All my relations: urban Indians.

• Author: Lobo, Susan
• Position: Intertribal Friendship House, Oakland, California

Oakland, California

Intertribal Friendship House, the American Indian Center in Oakland, was established in 1955 to respond to the needs of American Indian people of many tribes who had migrated into the area through the Federal relocation program. Since that time, a large and active American Indian community has come to exist in the Bay Area. Similar American Indian communities are found in most urban areas of the Unite States, so that now more India people live in urban areas than in rural areas.

Yet the existence of American Indians in urban areas is often unknown to the public at large. In fact, urban Indian communities are generally invisible to those outside.

This invisibility, now made worse by the severe undercount of urban Indian people by the 1990 census, greatly undermines the ability of urban Indian organizations to develop and fund urgently needed programs in health, social...