The radical story of the Native American liberation movement, 50 years on

Abstract

First paragraph: In the thick of 1968’s seismic social upheavals, Native Americans also reached for their rights, and activists renewed their campaign for recognition and status as fully sovereign nations. The late Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign featured several caravans that collected Indian activists before converging on Washington DC. In May and June 1968, Native American delegates lobbied US officials and castigated federal Indian policy in the press, explaining that American Indians did not want civil rights – they wanted their own collective rights of sovereignty: We make it unequivocally and crystal clear that Indian people have the right to separate and equal communities within the American system – our own communities that are institutionally and politically separate, socially equal and secure within the American system.