My work interrogates the ways indigeneity functioned as both a rhetorical device and identity category within folk fairs and civic celebrations in the 20th century Philadelphia framing discourses regarding race, immigration, and multiculturalism. Performance here was a critical tactic in asserting a utopian cultural sovereignty by urban Indigenous residents and the women who led this charge in the face of rampant economic disenfranchisement. Ultimately, I’m interested in the making of indigeneity in a city often defined as a black one. Following its gendered, racialized, sexualized, and classed contours, I explore the adaptive lives of Indigenous people and their continued presence within the fabric of cultural life in the Mid-Atlantic region.