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The phrase "Red Power", attributed to Vine Deloria Jr., commonly expressed a growing sense of pan-Indian identity. At the forefront of this movement was AIM, or the American Indian Movement, which was founded in 1968. Its members represented mainly urban Indian communities, and its leaders were young and militant. Like the Black Panthers and Brown Berets, AIM was initially organized to monitor law enforcement practices such as police harassment and brutality. It soon played a major role in building a network of urban Indian centers, churches and philanthropic organizations and in establishing the "powwow circuit" that publicized news of protest activities across the country. Skillful in attracting attention from the news media, AIM quickly inspired a plethora of new publications and local chapters. Many young Indians turned to their elders to learn tribal ways, including traditional dress and spiritual practices.
The major catalyst of Red Power was the occupation of the deserted federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay on November 20, 1969. A group of 89 Indians, identifying themselves as "Indians of All Tribes", claimed the island according to the terms of an 1868 Sioux treaty that gave Indians rights to unused federal property on Indian land. The group demanded federal funds for a multifaceted cultural and educational center. For the next year and a half, an occupation force averaging around 100 and stream of visitors from a large number of tribes celebrated the occupation. Although the protesters ultimately failed to achieve their specific goals, they had an enormous impact on the Indian community. With the occupation of Alcatraz, a participant testified, "we got back our worth, our pride, our dignity, our humanity."
The 1960s also marked the beginning of an "Indian Renaissance" in literature. New books like Vine Deloria Jr.'s Custer Died for Your Sins (1969) and the classic Black Elk Speaks (1961), reprinted from the 1930s, reached millions of readers inside and outside Indian communities. A wide variety of Indian novelists, historians, and essayists, such as Pulitzer Prize-winning N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Silko, followed up these successes, and fiction and nonfiction works about Indian life and lore continued to attract a large audience.
See also
References
- Indian Activism in pbs.org.
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