Elder in Residence to speak on “Being Indian in the City” on February 23 at Fort Lewis College

DURANGO, CO – Dr. Nancy Lucero will speak at Fort Lewis College on Tuesday, February 23, 2010, as part of the FLC Native American Center’s Elder in Residence Program. Dr. Lucero’s presentation, entitled “Being Indian in the City,” begins at 5 p.m. in the Center of Southwest Studies Lyceum after a reception beginning at 4 p.m. in the Center. Both events are free and open to the public.

 

Dr. Nancy Lucero is a member of the Choctaw Nation and was raised in Denver. She spent her early career as a counselor and therapist for urban Natives. After years of seeing cultural misunderstandings between Native people and non-Indian service providers, she decided to take action to help alleviate the gap-she went back to school and received the Ph.D. in Social Work. Her dissertation studied the ways that the Federal Relocation Program and living in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver have affected urban Indians’ cultural identities.

 

Between 1952 and the mid 1960s, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs began to systematically remove Native peoples from their home communities and relocate them to the urban areas.  While not entirely a positive attempt to improve Native economics, the process brought about adaptation and development. Indeed Dr. Lucero postulates that relocatees’ culture wasn’t left on the reservations, but it has stayed with them regardless of where they live. What else has gone on that makes living in an urban area work for Native people? Dr. Lucero speaks from experience, research, and education.

 

Currently Dr. Lucero is on the Social Work faculty at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work (they have a satellite campus here in Durango and Dr. Lucero teaches in that program).

 

For more information, call 970-247-7222.