An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

a home, she was also highlighting a major point we tend to forget: that
those Africans were from a variety of Indigenous groups with particular
customs, beliefs, and political structures.
Brown continued expounding on the connections between these groups.
“The Indian people taught them what to do because they were too stupid to
know how to work the land and then they broke our back to do the work.”
She suggested that the crowd think of fighting for Dennis Banks as an act of
solidarity, and that it was “an issue of human beings who are beginning to
struggle together, who believe in Power to the People.” 51 The
Intercommunal News Service also documented other events, including the
Longest Walk in 1978. In this action, various Native people organized a
caravan of people from all across the country in what became the “Longest
Walk” to protest the US government’s continued violation and complete
disrespect of its treaties with Indigenous nations.
Black organizations continued to show support and make ideological
connections with Indigenous peoples. There were offshoot organizations
such as the Black Liberation Army (BLA), that believed in armed
revolution. While the Black Panther Party believed in armed self-defense,
the BLA believed that the time for revolution was now, and that it had to
use a variety of tactics against the US government to further its idea of
revolution. While there are at least a few well-known members of the BLA,
including Mutulu Shakur, the stepfather of the late rapper Tupac Shakur,
perhaps no one garners more emotional responses than Tupac’s godmother,
Assata Shakur, who today is still in Cuba. In 2013, the FBI declared that it
had added Shakur to the “Top Ten Most Wanted Terrorists” list—the first
time they had placed a woman on that list. 52 She remains a cultural icon for
Black people throughout the diaspora.
Shakur, a Black revolutionary, is best known for fleeing to Cuba after
being rescued from prison in New Jersey. She was originally arrested and
convicted because of her alleged involvement in the killing of New Jersey
state trooper Werner Foerster, after he stopped and pulled over two of her
BLA comrades, Sundiata Acoli and Zayd Malik Shakur. In 1979, she was
liberated from prison, and later escaped to Cuba, which granted her asylum
in 1984. Shakur also wrote for the news organ of the Third World Women
Alliance (TWWA), Triple Jeopardy: Racism, Imperialism, Sexism.
Founded in the summer of 1970, TWWA first emerged out of the Black
Women’s Liberation Caucus of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating