Edmund Jefferson Danziger - Survival and regeneration : Detroits American Indian community

GREAT LAKES BOOKS

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Northern Michigan University

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SURVIVAL
AND
REGENERATION

DETROITS AMERICAN INDIAN COMMUNITY

EDMUND JEFFERSON DANZIGER. JR

Copyright 1991 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48202.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Danziger, Edmund Jefferson, 1938

Survival and regeneration : Detroits American Indian community / Edmund Jefferson Danziger, Jr.

p. cm. (Great Lakes books)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8143-4332-6 (alk. paper); ISBN 978-0-8143-4333-3 (ebook)

1. Indians of North AmericaMichiganDetroit RegionUrban residence. 2. Indians of North AmericaMichiganDetroit RegionSocial conditions. 3. Indians of North AmericaMichiganDetroit RegionEconomic conditions. I. Title. II. Series.

E78.M6D36 1991

305.897077434dc20 90-29857

Book design by Mary Primeau

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ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE

Interviews can be nerve-racking, especially when much is at stake. While driving north to Detroit on a spring morning in 1977, I was worried about an appointment with Dean George. Several times he had delayed our meeting. I persisted because the fate of my projectwriting a history of Detroits native American communitywas in the balance. Somehow I had to penetrate the well-founded cynicism of George and other urban Indians if I were to get firsthand knowledge of their experiences. The key was Dean George: a respected elder, past president of the North American Indian Association of Detroit, and former director of the Detroit American Indian Center. When I arrived at his home, we met in the kitchen and over coffee talked history. He listened patiently as I expressed belief in the relevance of my study for the people of Detroit and southeastern Michigan. George remained noncommittal; but a conference was arranged with several staff members of the downtown Indian center. For two hours I described my plan, outwardly calm but inwardly apprehensive that the promising proposal would be thwarted. The listeners, who were less than effusive, nevertheless gave tacit permission for weekly visits to see what I could learn from native peoples who frequented the center. New life was breathed into the project.

For years I had been concerned about the paucity of scholarship on urban Indians. Most studiesarticles and dissertations by geographers, sociologists, and anthropologistslacked the historical dimension. Furthermore, the American Indian Policy Review Commission reported to Congress in 1977 that 45 percent of the nations Indians, perhaps half a million, lived off the reservations. For most of this century they were invisible despite their pressing economic and social needs and their historic importance, neglected by Washington as well as by scholars. The Review Commission observed that one of the greatest obstacles faced by native peoples in their drive for self-determination and a place in this Nation is the American publics ignorance of the status of the American Indian in our society today. For Indian leaders and government officials at all levels to comprehend fully the present condition of urban native Americans, histories of these groups must be available.