Indian Cities

Kent Blansett is Langston Hughes Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies and History at the University of Kansas. He is the author of A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement. Cathleen D. Cahill is Associate Professor of History at Penn State University. She is the author of Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933 and Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement. Andrew Needham is Associate Professor of History at New York University. He is the author of Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest.

"Indian Cities brings together cutting-edge scholarship on urban Native America and provides an important theoretical framework for making sense of this history in the context of American settler colonialism."--Journal of Southern History "As with any collection of reading, Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanization is a testimony to the burgeoning, wide-ranging scholarship about Native American experiences. At its broadest conception, the urban Indigenous heritage is a vital but sometimes overlooked component of Native American lifeways. Urban indigeneity, whether expressed by tangible of intangible means, provides a sense of belonging, continuity, and collectivity. As this volume aptly illustrates, Native American urban issues are a complex arena that deserves further scholarly attention. Overall, the contributions are a framework for reflection, debate, and new avenues for research."-- Great Plains Research "From Winnipeg to what is for the moment known as the American Southwest, from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, Indian Cities offers some of the best work so far on the intersection of Indigenous and urban histories. Moving beyond simplistic settler narratives that have all too often estranged urban and Indigenous histories from each other, this collection highlights the diversity of Indigenous experiences in places ranging from national capitals to reservation border towns. Emphasizing ongoing projects of both dispossession and justice, these essays make a powerful case for centering Indigenous people and settler colonialism in North America's urban history."--Coll Thrush, author of Native Seattle and Indigenous London "The multitude of essays in Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanization provides several avenues to view the relationship between Indigeneity and urban places. While each focuses on different aspects of Indigenous urban history, the authors effectively connect all to the themes of settler-colonialism, Indigenous erasure, and the impact of harmful narratives on Native history. Conversely, they advance the themes of Indigenous sovereignty, tribal nationalism, and Indigenous belonging. Indian Cities provides a pointed view of overlooked areas of Indigenous and urban scholarship. Focusing on disregarded cities in these specialties, such as Winnipeg, Dallas, and Rapid City, and discussing neglected Indigenous actors, such as women."--Chronicles of Oklahoma "Covering a broad range of topics, Indian Cities provides valuable insights into the urban spaces created by Native Americans while race relations were being redefined. This book calls for us to rethink the whole context of Indian-white relations as an integral part of urban America."--Donald L. Fixico (Shawnee, Sac & Fox, Muscogee, and Seminole), author of The Urban Indian Experience in America