Bradley Blankemeyer

HIST 610 Hopkins

December 5, 2013
Nationalism, Sovereignty, and Red Power Activism, 1961-1972
On November 2, 1972, a group of young American Indians marched on and occupied the
Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC, in a manner reminiscent of the sit-ins that occurred
at UC-Berkeley, multiple historically black colleges and universities, and various sites guilty of
injustice or discrimination during the 1960s. Rising from the ideas of young Indians inspired by
other ethnic pride movements, the six hundred or so had traveled across the country to the
nations capital, in what became known as the Trail of Broken Treaties, to draw attention to the
issues affecting Native Americans both on and off reservations. While traveling to DC from
California, the group made strategic rest stops at many different reservations and urban Indian
communities for rallies and recruitment, intending to reach the Bureau with a larger group
comprised of multifarious tribal backgrounds and ancestry as well as to arrive on the eve of the
presidential election. 1 All stages sought national exposure.
Seven days later, the occupation gained media attention. As remarked in Time magazine,
very few people noticed the Bureau of Indian Affairs or its operation, including the Indians
supposedly represented and served by it, until the actions of the Indian activists. Appeasement
came from the Administration through financial compensation, merely to cover the expenses of
the travel required to clear the area within the Bureau building. 2 While the Trail was certainly
the most publicized event, a number of previous occurrences detailed the growing concern of
American Indian youth on the heels of the various movements during the 1960s. Indians watched
as young blacks fought for equality and succeeded, with some even joining the March on
Washington in 63, and they saw the opportunity for readdressing many of the same federal

shortcomings that had plagued their forebears. The failed recognition of treaties signed between
the United States and tribal nations, the forced removal and resettlement of Eastern tribes, and
the lack of understanding of Indian demands in the past all weighed heavily on the minds of
activists. Through the renewed and reinvigorated discussion of history, the primary objective
became securing national sovereignty and gaining respect for past treaties.
Much like the Black Power movement, Indian activist groups stressed ethnic and racial
unity above all, but a distinct sense of nationalism further separated tribal organizations from
previous civil rights groups. As Vine Deloria, Jr., a Native American author and one of the key
leaders of the Trail, stated, the tribes were concerned about their separate existence as
dependent nations for whom the United States had a responsibility. 3 Group identity would not
lead to the embrace of other racial groups once American Indians had achieved their goals; on
the contrary, after national sovereignty was secured, the objective was to regain rightful tribal
lands on the entire North American continent. This included the removal of even those who had
made possible the renewal of Red Power, or Indian nationalism. 4 It is this understanding of
national identityan imagined community of sorts, to invoke Benedict Andersonin which I
am most interested. Tribal differences and old rivalries certainly must have remained to an
extent, regardless of the coalition of the Five Civilized Tribes in pre-Sooner Oklahoma, and so
how did a combined nationalism come to the fore? By analyzing the development of Indian
activism and the major events between 1961 and 1972, with a particular emphasis on the
occupations of both Alcatraz Island and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, I argue that ethnic renewal
via an imagined community formulated a sense of nationalism that inspired a unified movement
for Indian rights and sovereignty.

Sovereignty plays a role in Andersons nationalist theory, where the political community
is imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign, 5 limited in the sense that the community
defines its political boundaries and sovereign in the right to govern its own people. For the
Indian activist in particular these boundaries were the geographical entity of North America, and
sovereignty derived from federal recognition of legal precedent on treaty terms, in addition to the
pre-colonial existence of distinct tribal nations. Yet also within this Red Power nationalism was
the imagination of a communal identity among all tribes, even though Native Americans are
geographically dispersed, linguistically diverse, and culturally varied. 6 A plurality of ethnicities
included within the term American Indian meant that prior to the resurgence of Indian activism
variations existed between the objectives of individual nations and their understanding of
sovereignty, and in some ways those distinct cultural identities remain today. Yet somehow
during the sixties and early seventies, activists overcame these different characteristics to express
a united movement for Indian rights.
The cross-continental movement first mobilized in June 1961 when representatives from
about ninety separate tribal communities met at the American Indian Chicago Conference at the
University of Chicago. Here a number of key moments occurred that would initiate the Red
Power movement further beyond any earlier action. First, the conference initiated foundation of
the more activist organization of young Native Americans called the National Indian Youth
Council, signaling a radical turn in the formation of Indian political strategy. 7 Prior to the
conference, most Indian activism post-New Deal had involved legal claims made to federal
courts or the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but rarely outright protest and demonstration. One
exception to this paradigm was the Tuscarora protest of the expansion of energy facilities at
Niagara Falls, led by Wallace Mad Bear Anderson, which resulted in a march on the

Department of the Interior office in Washington, DC just a few years earlier. As Deloria
described it, the Tuscaroras had stood up for Indian treaty rights and the international status of
the tribes at a time when few men were willing to stand for any principles at all. 8 Yet the
Tuscarora march was merely one tribe, and now a unified organization of young Indians
intended to take up the torch.
The second major initiative of the American Indian Chicago Conference was the drafting
of the Declaration of Indian Purpose, a document prepared within committees of all the
represented tribes. Among many elements of the resolution the drafters stressed the need for
development of local programs within reservations and urban communities, run by the Indians of
each respective group in its community. In doing so, the intent was to reorganize the Bureau of
Indian Affairs to remove the single Commissioner and replace him with a larger network that
connected the needs of distinct tribes across the United States and afforded them the guidance
and technical assistance of the federal government. 9 Essentially the message, though implicit in
this early statement, was that of sovereignty. Federal assistance denoted not the attachment to the
United States government but rather insurance of promises to provide for the sovereign nations
by supporting their relocation and reservation settlement. Recent acquisition of Indian
reservation land as a result of federal hydroelectric and/or flood control projects and major
efforts to terminated federal treaty and trust responsibilities to Indian nations, 10 all which had
occurred prior to most comprehensive Civil Rights demonstrations, necessitated the Declaration
of Indian Purpose.
In addition to these two watershed points at the Chicago Conference, the general
accomplishment of the meeting was that for the first time Indian people of many different tribes
from all over the country and representing many different points of view came together to

compare and to discuss their problems just among themselves. 11 Western reservation tribes had
certainly felt compelled to appear but even more so the eastern Indian groups who brought
greater momentum to the coalition. These groups, which included Lumbee, Mohegan, and
Pequot among others, were communities that claimed Indian heritage but which at that time
were not recognized by federal or state agencies and held no reservation land. 12 They had
certainly experienced their fair share of property loss, but without the more storied legal
precedent to which to hold the US government. While many of the larger reservation tribes
sought better treatment for the lands that were reserved for tribal sovereignty, the lesser-known
eastern bands simply wanted recognition. Regardless of impetus for attendance, the result of the
conference was that a multifarious collective of tribes from across the continent came together to
discuss problems and, most importantly, solutions.
Individuals within the National Indian Youth Council directed the solutions in the years
following the Chicago Conference. The first demonstrations, undoubtedly inspired by Civil
Rights movement tactics, did not incorporate a vast array of cross-country tribes. Fish-ins, as
they were so called, occurred in the Pacific Northwest in opposition to strict regulation of Indian
fishing rights in Washington State, but they were particularly comprised of individuals from
smaller tribes and accomplished little. Larger tribes, many whom had negotiated with local state
authorities for hunting and fishing rights, frowned upon the demonstrations, seeing them as an
improper approach that might threaten cooperation. Yet, incredibly, the fairly unsuccessful first
moves of the fish-in motivated other western activists to attempt their own resistance, such as
organized hunting demonstrations in Idaho and other western states. 13 At the very least, this
young activism had the bureaucrats talking, and thus drew the attention of the National Congress
of American Indians, an older Native American organization. Founded in 1944, the NCAI

represented tribes through various political outlets. In the 1950s when Congress looked to
impose a policy of terminationthat is, the removal of trust status of reservations to subject
Indian lands to state jurisdiction instead of federalthe NCAI resolved to establish selfdetermination measures through federal legislation. 14 Yet the sixties still carried echoes of
termination, and even after the landmark conference in 1961 some began to question the efficacy
of the NCAI. While many of the pre-AICC tribes trusted the NCAI, primarily those located in
the western United States, many eastern Indians viewed the NCAI as too conservative, too
much aligned with the BIA, and too opposed to eastern Indian interests, including federal
recognition efforts. 15 While the NCAI had done much to represent the interests of all tribes, and
had achieved significant concessions through the political sphere, on a comprehensive pan-tribal
level much more activism was required.
What the National Indian Youth Council accomplished outside the bureaucratic
negotiations was activism that pressured the government to act on principles stressed in the
legislature. In 1967, the president of the Youth Council, Clyde Warrior, testified to the need for
self-determination at a hearing of National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty in Memphis.
Simultaneously, older Indians were meeting in Washington to discuss the Omnibus Bill, a
proposal by President Lyndon Johnson to combine all the problems laid out by Indian groups
into one large piece of legislation. While the plan was to consult the National Congress of
American Indians in a cooperative effort between tribal leaders and congressmen, Warrior
voiced the ideas that reverberated amongst young Indians looking for not only recognition but
preservation of cultural identity. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had encourage in the 1950s a
policy of relocation for young Indians to leave reservations and seek employment in urban
centers, even offering a one-way bus ticket, assistance in finding work, and housing and free

medical care for a year. Also included in this effort was the encouragement of white families to
adopt Indian children. 16 Many young Indians felt that these efforts at cultural assimilation and
exploitation were not sufficiently denounced by the older tribal leaders in the NCAI, and
truthfully the NCAI itself often worked to preserve the BIA as a bureaucratic mouthpiece.
Younger Indians, like those involved in the National Indian Youth Council, felt that the better
approach was self-determination through recognized sovereignty, not cooperation with white
authorities. Warrior voiced this sentiment in his testimony in Memphis:
Perhaps, the National Indian Youth Councils real criticism is against a structure
created by bureaucratic administrators who are caught in this American myth that
all people assimilate into American society, that economics dictates assimilation
and integrationWhat ethnic groups do is not integrate into the mainstream of
American society and economy individually, but enter in the mainstream of
American society as a people, and in particular as communities of people. The
solution to Indian poverty is not government programs but in the competence of
the person and his people. The real solution to poverty is encouraging the
competence of the community as a whole. 17
With the untimely death of Clyde Warrior in 1968, the National Indian Youth Council certainly
lost a great voice for the new activism for self-determination, but his words lived on through the
other individuals inspired by his message.
As the federal government implemented relocation policies in the 1960s, the decisions of
what had hitherto been merely talking points in Washington, DC took effect, with Indians
encouraged to move out of the reservation. The response was widespread. Across the United
States, federal facilities were occupied and more activist organizations sprouted up, with regional
groups taking up the cause of self-determination and Warriors message. Regardless of the crosscontinental activity, by late 1967 national conferences appeared less productive, strong local
mobilization and community development increased, and the efficacy of a comprehensive pantribal community dwindled. 18 In the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the largest terminus sites of

Indian relocation from reservations, local organizations developed in response to the poor
government assistance that was available. Given that the relocation policy had introduced
various tribes to the same urban area, single-tribe social clubs that first formed soon gave way to
larger urban Indian coalitions. 19 By 1969 Indians also witnessed the anti-war and civil rights
demonstrations with anticipation for their own protests, especially young Indian students at UCBerkeley and other schools in the Bay Area. Following a fire at the San Francisco Indian Center
and its subsequent destruction, a cultural and vocational training center for urban Indians,
activists were forced to look elsewhere for a new congregation spot. Ever since a short
occupation of the island of Alcatraz--at this time abandoned federal landby a group of
relocated Sioux in 1964, Indians in the local area saw the island as a source of pride and a
potential site for a more imposing future demonstration. Serving as both suitable grounds for
Indian activities and a symbolic presentation of Indian rights to certain federal property, Alcatraz
Island became the target for the new center. 20
In early November, nineteen students from Berkeley and San Francisco State University
occupied the island of Alcatraz initially for one night at a time, gauging the response of the
caretakers there. Once they discovered that the security was hardly worrisome, they planned a
larger occupation. Aptly naming themselves Indians of All Tribes, the group included
Minnesota Chippewa Adam Nordwall, New York Mohawk Richard Oakes, and Pomo Luwana
Quitiquit, along with various other tribal representatives. They recruited Indian students from all
over California, including a group of about eighty students from UCLA, and together a group of
almost three hundred captured Alcatraz on November 19, initiating a story that would capture the
attention of the United States and the world for the next nineteen months and unite Indian people
from throughout the continents of North and South America. 21 During the occupation, an

intertribal community formed that served the need s and interests of all different backgrounds,
and the group conducted conferences, powwows, activities, and delegated responsibilities to all
occupiers. Each person had a specified job, from security to cooking, and meetings were held
multiple times a day to ensure efficient operation of the island, while people in the Bay Area
worked to bring supplies from the mainland .The idea behind the island organization was to
create an egalitarian society with no clear leader among them, even though for the purpose of
media representation and negotiation Richard Oakes served as chiefa post he renounced. 22
Ultimately, however, the extended stay on the island was slowly restricted, as over time federal
official cut off supplies of food, water, and electricity to expedite negotiations.
Outside of publicity and recognition of Indian concerns through the Alcatraz occupation,
the major consequence of this first radical demonstration was the creation of the Alcatraz
Proclamation to the Great White Father and his People, a document that laid out all the reasons
for the occupation. Some statements presented concerns in a humorous, albeit brutally honest
fashion, such as the offer to purchase said Alcatraz Island for twenty-four dollars in glass beads
and red cloth, a precedent set by the white mans purchase of a similar island about 300 years
ago or the request for creation of a Bureau of Caucasian Affairs to represent the interest of the
non-natives. Other points listed showcased the problems with reservation administration and
support from the federal government, linking the lack of running water, proper sanitation,
educational or health care facilities on Alcatraz to the same dire situation on Indian
reservations. 23 While undoubtedly federal officials were not likely to respond to these issues,
they should have at least answered to the other requests made by the Indians of All Tribes to
create a suitable replacement for the Bay Area facility that burnt down in 1969, including an
educational and cultural center. Ultimately, the federal government response was instead that of

armed invasion of the island to remove the last occupiers, and no demands were met. A hard
fought battle ended without the main objectives achieved, but it left a lasting legacy.
What separated the Alcatraz occupation from past demonstrations was the demographic
of the individuals involved. In the past, protests had taken place on local sites throughout the
United States. In New York, Mohawk protests targeted treaty violations that affected their free
passage between the US and Canada. In the Pacific Northwest to Idaho, as mentioned above,
fish-ins carried out by local tribes were not unified even if they inspired one another. As Troy
Johnson notes, the difference between what is seen in these actions however is that they were
local, and they were primarily tribal in nature. The Alcatraz occupation was multi-tribal and
attracted attention, media coverage, and support on an international scale. 24 Also important
from this united pan-tribal effort was the length of time which it existed on a site with no
amenities except those provided by the San Francisco Indian Center, but even the donations
originated from tribes outside California, such as Sioux or Navajo. While life on the island
during the last days was not positive, the overall result was that Indians from across the United
States and the world saw a strong first attempt to organize and speak up for Indian rights.
While the National Indian Youth Council had served as the grassroots for the youth
activism that developed into greater initiatives like the occupation of Alcatraz, over time its
agenda had become more centrist, and newer groups sprung up to replace the gap left in the
radical sphere. In the years following Alcatraz, the main organization to coalesce was the
American Indian Movement, a group formed in Minneapolis in 1968. Many of those at Alcatraz
became involved with AIM, both before and after the occupation, as it was primarily an urban
organization much like the Bay Area groups seeking to provide financial and legal services to
relocated Indians. After a visit to Alcatraz by a group of senior members in 1970, they gained

greater publicity by seizing a replica of the Mayflower on Thanksgiving Day. 25 AIM was not the
only group participating in these protests, however, as the end of the Alcatraz occupation
inspired the beginning of almost a decade of Native American activism. Federal property ranging
from military bases and national monuments to government buildings such as regional offices of
the Bureau of Indian Affairs were targeted for demonstrations, all leading up to the grandest
demonstration via the occupation in 1972 of the BIA main headquarters in Washington, DC.
An important distinction to be made about the American Indian Movement is its origin.
Although it began in the urban metropolis of Minneapolis-St. Paul, it was not entirely limited in
its scope. Focused on topics of sovereignty, federal disregard for treaties, and legal issues related
to reservation legislature, AIM was a national organization concerned with issues affecting rural
reservation Indians as well as urban Indians. The group had not initially been committed to
these principles, but upon observing various intertribal efforts its members sought to look outside
its primary goals of urban Indian support. Noting the issues that arose from relocation policies,
the Indian founders and leaders of AIM sought to re-establish a sense of awareness in Indian
identity and a pride in the Indian heritage. 26 Founders were primarily of the local tribe Ojibwa,
which produced two main leaders of AIM, Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt, but it also
included members of nearby tribes like the Oglala Sioux. Russell Means, who at an earlier age
had been present at the first occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1964, served as one of the
galvanizing figures in early AIM activism, and his ancestry was that of Sioux. As membership
grew between69 and 72, AIM leaders embraced the issues concerning as many tribes nationally
as possible. By 1975, AIM chapters had developed in thirty-two states, figuring the group as a
supratribal organization in which tribal identities are submerged in an Indian identity. 27

Ethnic concerns still seemed to exist within the local communities, but with an organization like
AIM the imagined community earned more credence.
Distinct differences separated the Trail of Broken Treaties from the occupation of
Alcatraz, especially when considering the change in strategy and ideological development of Red
Power activism. Alcatraz began as a local movement involving students of various tribes who
had connected via organizations on campus or in the Bay Area, which as it progressed recruited
more numbers and support to greater maximize its appeal and publicity. The Trail of Broken
Treaties began with AIM, and more specifically the AIM that believed more strongly in pantribal issues. In preparation for the Trail, AIM met with a host of other groups, including the
National Indian Youth Council, to discuss procedure for accomplishing a national-scale protest.
Most organizations present had smaller constituencies and served more local purposes. From the
start, this movement intended to bring as many Indians and Indian groups together as possible
before even initiating the demonstration. Designating three caravans to leave from west coast
cities, the travel routes meandered through the major reservations en route to St. Paul, where the
caravans would reconvene and draft a position paper on the collective needs of American
Indians. 28 Even those tribes who could not join or send representatives were still consulted. All
points, from start to finish, involved incorporation of all tribes.
Methodology also played a significant role in the efficacy of the Trail of Broken Treaties.
Besides the systematic incorporation of multi-tribal concerns, Trail leaders also determined the
most proper course of action once they reached Washington, DC. Although accommodations had
been arranged, plans fell through and the group was forced to find other lodging. Perhaps
through intent, or a combination of bad luck and dissent, the Trail participants decided to occupy
the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 29 While not a considerable amount of time compared to Alcatraz,

the week-long residence in a federal headquarters office stirred up quite a bit of concern from the
government. Discontent with the BIA certainly was not hidden, but with the occupation it
became much more prominent.
In ideology, the message from AIM and the other Trail groups was sovereignty. Alcatraz
carried elements of national sovereignty, as developed through the inclusion of multiple tribes,
but the main objective was federal recognition of culture and self-determination. The directives
of AIM directly influenced the ideology of the Trail of Broken Treaties, and this was particularly
evident in the Twenty-Point Proposal. Within this proposal, points summarized essentially rights
given to nations, such as treaty-making authority, tax immunities, repeal of imposing laws made
by governments (state-level) without jurisdiction over sovereign nations, and restoration of land
from which tribes had been removed. 30 Self-determination was one request that had been
directed towards federal officials, but the poor political response necessitated stronger pressure
in the form of national sovereignty claims. More so than ever before, Red Power activists had
announced their objectives dramatically and through a careful consideration of the imagined
community of all American Indians. On January 9, 1973, the United States government
responded to the Proposal and rejected all points under the pretense that the government only
makes treaties with nations, and that over time Indians have become citizens and not foreign
nationals. 31 Activism would continue beyond the Trail, but with certain events like Wounded
Knee in 1973 the approach and directives shifted again. Nevertheless, activists still sought to
remedy the poor recognition of Indian rights by a federal government intended to protect them.
Besides the general connection made between Benedict Andersons theory of nationalism
and the Red Power movements of the late sixties and early seventies, the deeper points connect
quite remarkably to Indian nationalism. Much of what has been discussed above concerns the

preservation of sovereignty, a point Anderson stresses within his thesis, but also cultural
retention and preservation. With relocation policies responsible for many urban Indian
communities, one of the greater concerns not touched on more deeply here was the issue of
Indian cultural heritage. Inherent in the Alcatraz and BIA occupations was the understanding that
culture was disappearing due to federal reservation policies, and the adjustment of AIMs
approach to include preservation of Indian identity. In his explanation of the roots of nationalism
through imagined communities, he states that nationalism has to be understood by aligning it,
not with self-consciously held political ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that
preceded it, out of whichas well as against whichit came into being. 32 Prior to the
separation of land for reservations, American Indians possessed large cultural systems that
defined them, and during the sixties a renewed sense of the significance of this heritage boomed.
Even with the development and administrative issues on reservations, culture became something
behind which Indians could rally. As Joane Nagel mentions, the problems of poverty and
despair that confront many reservation communities have led to renewals and revisions of
cultural practices in order to deal with social problems. 33 Returning back to the central point of
imagined communities, it is very clear that between 1961 and 1972 the smaller local units of
activists for Indian rights grew stronger and looked to cooperate with those considered ethnically
different and perhaps historically oppositional. Recognition of the importance of cultural
preservation in maintaining identity, they found common ground and connected the Indian
community. National organizations like the American Indian Chicago Conference, the National
Indian Youth Council, the National Congress of American Indians, and the American Indian
Movement, containing collections of tribal representatives from various American communities,

all contributed to an increasing awareness of common problems and interests shared by many
tribes as well as by the growing urban Indian population. 34
National sovereignty most certainly existed for Indian tribes, and based on the hundreds
of treaties arranged in the past between the President and officials and leaders of particular tribal
communities the precedent exists for the argument. While the provision still fails to exist for
Native Americans today, the movements that occurred in the sixties and early seventies drew
attention to the needs of Indians and instilled change for generations. With the efforts at
Alcatraz, the official government policy of termination of Indian tribes was ended and a policy
of Indian self-determination without termination became the official U.S. government policy. 35
Following the Trail of Broken Treaties, the Bureau of Indian Affairs experienced administrative
changes, and groups like the American Indian Movement felt empowered to be more active, as
evidenced by the efforts undertaken throughout the 1970s. The accomplishments of these two
events would not have been realized without the coalition of Indian tribes that united around the
idea of nationalism. Even if the community of Red Power was imagined after all, the value of the
fight was still greatly significant because of it.

Alvin M. Josephy, Joane Nagel, and Troy R. Johnson, eds., Red Power: the American Indians Fight for Freedom
(Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 44.
2
Drums on the Potomac, Time 100, no. 25 (December 18, 1972): 29. Publisher Provided Full Text Searching
File, EBSCOhost.
3
Vine Deloria, Jr., Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: an Indian Declaration of Independence (New York: Dell
Publishing, 1974), 24.
4
Deloria, Behind the Trail, 3. Deloria was also one of the first to use the distinction Red Power, during a speech at
the conference of the National Congress of American Indians in 1966.
5
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso,
2006), 6.
6
Joane Nagel, American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996), 7.
7
Laurence M. Hauptman and Jack Campisi, The Voice of Eastern Indians: The American Indian Chicago
Conference of 1961 and the Movement for Federal Recognition, Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society 132, no. 4 (December, 1988): 317.
8
Deloria, Behind the Trail, 21.
9
American Indian Chicago Conference, Declaration of Indian Purpose (June 13-20, 1961). Reprinted in Josephy et
al, Red Power, pp. 13-15.
10
Hauptman and Campisi, 317.
11
Nancy Oestreich Lurie, The Voice of the American Indian: Report on the American Indian Chicago Conference,
Current Anthropology 2, no. 5 (December, 1961): 478.
12
Hauptman and Campisi, 318.
13
Deloria, Behind the Trail, 26-7.
14
Christopher K. Riggs, American Indians, Economic Development, and Self-Determination in the 1960s, Pacific
Historical Review 69, no. 3 (August, 2000), 433-6.
15
Hauptman and Campisi, 319.
16
Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded
Knee (New York: The New Press, 1996), 7.
17
Clyde Warrior, We Are Not Free, (February 2, 1967) in Red Power, 21.
18
Vine Deloria, Jr., This Country Was a Lot Better Off When the Indians Were Running It, (March 8, 1970) in
Red Power, 34-5.
19
Troy Johnson, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island: Roots of American Indian Activism, Wicazo Sa Review 10,
no.2 (Autumn, 1994), 65-6.
20
Deloria, Red Power, 29.
21
Deloria, Behind the Trail, 37; Deloria, Red Power, 29; Smith and Warrior, 11-19; Johnson, 66-7.
22
Josephy et al, 39; Johnson, 69.
23
Indians of All Tribes, The Alcatraz Proclamation to the Great White Father and his People, (November 1969),
in Takin It to the Streets: A Sixties Reader, edited by Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 149-50.
24
Johnson, 69.
25
Johnson, 75.
26
Rachel A. Bonney, The Role of AIM Leaders in Indian Nationalism, American Indian Quarterly 3, no. 3
(Autumn, 1977), 212-5.
27
Bonney, 217.
28
Smith and Warrior, 142-3.
29
Josephy et al, 45.
30
The Twenty Point Proposal of Native Americans on the Trail of Broken Treaties, (October, 1972), in Red
Power, 45-6.
31
Bonney, 216.
32
Anderson, 12.
33
Nagel, 7.
34
Josephy et al, 3.
35
Johnson, 75.