The Exiles: Native Survivance and Urban Space in Downtown Los Angeles

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-182
Author(s):  
Liza Black
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Native People ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Agency

The 1961 independent film The Exiles is remarkable for many reasons. Nonprofessional Native actors played themselves, created their own dialogue, and developed the storyline, for example, and the film positions itself as documentary and ethnography in ways that validate these Native interventions. Although The Exiles is fundamentally a portrait of American Indian life in Los Angeles, readings from film and urban studies primarily focus on filmmaking technique. As a result of this critical focus, the film's significance in regard to the cultural agency and urban history of Native peoples becomes secondary, and urban Natives are erroneously depicted as anomalous as well. Looking closely at Yvonne Williams, the female Native protagonist, I find that the film embodies Native American survivance through capturing an urban experience that was controlled by Native people more than any other filmic representation up to that point. This article argues for the tremendous import of The Exiles by highlighting the ways in which it challenges expectations of modern Indian people.

The Development of the Underclass

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marne L. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Local Media ◽  
History Of ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Impact ◽  
History Of Race

Chapter 4, “The Development of the Underclass,” contextualizes the history of race in Los Angeles within the history of the American West (1870 – 1900). It explores how local white Angelenos combated notions of criminality and attempted to portray Los Angeles as atypical compared to other western American centers, hoping to pin its social ills on the small racialized communities (black Latino/a, and Chinese) that they were actively trying to segregate and minimize. It also explores California’s legal history, and examines the impact of federal, state, and local legislation on the communities of racialized minorities, particularly African American, Native American, and Chinese people. This chapter also examines the role of the local media in shaping mainstream attitudes towards local people of color.

The Spider’s Web

2019 ◽  
pp. 385-408
Author(s):  
Douglas K. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
Carceral State ◽  
Red Power ◽  
American Indian Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Reservation System ◽  
Wounded Knee

The chapter situates Native American incarcerations within a long history of broken treaties, circumscribed sovereignty, land theft, forced removals, reservation and boarding school confinement, and economic and cultural paternalism. The framework that the chapter offers is one centered on what the author calls “settler custodialism,” where the root of Indian incarceration runs through the reservation system. The chapter locates Native American prisoner resistance within a longer trajectory of struggle against settler colonialism that has drawn on traditional ties to land, family, tribe, and community. The rising consciousness of the American Indian Movement (AIM) is linked directly to the incarceration of two of its principal founders, Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt. From AIM’s police patrols to the Alcatraz Island prison takeover, the radicalization of the Red Power movement had more to do with its encounter with the carceral state than has been previously recognized. The chapter concludes that the prison also served as a blunt instrument to dismantle the Red Power movement when many of its leaders were incarcerated following the 1973 Wounded Knee operation.

Genocide and American Indian History

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Ostler
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Large Population ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Native People ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
American Indian History ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Direct Killing

The issue of genocide and American Indian history has been contentious. Many writers see the massive depopulation of the indigenous population of the Americas after 1492 as a clear-cut case of the genocide. Other writers, however, contend that European and U.S. actions toward Indians were deplorable but were rarely if ever genocidal. To a significant extent, disagreements about the pervasiveness of genocide in the history of the post-Columbian Western Hemisphere, in general, and U.S. history, in particular, pivot on definitions of genocide. Conservative definitions emphasize intentional actions and policies of governments that result in very large population losses, usually from direct killing. More liberal definitions call for less stringent criteria for intent, focusing more on outcomes. They do not necessarily require direct sanction by state authorities; rather, they identify societal forces and actors. They also allow for several intersecting forces of destruction, including dispossession and disease. Because debates about genocide easily devolve into quarrels about definitions, an open-ended approach to the question of genocide that explores several phases and events provides the possibility of moving beyond the present stalemate. However one resolves the question of genocide in American Indian history, it is important to recognize that European and U.S. settler colonial projects unleashed massively destructive forces on Native peoples and communities. These include violence resulting directly from settler expansion, intertribal violence (frequently aggravated by colonial intrusions), enslavement, disease, alcohol, loss of land and resources, forced removals, and assaults on tribal religion, culture, and language. The configuration and impact of these forces varied considerably in different times and places according to the goals of particular colonial projects and the capacities of colonial societies and institutions to pursue them. The capacity of Native people and communities to directly resist, blunt, or evade colonial invasions proved equally important.

American Indian Activism after 1945

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Shreve
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Indian ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Energy Resource ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Native People ◽  
Treaty Rights ◽  
1960S And 1970S

American Indian activism after 1945 was as much a part of the larger, global decolonization movement rooted in centuries of imperialism as it was a direct response to the ethos of civic nationalism and integration that had gained momentum in the United States following World War II. This ethos manifested itself in the disastrous federal policies of termination and relocation, which sought to end federal services to recognized Indian tribes and encourage Native people to leave reservations for cities. In response, tribal leaders from throughout Indian Country formed the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) in 1944 to litigate and lobby for the collective well-being of Native peoples. The NCAI was the first intertribal organization to embrace the concepts of sovereignty, treaty rights, and cultural preservation—principles that continue to guide Native activists today. As American Indian activism grew increasingly militant in the late 1960s and 1970s, civil disobedience, demonstrations, and takeovers became the preferred tactics of “Red Power” organizations such as the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), the Indians of All Tribes, and the American Indian Movement (AIM). At the same time, others established more focused efforts that employed less confrontational methods. For example, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) served as a legal apparatus that represented Native nations, using the courts to protect treaty rights and expand sovereignty; the Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT) sought to secure greater returns on the mineral wealth found on tribal lands; and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) brought Native educators together to work for greater self-determination and culturally rooted curricula in Indian schools. While the more militant of these organizations and efforts have withered, those that have exploited established channels have grown and flourished. Such efforts will no doubt continue into the unforeseeable future so long as the state of Native nations remains uncertain.

Circulating Silver

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-57
Author(s):  
Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Native People ◽  
Native American Church

Silversmiths made objects that were beautiful and that could render important symbols of the Native American Church. They communicated ideas and images that served as public representations of this religion as Native people exchanged these objects. The emergence and spread of Peyotism from the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache reservation began to generate new Kiowa and American Indian identities. The jewellery and emerging identities parallel one another. Kiowas and others communicated these changes through painting, photography, clothing, and through jewellery itself.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Douglas K. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Native People ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
American People ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Bureau Of Indian Affairs ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Reservation System

Beginning with the socially, economically, and physically confining late-nineteenth-century reservation system, and throughout the twentieth century, Native American peoples practiced mobility and experienced urbanity on their own terms and with their own futures and survival strategies in mind. They did so in pursuit of new social, education, and work opportunities. This is a story that greatly transcends the history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ 1950s-60s urban relocation program, which scholars have long cited as the reason why roughly 75 per cent of all Native American people live in urban areas today. More Native people urbanized outside of the program, to more places, and for more reasons than historians have previously emphasized.

Skateboarding and the City

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory J. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Sociology ◽  
Cognitive Maps ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This chapter offers a brief history of the subculture and introduces readers to skateboarding practices. There is a detailed description of tricks and a discussion of how skateboarding forces a reexamination of classic urban sociology by focusing on the specific history of the growth of Los Angeles. In doing so we come to appreciate not only how skateboarding changes one’s perception of urban space, but also how skaters’ cognitive maps of the city offer a critique of classic Chicago School sociology.

Digging up the Remains of Early Los Angeles: The Plaza Church Cemetery

2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Steven W. Hackel
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Burial Ground ◽  
California History ◽  
Potential Value ◽  
History Of ◽  
California Population ◽  
Huntington Library

Recent construction next to the old Plaza Church in Los Angeles unearthed remnants of a forgotten burial ground where 695 bodies were interred between 1823 and 1844. Data from Franciscan sacramental records in the Huntington Library’’s Early California Population Project reveal the origins of these people, the migration of diverse Native American peoples to the pueblo, the increasing Indian presence there after 1835, and various aspects of the lives of individuals buried there. This discussion of the burial records pertaining to this one cemetery demonstrates the potential value of the Early California Population Project to research on many aspects of the history of the Spanish and Mexican periods of California history.

scholarly journals Evading Time and Place in Ankara: A Reading of Contemporary Urban Collective Memory Through Recent Transformations

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-356
Author(s):  
Segah Sak ◽  
Burcu Senyapili
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Urban Issues

Based on precedent theories on collective memory and urban studies, this article develops a framework of approach to contemporary urban collective memory. Understanding urban collective memory by handling people and urban space as a system provides a sociospatial perspective for critical approaches to cities. The study initially provides overviews of theoretical approaches to collective memory and city, and then puts forth constituents of urban collective memory. Based on these constituents, contemporary urban collective memory is discussed, and a framework for analyzing contemporary cities in terms of urban space and urban experience is introduced. For a clear portrayal of urban issues within the context, the introduced framework is devised through the case of Ankara, the capital city of Turkey and the inspiring force behind this study. This framework aims to present a ground to assess people’s relation to urban spaces in the contemporary era.

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