Abstract
The term “pan-Indianism” is recognizable, yet the concept itself is unstable and remains undertheorized. The term has been associated with different time periods, geographic locations, movements, organizations, and practices. Despite this ambiguity, pan-Indianism remains consistently associated with urban spaces. This association is no accident but rather the result of a particular area of scholarship in the 1950s and 1960s known as Acculturation Studies. In its effort to gauge the levels of assimilation within Indigenous communities, this scholarship reinforced assimilationist policies at the time. I argue that the uncritical association of pan-Indianism with urban spaces leaves unexamined colonial ideologies which not only constructed the concept of pan-Indianism but continue to reinforce assimilationist policies and colonial borders that erase Indigenous presence in urban spaces. By critically examining pan-Indianism’s association with urbanization and assimilation, we refuse this erasure and the associated assimilationist rhetoric, and it provides the opportunity to more thoroughly engage the inter-tribal decolonizing work being done contemporarily in urban Indigenous communities.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
INDIGENOUS CULTURES; PAN-INDIANISM; COLONIALISM; INTER-TRIBALISM; NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS; URBANIZATION
