This book explains how, and why, hippies, Quakers, Black Panthers, movie stars, housewives, and labor unions, to name a few, supported Indian demands for greater political power and separate cultural existence in the modern United States.

Through much of the 20th century, federal policy toward Indians sought to extinguish all remnants of native life and culture. That policy was dramatically confronted in the late 1960s when a loose coalition of hippies, civil rights advocates, Black Panthers, unions, Mexican-Americans, Quakers and other Christians, celebrities, and others joined with Red Power activists to fight for Indian rights. In Hippies, Indians and the Fight for Red Power, Sherry Smith offers the first full account of this remarkable story. Hippies were among the first non-Indians of the post-World War II generation to seek contact with Native Americans. The counterculture saw Indians as genuine holdouts against conformity, inherently spiritual, ecological, tribal, communal-the original "long hairs." Searching for authenticity while trying to achieve social and political justice for minorities, progressives of various stripes and colors were soon drawn to the Indian cause. Black Panthers took part in Pacific Northwest fish-ins. Corky Gonzales' Mexican American Crusade for Justice provided supplies and support for the Wounded Knee occupation. Actor Marlon Brando and comedian Dick Gregory spoke about the problems Native Americans faced. For their part, Indians understood they could not achieve political change without help. Non-Indians had to be educated and enlisted. Smith shows how Indians found, among this hodge-podge of dissatisfied Americans, willing recruits to their campaign for recognition of treaty rights; realization of tribal power, sovereignty, and self-determination; and protection of reservations as cultural homelands. The coalition was ephemeral but significant, leading to political reforms that strengthened Indian sovereignty. Thoroughly researched and vividly written, this book not only illuminates this transformative historical moment but contributes greatly to our understanding of social movements.

Reimagining Indians investigates a group of Anglo-American writers whose books about Native Americans helped reshape Americans' understanding of Indian peoples at the turn of the twentieth century. Hailing from the Eastern United States, these men and women traveled to the American West and discovered "exotics" in their midst. Drawn to Indian cultures as alternatives to what they found distasteful about modern American culture, these writers produced a body of work that celebrates Indian cultures, religions, artistry, and simple humanity. Although these writers were not academically trained ethnographers, their books represent popular versions of ethnography. In revealing their own doubts about the superiority of European-American culture, they sought to provide a favorable climate for Indian cultural survival in a world indisputably dominated by non-Indians. They also encouraged notions of cultural relativism, pluralism, and tolerance in American thought. For the historian and general reader alike, this volume speaks to broad themes of American cultural history, Native American history, and the history of the American West.

The phrase Red Power, coined by Clyde Warrior (1939-1968) in the 1960s, introduced militant rhetoric into American Indian activism. In this biography of Warrior, the author presents the Ponca leader as the architect of the Red Power movement, spotlighting him as one of the most significant and influential figures in the fight for Indian rights.

We Talk, You Listen is strong, boldly unconventional medicine from Vine Deloria Jr. (1933-2005), one of the most important voices of twentieth-century Native American affairs. Here the witty and insightful Indian spokesman turns his penetrating vision toward the disintegrating core of American society. Written at a time when the traditions of the formerly omnipotent Anglo-Saxon male were crumbling under the pressures of a changing world, Deloria's book interprets racial conflict, inflation, the ecological crisis, and power groups as symptoms rather than causes of the American malaise: "The glittering generalities and mythologies of American society no longer satisfy the need and desire to belong," a theory as applicable today as it was in 1970. American Indian tribalism, according to Deloria, was positioned to act as America's salvation. Deloria proposes a uniquely Indian solution to the legacy of genocide, imperialism, capitalism, feudalism, and self-defeating liberalism: group identity and real community development, a kind of neo-tribalism. He also offers a fascinating cultural critique of the nascent "tribes" of the 1970s, indicting Chicanos, blacks, hippies, feminists, and others as misguided because they lacked comprehensive strategies and were led by stereotypes rather than an understanding of their uniqueness. Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux, 1933-2005) was the author of more than twenty books, including Custer Died for Your Sins, Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties, and God Is Red. Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne & Muscogee) is a poet, lecturer, curator, columnist for Indian Country Today, policy advocate, and president of the Morning Star Institute, a national Indian rights organization.

A study of the massacre at Wounded Knee in history and memory.

"Over 15 chapters, Dunaway transforms what we know about icons and events. Seeing Green is the first history of ads, films, political posters, and magazine photography in the postwar American environmental movement. From fear of radioactive fallout during the Cold War to anxieties about global warming today, images have helped to produce what Dunaway calls "ecological citizenship, " telling us that "we are all to blame." Dunaway heightens our awareness of how depictions of environmental catastrophes are constructed, manipulated, and fought over" -- Publisher information.