Urban Indian

Canadian cities with large First Nations populations, most of which are in the Prairie Provinces and Northern Canada, include Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, and Thunder Bay.

[4] Much of the scholarly literature of the 1970s and 1980s focused on the great hardships that Native Americans encountered in urban areas, and especially the failure and abuses of the BIA's Relocation Program.

But, more recent scholarship has demonstrated that Native people were resourceful and able to adapt to the demands of urban living just as poor European immigrants had done in the 19th century.

Regarding prior negative stereotypes about adjustment, Native scholar Fixico has stated, "This downtrodden image does not accurately portray urban Indians, particularly in the 1990s when at least three generations have survived the relocation years of the 1950s and 1960s.

(p. 27).Charles Wilkinson, a legal scholar and author of Blood Struggle, has stated: "Relocation fell into disfavor because of the coercion and ineffectiveness, but one bright light began to shine years later.

(p. 85)Wilma Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, is a good example of the Indian professional middle class raised in an urban area.

(p. 68-69) Relocation was difficult for the young Wilma, but she later attended San Francisco State College and learned techniques of community organization in the political climate of the Bay Area in the 1970s.

Anthropologist James Clifford has argued that, although many Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples live in urban settings away from their ancestral homelands, this does not necessarily mean that their connection to those lands are severed.

He points out that many Native Americans travel back and forth between cities and rural communities, and maintain active ties to their ancestral lands even while not occupying them full times.

[5] Cherokee scholar Russell Thornton, a demographer and professor at UCLA, has pointed out that Native Americans tend to intermarry with non-Indians at an increasing rate.