Red power rising: the National Indian Youth Council and the origins of Native activism

Abstract

P revious treatments of “Red Power” and Native American activism in the 1960s and 1970s began their histories with the occupation of Alcatraz, lionized the male leadership of the American Indian Movement (AIM), or characterized Native activism as inspired by or derivative of the other “power” movements of the time period. Shreve challenges such portrayals by detailing the development of the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), an organization of Native activists responsible for sparking two decades of grassroots and national activism in the mid-twentieth century. Using exhaustive archival sources and interviews with several key activists, he contextualizes the NIYC within a broader history of intertribal organizing, and traces its inception, development, key personalities, and controversies. In doing so, Shreve provides persuasive evidence that indigenous activism in the mid-century United States not only predates AIM and the Alcatraz occupation but also must be understood within the larger flow of 20th century Native American history. Doing so deepens and complicates our understandings of Native American activism at mid-century and prevents us from stereotyping “Red Power” as derivative of contemporaneous activist movements. After reviewing intertribal and Native youth organizing in the early twentieth century in the first two chapters, Shreve’s next two deal with the foundational years of the NIYC. His fifth chapter details NIYC’s successful involvement with the fish-ins of the Pacific Northwest, while chapters six and seven reveal an association of activists struggling to balance grassroots activism with their status as a national organization, and militancy with the need for institutionalization. The final chapter and epilogue follow the NIYC after the push for organization won out over militancy as the late 1970s saw legislative and legal successes for Native communities and the 1980s produced a sharp right turn in national politics. Shreve succeeds in asserting that the development of the NIYC is essential to understanding Native activism in the twentieth century. By Book Reviews 155