A one-of-a-kind lyrical and fast-paced memoir of the frontlines and trenches of Native liberation in the Four Corners and Southwest in the 1970s.
From the late summer of 1972 to the late summer of 1974, John Redhouse and many other Navajo and Indian rights activists threw all they had into mass movement organizing and direct action. And they were pretty good at it too in terms of effectiveness and impact.
Written in the first-person and above all, with a collective spirit of generosity and witness, John Redhouse describes the hot temper of the times in the racist and exploitative border towns in the Four Corners area of the Southwest region.
As John Redhouse says, “Without the People, you have nothing. But back then, we had a lot of people WITH us.” Yes, the Power of the People, the collective human spirit of the emerging local and regional Indian civil movement, thousands of us marching in the streets of Gallup and Farmington in northwestern New Mexico with our demands. A bold citizens arrest at city hall, a downtown street riot, burning images of enemy leaders in effigy. And more marches, demonstrations, and direct actions.
Above all, though, there was that Spirit—that unbroken, unconquerable spirit—that moved us, that drove us, that led us. And that was just in the border towns. In that turbulent decade, there was also the rapidly rising and spreading with-the-people, on-the-land resistance struggles in the coal, uranium, and oil and gas fields, and in disputed territories in the San Juan and Black Mesa basins that were targeted for ethnic cleansing and mineral extraction.
Bordertown Clashes, Resource Wars, Contested Territories: The Four Corners in the Turbulent 1970s brings readers to the enduring issues of the day, traced over half a century ago, where John Redhouse and many more were in the middle of a revolution that unfolds to this day.
About the Author
John Redhouse was born and raised in Farmington, New Mexico and graduated from Farmington High School in 1969. He was a longtime Navajo and Indian rights activist. Redhouse worked with the Indians Against Exploitation in Gallup, N.M. in 1972–1973 and the Coalition for Navajo Liberation in Farmington in 1974. He was Associate Director of the National Indian Youth Council in Albuquerque, N.M. from 1974 to 1978. Redhouse also served on the City of Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Air Quality Control Board in 1978 and the New Mexico State Advisory Committee to the United States Civil Rights Commission in 1978-79. In 1979–1980, he worked with the American Indian Environmental Council in Albuquerque; Reno, Nevada; and Flagstaff, Arizona. Redhouse was a writer and consultant from 1981 to 1987. In 1988–1989, he worked with the Tonantzin Land Institute in Albuquerque. Redhouse was a consultant from 1990 to 2012. He is a graduate of the University of New Mexico and a U.S. Army veteran.
Diné) (Introduction, Editor) is Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and coauthor ofRed Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation and The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save the Earth. She cohosts and produces the podcast Red Power Hour, which is sponsored by Red Media, a Native-led media organization she cofounded in 2019. She also does community organizing with The Red Nation, a grassroots Native-run organization she cofounded in 2014 that is committed to Indigenous liberation and decolonization.
Jennifer Denetdale (Foreword) is a citizen of the Navajo Nation. She is a professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and the chair of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission. She is the author of Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita and two Diné histories for young adults. She is a coauthor of Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation and has published numerous journal articles and chapter essays on Indigenous feminisms, Diné nation building, and bordertown studies. She is the recipient of two Henry Luce Foundation grants to mount a Milton Snow Photography exhibition in collaboration with the Navajo Nation Museum.
Excerpt
“I grew up in Farmington in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a typical bordertown, racist as hell. There were the usual local rednecks, the ones whose eyes were genetically and generationally spaced closer together than most people. They didn’t like Indians but they liked our money. They rather roll an Indian than kill one, although there were some white Indian killings. And then came the boomers, the white oilfield trash from Texas and Oklahoma, who were as dangerous as they looked. They hated Blacks in TX and OK but since there were very few Negroes and a whole lot of Indians in the new Energy Capital of the West, we, the local Indians, became their niggers. Red niggers. The energy boom of the 50s and 60s brought the boomers and that’s when Indian killing became a regular sport in Farmington. They would kill you just because you were an Indian. So the bordertown bros like Fred Johnson, Sam Benally, Melvin Betsellie, Deland Pioche, me, and others who grew in South Farmington and on the Peninsula grew up fighting during that particularly violent period. We had to fight back to survive. Or the local Hitler Youth would have beat us to death. And while we were fighting for our lives, we realized the supreme irony that most of the energy that made Farmington a boomtown came from the nearby Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, Southern Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute Indian reservations. And that much of the water in the rivers which flowed through our tribal lands were used for regional energy development which benefited not only the area boomers but large off-reservation, non-Indian populations in big cities such as Albuquerque, El Paso, Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Los Angeles…Oh, my god, we were a colony, an exploited energy and water colony of the master race. The colonialism was by design. The exploitation was part of a grand plan. And we in the bordertown ghettoes were fighting the sons of the colonizer and exploiters who had set up shop and were running their resource raids out of Farmington. We the indigenous people of this land were being screwed—coming and going.”
* * *
“Even as future uranium mining and milling were planned, there were still no laws to compensate radiation victims and survivors of past uranium development. There were no laws to reclaim and remediate abandoned uranium mines and mills. There was no governmental or corporate responsibility to address these heinous environmental crimes. And with the renewed uranium rush, our tribal homelands were being invaded or reinvaded by outsiders. It was a foreign invasion or reinvasion. Land was being taken. People were dying. These are the elements of war. The Indian Wars are not yet over.”
* * *
It was mid-morning on September 19, 1972. A yellow cab had just dropped me off at the southeast corner of Vassar and Central, S.E., across from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Carrying my ever-present briefcase and snag bag, I stepped on to the main campus and walked purposefully to 1812 Las Lomas, N.E. where the Native American Studies Center and the Kiva Club were jointly housed in a one-story adobe under the shade of huge cottonwoods. Opening the dark brown door, I was greeted immediately by center secretary Lena Lujan, a strikingly attractive, vivacious woman from Isleta Pueblo and James Nez, a quiet laidback Navajo student from Shiprock and one of the roommates of Larry Casuse. James told me how to find Larry at their off-campus, high-rise dormitory room on east Grand, just a few blocks away. I went to their dorm room and found that my old friend Ricky Anderson from Farmington was also one of Larry’s roommates. A brilliant Navajo civil engineer major, Ricky then told Larry that I had arrived. After shaking hands, Larry and I spent the rest of the day discussing the important issues and work which had brought us together the month before.
In addition to Larry’s continued work as a member of the Gallup-based Indians Against Exploitation Central Committee, he was recently elected as president of the Kiva Club. Under his leadership, KC had become increasingly active in native issues both on and off campus. One of the areas of particular focus was IAE’s continuing campaign against the exploitive Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial. After finishing our intense strategic planning session, Larry took me to the airport where I caught a plane to Farmington. But before boarding the plane, I was singled out and physically searched for bombs and other weapons of mass destruction by airport security that was obviously alerted by the FBI and state police who were no doubt following Larry and I earlier that day. In time, we would get used to—and in fact, expect—the constant surveillance and harassment by the monolithic oppressor. It was just part of the reality of the Indian rights work to which we were committed.