"Susan Power grew up in a three-room house on a South Dakota reservation, a stone's throw from where Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull was believed to be buried.

"Whenever we would see a car of white people driving up the road, my mother would send my sister and me out to sit near the grave," said Power, 86, a longtime Chicago activist and member of the Dakota nation. "We'd pretend we didn't speak English and we'd hear them talking about us. But we sat there because people were always trying to steal from his grave and they wouldn't do it if someone was looking."

Power left the reservation in 1942 and moved to Chicago to care for a relative. But she never lost her connection to the stories and the life on the reservation. She said it wasn't until 1961 when she attended a conference organized by noted University of Chicago anthropologist Sol Tax that she got a chance to address something many urban Indians were struggling with: the feeling of having a foot in two worlds and not belonging entirely to either.

On Saturday, Power will join other Native Americans from around the country at the University of Chicago to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the conference many considered to be a groundbreaking event.

"It was the first time that Indians from the reservation and from the city came together," Power said. "The conference helped remind people that whatever differences that were cropping up, those of us in urban areas still belonged to the reservation as if we were living there on a daily basis.""

Get the Story:
Urban Native Americans feel they have a foot in two worlds (The Chicago Tribune 3/28)