Clyde Warrior's

Abstract

Clyde Warrior's "Red Power": A Fresh Air of New Indian Idealism is an ethnobiography of one of the most outspoken young activist of the early Red Power movement. Based on primary source research and the oral history of some of his closest friends and family, the chapters detail the complexity of community, tradition, cultural immersion, and identity, and how these issues combined to inform and influence Warrior. Largely remembered as someone who predicted Red Power and paved the way for a future generation of militancy, Warrior actually shaped Red Power and laid the foundations for the more militant generation that followed.

Warrior's traditional upbringing defined his identity and was the thread that weaved all aspects of his life together. Clyde Warrior's "Red Power": A Fresh Air of New Indian Idealism begins with a brief of the Ponca before following with a description of how Warrior was raised within tribal traditions. The following chapters discuss Warrior's growing involvement and influence in American Indian activism as he introduces direct action and, together with Mel Thom, coins the phrase Red Power that would become symbolic of Indian's fight for civil and treaty rights in the 1960s and 1970s. Within the text is an analysis of the creation and perpetuation of the erroneous myth of early Red Power activism, and powwow culture, as pan-Indian constructs.

Warrior was a man of paradoxes. He grew up surrounded by intense, sometimes violent, racism and yet, as an adult, mixed comfortably in non-Native circles. He was a cultural carrier who crossed Native and non-Native worlds yet also managed to keep them apart. His traditional upbringing defined his identity yet not non-traditional cultural forms such as powwow equally shaped his worldview. He despaired of bureaucratic oversight of Indian nations and people, yet called for reform rather than abolition. He fought on behalf of all American Indians yet eschewed the concept of Pan-Indianism. He successfully demanded change to the system but did not live to see that change implemented. He was the most militant activist of his generation yet knew that the following generation would make him seem ineffectual by comparison. Brash, outspoken and irreverent publicly and to elected officials, he was always respectful and humble in the presence of traditional elders.

Clyde Warrior's "Red Power": A Fresh Air of New Indian Idealism underscores the need for scholars to revise conventional discussions of American Indian activism and move away from the ubiquitous prisms of Indian/White political relations. As much as Red Power was a fight for tribal self-determination and the rejection of federal oversight, in it's earliest incarnation that fight was not defined by federal policies of the past and present. It was a fight for the protection and retention of tradition, culture, community, and identity. It was defined by distinct cultural traditions and motifs, by tribal identity and traditions of inter-tribal co-operation and support. Clyde Warrior epitomized those traditions and motifs of tribalism, inter-tribalism, leadership and support. To many of his cohorts, Clyde Warrior was Red Power.