in new ways.

Sounds pretty good, right?

As with so many things, there’s a flip side to this.

What if coming together across Native cultures actually made Natives less visible, not more?

I’ll let Cherokee scholar and activist Robert Thomas explain.

In the 1970s, he warned that Natives living in cities were at risk

of being cut off from their cultures and the natural world.

He feared that unique tribal identities would soon be replaced by a single idea

of what it means to be “Indian.”

Like if, instead of having New York style pizza, Chicago style pizza, and Detroit style pizza,

we just had… pizza.

This idea is called Pan-Indianism.

It’s a political philosophy that’s either positive or negative, depending on your perspective.

Some Native people see it  as representing intertribal 

unity and working toward common goals,

while others see it as a blending together 

of distinct tribal identities  into generic sameness.

To this day, Natives debate whether Pan-Indianism in cities is “good” or “bad.”

Does banding together over a common “Indian-ness” support Native nations’ sovereignty?

Or does it threaten it?

Scholar Sydney Ann Beckmann argues 

that this debate is missing  the forest for the trees.

It perpetuates, quote, “the idea that Indigenous people and cultures cannot exist [...]

in urban spaces and that Indigenous land ends at city limits.”

Which, as we’ve seen, couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s not the possibility of Native urban life that’s up for debate – it’s the quality of it.

No matter the perspective, there’s no denying that Native Americans are here, in full force.

We’re in cities just as much  as we’re on reservations.

And we’ve refused to be  invisible in a variety of ways,

like by banding together  to provide mutual support.

And by celebrating our uniqueness across cultures.

Today, fifty years after  relocation officially ended,

we continue to define and redefine what it means to be Native in the city.

As the Cheyenne and Arapaho writer Tommy Orange wrote,

“The city made us new, and we made it ours.”

Next time, we’ll dive into the unique histories of Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians.

And I will see you then.

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Native American History,

which was filmed at our studio  in Indianapolis, Indiana,

and was made with the help  of all these nice people.

If you want to help keep Crash  Course free for everyone, 

forever, you can join our community on Patreon.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
relocation /ˌriːloʊˈkeɪʃən/ B2	noun - the act of moving something or someone to a new place verb - to move to a new place
native /ˈneɪtɪv/ A2	adjective - born or produced in a particular place noun - a person born in a particular place
city /ˈsɪti/ A1	noun - a large town
government /ˈɡʌvərnmənt/ B1	noun - the group of people who formally control a country or state
tribe /traɪb/ B1	noun - a group of people linked by common interests or received from the same source
reservation /ˌrɛzərˈveɪʃən/ B1	noun - an area of land set aside for a special purpose, often for Native Americans
program /ˈproʊɡræm/ A2	noun - a system or plan of activities or procedures verb - to provide a planned series of events
culture /ˈkʌltʃər/ A2	noun - the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society
identity /aɪˈdɛntəti/ B1	noun - the distinctive character or personality of an individual
urban /ˈɜːrbən/ B1	adjective - relating to a city or town
movement /ˈmuːvmənt/ A2	noun - a group of people who work together to promote a social or political change
activist /ˈæktɪvɪst/ B2	noun - a person who takes part in or supports a protest or political change
treaty /ˈtriːti/ B2	noun - a formal agreement between countries or groups
sovereignty /ˈsɑːvrɪnti/ C1	noun - the authority of a state to govern itself
poverty /ˈpɑːvərti/ B1	noun - the state of being extremely poor
unemployment /ˌʌnɪmˈplɔɪmənt/ B1	noun - the state of not having a job
census /ˈsɛnsəs/ B2	noun - an official count or survey of a population
coalition /ˌkoʊəˈlɪʃən/ C1	noun - a union of persons, parties, or states
discrimination /dɪˌskrɪmɪˈneɪʃən/ B2	noun - unfair treatment of one person or group, usually because of prejudice about race, gender, or age
housing /ˈhaʊzɪŋ/ A2	noun - the houses or apartments of a town or area