As the leading national advocate for urban Indian families, the National Urban Indian Family Coalition is working with our network on a series of vital projects across the country. These past initiatives supported our work of building a movement that promotes visibility, enhances resources, and mobilizes systems to be more reflective of the needs of urban Indian issues.
The NUIFC previously focused on these past- initiatives:
Over 90% of all Native students attend public schools. The national graduation rate for those students is 40%. They are disciplined and suspended at rates far higher than their peers. NUIFC's position on these numbers is plain: this is not students failing the system. This is the system failing students.
The Resurgence Urban Indian Education Initiative was NUIFC's response to that failure. Grounded in traditional Native values, knowledge, and pedagogies, Resurgence worked to reimagine K-12 education for urban Indigenous youth, supporting their social, emotional, intellectual, and academic development on their own cultural terms.
The initiative operated through two strategies:
• Resurgence Practitioner Network: Brought together the vanguard of urban Native K-12 educators from across the country in a first-of-its-kind cohort. Educators shared knowledge, built relationships, and strengthened their collective capacity to serve Native youth in cities.
• Resurgence Schools: A comprehensive program for urban Indigenous youth that grounded core academic domains in cultural context, meeting students where they are and affirming who they are in the process.
REsurgence Urban Indian Education INITIATIVE
Being counted is the foundation of civic power. Federal funding, political representation, and program eligibility all flow from census data, and urban Native communities have historically been among the most undercounted populations in the country.
In 2020, NUIFC and our coalition of urban Native nonprofits worked to change that. We organized in cities across the country to ensure that urban American Indian and Alaska Native communities were counted accurately in the decennial Census, knowing that any serious civic engagement work had to start there.
The results were record-breaking.
The American Indian and Alaska Native population, alone and in combination, rose to 9.7 million nationally, an 87% increase since 2010. In the states where NUIFC organized, that population grew by an average of 78%. In the counties where we organized, the increase averaged 84%. Every county where NUIFC was active saw its urban Native population grow, and six counties saw increases of more than 100%.
These numbers reflect real people who were seen and counted, many for the first time. That mattered then, and it shapes federal investment and political representation for the decade ahead.
NUIFC produced State Snapshots and Year-End Recaps to document the population growth and show the direct connection between our organizing and those results.
The accuracy of that count made the next step possible. In 2021, NUIFC and our member organizations turned to redistricting, working to ensure that the thousands of new legislative and political maps drawn in the wake of the Census actually reflected the urban Native communities we count on those maps to represent. Our partners attended community listening sessions, built maps and datasets documenting the urban Native population in their cities, worked in coalition with other communities of color, and participated fully in every stage of the redistricting process.
The Census told the country who we are. The redistricting work made sure that counted for something.