Urban Indians Seek a Higher Profile : Social services: An L.A. group is going to the White House to urge increased aid for Native Americans who live in metropolitan areas.

Los Angeles County could be called the secret capital of Indian America. There are an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 Native Americans, more than in any other U.S. metropolitan area, more than on any reservation--and yet they are invisible to most Angelenos.

Today a delegation of American Indians from Los Angeles will travel to Washington to join a meeting with White House officials aimed at raising the profile of urban Indians.

Noting that 60% of Native Americans live in cities, activists from across the country plan to lobby the federal government for social services targeted specifically at urban Indians.

The goal is to make the government “more aware of the fact that Indian people are struggling in urban areas,” said David Rambeau, a Paiute and director of a Skid Row center that serves poor families and homeless people of many tribes. “There needs to be an urban Indian policy.”

Until now, urban Indians say, it has been reservation Indians who get virtually all public and government attention, as evidenced by the high-profile meeting of tribal leaders with President Bill Clinton two months ago.

Urban Indians do not expect their visit to receive the heavy television coverage that was given to the tribal leaders. They will not wear camera-attracting feather headdresses, and some, because they are of mixed ancestry, do not look like people’s stereotypical images of Indians. Yet for these activists, tribal identity remains central to their lives.

Los Angeles has a large Native American population largely because of a U.S. government relocation policy in the 1950s and 1960s. Tens of thousands of people from scores of tribes were given bus tickets off their reservations and were promised help finding jobs in big cities.

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Local Indian activists have long believed the government’s aim was not merely to assimilate Native Americans but to wipe out their Indian identity by immersing them in mainstream environments, says Colleen Colson, a Cherokee who is a member of the Los Angeles City-County Native American Indian Commission.

“Obviously (the policy) didn’t work because we’re all still here,” Colson said. “(It) makes us want to fight harder to be close to our culture.”

As a result of relocation, the Los Angeles region has one of the most diverse Native American populations in the country. Only a small minority of the Indians are from Southern California tribes. Because the government discouraged Indians from clustering together, they are scattered across the Los Angeles Basin, with no predominantly Indian neighborhoods, clusters of shops, or community centers. Large numbers live in the Long Beach, Bell Gardens and other Southeast Los Angeles County cities.

Although some Indians have little interest in their tribal roots and live entirely mainstream lives, others are actively trying to maintain or rediscover traditions. On almost any weekend in Los Angeles, hundreds of American Indians gather at powwows, the pan-tribal community gatherings featuring dance competitions, food and fellowship.

Others gather on Skid Row. About 20% of Native Americans in Los Angeles live below the poverty level, a reflection of the fact that urban Indians face many of the same problems of Indians on reservations, such as alcoholism and low education levels, says Colson. They suffer higher rates of diabetes, tuberculosis and heart disease than the population as a whole.

They also face the stress of adjusting to a pace of life far faster and more competitive than that on reservations and aggravated by the lack of a traditional family support systems. In addition, the continuing influx of newcomers from reservations and rural areas to Los Angeles burdens American Indian-oriented social service agencies.

Urban Indians say they face identity conflicts on a more regular basis than reservation Indians because they are surrounded by people who tend to hold images of them formed by Hollywood Westerns.

For example, Native Americans who look like the popular conception of Plains Indians--tall, dark and Roman-nosed-- are greeted as “Chief” on the street and face taunts at work. Indians who are paler or otherwise fail the stereotype hear questions raised about whether they are Indians at all. And all struggle with the inability of many people to recognize that their many tribes have different cultures and traditions.

“Many of our children don’t identify themselves as Indian (in school). They don’t want the hassle,” Rambeau said. They would rather be taken for Mexican Americans than be asked about tepees or asked to “play Indian” in Thanksgiving Pilgrim plays--when their own tribes never lived in tents and never were anywhere near Massachusetts, he says.

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In Southern California, Native Americans also face an onslaught of curiosity from spiritual seekers looking for enlightenment in Native American religion.

“People choose to romanticize American Indians. If we don’t meet their expectations or their stereotypes, we tend to be discounted as American Indians,” Colson said.

In fact, the Los Angeles Indian community includes rap musicians, skateboard champions, doctors, teachers and engineers. “People need to realize,” Colson said, “that we’re very much here and very much part of today’s world.”