CRE 287 The Radical history of the Red Power movement’s fight for Native American sovereignty

 CRE 287 The Radical history of the Red Power movement’s fight for Native American sovereignty

1) The Civil Rights Movement, Women’s liberation protests, and Vietnam War protests (1960s-1970s) served to raise consciousness and protests

a. Native Americans were also motivated by this period.

2) Native Americans -had experienced discriminatory policies, discarded treaties, and systemic injustice ever since the founding of the U.S. in the late 18th century.

3)      Red Power movement -Indigenous activists challenged those practices

a.      Cultivated a sense of pride in their communities

b.      Demanded sovereignty and self-determination.

4)      US, throughout the first hundred years, signed more than 350 treaties

a.      Brokered under duress

b.      Indigenous people ceded ancestral lands to the U.S. government

                         i.      Promise that they would have sovereign rule over new territories they settled

                           ii. But White settlers, as they expanded westward, the U.S. backed out of its promises and pushed Native tribes to ever smaller reservations.

5)      Starting in the 1940s, the U.S. began dismantling Native sovereignty under a policy of termination

a.      Many had been recognized as nations

6)      Over 100 tribes and bands saw their tribal status terminated

a.      Lost millions of acres of land

b.      Attempted to relocate Native Americans from reservations into urban areas

c.      Bureau of Indian Affairs

                      i.      Established in 1825 without input or approval of Native Americans to impose laws on the tribes

                       ii.      Became a symbol of hatred and oppression.

7)      Riven by social disparities

a.      Faced with poverty, crime, and despair

b.      Little recognition by the U.S. government or mainstream America

c.      Broken treaties and misguided attempts at assimilation forced many to lose their language and suppress many Native religious and cultural practices.

8) A growing movement of young Native Americans seeking to reclaim sovereignty created the Red Power movement

a. Media-savvy and motivated by the protest movements of the 1960s, they staged high-profile protests to raise awareness of Native Issues.

b.      First was the occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay -home of a decommissioned prison where Hopi Men and Other Native Americans had once been held

                          i.      Indians of all tribes took the island and proclaimed it a cultural and spiritual center in the name of all Native Americans

                         ii.      Lasted till 1971, when it disintegrated due to organizational issues, infighting, and worsening conditions as the U.S. government cut off power and water to the island

c. While they lost this battle, the protests continued, and groups such as the American Indian Movement, Formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1968, became the movement that was most visible, controversial, and organized.

d.      In Oct 1972, AIM organized the trail of Broken Treaties a caravan that traveled from the West Coast to Washington, DC

                      i.      Called for restoration of treating, making authority

                        ii.      Abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs

                          iii.      Investments in jobs, housing, and education.

                     iv.      Once they arrived in DC, they barricaded themselves inside the Bureau of Indian Affairs

1. The standoff ended a week later when the federal government agreed to address the group’s grievances and appoint a Native American to a post within the BIA

e. Next came the 71-day siege of Wounded Knee, South Dakota -Feb. 1973 on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

                          i.      Site of 1890 massacre killing 150 native Americans by Amry soldiers

                       ii.      By 1970, the reservation was beset by poverty and crime

1.      Oglala Lakota people asked AIM to help expel tribal chairman -Richard Wilson

a.      Accused of corruption

b.      They were unsuccessful in attempts to have him impeached.

                                                           iii.      When the food and supplies had been cut off, they surrendered, but two activists had been shot, and the occupation gained national news.

f.        The Longest Walk -1978

                          i.      Participants walked five months, 3,000 miles in a spiritual protest to Washington, D.C.

1.      Designed to draw attention to a series of federal bills that further threatened Native land and water rights and cut off social services.

2.      Jimmy Carter refused to meet with activists

3. Congress withdrew bills but passed the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act -protecting Native rituals.

g. The Red Power movement was in decline by the 1980s as FBI surveillance, investigation, and infiltration had sparked infighting and suspicion among its members.

h.      But in 1975, the U.S. government reversed its policy of termination

                         i.      Gave tribes ability to control their own affairs through the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act

i.        The U.S. also ended longstanding assimilation policies in the 1970s and invested in Native American education and health care.

j.        Movements’ greatest legacy is the sense of pride it left behind

k.       Armed with new national awareness of injustices Native Americans faced and new investments in the preservation of Native Culture -Native Americans managed to seize their long-denied sovereignty.

l. The journey continues today as Nativ activists push for water rights to recognize their right to prosecute crimes on lands promised to them in 19th-century treaties.