Native Sun: Shining Light on Women and Newspaper’s Roles in Identity Making and Maintaining in Midcentury Detroit

I argue that Native-run community newspapers were critical in creating a global Indigenous identity among everyday Native peoples, and especially Native women, in Detroit in the mid-twentieth century. I am exploring materials that have not previously been used in historical analysis, particularly the local Native-run newspaper the Native Sun. This newspaper, spanning from the 1970s to the 1990s, shows the importance of gathering and information sharing in maintaining and creating new forms of Native American identity among the various Native peoples living in Detroit and its suburbs. It also shows the underrepresented role Native women played in maintaining their broader Native community, including their families and specifically their children’s identity as proud Native people. Including sections on international news, news from other tribes, and addressing the relations between the Detroit tribal community and the federal government on a nation-to-nation basis, concepts of sovereignty and relations expanded globally in the Native Sun. To fully grasp the world news, local politics, and insider humor of the paper, a variety of methods from close reading, personal reflection by the author as a descendent of the community, storytelling, and oral histories from members of the Detroit community will be employed. I will also provide insight into the continuing legacy of the urban and suburban centers of Native American populations in Southeast Michigan—those whose ancestral territory has always been there and those whose homelands are elsewhere who moved to Detroit primarily for employment in the auto industry.