Cities, migration and identity now

Lesson 2 of 5 in "Peoples today", about 5 minutes

The popular image of indigenous people places them in a village, forest or reservation. For a great many that image is out of date. In the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and much of Latin America, a large share of indigenous people, and in several countries the majority, live in towns and cities. They are nurses, students, drivers, programmers and artists. They are no less indigenous for that.

Why people move

• Work: jobs are scarce in many homelands, especially after land has been lost.
• Education and health care: secondary schools, colleges and hospitals are in towns.
• Displacement: dams, mines, conflict and disasters push people out.
• Government policy: some states actively moved people to cities.
• Choice: young people everywhere are drawn to city life.

Policy played a direct part. In the 1950s the United States ran a relocation programme that encouraged Native people to leave reservations for cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Denver, with the aim of assimilation. In New Zealand, most Māori lived in rural areas before the Second World War. Within a few decades the great majority lived in towns.

India's migrants

In India, Adivasi migration for work has a long history. In the nineteenth century, large numbers of people from the Chota Nagpur plateau, including Santhal, Munda and Oraon, were recruited to work on the tea estates of Assam and Bengal, where their descendants still live. Today many tribal families from central India travel each year to work on construction sites and brick kilns, returning home for planting and harvest.

Keeping identity in the city

City life mixes people from many nations. That can weaken ties to one homeland. It can also create new, wider identities and political strength. Urban Māori founded their own organisations and, in Auckland and elsewhere, built marae, the meeting grounds central to Māori life, that welcome people of any tribe. Urban powwows in North America bring together dancers from dozens of nations.

Links with home stay active. People travel back for festivals, funerals and harvests, send money to relatives and vote in tribal elections. Phones and social media let a grandmother in the village teach songs to a grandchild in the city. Indigenous writers, film makers and musicians reach wide audiences. The 2001 film Atanarjuat was the first feature made entirely in Inuktitut, and it won a major prize at the Cannes film festival.

Who counts?

Distance sharpens the question of belonging. States use documents: a status card in Canada, a tribal enrolment number in the United States, a caste certificate for Scheduled Tribes in India. Communities use their own tests: who are your parents, which clan are you, do you take part? The two do not always agree, and a person can be accepted by one and refused by the other.

Rights that stop at the boundary

Many rights are tied to territory. Services may be funded only on a reservation. In India, a person listed as a Scheduled Tribe in one state generally loses that status on moving to another state. Urban indigenous people can therefore fall between two systems: cut off from tribal services and overlooked by city authorities. Poor housing and discrimination in work and policing are common complaints.

A changing picture

It is tempting to treat the city as the place where indigenous identity ends. The evidence points the other way. Census counts of indigenous people have risen sharply in several countries, partly because more people, many of them urban, now feel able to state their identity. Language classes, cultural centres and political movements often start in cities. An identity can travel, and it can be renewed far from where it began.