American Quarterly

In 2008 Milestone Pictures rereleased Kent Mackenzie’s 1961 black-and-white docudrama The Exiles, one of the few twentieth-century films that features urban American Natives. While The Exiles reinforces negative stereotypes about American Natives, it also serves as a visual archive of the dire economic and social realities for American Natives during the Termination era. This article sets The Exiles within a broader political and historical context of American Native urban experience and illustrates the critical role that gender played in urban relocation.