Resisting and reifying racialization among urban American Indians

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at the internalization and strategic utilization of racialized ideas about “Indianness” among urban American Indians (AIs). Based on 2½ years of ethnographic research in two urban AI communities, this study illustrates that urban AIs simultaneously resist and reify dominant, essentializing images of Indianness (e.g. brown skin, black eyes and full-bloodedness). Urban frequently “mixed-blood” AIs work to attach new meanings to Indianness that align with their individual experiences of Indian identity. At the same time, however, they contradict their resistance efforts with practices and statements that indicate their attachment to the racialized images they are trying to resist. As such, I argue that both internalized oppression and strategic essentialism are persistent mechanisms of racialization among urban AIs.

KEYWORDS:

• American Indians
• racialization
• racial identity
• internalized oppression
• strategic essentialism
• resistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Anyone can claim an Indian identity on the U.S. Census, but obtaining federal recognition of Indian race requires a specified “degree of Indian blood” (blood quantum) or membership in a federally recognized tribe (Meyer 1999; Thornton 1997). Each tribe has the legal right to determine its membership requirements, but many tribes still insist on some degree of Indian blood (Liebler and Zacher 2013; Meyer 1999; Thornton 1997).

2. Interestingly, AIs in Ohio have limited access to resources provided by tribal nations whether or not they are tribally enrolled.

3. While this phenomenon is not unheard of amongst reclaimers in NE Ohio, Merolla and I demonstrate that NE Ohio reclaimers work together to achieve interactional validation of their Indian identities in the context of an AI community organization (Jacobs and Merolla 2017).

4. Per Fitzgerald (2007).