Indigenous Feminist Oral Histories and the Resituating of Detroit as a Native Place
ICGC Commons for Critical Inquiry (537 Heller Hall) and livestream.
My research aims to resituate the city of Detroit as a modern Native place. Voluntary relocation over the 20th century and the continued maintenance of Native identity, as well as the creation and dissemination of global Indigenous identity, were part of the everyday life of Native people in Detroit and its suburbs. While Detroit is historically understood as a Native place in early French settlers’ accounts, its Native role in the 20th century is often ignored, especially in contrast to the renewed attention Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Relocation cities such as Minneapolis and Chicago. I argue that community newspapers were central to creating conceptions of global Indigenous identity among everyday Indigenous peoples during the latter half of the twentieth century. Native-run newspapers included sections on international news, news from other tribes, reprints from other newspapers, and articles on the relations between the urban tribal community and the federal government on a nation-to-nation basis. To fully grasp the world news, local politics, and insider humor of the paper, a variety of methods, from close reading and Indigenous Feminist oral histories, are needed to appreciate the value of these sources in modern scholarship.
About the Speaker
Lindsey Willow Smith is a Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians citizen, muhkwa nindoodem, born and raised in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. She earned her undergraduate degree in History at the University of Michigan and then worked at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian before beginning her Ph.D. in History at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in understanding the role of society in identity formation, especially in relation to how Native people in Detroit and other urban settings defined themselves, their communities, and their nations in the 20th century. Her research is rooted in concepts of relationality stemming from her experiences of learning Ojibwemowin and is deeply rooted in Indigenous Feminisms, as well as Critical Indigenous Studies. Her research interests include Native American urban history, Indian relocation, and Indigenous oral histories.