An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

this growing unity is the best assurance that a world free of racism,
oppression and exploitation—a truly new world—can be born.” 2 It is
interesting that Black radical intellectuals and activists held this belief;
however, the settler state has erased our collective memories and our
imagination about what might be possible for our collective freedom.
This chapter seeks to analyze the contested relationship between Black
and Indigenous intellectuals and activists during the freedom struggles of
the 1960s and 1970s. During this era of what historian Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar
has called “radical ethnic nationalism,” Black and Indigenous activists
sought to radically transform their predicaments in a white supremacist
settler society. 3 They forged coalitions. They viewed their movements
separately, but what brought them together in protest and ideological
struggle was a complete overturning of the capitalist, settler-colonial, and
white supremacist system that had kept them oppressed for centuries.
During the Black freedom struggle, which, for analytical purposes, lasted
from the late 1950s until the late 1970s, there was also a parallel movement
for Indigenous treaty rights. Native Americans, just like Black Americans,
struggled for power. They wanted a return of land and a restoration of
sovereignty. Like Black folks, they held sit-ins, they held fish-ins. 4 While
Black folks were creating rebellions in the North and South, Indigenous
peoples were traveling to cities from reservations in great numbers. They
were also fomenting rebellions of their own; from taking government
buildings to taking over Alcatraz Island, Indigenous people showed that
they were alive and well. These groups also overlapped ideologically. As
Robert Warrior and Paul Chaat Smith note in their book Like a Hurricane
(1995), radical Indigenous groups like the American Indian Movement, led
by Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, and, later, Russell Means, “forged key
alliances with progressive lawyers, civil rights activists, and journalists.
They also understood that good news coverage was an involved and twoway
process.” 5 Smith and Warrior also note that AIM members also
“borrowed from the Black Panthers or other groups when necessary.” 6 Not
only did Indigenous activists and intellectuals borrow from Black Power
groups, but they also diligently studied them and worked with them.
DISCOURSES OF BLACK AND RED POWER