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Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-75. By James B. LaGrand. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Pp. Xii, 284. Illus., notes, bib., index. Cloth, $34.95).
In September 2004 the Smithsonian Institution will open a new museum in Washington, D.C. : The Museum of the North American Indian. The first exhibit will feature three native communities, including the Chicago American Indian Center (CAIC). The nation's oldest urban Indian center, the CAIC is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year (2003-2004). James B. LaGrand's Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-75 comes just in time to celebrate both of these milestones. Indeed, despite popular images of Indians as rural, reservation-based people, during the second half of the twentieth century the majority of American Indians had moved to cities (as many as 53 percent by 1980).
Focusing on Chicago's Indian community, LaGrand uses the methods of immigration studies to explore this population shift and the experiences of the native people who took part in it. He then examines the move's effect on peoples' tribal identities, offering the reader a strong social and cultural history. By demonstrating that American Indian people of the upper midwest were a part of Chicago's hinterland, he also adds a human aspect to the economic interactions described by William Cronon in Nature's Metropolis. An important addition to the...