Urban Homelands: Writing the Native City from Oklahoma

Oklahoma is bound to both the South and the Southwest and their legacies of conquest and Indigenous survivance. At the same time, mobility, ingenuity, cultural exchange, and creative expression—all part of the experience of urbanization—have been fundamental to people of the tribes that call this place home. Tulsa, New Orleans, and Santa Fe, with their importance in histories of geopolitical upheaval and mobility that shaped the establishment of the United States, are key to uncovering the history of urbanization experienced by Native Americans from Oklahoma. Urban Homelands, while examining the overlooked histories of Oklahoma Indigenous urbanization relative to these regions, engages literature and film as not just mirrors of experience but as producers of it. Lindsey Claire Smith brings the work of three-time poet laureate Joy Harjo into conversation with the great Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs and breakout filmmaker Sterlin Harjo. Flying in the face of civic landmarks and settler histories that at once obscure Native origins and appropriate Native culture for tourism, this creative reclaiming of Indigenous cities points toward the productive possibilities of recognizing untold urban histories and the creative relationships with urban space itself.