Indigenous in the City: Contemporary Identities and Cultural Innovation

Evelyn Peters and Chris Andersen eds., Indigenous in the City: Contemporary Identities and Cultural Innovation. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014. 428 pages. ISBN 978-0-774-82465-1. $34.95 paperback.The aim of this edited collection of articles is to provide new analyses of the variable and complex ways that Indigenous peoples negotiate identity in urban contexts. It contributes to a growing trajectory of research that redresses earlier analyses that either problematized Indigenous peoples and traditions as inherently incompatible with urban life or assumed that Indigenous urbanization necessarily signified a willingness to sever ties with ancestral homelands and assimilate to Western worldviews. The authors, most of whom identify as Indigenous, collectively challenge these earlier notions by 1) emphasizing the continuities and connections among urban and rural Indigenous communities and cultures, 2) exemplifying the ability of Indigenous urbanites to strengthen and adapt Indigenous identities and traditions to urban environments, and 3) challenging discourses that label urban Indigenous cultural forms as inauthentic versions of their more rural cousins. Also welcome is the multi-disciplinarity of the contributors, who write from such diverse perspectives as Native Studies, Demography, Environmental Studies, Architecture, Geography, Social Work and Sociology.The book is international in scope and includes analyses from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Given that the majority of Indigenous people from these countries now live in urban areas, the studies presented in this volume constitute a welcome and much needed addition to the academic literature in this area. The articles are grouped according to their national context, a strategy which allows for some useful comparisons of the histories, policy contexts, discourses, and identities across the different regions and populations examined. However, contributions focused on Canadian cities and Indigenous populations comprise almost half the total contributions in the volume. Of the Canadian contributions focused on specific urban populations, all focus on prairie cities, particularly the city of Saskatoon. The dominance of Canadian analyses in this international compilation is likely due to its origin as a workshop on international Indigenous urbanization hosted in Saskatoon. The editors tempered this imbalance somewhat by including an overview and a demography chapter for each of the four national regions.The individual chapters are eclectic in their focus. Some examine the policies, structures, organizations, or discourses that define Indigenous populations and culture as out of place in cities, thereby constraining or challenging the possibilities for urban Indigenous peoples to practice Indigeneity in ways that make sense to them. …

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