Native American/Indigenous Studies: Contemporary History

The heyday of American Indian activism is generally seen as bracketed by the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 and the Longest Walk in 1978; yet Native Americans had long struggled against federal policies that threatened to undermine tribal sovereignty and self-determination. This is the first book-length study of American Indian political activism during its seminal years, focusing on the movement's largely neglected early efforts before Alcatraz or Wounded Knee captured national attention.

During the 1960s, American Indian youth were swept up in a movement called Red Power--a civil rights struggle fueled by intertribal activism. While some define the movement as militant and others see it as peaceful, there is one common assumption about its history: Red Power began with the Indian takeover of Alcatraz in 1969. Or did it? In this groundbreaking book, Bradley G. Shreve sets the record straight by tracing the origins of Red Power further back in time: to the student activism of the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), founded in Gallup, New Mexico, in 1961.

Indian Resilience and Rebuilding provides an Indigenous view of the last one-hundred years of Native history and guides readers through a century of achievements. It examines the progress that Indians have accomplished in rebuilding their nations in the twentieth century, revealing how Native communities adapted to the cultural and economic pressures in modern America.

Spiral to the Stars offers a critical and concrete map for community making that leverages Mvskoke way-finding tools of energy, kinship, knowledge, power, and spaces.

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.

The imposition of modern American colonial rule has defined U.S. indigenous relations since the time of the American Civil War. In resistance, Kevin Bruyneel asserts, indigenous political actors work across American spatial and temporal boundaries, demanding rights and resources from the government while also challenging the imposition of colonial rule over their lives. This resistance engenders what he calls a third space of sovereignty, which resides neither inside nor outside the U.S. political system but rather exists on its boundaries, exposing both the practices and limitations of American colonial rule.