Housing Inequality in America

Native American Urban Dwellings

What about Native Americans who do not live on reservations? According to  Linda Poon, more than two-thirds of Native Americans now live in urban areas, a reflection of the 1950s-era federal policy designed to encourage Natives to urbanize in order to speed up the process of assimilation. The Bureau of Indian Affairs Urban Relocation Program of 1952 and the Federal Indian Relocation Act of 1956 promised job training and housing for Native Americans willing to relocate, expecting that the move to urban centers would grant Native Americans the opportunity to participate in the postwar economic boom. Instead, according to former Indian Affairs Commissioner Philleo Nash, the relocation policy was “essentially a one-way bus ticket from rural to urban poverty.”

Taken out of their family support systems and cultural networks and forced into urban environments, “urbanized Indians” have been subjected to discrimination and neglect while being denied access to adequate housing and healthcare. According to Poon, some reports suggest that health issues facing tribal people on reservations are actually compounded and made worse for those in the city. In order to access health care, many Native Americans living outside reservations are forced to travel to the nearest reservation; Ojibwe tribe member and Melissa Walls says, “We drove an hour literally to go to the doctor, to go to the dentist, to get our eyes checked,” she says. “But when you grow up in that context, you don’t label it as an inequity or disparity. It’s just sort of your reality.” Indian Health Service is the primary care provider for most Native Americans, responsible for providing healthcare under treaty agreements between the federal government and Indian tribes, but according to Annie Belcourt, the majority of Native Americans live in urban settings and therefore have very limited access to Indian Health Services facilities.

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