Seeing Indian in Chicago: Photographic Resilience in an Urban Indigenous Community, 1958-1980

In the summer of 1985, the Newberry Library hosted a photography exhibition titled Seeing Indian in Chicago featuring photographs taken by members of the American Indian Center’s camera club. Pairing these photographs with archived oral history interviews of the photographers, this article explores the multiple meanings and interpretations vested within these images through their exhibition for audiences visiting the Newberry Library. Taken between the late 1950s and the early 1980s, the photographs capture life in the decades following the conclusion of the federal relocation program, which was geared towards assimilation, moving Indigenous individuals and families away from their homelands to work in urban areas. The photography exhibition, then, worked to display the adaptation and resilience of this community as both Indigenous and familiar mainstream Americans while also subtly challenging stereotypes of “Indians” that visitors to the exhibition likely held. As such, this article contributes to the growing scholarship challenging victim narratives of Indigenous urbanization.