Lost Between Worlds: The Struggle for Identity as a Urban Indian
There is a peculiar pain in being unseen, in walking the earth with a soul stretched between two worlds, yet never fully belonging to either. I am Melanindigenous. I am the child of displacement, the product of generations cast adrift by history’s cruel tides. In the city, my indigeneity is questioned. In Indigenous spaces, my so-called Blackness is an anomaly. And in America, my very existence is a paradox, an inconvenient truth often ignored or misclassified.
The Weight of Misclassification
People ask me where I’m from, what I am. The question comes not from curiosity, but from a need to categorize, to fit me into neat, digestible boxes. When I say “ American Indian,” I am met with skepticism. To many, I am either not Indigenous enough or not African enough. The U.S. government does not make room for people like me, their blood quantum laws slicing through my heritage like a bureaucratic scalpel. I am registered nowhere, belonging everywhere and nowhere at once. As Dr. Martin Luther King said “ an exile in his own land ”
Even within my own communities, I encounter erasure. Black washing AND White washing the true history, struggling against the same systemic oppression, often don’t know the history of our Indigenous roots, severed by forced assimilation and chattel slavery. Indigenous communities, themselves fighting against erasure, sometimes hesitate to embrace those of us whose ancestry is tangled with the African or original darker Indigenous diaspora. We exist in the gaps, our stories rarely told, our presence often unacknowledged.
The Struggle Against Poverty
Poverty is a chain passed down like an unwanted inheritance. The reservations, like the inner cities, are scars of historical oppression, each a testament to government-sanctioned neglect. My ancestors walked the Trail of Tears and toiled in forced servitude. Today, I walk city streets riddled with economic disparity, where gentrification pushes us further into the margins. The struggle for survival is relentless—rent overdue, food scarce, dreams deferred.
Education, housing, healthcare—these basic human rights are privileges denied to many of us. Racism and economic disenfranchisement are twin demons, suffocating opportunity before it can take root. Some say we should just "work harder," as if centuries of systemic oppression can be undone by sheer will. They do not see the closed doors, the silent rejections, the glass ceilings reinforced by centuries of bias.
The Search for Lost Heritage
What does it mean to reclaim something stolen generations ago? My ancestors spoke their languages in whispers, fearing the lash of the boarding school masters, threats from the KKK and illegal to be American Indian in the ancestral homelands . My great-grandmother, who was forced to hide her hair and deny her culture, passed down her mother’s stories. Our traditions were stolen or shared in secret, our names altered, our existence denied. But I am searching. I visit powwows and read history written between the lines of colonial narratives. I listen to the wind, to the drum, to the heartbeat of people who refuse to vanish and we innovate new styles and music expressions in our Aboriginal way.
The search is painful. There is grief in realizing that some things may never be recovered, that the blood in my veins carries echoes I may never fully translate. But there is also power in knowing that survival itself is resistance. I am here because my ancestors endured. They refused to be erased. And in my search, I honor them.
The Lack of Healthcare
Access to healthcare remains a distant dream for many of our Urban Indians. Systemic neglect and underfunded medical programs mean that both Indigenous and Black communities face disproportionately high rates of chronic illness, untreated mental health issues, and preventable diseases. American Indian healthcare services are stretched thin, underfunded, and often inaccessible to those living in cities. Meanwhile, Black communities suffer from racial bias in medical treatment, where our pain is dismissed, our illnesses overlooked. The combination leaves many of us untreated, uncared for, and forgotten by a system that never considered our existence in the first place.
The Miseducation of Our History
Miseducation is another form of erasure, a deliberate rewriting of history that leaves people like me stranded in ignorance of our own roots. The education system rarely acknowledges the complex relationships between Black and Indigenous peoples, reducing history to a simplistic narrative that pits us against one another or erases our intersectionality altogether. We are taught about the Trail of Tears and slavery, but not about how Indigenous and African peoples built communities together, resisted together, and survived together. We are left to piece together our histories from fragments, seeking knowledge in esoteric and obscure texts. Without proper education, we risk losing our identity entirely, left to navigate the world with only half our story intact. Moving Forward
Despite the struggle, I stand firm in my identity. I refuse to be boxed in, defined by colonial categories meant to divide and erase. I am Indigenous , and I am whole. My existence challenges the false narratives that seek to keep our histories separate. My voice is a reclamation, a declaration that we are still here.
As I walk through this world, I carry with me the resilience of those who came before. I will teach my children the truths that were kept from me. I will fight for recognition, for justice, for space where we are seen, heard, and valued. And I will continue to search, not for permission to exist, but for the full, unbroken story of who we have always been.
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