Post by Okwes on Dec 21, 2006 13:41:11 GMT -5
Searching for the Roots of Indian Activism November 29, 2006
www.the-review.com/news/simple_article/397152
<http://www.the-review.com/news/simple_article/397152> Bradley
Shreve is thinking about how the roots of Indian Activism came into
being and began to grow. His dissertation on Red Power Rising, the
Origins of Pan-Indian Activism in the United States is a work in
progress as he explores how Native Americans began to reach out beyond
tribal boundaries to become an activist movement. Bradley wasn't
thinking about politics as he grew up in Alliance. Politics didn't enter
the picture until he began work on his Bachelor's degree at Kent State
University. That was where the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four
students in 1970. It was at Kent State that he began to be interested in
civil rights and the Black Power Movement. He expanded his interest to
the Indian student movement, and that drew him to the University of New
Mexico, where he could work with one of the foremost scholars of
American Indian history, Margaret Connell-Szasz. She now chairs his
dissertation committee. Most historians, he says, believe the Native
American activist movement really began in the 1970s with the rise of
the American Indian movement and the takeover of the old federal prison
at Alcatraz in California. But he thinks it began decades earlier and is
poring over the papers of the National Indian Youth Council that were
processed and opened to the public a couple of years ago at the Center
for Southwest Research. He believes the Native American activist
movement can be traced to roots at the time of the New Deal in the
1930s, when John Collier argued with the American Indian Federation over
whether Indians should be assimilated into general American culture.
Bradley hopes to publish his research in book form after he completes
his dissertation in the Spring of 2007.
www.the-review.com/news/simple_article/397152
<http://www.the-review.com/news/simple_article/397152> Bradley
Shreve is thinking about how the roots of Indian Activism came into
being and began to grow. His dissertation on Red Power Rising, the
Origins of Pan-Indian Activism in the United States is a work in
progress as he explores how Native Americans began to reach out beyond
tribal boundaries to become an activist movement. Bradley wasn't
thinking about politics as he grew up in Alliance. Politics didn't enter
the picture until he began work on his Bachelor's degree at Kent State
University. That was where the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four
students in 1970. It was at Kent State that he began to be interested in
civil rights and the Black Power Movement. He expanded his interest to
the Indian student movement, and that drew him to the University of New
Mexico, where he could work with one of the foremost scholars of
American Indian history, Margaret Connell-Szasz. She now chairs his
dissertation committee. Most historians, he says, believe the Native
American activist movement really began in the 1970s with the rise of
the American Indian movement and the takeover of the old federal prison
at Alcatraz in California. But he thinks it began decades earlier and is
poring over the papers of the National Indian Youth Council that were
processed and opened to the public a couple of years ago at the Center
for Southwest Research. He believes the Native American activist
movement can be traced to roots at the time of the New Deal in the
1930s, when John Collier argued with the American Indian Federation over
whether Indians should be assimilated into general American culture.
Bradley hopes to publish his research in book form after he completes
his dissertation in the Spring of 2007.