American Indians and the American Dream

Policies, Place, and Property in Minnesota

Kasey R. Keeler

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781452963457
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Native American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Understanding the processes and policies of urbanization and suburbanization in American Indian communities

 

Nearly seven out of ten American Indians live in urban areas, yet studies of urban Indian experiences remain scant. Studies of suburban Natives are even more rare. Today’s suburban Natives, the fastest-growing American Indian demographic, highlight the tensions within federal policies working in tandem to move and house differing groups of people in very different residential locations. In American Indians and the American Dream, Kasey R. Keeler examines the long history of urbanization and suburbanization of Indian communities in Minnesota.

At the intersection of federal Indian policy and federal housing policy, American Indians and the American Dream analyzes the dispossession of Indian land, property rights, and patterns of home ownership through programs and policies that sought to move communities away from their traditional homelands to reservations and, later, to urban and suburban areas. Keeler begins this analysis with the Homestead Act of 1862, then shifts to the Indian Reorganization Act in the early twentieth century, the creation of Little Earth in Minneapolis, and Indian homeownership during the housing bubble of the early 2000s.

American Indians and the American Dream investigates the ways American Indians accessed homeownership, working with and against federal policy, underscoring American Indian peoples’ unequal and exclusionary access to the way of life known as the American dream.

Cover alt text: Vintage photo of Native person bathing smiling child in the sink of a midcentury kitchen. Title in yellow.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Suburban Indians: Family, Identity, and Homeownership
• Chapter 1. Land of Loss and Survival: The Homestead Act of 1862 and the U.S.–Dakota War
• Chapter 2. Pivotal Policies: The Creation of the Federal Housing Administration and the Indian Reorganization Act
• Chapter 3. “We Must Do This Ourselves”: American Indians and the American Dream in the Twin Cities
• Chapter 4. Intersections of Responsibility: Federal Housing Policy, Indian Policy, and Minneapolis’s Little Earth Housing Complex
• Chapter 5. Indian Homes and Indian Loans: Suburban Indians and the Section 184 Indian Home Loan Guarantee Program
• Conclusion: Racializing Public Space: American Indian Homelessness as Houselessness and Exclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Timeline: Federal Indian and Federal Housing Policies, Including Significant Events and Legislative Acts
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author