Abstract
American governmental policy toward Native American people and nations has long taken an exterminatory approach. The relocation era sought to remove American Indian people from reservations and tribal communities into cities to assimilate them into dominant society. The cities were marketed as beacons of economic and academic opportunity, but their realities bore different fruit including unemployment, poor living conditions, and segregated and low-performing schools. Though schools are often depicted as mechanisms of social and economic mobility, for Native children, the continued extermination of their histories, languages, cultures continue to be obstacles to their success. These obstacles are particularly harmful for Natives living in urban areas away from their tribal communities. This study of nine American Indian people from various tribes in North Carolina gathers their stories of trauma and triumph as they navigated urban public K-12 schools. Several themes emerged including the racism endured in school, lack of American Indian representation in curriculum, teachers, and peers, being tokenized as the only American Indian student, and stories of resistance and resilience despite anti-Indian circumstances.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
American Indian Relief Council. (n.d.). Retrieved May 14, 2019, from: http://www.nrcprograms.org/site/PageServer?pagename=airc_index.
American Indian Urban Relocation. (n.d.). Retrieved May 5, 2019, from: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/nindian-relocation.html.
Baloy, N. J. K. (2011). “We can’t feel our language”: Making places in the city for Aboriginal language revitalization. American Indian Quarterly, 35(4), 515–548.
Bear, C. (2008). American Indian boarding schools haunt many. National Public Radio. Retrieved August 1, 2019, from: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865.
Biolsi, T. (1992). Organizing the Lakota: The political economy of the New Deal on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Brayboy, B. M. J. (2005). Toward a Tribal critical race theory in education. The Urban Review, 37(5), 425–446. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-005-0018-y.
Child, B. (1998). Boarding school seasons: American Indian families, 1900–1940. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Civil Rights Data Collection. (2016). Civil rights data collection: A first look. Retrieved May 14, 2019, from: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/2013-14-first-look.pdf.
Deyhle, D., & Swisher, K. (1997). Research in American Indian and Alaska Native education: From assimilation to self-determination. Review of Research in Education, 22, 113–194.
Dial, A., & Eliades, D. (1975). The only land I know: A history of the Lumbee Indians. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Freng, A., Freng, S., Moore, H., & Freng, A. (2006). Models of American Indian education: Cultural inclusion and the family/community/school linkage. Sociological Focus, 39(1), 55–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/00380237.2006.10571277.
Fuchs, E., & Havighurst, R. (1972). To live on this Earth: American Indian education. Doubleday.
Grande, S. (2015). Red Pedagogy: Native American social and political thought. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Hendrix, L. R. (n.d.). 1953 to 1969: Policy of termination and relocation. Stanford School of Medicine.
James Oxendine Student File. (1911). Retrieved May 14, 2019, from Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center: http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/student_files/james-oxendine-student-file.
Jeffries, R. B., & Singer, L. C. (2003). Successfully educating urban American Indian students: An alternative school format. Journal of American Indian Education, 42(3), 40–57.
Klein, R. (2014). The education system is failing Native American students. Here’s proof. Huffington post. Retrieved May 5, 2019, from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/18/native-american-education_n_5593253.html.
Klug, B. J., & Whitfield, P. T. (2003). Widening the circle: Culturally relevant pedagogy for American Indian children. New York: Routledge Falmer.
Lambert, L. (2014). Research for Indigenous survival: Indigenous research methodologies in the behavioral sciences. Pablo, Montana: Salish Kootenai College Press.
Laukaitis, J. (2005). Relocation and urbanization: An educational history of the American Indian experience in Chicago, 1952–1972. American Educational History Journal, 32(2), 139–144.
Lees, A. (2016). Roles of urban Indigenous community members in collaborative field-based teacher preparation. Journal of Teacher Education, 67(5), 363–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487116668018.
Lomawaima, K. T., & McCarty, T. L. (2006). To remain an Indian: Lessons in democracy from a century of Native American education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Lucero, N. (2010). Making meaning of urban American Indian identity: A multistage integrative process. Social Work, 55(4), 327–336. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/55.4.32.
Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina (Lumbee Tribe). (2016). History and culture. Retrieved August 1, 2019, from http://www.lumbeetribe.com/history–culture.
Mann, H. (1997). Cheyenne–Arapaho education, 1871–1982. Niwot, Colo: University Press of Colorado.
Maynor Lowery, M. (2018). The Lumbee Indians: An American struggle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
McCarty, T., & Lee, T. (2014). Critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and Indigenous education sovereignty. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 101–124.
National Archives. (2016). American Indian urban relocation. Retrieved May 5, 2019, from: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/indian-relocation.html.
National Indian Education Association. (n.d.). Retrieved August 2, 2019, from: http://www.niea.org/foradvocates/education-priorities/elementary-and-secondary-education/.
National Indian Education Association. (n.d.). Statistics on native students. Retrieved August 2, 2019, from: http://www.niea.org/Research/Statistics.aspx.
NC School Report Card. (2013). Department of public instruction. Retrieved May 5, 2019, from: http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/src/.
Oklahoma Historical Society. (n.d.). Termination and relocation program. Retrieved May 14, 2019, from: https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=TE014.
Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X12441244.
Peck, C. (2017). Urban school reform in the United States. Education and Society. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.27.
Powers, K., Potthoff, S. J., & Bearinger, L. H. (2003). Does cultural programming improve educational outcomes for American Indian youth? Journal of American Indian Education, 42(2), 17–49.
Prucha, F. (1986). The great father: The United States government and the American Indians (Unabridged ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Sabzalian, L. (2019). Indigenous children’s survivance in public schools. Abingdon: Routledge.
Shear, S., Knowles, R., Soden, G., & Castro, A. (2015). Manifesting destiny: Re/presentations of Indigenous peoples in K-12 U.S. history standards. Theory and Research in Social Education, 43(1), 68–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2014.999849.
State Advisory Council on Indian Education. (2018). Growing sacred wisdom keepers through connections to American Indian culture and education. Department of public instruction. Retrieved August 1, 2019, from: http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/americanindianed/reports/.
Stuart, P. (1977). United States Indian policy: From the Dawes Act to the American Indian policy review commission. Social Service Review, 51(3), 451–463. https://doi.org/10.1086/643524.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2018a). (U.S. Census Bureau Guilford). Quickfacts: Guilford County, North Carolina. Retrieved August 2, 2019, from: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/guilfordcountynorthcarolina.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2018b). (U.S. Census Bureau Mecklenburg). Quickfacts: Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Retrieved August 2, 2019, from: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/mecklenburgCountynorthcarolina.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2018c). Quickfacts: Robeson County, North Carolina. Retrieved August 2, 2019, from: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/robesoncountynorthcarolina.
Wade, L. (2014). U.S. schools are teaching our children that Native Americans are history. Pacific standard. Retrieved May 5, 2019, from: http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/u-s-schools-teaching-children-native-americans-history-95324.
Walch, M. (1983). Terminating the Indian termination policy. Stanford Law Review, 35(6), 1181–1215.
Walls, M., & Whitbeck, L. (2012). The intergenerational effects of relocation policies on Indigenous families. Journal of Family Issues, 33(9), 1272–1293. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X12447178.
Weeks, P. (2002). They made us many promises: The American Indian experience 1524 to the present. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson.
Wilkins, D. (2006). American Indian politics and the American political system. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240.
Wolfram, W., & Reaser, J. (2014). Talkin’ tar heel. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hunt, B.D., Locklear, L., Bullard, C. et al. “Do You Live in a Teepee? Do You Have Running Water?” The Harrowing Experiences of American Indians in North Carolina’s Urban K-12 Schools. Urban Rev 52, 759–777 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-020-00563-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-020-00563-1