THE AMERICAN INDIAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

1
THE AMERICAN INDIAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

• A Case Study in Civil Society Protest

2
(No Transcript)
3
(No Transcript)
4
CHANGING AMERICAN INDIAN POLICY

• Open warfare, followed by treaty-making,
  beginning in 1778
• Forced removal of Eastern Indians to west of the
  Mississippi River, the Indian Removal Act of 1830
  (the Trail of Tears, beginning in 1831)
• Confinement to reservations
• Economic and cultural assimilation including
  acculturation at boarding schools and the end of
  government trust of communal tribal land
  (individual allotment of land ownership, the
  Dawes Severalty Act of 1887)
• The Indian New Deal through the Indian
  Reorganization Act of 1934
• The end of the Federal guardianship of tribal
  nations through termination, 1953
• Urbanization of the Indian population through the
  Voluntary Relocation Program, 1952

5
American Indian Population(in thousands)

• Source U.S. Census Bureau statistics in First
  Peoples A Documentary Survey of American Indian
  History by Colin G. Calloway, Boston, New York
  Bedford/St. Martins, 2012

6
AMERICAN INDIAN URBAN POPULATION (as a
percentage of the total Indian population)
7
(No Transcript)
8
(No Transcript)
9
UPHEAVAL IN AMERICA

• The 1960s and 1970s mark a new era of Indian
  militancy and Red Power
• New organisations (National Indian Youth Council,
  American Indian Movement, Women of All Red
  Nations)
• New leadership (Clyde Warrior, Russell Means,
  Dennis Banks, Vernon Bellecourt, Ada Deer, Wilma
  Mankiller)
• New tactics (Fish-ins, occupations, blockades)

10
Lumbee Indian war veterans celebrate their
dispersal of a Ku Klux Klan rally in North
Carolina, 1958
11
Tuscarora Indians resist the seizure of tribal
land for the construction of a dam in New York
State, 1958
12
Nisqually River Fish-in, Washington State, mid
1960s
13
Indian militants occupy the former US prison on
Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay, November
1969- June 1971
14
Alcatraz Island Occupation
15
Benjamin Bratt (Quechua), American actor,
Alcatraz occupier
16
Indian activists come to Washington, DC on their
Trail of Broken Treaties, autumn, 1972 and
occupy the Bureau of Indian Affairs building that
November
17
Indian militants confront US Federal authorities,
Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation, South
Dakota, 1973
18
American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders, Russell
Banks (Ogallala Lakota)and Dennis
Means(Anishinaabe), Wounded Knee, 1973
19
Ada Deer (Menominee), first Native American woman
to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs
20
Wilma Mankiller (Cherokee), first elected female
tribal chief, 1987
21
Seminole Indians celebrate tribal purchase of
Hard Rock International, for 965 million, Times
Square, New York City, 2006
22
FURTHER POSSIBILITIES

• Relevant Court Cases
• Worcester vs. Georgia, 1832
• Ex Parte Crow Dog, 1887
• Lone Wolf vs. Hitchcock, 1903
• Oliphant vs. Suquamish, 1978
• United States vs. Lara, 2004

23
TWENTIETH CENTURY INDIAN TESTIMONY

• We are Not Free- Clyde Warriors testimony
  before the Presidents National Advisory
  Commission on Rural Poverty, 1967
• Proclamation to the Great White Father and All
  His People- statement of the Alcatraz occupants
  calling themselves the Indians of All Tribes,
  1969
• Mankiller A Chief and Her People, the
  autobiography of the late Wilma Mankiller, with
  Michael Wallis, 1993

24
COLLECTIONS OF SOURCE MATERIAL

• First Peoples A Documentary Survey of American
  Indian History by Colin G. Calloway, Boston and
  New York Bedford/ St. Martins, 2012
• Native American Testimony A Chronicle of Indian-
  White Relations from Prophesy to the Present,
  1492- 1992 edited by Peter Nabokov, New York
  Viking, 1991