Red Power

The Beginnings of Red Power

The decades before the 1960s were particularly difficult for Native Americans. In the early part of the 20th century, tribes struggled to adjust to reservation life and the rampant poverty and cultural alienation that accompanied it. The despair was exacerbated by the U.S. government's attempts to assimilate Native Americans into the mainstream culture through the imposition of U.S. styles of government, the forced removal of tribal children into off-reservation boarding schools, the establishment of mass relocation programs aimed at luring young native peoples off the reservations and into large urban centers, and the termination of dozens of tribes' federally recognized status. Such tactics resulted in the loss of land, political power, and cultural knowledge and created rifts between tribal members who viewed assimilation positively and those who saw it is a direct attack on tribal sovereignty and Native American cultures in general.

Ironically, these same tactics also provided the material and psychic resources that helped galvanize the Red Power Movement. For one, the boarding-school era cultivated the growth of a pan-Indian identity among students and produced a cadre of young, educated American Indians with the intellectual tools and social resources necessary for successful political mobilization. Many of the leading organizations in the Red Power Movement, such as the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), United Native Americans (UNA), and the AIM were launched in large cities, bringing together dislocated American Indians who shared similar dissatisfaction with urban life. Before long, their efforts became more outwardly focused and activist oriented. Although their tactics were clearly influenced by the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, their objectives were primarily motivated by shared experiences of discrimination, political disempowerment, and cultural alienation that were unique to Native Americans.

...