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Title details for Indians on the Move by Douglas K. Miller - Available

Indians on the Move

Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century

by Douglas K. Miller
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In 1972, the Bureau of Indian Affairs terminated its twenty-year-old Voluntary Relocation Program, which encouraged the mass migration of roughly 100,000 Native American people from rural to urban areas. At the time the program ended, many groups — from government leaders to Red Power activists — had already classified it as a failure, and scholars have subsequently positioned the program as evidence of America’s enduring settler-colonial project. But Douglas K. Miller here argues that a richer story should be told — one that recognizes Indigenous mobility in terms of its benefits and not merely its costs. In their collective refusal to accept marginality and destitution on reservations, Native Americans used the urban relocation program to take greater control of their socioeconomic circumstances. Indigenous migrants also used the financial, educational, and cultural resources they found in cities to feed new expressions of Indigenous sovereignty both off and on the reservation.
The dynamic histories of everyday people at the heart of this book shed new light on the adaptability of mobile Native American communities. In the end, this is a story of shared experience across tribal lines, through which Indigenous people incorporated urban life into their ideas for Indigenous futures.

  • Creators

  • Series

    Critical Indigeneities

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 20, 2019

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

      • ISBN: 9781469651392

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781469651392

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781469651392
      • File size: 15296 KB
    Kindle restrictions

  • Accessibility

    No publisher statement provided

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from March 1, 2019

      In 1952, the Bureau of Indian Affairs inaugurated the Volunteer Relocation Program (VRP), which was intended to encourage Native Americans to move from rural reservations to cities. Approximately 100,000 Natives were relocated over the program's 25-year existence. Although the author acknowledges that the VRP was a failure and caused harm to many who participated in the initiative, Miller (history, Oklahoma State Univ.) argues that some of its impacts were transformative. Rather than succumbing to the problems they encountered in urban areas, many Natives utilized their ingenuity and determination to chart their own futures. Some used educational opportunities to become academics, doctors, lawyers, or politicians. Others returned to their home communities to assume leadership roles, such as Wilma Mankiller, who rose to principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. It is not coincidental that Pan-Indian organizations, including the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the National Congress of American Indians, emerged from the urban milieu. VERDICT Miller's narrative expands significantly beyond the VRP in order to contextualize it within the broader scope of Native American migration over the course of the 20th century. In doing so, he has created a fascinating monograph highly recommended for anyone interested in Native American studies or American history.--John R. Burch, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

      Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook
Kindle restrictions

subjects

Languages

  • English

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