Warrior rose to prominence in the 1960s during the Termination Era, which saw the U.S. government’s elimination of Native rights and reversal of New Deal laws and policies that had partially expanded Native self-determination and governance after decades of assimilationist policies. Congress passed legislation in 1953 that aimed to “terminate” the treaty trust relationship between sovereign Native nations and the federal government. This policy ultimately aimed to strip Native people of their tribal citizenship and land, removing federal protection and treaty obligations. At the same time, Congress introduced a program that pushed for relocation from reservations to major U.S. cities. In the midst of these policies, individual state legislators saw opportunities to assert their own infringements upon Native Peoples.
The roots of Red Power extended back much further than the period of termination and relocation, with the early movement focusing not just on the abrogation of treaty rights but also pushing back against generations of paternalistic federal oversight of every facet of Native lives. The emergence of Red Power as a slogan of resistance can, however, be traced to a singular moment in the mid 1960s. The moment the words were first uttered publicly was when Warrior and other National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) members, including his wife Della (Otoe Missouria) and Mel Thom (Paiute), gatecrashed the July 4, 1966, National Congress of American Indians annual conference parade. They did so in a rental car with a piece of paper attached to one side reading, “Red Power, National Indian Youth Council,” and another piece of paper with “Custer Died for Your Sins” attached to the other side. Warrior, Thom, and Herb Blatchford (Navajo) were part of the collective that formed the NIYC—which they specifically described as a movement rather than an organization—in 1961. It was Warrior and Thom who together created Red Power as a slogan in July 1966, two weeks after hearing Stokely Carmichael’s iconic Black Power speech.
Warrior was an astute political observer whose rhetoric of resistance connected the Indigenous right to self-determination and local and national treaty rights with the wider geopolitical issues of the era such as the Cold War and the decolonization movements sweeping across Africa. In the years between his declaration of a new era in 1964 and his untimely death on June 7, 1968, Warrior was a relentless advocate, attending rallies and conferences, and fighting for government reform. Within that period, he wrote and presented several significant essays and speeches outlining the theories and arguments he ultimately labeled Red Power. His rhetoric focused on key areas of Indigenous discontent, including: self-determination for Native nations; the protection, preservation, and recognition of tribal treaty rights by the federal government; the introduction of culturally sensitive/responsive education; freedom from coercive federal and state policies designed to control and dictate to American Indians; and an end to stereotypical representations of American Indians in the media and education systems.