Linda Holston
Research Design Project
History 290/History 333
26 January 2010
The Day After: Why the Individual Efforts of the Red Power Movement Failed
The United States government's policy of termination served as the powder keg
for radical American Indian activism in the 1960's and 1970's. Young Native Americans
across tribes and across the nation came together to regain not only their previously
pilfered land but also their sense of culture and community. This new era in protest has
come to be called the Red Power Movement. Perhaps the most well-know events of the
RPM are the Occupation of Alcatraz, the Trail of Broken Treaties/the Occupation of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Occupation of Wounded Knee, 1973. These three
incidents undoubtedly garnered substantial media attention and were precursors for
eventual reform on the Native American front, but what these protests were not
successful in doing is attaining their immediately proposed goals. This project seeks to
identify the elements that led to the downfall of the Red Power Movement. This will be
accomplished by analyzing its goals, major incidents and longstanding effects. As of
now, my running thesis is that the aspect of occupation and the failure of RPM leaders to
vary their tactics is what led to their lack of success in attaining immediate goals.
I have chosen the Red Power Movement as my area of focus for it marked the
beginning of a new era in American Indian activism, one characterized by a renewed
sense of pan-Indian identity, forceful resistance and the act of occupation. Another factor
that contributed to my selection of this time period is the fact that there doesn't seem to be
continuous activism in the Native American Civil Rights narrative. It is also a movement
that is not concentrated in any one area such as the south, which is increasingly
fascinating to me. I want to identify why a more unified movement would produce less
successful results than the scattered activism of the past. To better position this topic, I
will look briefly at instances, prior to my time period, in which American Indian activism
proved highly successful. What tactics were used in these movements? How do the
organizers and goals of previous movements differ?
My preliminary work on this topic is as stands; I have compiled a comprehensive
list of secondary sources surrounding the three major events of the Red Power
Movement: The Occupation of Alcatraz, The Trail of Broken Treaties/The Occupation of
the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Occupation of Wounded Knee, 1973. What these
three incidents share is how highly publicized they were, their protest tactic of occupation
and the fact that they were, ultimately, unsuccessful. Most of my primary sources focus
heavily on laying out the details of these events. A small number of my consulted sources
(two to be exact) focus on the longstanding effects of the aforementioned incidents. I
have also identified four primary sources that I feel will contribute greatly to the success
of my argument. Each of the four primary sources pertains exclusively to one of the three
major incidents of the Red Power Movement, highlighting the movements' innermost
workings and strategies.
My first primary source is The 'Indians of All Tribes Alcatraz Proclamation of
1969', drafted and signed by members of the Indians of All Tribes. This document
basically notifies the United States government of Native American intent to reclaim the
island of Alcatraz. Their plan of actions is listed in this document. The following are
examples of the documents key points: 1) We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for
twenty-four dollars in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man's
purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago...2) We will give to the inhabitants of
this island a portion of the land for their own to be held in trust by the American Indian
Affairs and by the bureau of Caucasian Affairs to hold in perpetuity--for as long as the
sun shall rise and the rivers go down to the sea. The document goes on to list the
condition of Alcatraz Island at the time. This document will be easy for me to find as it is
a commonly cited and reproduced. In my case, it was retrieved from a collection of
primary sources titled Competing Voices from Native America compiled by Dewi Ioan
Ball and Joy Porter. This source will be useful in identifying some of the overarching
goals of the RPM.
The second primary source that I will consult was also pulled from Competing
Voices from Native America and is titled 'Notes from a Day at Wounded Knee.' This
source is a collection of journal entries recorded by freelance photographer/
photojournalist Kevin Barry McKiernan who spent seven weeks on-site during the
occupation. The entries span a short amount of time - from dawn until 12:30pm on April
17, 1973. The value in consulting this primary source is that it provides a day-in-the-lifestyle narrative of the events at Wounded Knee. By looking at these journal excerpts, I can
identify some of the successful and not-so-successful tactics of the incident. The fact that
the document was produced by someone in the field, but not exclusive to either group
(Native Americans vs. FBI), provides me with a more reliable depiction of events.
My last two primary sources deal with media attention surrounding the Red
Power Era. Media attention was greatly responsible for Native American reform
following the RPM for it exposed the rest of the nation to the American Indian plight, but
it focuses little on whether or not the actual goals of the RPM's individual movement's
were attained. I will be working with a collection of on-site interviews and news
broadcasts from 1969 that featured some of the actual Alcatraz occupiers. This footage
can be found at the San Francisco State University Archives, home of the San Francisco
Bay Area Television Archives which are accessible via the internet. The specific
interviews that I will be looking at originally aired on KQED News on November 24,
1969, but there exists more than three hours of related footage shot by KPIX and KQED.
Though I do not have current access to them, strike-related newspapers can be found at
the San Francisco State University Archives as well. More than thirty five periodicals
exist within this collection; I am more than certain that at least one of them contains
information pertaining to the Red Power Movement. However, considering the fact that I
have yet to identify the content of these periodicals, I do not count them in my tally of
primary sources. Lastly, I will be consulting a newspaper article published on November
11, 1972 by the Washington Post. The article, titled Damage to BIA Third Heaviest Ever
in U.S., is a great example of the extent to which Native American activist took their
action and how the media and the public perceived these actions.
Historiography related to this topic proves itself to be rather tricky with
unbalanced coverage and uncommon literary formats being the most frustrating aspects.
Like any other area of history, the Red Power Movement is one with its forerunners
(Vine Deloria Jr. and Troy Johnson are the first historians to come to mind) and distinct
trends. For starters, the Red Power genre is one that remained relatively untapped until
the 1990's. Troy Johnson was one of the first scholars to really get into the Native
America Civil Rights genre with his book The Occupation of Alcatraz Island (1996). To
date, there exists a significant amount of literature on the Red Power Movement with an
abundance of it focusing on the 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz Island. Of all the
major events of the Red Power Movement, this is definitely the one that is most aptly
covered. In terms of trends, the most obvious is the fact that a large number of
scholarship on this subject was produced by Native American scholars.
One of my most useful yet controversial sources is a book titled Alcatraz!
Alcatraz!: The Indian Occupation of 1969-1971 by Adam Fortunate Eagle. It is an
example of a work written by a Native American author, but it also serves as an example
of how tricky historiography on this topic can be. The book is written by Eagle in the
style of a novel, but claims to describe the Occupation of Alcatraz from a first-hand
participant without bias. No sources are cited in this text. It remains a useful tool in terms
of identifying a definite timeline of events, but I question whether or not it could be
considered a primary or even a secondary source. On the contrary, Eagle's other work
Heart of the Rock falls perfectly into the scholarly mold. Like Alcatraz! Alcatraz!, it
presents an in-depth look at the occupation of Alcatraz Island, but it is far more credible
of a source. I will use this work as my go-to resource on the details of the Alcatraz
occupation. with Alcatraz! Alcatraz! being a detailed underscore.
As I mentioned earlier, little scholarship is written on the aftermath of the Red
Power Movement. Two sources that I will be using come in the format of a book and a
short article. Ghost Dancing the Law: the Wounded Knee Trials by John William Sayer is
a book that chronicles the legal action that followed the Wounded Knee occupation. More
than anything, this work highlights the consequences that arose out such a radical form of
conquest. Though it unlikely, and a research project in and of itself, I would love to be
able to examine the court records consulted by Sayer during the construction of this book.
These documents are located at Minnesota Historical Society Library should the
opportunity to survey them arise. The Bloody Wake of Alcatraz: Political Repression of
the American Indian Movement during the 1970's is an article by Ward Churchill. The
article is simple and to the point, focusing on the political, institutionalized responses to
the Occupation of Alcatraz. It is in sources like this that I find the primary basis for my
argument.
I will approach this project, primarily, from a political/policy approach. Most of
the literature surrounding this topic takes the cultural history approach and this is of no
surprise, for I have not been able to distance myself from this even in these early stages
of my research. To deviate from making this solely a social issue, my focus will not be on
the nature of the Red Power movement, but instead its mechanics. By looking in-depth at
the manner in which these events unfolded and , I can identify their connecting instances
and thus the root of their failures.
In conclusion, what this area of history lacks is scholarship on the direct aftermath
of the Red Power Movement. This is where my research comes into play. There is a lot of
focus on the current conditions of the Native American population and the mainstream
attention that the events that the Red Power era garnered, but not the movement's
immediate successes and failures. Some individual examples exist, such as Ghost
Dancing the Law and the aforementioned article by Ward Churchill, but what is missing
is a comprehensive history. Prior to the start of my work on this project, my knowledge
of the Red Power Movement (or Native American Civil Rights activism for that matter)
was basically non-existent. After surveying what was within my grasps, I realized that
there are a number of holes in this field of history. I worry that this area of history is one
that is represented by too few viewpoints. I hope that with this project, I am able to better
diversify the pool literature on the Red Power Movement.
word count: 1942
Bibliography
Churchill, Ward. "The Bloody Wake of Alcatraz: Political Repression of the American
Indian Movement During the 1970s." In American Indian Activism, ed. T.
Johnson, Joane Nagel and Duane Champagne., 242-284.
Deloria Jr., Vine. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of
Independence. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.
Eagle, Adam Fortunate. Alcatraz! Alcatraz!: The Indian Occupation of 1969-1971.
Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1992.
Eagle, Adam Fortunate. Heart of the Rock: the Indian Invasion of Alcatraz. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
Johnson, Troy. The Occupation of Alcatraz Island: Indian Self-Determination and the
Rise of Indian Activism. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
Johnson, Troy. Red Power: The Native American Civil Rights Movement. England:
Chelsea House Publications, 2007.
Johnson, Troy, Josephy Jr. Alvin M and Nagel, Joane. Red Power: The American Indians
Fight for Freedom. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Katz, John. 'Damage to BIA Third Heaviest Ever in U.S.', The Washington Post,
Saturday, 11 November 1962.
Lyman, Stanley David. Wounded Knee 1973: A Personal Account by Stanley David
Lyman. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
McKiernan, Kevin Barry. 'Notes from a Day at Wounded Knee', Minnesota Leader, 30
December 1974.
Sayer, John William. Ghost Dancing the Law: The Wounded Knee Trials. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1997.
"The Indians of All Tribes Alcatraz Proclamation, 1969." In Competing Voices from
Native America, edited by Dewi Ioan Ball and Joy Porter, 231-232. Westport:
Greenwood Press, 2009.