‘Red’ nations: Marxists and the Native American sovereignty movement of the late Cold War

ABSTRACT

This article constructs a history of the mutual personal engagement of Native American sovereignty activists and Marxist entities in the 1970s and 1980s. Native American diplomacy attempted to reconfigure the geography of American Indian sovereignty into a fully independent Native America in alliance with revolutionary Marxism and its ‘red’ nations around the globe. Marxist-Native solidarity in Europe was enabled by older continental European fantasies about Indians, and sanctioned by some Eastern Bloc governments. Indian-Marxist alliances could not be sustained because of the difficulties of reconciling US patriotic anti-Communism, the Marxist revolutionary project, and the indigenous rights struggle.

KEYWORDS:

• Native Americans
• sovereignty
• solidarity
• Marxists
• Cold War
• diplomacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ “National Amerindianist Party Platform,” in “S-0271-0001-04, American Indians – Wounded Knee, South Dakota (2),” Electronic file version of hard copy documents. United Nations Archives and Records Management Section, New York City, New York. Acquired on-site January 2009.

² The vast majority of literature on Marxism and Native Americans has focused on either the applicability of Marxism as ideology to indigenous sovereignty, or the utility of Marxist frameworks for the scholarship of indigenous issues. The first category of studies includes Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Francisco Salas Pérez, “All Our Relations (of Production): Losing and Finding Marx in the Field of Indian Materialism,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 24, no. 3 (2013): 160–7; David Michael Smith, “Marxism and Native Americans Revisited,” Sixth Native American Symposium, Southern Oklahoma State University, 10 November 2005 (online), http://www.se.edu/nas/files/2013/03/Proceedings-2005-Smith.pdf (accessed 2 November 2018); David Bedford, “Marxism and the Aboriginal Question: The Tragedy of Progress,” The Canadian Journal of Native Studies 14, no. 1 (1994): 101–17; Russel Lawrence Barsh, “Contemporary Marxist Theory and Native American Reality,” American Indian Quarterly 12, no. 3 (1988): 187–211; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “The Fourth World and Indigenism: Politics of Isolation and Alternatives,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 12, no. 1 (1984): 79–105; Richard Chase Smith and Shelton H. Davis, “Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s ‘The Fourth World and Indigenism: Politics of Isolation and Alternatives,’” Journal of Ethnic Studies 12, no. 4 (1985): 113–20; and Ward Churchill, ed., Marxism and Native Americans (Boston: South End Press, 1983). The second strand of inquiry is represented by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “The Relationship between Marxism and Indigenous Struggles and Implications of the Theoretical Framework for International Indigenous Struggles,” Historical Materialism 24, no. 3 (2016): 76–91; Samuel W. Rose, “Marxism, Indigenism, and the Anthropology of Native North America: Divergence and a Possible Future,” Dialectical Anthropology 4, no. 1 (2017): 13–31; and Scott Simon, “Introduction: Indigenous Peoples, Marxism and Late Capitalism,” in “Capitalism and Indigenous Peoples,” special issue of New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry 5, no. 1 (2011): 6–9; articles by Charles R. Menzies, Frank James Tester, Kimberly Linkous Brown, and Dorothee Schreiber in the “Indigenous Nations and Marxism,” special issue of New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry 3, no. 3 (2010); and David A. Muga, “Native Americans and the Nationalities Question: Premises for a Marxist Approach to Ethnicity and Self-Determination,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 16, no. 1 (1988): 31–51.

³ These include Anna Bánhegyi, “Where Marx Meets Osceola: Ideology and Mythology in the Eastern Bloc Western” (PhD diss., Southern Methodist University, 2012); and Carol L. Bagle and Jo Ann Ruckman, “Iroquois Contributions to Modern Democracy and Communism,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 7, no. 2 (1983): 53–72.

⁴ I define transnational as ways of thinking, embodied practices, and alliances that reach across the borders of the US nation state, bypass the US government, and thereby transcend the nation. Transnational performances, relations, diplomacy, or exchange can take place between a US ‘domestic’ group and another group from outside the US, or a US ‘domestic’ group and a foreign government. This definition of transnational builds on Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s 2004 presidential address to the American Studies Association. My conceptual framework is indebted to the scholarship of Penny von Eschen, and is not meant to minimise the overwhelming power of the (nation) state even as it attempts to recover the limited agency of such groups. Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American Studies. Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, 12 November 2004,” American Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2005): 17–57. Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–57 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997).

The Native American diplomacy of the Late Cold War was transnational because it involved American Indians outflanking the US government and pressuring it from the outside to recognise, enact, and respect their sovereignty rights. In their diplomacy – their demonstrations and solidarity rallies, fundraising concerts, diplomatic meetings, commemorations, and press conferences – the Native sovereignty movement temporarily transcended the US nation state both geographically and in that they articulated a Native status and identity outside of the US nation state.The American Indian sovereignty struggle of the Late Cold War resembled a national liberation movement in its goals: the activists of the American Indian Movement and its organisation the International Indian Treaty Council actually wanted to achieve independence for various Native North American communities. Therefore, their efforts aimed at a profoundly diplomatic goal: a fully sovereign Indian country. Accordingly, their means included approaching the US State Department, demonstrating and lobbying at the United Nations, building relations with European politicians and governments, Marxist regimes, and national liberation movements. These Native activists represented an all-Indian entity – ‘pan-Indianism’ – as they conducted relations with the US government, foreign governments, and other transnational movements. Their transnational programme was diplomacy also because they reasserted their nations’ prerogative to make treaties – an international diplomatic activity – and it also concerned maintaining peaceful relations; as making peace is reserved by the US Constitution for the federal government, it is a governmental diplomatic power. Finally, the radical Native sovereignty movement sought recognition of treaty and sovereignty rights by various entities – a major object of diplomatic relations.

⁵ The phrase and concept are from Philip J. Deloria. Philip J. Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).

⁶ See Quinn Slobodian, ed., Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015).

⁷ The term ‘impaired sovereignty’ was first used in the Johnson v. McIntosh decision of the so-called Marshall trilogy of US Supreme Court rulings on Indian rights. This judicial opinion claimed that tribal sovereignty, while impaired by European colonisation, still needs to be taken into consideration. Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823), Justia US Supreme Court Center (online), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/21/543/ (accessed 3 November 2018).

⁸ For more on the sovereignty movement’s struggle to roll back the post-war federal termination policy, see Charles Wilkinson, Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations (New York: Norton, 2005).

⁹ Paul C. Rosier, Serving Their Country: American Indian Politics and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 9, 10–11, 110–60.

¹⁰ Daniel Cobb, Native Activism in Cold War America: The Struggle for Sovereignty (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 14, 18–21.

¹¹ For more see Chapter 3 “Dilemmas,” in ibid., 58–79.

¹² “14 June 1974 Speech to the International Indian Treaty Council Meeting” by Russell Means, 1–2. Emphases added. Roger A. Finzel American Indian Movement Papers, Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

¹³ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 31–2.

¹⁴ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005), 17, 20, 51, 261.

¹⁵ Carol Sullivan, “The Indians and the Media” in “Perspectives on the Occupation of Wounded Knee,” 5–9, Self-standing manuscript. No date, in the years after spring 1973. Carol Sullivan Papers, Center for Southwest Research, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

¹⁶ Lucie Kýrová, Personal communication, 29 September 2018. Also see “A Handy Tool or a Limited Sideshow: The Native American Rights Struggle and the Media,” in Lucie Kýrová, “‘The Right to Think for Themselves’: Native American Intellectual Sovereignty and Internationalism During the Cold War, 1950–89” (Unpublished PhD diss., College of William and Mary, December 2014).

¹⁷ Lucie Kýrová, Personal communication, 29 September 2018; Iona Andronov, “Ještě jedna americká tragédie,” (“Another American Tragedy”) Nová doba (Czechoslovak edition of the Soviet weekly New Times), no. 12 (28 March 1973), 20–2.

¹⁸ Russell Means with Marvin J. Wolf, Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 279; and Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: The New Press, 1996), 206; Woody Kipp, Viet Cong at Wounded Knee: The Trail of a Blackfeet Activist (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 126.

¹⁹ For various such charges, made on and off the record, see Means and Wolf, Where White Men Fear to Tread, 276, 328; Dennis Banks and Richard Erdoes, Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 176, 220; Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane, 192, 207; and William S. White, “The Red Storm-Trooper Phenomenon” (originally Associated Press 7 March 1973), in Akwesasne Notes, April 1973, 16, Underground Newspaper Collection, Center for Southwest Research, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Michael J. Harner, “Wounded Knee,” The New York Times, 20 March 1973, 39. “Wounded Knee Trial Resumes in Accord,” The New York Times, 27 August 1974, 24.

²⁰ Bernd C. Peyer, “Who is Afraid of AIM?” in Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays, ed. Christian F. Feest (Aachen: Edition Herodt-Rader Verlag, 1987), 551.

²¹ Friedrich von Borries and Jens-Uwe Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys: Der Wilde Westen Ostdeutschlands [Socialist Cowboys: The Wild West of East Germany] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2008), 41–3.

²² For selected scholarship on the topic, see James MacKay and David Stirrup, eds., Tribal Fantasies: Native Americans in the European Imaginary, 1900–2010 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); H. Glenn Penny, Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013); Pamela Kort and Max Hollein, eds., I Like America: Fictions of the Wild West (New York: Prestel, 2006); Colin G. Calloway, Gerd Gemünden, and Suzanne Zantop, eds., Germans and Indians: Fantasies, Encounters, Projections (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002); and Christian F. Feest, ed., Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays (Aachen: Edition Herodot Rader-Verlag, 1987).

²³ Von Borries and Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys, 46–51. All subsequent quotes translated by the author into English. For more on the infusion of Marxism in the East German Indianerfilme, see Anna Bánhegyi, “Where Marx Meets Osceola.”

²⁴ Means and Wolf, Where White Men Fear to Tread, 295; and Banks and Erdoes, Ojibwa Warrior, 202.

²⁵ Akwesasne Notes August–October 1973, 44–6, Underground Newspaper Collection.

²⁶ Von Borries and Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys, 63–6.

²⁷ “Interview mit der AIM-Indianerin Monica Charles,” Junge Welt, 17 August 1973. Quoted in ibid., 65–6.

²⁸ Quoted in ibid., 66.

²⁹ “Letters of Solidarity,” Box 24, Location, 151.K.3.9B; “Letters,” Box 93; “Correspondence: Foreign Fund-Raising, Solidarity, and Information Requests,” Box 95; Undated petition in English, “Petitions: Foreign and Domestic,” Box 100; “Petitions: Foreign and Domestic,” Location 146.H.13.4F: Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee, Minnesota Historical Society, St Paul, Minnesota.

³⁰ 5 December 1973 letter from Seán O Cionnaith of International Affairs Bureau of the Irish Republican Movement, Dublin, Ireland, Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee.

³¹ October 1974 letter from Andreas Erdmann of East Germany; 21 February 1975 letter from Andreas Wollmann, East Berlin; undated letter from H. Marius Spanier of Hannover, West Germany: Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee.

³² Quoted in von Borries and Fischer, 66, translation by Toth, in “Letters of Solidarity,” Box 95, Location 151.K.3.9B and in “Petitions: Foreign and Fomestic,” Box 100, Location 146.H.13.4F, Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee; 20 May 1974 letter from How-kola-Klub Völkerkundliche Kulturgruppe Zur Pflege des Brauchtums der Prärieindianer, Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee.

³³ 5 April 1974 from Ingrid Jakob, Coburg, West Germany; 27 September 1974 letter from Marion Busch from East Germany: Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee.

³⁴ Martin Klimke, The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany & the United States in the Global Sixties (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010, 134–42); 28 October 1974, letter from Andreas Erdmann of East Germany, Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee.

³⁵ Undated letter to Ingrid Jakob of Coburg, West Germany; 10 April 1974 letter to unnamed addressee; 12 February 1974 letter from Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee to Irish Committee for the Defense of Wounded Knee; Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee.

³⁶ 5 June 1974, letter to Miss Marlis Horn of Hamburg, West Germany; Undated letter to Axel Schulze-Thulin of German American Indian Group; Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee.

³⁷ “Petitions: Foreign and Domestic,” Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee; John William Sayer, Ghost Dancing the Law: The Wounded Knee Trials (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 228; “Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee: An Inventory of Its Records at the Minnesota Historical Society,” Online finding aid. http://www.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00229.xml (accessed 27 June 2019); 27 September 1974 letter from Marion Bush from East Germany; 18 October 1974 letter from C. Sänger, East Berlin; 13 October 1974, letter from Herbert Leisdahner of “Committee American Indian Movement, Betriebschule des VEB Robur”: Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee.

³⁸ Crow Dog and Erdoes, Lakota Woman (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), 238–9.

³⁹ Ibid., 78–9, 153, 155–6.

⁴⁰ Quoted in Ibid., 55. The authors of the original book changed the German names to protect the privacy of their respondents.

⁴¹ Bernd C. Peyer, “Who is Afraid of AIM?” in Feest, ed., Indians and Europe, 551.

⁴² For more on Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, see Glenn Penny, “Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich and Indian Activist Networks in East and West Germany,” Central European History 41 (2008): 447–76.

⁴³ Von Borries and Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys, 44, 47.

⁴⁴ Letters to Richard Erdoes from Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, 8 November 1974; 1 April 1975, Richard Erdoes Papers. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale University, New Haven, CT.

⁴⁵ Peyer, “Who is Afraid of AIM?,” 551.

⁴⁶ Letter to Richard Erdoes from Regina Mayer White Plume, 13 February 1975, Richard Erdoes Papers.

⁴⁷ Letters section of Akwesasne Notes December 1971, 47, Underground Newspaper Collection.

⁴⁸ “Discography LP’s,” Pete Wyoming Bender homepage (moribund). http://www.pete-wyoming-bender.de/ (accessed 15 February 2014).

⁴⁹ 11 February 1976 cable from the US Embassy in Berlin to the Secretary of State, Washington, DC. State Department Records (online database). National Archives and Records Administration. https://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-description.jsp?s=4073&cat=all&bc=sl (accessed 16 August 2019).

⁵⁰ “pete – revo,” “pete – warrior” Photographs on Pete Wyoming Bender homepage (moribund) (accessed 15 February 2014).

⁵¹ One of the photographs recording this is “Russell Means and Dennis Banks” Unidentified Artist, 1973 NPG.2005.32 Online database of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery https://npg.si.edu/media/A5000064C.jpg (accessed 5 November 2018); According to his English biography on his (now moribund) website, Bender was born in France but spent much of his childhood in the United States before moving with his father ‘back to Germany’. The lyrics of his hit ‘Born to be Indian’ were ‘written by his brother Zeph Zephier Sr. (a Yankton Sioux). Pete was adopted by the family and tribe. Pete was also member of the American Indian Movement and speaker for the German office for some time.’ This kind of positioning of a white person ‘adopted’ by Native North Americans and being a member of the radical sovereignty movement is itself a transatlantic form of ‘playing Indian’. Biography. Pete Wyoming Bender homepage (moribund). http://www.pete-wyoming-bender.de/ (accessed 15 February 2014).

⁵² “Indian Delegation Visits Soviet Union,” Treaty Council News, November 1977, 3; ‘“These Countries Believe Strongly in Human Rights,”’ By Sherry Means, Treaty Council News, November 1977, 4. Original title in quotation marks. Records of the International Indian Treaty Council, San Francisco, California.

⁵³ By the late 1970s, the US government’s relentless legal campaign against AIM, and tribal chairman Dick Wilson’s reign of terror on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota, were taking their toll on the radical Indian sovereignty movement. Some of their leading activists, like Pedro Bissonette and Anna Mae Aquash, had been killed; others, like Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Leonard Crow Dog, and Leonard Peltier, were either being prosecuted in court or had already been sentenced to prison terms up to life.

⁵⁴ Katrin Sieg, Ethnic Drag: Performing Race, Nation, Sexuality in West Germany (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002), 122.

⁵⁵ Von Borries and Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys, 18–19, 31–2.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 32–3; Interview with long-time member and leader of the Bakony group of Hungarian Indianist hobbyists, June 2011. Source kept anonymous to protect personal identity; Von Borries and Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys, 31–2, 54.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 35.

⁵⁸ 28 October 1974 letter to WKLD/OC from Andreas Erdmann of Neuruppin. Original in English. Records of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee.

⁵⁹ In 1977, Leonard Peltier was sentenced to consecutive life terms in prison for the killing of two FBI agents on the Jumping Bull Ranch in June 1975. The radical Indian sovereignty movement embarked on a still on-going international campaign to win the release of Peltier. Von Borries and Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys, 67; the Treaty Council’s Jimmie Durham also attended a peace conference in Warsaw, Poland, May 1977, which issued resolutions calling for international campaigns supporting Native American ‘political prisoners’ Skyhorse, Mohawk, and Peltier. “Treaty Council at World Peace Conference,” Council News, June 1977, 2, Records of the International Indian Treaty Council.

⁶⁰ Von Borries and Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys, 33.

⁶¹ Ibid., 41, 43, 60, 68–9, 78–9, 86–7.

⁶² Ibid., 135–6. For such a perspective among Czechoslovak Indian hobbyists, see John Paskievich, dir., documentary If Only I Were an Indian (Winnipeg: National Film Board of Canada, 1995).

⁶³ Anja Kunze, “Die Indianistikszene der DDR” [The Indianist Scene of the German Democratic Republic] (Master’s Thesis in European Ethnography and Geography, Humbold University of Berlin, October 2006), 65–6. Library of the Federal Commissioner for the files of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic, Berlin.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 136. Such measures of state control were not exclusive to East Germany. Hungarian state security also monitored Indianist hobby groups. See Melinda Kovai, “Az ‘Indiánok’ fedőnevű ügy” [“Operation ‘Indians’”] In special issue on “Surveillance,” AnBlokk 3 (2009): 40–51.

⁶⁵ File “XIV 1418/85, Karl-Marx Stadt, ‘Hans,’” 000069. Federal Commissioner for the files of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic.

⁶⁶ Means with Wolf, Where White Men Fear to Tread, 368, 369.

⁶⁷ “Ceremony & Sundance, Europe, Do’s & Don’ts; Beer & Alcohol, etc., Europe?” Undated audio recording of Archie Fire Lame Deer, 1/2, Richard Erdoes Papers.

⁶⁸ 000173, Federal Commissioner for the files of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic.

⁶⁹ “Archie Fire, Tape 3; Wolakota,” Audio recording, 1/2, 2 March 1986, Richard Erdoes Papers.

⁷⁰ Here I use Philip J. Deloria’s analytical term ‘playing Indian’ for the performance of Indianness by white Americans to fashion a variety of collective identities for themselves. Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (London: Yale University Press, 1998), 5, 7–8.

⁷¹ “Archie Fire, Tape 3; Wolakota,” Audio recording, 1/2, 2 March 1986, Richard Erdoes Papers.

⁷² Such scholarship includes Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Leonard J. Sadosky, Revolutionary Negotiations: Indians, Empires, and Diplomats in the Founding of America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009); Timothy J. Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy on the Early American Frontier (New York: Viking, 2008); Tom Arne Midtrød, The Memory of All Ancient Customs: Native American Diplomacy in the Colonial Hudson Valley (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012); John T. Juricek, Colonial Georgia and the Creeks: Anglo-Indian Diplomacy on the Southern Frontier, 1733–63 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010); Charles A. Weeks, Paths to a Middle Ground: The Diplomacy of Natchez, Boukfouka, Nogales, and San Fernando de las Barrancas, 1791–95 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005); Gilles Havard, The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701: French-Native Diplomacy in the Seventeenth Century (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001); and Documents of American Indian Diplomacy: Treaties, Agreements, and Conventions, 1775–1979 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999).

⁷³ Rusty Conroy, “Defends Indian Rights: NASC Advances Struggle,” Guardian, 7 April 1976; “Threats to the Peaceful Observance of the Bicentennial. Hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-Fourth Congress, Second Session, 18 June 1976,” US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1976 (online) http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Threats_to_the_peaceful_observance_of_the_bicentennial.djvu/1 (accessed 16 August 2019). 91–3; “Discussion Paper – NASC [Native American Solidarity Committee] as a Non-Indian Solidarity Organization,” Underground Newspaper Collection.

⁷⁴ For more on the relations between the Red Power movement and the counterculture’s various groups, see Sherry L. Smith, Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

⁷⁵ For more on the fluidity characteristic of Germanic solidarity groups, see Bernd C. Peyer, “Who is Afraid of AIM?,” in Christian F. Feest, ed., Indians and Europe, 552–3.

⁷⁶ See Glen Penny, “Elusive Authenticity,” 798–818.

⁷⁷ Archie Fire Lame Deer was the son of John Fire Lame Deer, with whom Richard Erdoes had co-authored the book Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972).

⁷⁸ Von Borries and Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys, 82–4, 97.

⁷⁹ “Ceremony & Sundance, Europe, Do’s & Don’ts; Beer & Alcohol, etc., Europe?”, Undated audio recording by Richard Erdoes of Archie Fire Lame Deer, Richard Erdoes Papers. Peyer likewise refers to the same or possibly another similar instance at the 1983 “1st European Medicine Wheel Gathering and Spiritual Camp” in the Black Forest. Peyer, “Who is Afraid of AIM?” 560.

⁸⁰ “Declaration of Continuing Independence by the First International Indian Treaty Council at Standing Rock Indian Country June 1974,” Roger A. Finzel, American Indian Movement Papers. Also at https://www.iitc.org/about-iitc/the-declaration-of-continuing-independence-june-1974/ (accessed 5 November 2018).

⁸¹ International Indian Treaty Council application for non-governmental organisation consultative status in the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC), 21 June 1974. In Consultative Arrangements and Relations with the International Indian Treay Council- OR 340 (958), Pt. 1. S-0446-0264-0003, UN. Registry Section, Archive Series-Box S-0446-0264, Registry Archive Group – Organizational (OR). United Nations Archives, New York City.

⁸² Letter from Virginia Saurwein of the UN Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations to Jimmie Durham of the International Indian Treaty Council, 18 May 1977. In ibid.

⁸³ While in the early and mid-1970s there was a hope among Indian activists that they could get the United Nations to place Indian reservations on a track to eventual decolonisation through the Decolonization Committee, both the precedents by African Americans and the responses of the United Nations channelled Native efforts into categorising sovereignty rights as human rights. For more on this, see György Tóth, From Wounded Knee to Checkpoint Charlie: The Alliance for Sovereignty between American Indians and Central Europeans in the Late Cold War (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016), 141–68.

⁸⁴ For more, see President Jimmy Carter’s “First Inaugural Address,” 20 January 1977. Online at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1194 (accessed 5 November 2018); also “Human Rights and Foreign Policy,” Jimmy Carter’s commencement speech at Notre Dame University, June 1977. Online at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=727 (accessed 5 November 2018).

⁸⁵ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border, 44–6, 232.

⁸⁶ UNCHR session 21 February, 7 & 8 March 1978, Bound volume, “United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights 1978–9,” E/CN.4/SR.1441–1480; UNCHR session 10am & 3pm, 10 March 1979, Bound volume, “ United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights 1979–80,” E/CN.4/SR.1481–1522; UNCHR session March 11, 12, 10 AM, 3 PM, 1985, Bound volume “United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights 1985,” E/CN.4/1985/SR 46–58; UNCHR session 19 February 19, 27, 1990, Bound volume “United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights 1990,” E/CN.4/1990/SR.20–40: United Nations Library, Palace of the Nations, Geneva, Switzerland.

⁸⁷ “United Nations Commission on Human Rights (Thirty-Seventh Session),” Oyate Wicaho, February–May 1981, 6, Underground Newspaper Collection. Also “Written statements,” E/CN.4/NGO/299, 4 February 1981; E/CN.4/NGO/311 17 February 1981; E/CN.4/NGO/319, 2 March 1981, United Nations Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Thirty-Seventh session, agenda item 13, United Nations Library.

⁸⁸ UNCHR session 10 February 1989, Bound volume “United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights 1989–90,” E/CN.4/1989/SR. 1-20; UNCHR session 21 February, 1 March 1989, Bound volume “United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights 19890-90,” E/CN.4/1989/SR.21-36; UNCHR session 6 & 7 March 1989, Bound volume “United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights 19890-90,” E/CN.4/1989/SR.50-57, United Nations Library.

⁸⁹ See L.26 draft resolution on human rights in Cuba by the US, and L.35 draft resolution on human rights in the United States by Cuba: Bound volume “United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights 1985–8,” E/CN.4/1988/L.12-104. Also UNCHR session 10 March 1988, Bound volume “United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights 1988, E/CN.4/1988/SR. 42-57,” United Nations Library.

⁹⁰ For more, see Means’ speech “For America to Live, Europe must Die” at the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, South Dakota, July 1980. In Means with Wolf, Where White Men Fear to Tread, 545–54.

⁹¹ Ward Churchill, ed., Marxism and Native Americans (Boston: South End Press, 1983), 26, 28. The text of this article by Russell Means titled “The Same Old Song” is largely identical with his, “For America to Live, Europe Must Die,” a speech claimed to have been delivered at the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, South Dakota, July 1980, published in Means with Wolf, Where White Men Fear to Tread, 545–54.

⁹² For more about this, see Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Indians of the Americas: Human Rights and Self-Determination (London: Zed Books, 1984).

⁹³ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 12.

⁹⁴ Means with Wolf, Where White Men Fear to Tread, 461, 463, 466; Dunbar Ortiz, Blood on the Border, 12.

⁹⁵ “International Indian Treaty Council Report,” Oyate Wicaho, November 1980, 6–8; “Nicaragua’s Literacy Crusade: A Revolutionary Priority,” Oyate Wicaho, June–August 1981, 5; and “Liberated Indian Country: Free Nicaragua,” Treaty Council News, July 1981, 3, Underground Newspaper Collection.

⁹⁶ “Liberated Indian Country: Free Nicaragua,” Treaty Council News, July 1981, 3, Underground Newspaper Collection.

⁹⁷ “AIM and Treaty Council Visit Nicaragua,” Oyate Wicaho, January–March 1982, 6, Underground Newspaper Collection.

⁹⁸ Ibid.

⁹⁹ “Clarification of Treaty Council Position on the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua,” Oyate Wicaho, May–August 1982, 8–9, Underground Newspaper Collection.

¹⁰⁰ Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border, 129, 135–6; and Means with Wolf, Where White Men Fear to Tread, 459–60.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 137; and “An Interview with Russell Means,” Akwesasne Notes 14, no. 3 (1982), 23, Underground Newspaper Collection. Also the same at the American Indian Digital History Project (online) http://www.aidhp.com/files/original/38dc40f8473de5379a79eb2713d060da.pdf (accessed 29 September 2018).

¹⁰² Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “To the Editors of Akwesasne Notes,” 16 July 1982, Oyate Wicaho, May–August 1982, 9, Underground Newspaper Collection.

¹⁰³ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border, 137.

¹⁰⁴ Means with Wolf, Where White Men Fear to Tread, 463, 466; “Leaders Decry Proposal to Have US Indians Fight Sandinistas,” The Daily Californian, 3 April 1985; AIM Governing Council press release 4 April 1985, Records of the International Indian Treaty Council; also in Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border, 247.

¹⁰⁵ For example, the International Indian Treaty Council invited and hosted pro-Sandinista Miskito at a conference in Arizona. “Clarification of Treaty Council Position on the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua,” Oyate Wicaho, May–August 1982, 8–9, Underground Newspaper Collection.

¹⁰⁶ “NCAI President Enters into an International Agreement with General Commander Brooklyn Rivera, of MISURATA, Nicaragua,” 15 August 1983, Records of the International Indian Treaty Council; Letter from Armstrong Wiggins of the Indian Law Resource Center to William Means of the International Indian Treaty Council, 25 June 1984, Records of the International Indian Treaty Council. Also see Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border, 113.

¹⁰⁷ “Clarification of Treaty Council Position on the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua,” Oyate Wicaho, May–August 1982, 8–9, Underground Newspaper Collection.

¹⁰⁸ Letter from Armstrong Wiggins of the Indian Law Resource Center to William Means of the International Indian Treaty Council, 25 June 1984, Records of the International Indian Treaty Council. Also see Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border, 113.

¹⁰⁹ Letter from Glenn Morris of Colorado AIM to Bill Means and Bill Wahpepah of the International Indian Treaty Council, 29 October 1986, Records of the International Indian Treaty Council.

¹¹⁰ Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border, 257.

¹¹¹ Letter from Hank Adams of the Survival of the American Indians Association to President Ronald Reagan, 30 November 1985, Records of the International Indian Treaty Council. Also see Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border, 258–9.

¹¹² Ibid., 199–200.

¹¹³ Ibid., 258, 259.

¹¹⁴ This formulation was inspired by the title of Penny von Eschen’s Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism 1937–57 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).

¹¹⁵ Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border, 268.

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György Tóth

György Tóth holds degrees from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary (MA in English Language & Lit and American Studies) and The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA (PhD in American Studies). In his academic specialisations, George combines US cultural and social history with Transnational American Studies, Performance Studies, and Memory Studies to yield interdisciplinary insights into the politics of social and cultural movements in the post-1945 US and Europe. Since December 2014 George has been serving as Lecturer in post-1945 US History and Transatlantic Relations at the Division of History and Politics at the University of Stirling, Scotland, UK. His book From Wounded Knee to Checkpoint Charlie on the transatlantic alliance for American Indian sovereignty in the late Cold War was published by SUNY Press in 2016. He is co-author of Memory in Transatlantic Relations from the Cold War to the Global War on Terror, to be published by Routledge. Among others, George teaches courses on twentieth- century US history, American Indian history and policy, and transnational US history.