Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
May 2002
Abstract
Donald Fixico's study of urban Indians may seem at first to be a review of a well-known and well-documented period: the shift from reservation life to urban relocation as a result of the US government's deliberate assimilationist policies of the 1950s. Surely the historical attitudes regarding reservation termination and urban relocation have been amply documented in the last half century. But Fixico takes us beyond the historical realities to an in-depth look at Indian life in urban America, focusing on the variety of concerns with which these populations have had to cope: economic viability; employment and financial stability; access to education; personal socialization; and the physiological and psychological consequences of relocation, namely alcoholism, disease, isolation, depression, and cultural disintegration.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 2 (Spring 2002). Published by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Copyright © 2000 Center for Great Plains Studies. Used by permission.