She watched, confused, before realizing that she should run, too. "I said: 'I'm not living here. This is crazy,' " she recalled.
Not long afterward, however, Howard did return, and found a home in Minneapolis. She is part of a continuing and largely unnoticed mass migration of American Indians, whose move to urban centers over the past several decades has changed both reservations and cities.
Though they are widely associated with rural life, more than seven of 10 Indians and Alaska Natives now live in a metropolitan area, according to Census Bureau data released this year, compared with 45 percent in 1970 and 8 percent in 1940.
The trend mirrors the pattern of millions of African-Americans who left the rural South during the Great Migration of the 20th century and moved to cities in the North and West. But while many black migrants found jobs in meat-packing plants, stockyards and automobile factories, American Indians have not had similar success finding work.
