Although each urban Indian community is distinctive, there are a number of common features or characteristics that are found in most urban Indian communities. The salient characteristics of the San Francisco Bay Area Indian community and many other urban Indian communities are that they are multitribal and therefore multicultural; dispersed…

Alcatraz, the Trail of Broken Treaties, Wounded Knee--these are the well-known sites of "takeovers" by American Indian activists, mostly members of the American Indian Movement or AIM, in the 1960s and 1970s. AIM began in 1968, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, when urban Indians organized to protect their rights and preserve their traditions.…