ABSTRACT
This paper looks at the internalization and strategic utilization of racialized ideas about “Indianness” among urban American Indians (AIs). Based on 2½ years of ethnographic research in two urban AI communities, this study illustrates that urban AIs simultaneously resist and reify dominant, essentializing images of Indianness (e.g. brown skin, black eyes and full-bloodedness). Urban frequently “mixed-blood” AIs work to attach new meanings to Indianness that align with their individual experiences of Indian identity. At the same time, however, they contradict their resistance efforts with practices and statements that indicate their attachment to the racialized images they are trying to resist. As such, I argue that both internalized oppression and strategic essentialism are persistent mechanisms of racialization among urban AIs.
