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Collection: American Indian Activism in the Civil Rights Era

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The Art of Stealing Human Rights

Native peoples face similar struggles with the federal governments in the U.S. and in Canada.
by Radio Free Alcatraz via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on January 3, 1970

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In this episode of Radio Free Alcatraz, John Trudell opens by sharing articles from the Native Alliance for Red Power newsletter from Vancouver, British Columbia, to show similarities between Native People in the United States and Canada. The article is entitled, "The art of stealing human rights," taken from a speech given by Gerry Gambill given at a conference on human rights at a Tobique reserve in New Brunswick in August 1968. Trudell then shares NARP's eight-point program for the betterment of Canadian Indians. Trudell concludes this episode expressing United States Indians' support of Canadian Indians and their struggle, and promotes the next Tuesday's program with Canadians Jonny Yesno and Shirley Daniels.

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American Indian Activism in the Civil Rights Era

The Day the Native Americans Drove the KKK Out of Town

The North Carolina Klan thought burning crosses would scare the Lumbee tribe out of Robeson County. That’s not how things went down.
by Ilena Peng via Narratively on October 14, 2019
Fish in water next to rocks at the base of Kinzua Dam

Halted Waters

The Seneca Nation and the building of the Kinzua Dam.
by Maria Diaz-Gonzalez via Belt Magazine on January 30, 2020

The Tragic Story of the Man Who Led the Occupation of Alcatraz

A new book traces the role of Richard Oakes in the turbulent but transformative civil rights era of the 1960s and '70s.
by Dina Gilio-Whitaker via Los Angeles Times on January 10, 2019
An episode of Radio Free Alcatraz in which John Trudell, broadcasting from the occupied island in 1970, finds solidarity with the struggles First Peoples simultaneously faced in Canada.
LaNada Means War Jack with raised fist at Indian Land sign on Alcatraz.
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The 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz Was a Catalyst for Indigenous Activism

American Indian tribes have long used activism in their struggle for justice and the preservation of their lands and culture.
via Retro Report on January 31, 2024
Spread from Vine Deloria, Jr.'s essay "The Bureau of Indian Affairs: My Brother’s Keeper."

The Bureau of Indian Affairs: My Brother’s Keeper

An excerpt of “My Brother’s Keeper,” the essay that chronicles the Bureau’s various crimes over two centuries.
by Vine Deloria Jr. via Art In America on July 1, 1972
Clyde Bellecourt speaking outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA, 1974.

Damn Hard Work

Clyde Bellecourt taught Native people that colonizing society is weak because of its sense of superiority.
by Nick Estes via The Baffler on January 21, 2022

A History and Future of Resistance

The fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline is part of a centuries-long indigenous struggle against dispossession.
by Julian Brave NoiseCat, Annie Spice via Jacobin on September 8, 2016
Activists march in a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in Washington, D.C. (March 10, 2017).

DAPL and the American Indian as 'Protector'

Native Americans' fights for environmental protection should not be seen as battles against progress.
by Paul C. Rosier via Hindsights on September 7, 2017
A woman walking toward an isolated house on the Navajo reservation.

The Native American Women Who Fought Mass Sterilization

Over a six-year period in the 1970s, physicians sterilized perhaps 25% of Native American women of childbearing age.
by Brianna Theobald via Time on November 27, 2019
Rescue workers look through the roof of a submerged Rapid City house for flood victims on June 12, 1972.
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A Largely Forgotten Flood Ignited The Environmental Justice Movement

The Rapid City flood helped define pervasive environmental injustice and catalyze action.
by Stephen R. Hausmann via Made by History on June 9, 2022
Protestors gathered at Wounded Knee in 2022, waving the flag of the American Indian Movement and an upside down United States of America flag. (Photograph by Eunice Straight Head)

The Siege of Wounded Knee Was Not an End but a Beginning

Fifty years ago, the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization invited the American Indian Movement to Pine Ridge and reignited a resistance that has not left.
by Nick Estes, Benjamin Hedin via The New Yorker on May 6, 2023

Perhaps the World Ends Here

Climate disaster at Wounded Knee.
by Julian Brave NoiseCat via Harper's on December 5, 2019
Drawing of four red fists intersecting the U.S. Capitol building

The Rebirth of Red Power

The tribal sovereignty movement from the late 1960s never really ended. To find the future of the Native left, look to the past.
by Nick Martin via The New Republic on June 1, 2020
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