Native American Activism in Cold War America: The Struggle for Sovereignty (review)

Unlike previous works by Johnson and by Chaat Smith and Warrior that have a late 1960s and 1970s focus, Cobb traces the history of American Indian activism before the founding of the American Indian Movement (aim) in 1968.¹ His book starts with the termination era and ends with the Poor Peoples' Campaign in the spring of 1968. Strangely, the end date of this study seems arbitrary. The Mohawk sit-down protest on the International Bridge in December 1968, the founding of Akwesasne Notes in the spring of 1969, and the takeover of Alcatraz Island in November 1969, which were not the result of aim activists, shaped the movement even more than the tear gassing of Resurrection City during the Poor Peoples' Campaign, an incident that Cobb thoroughly describes.

Cobb enlightens the reader with helpful portraits of key Native Americans who have never received sufficient historical attention before. Other scholars, such as Thomas Clarkin in Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Years, 1961–1969 (Albuquerque, 2001) and George Castile in To Show Heart: Native American Self-Determination and Federal Policy, 1960–1975 (Tucson, 1998), have provided Washington-based studies of the Indian policies of Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, but they neglect much of the prodding by Native Americans in this era. Unlike these earlier policy studies, Cobb focuses on lesser-known but significant individuals—John Belindo (Kiowa-Navajo), Robert Dumont (Assiniboine), Tillie Walker (Mandan-Hidatsa), Jim Wilson (Oglala Lakota), and many others. His book also effectively adds to our knowledge about better-known Native Americans, including Hank Adams, LaDonna Harris, Mel Thom, and Clyde Warrior. He reveals the early involvement and influence of Vine Deloria, Jr., and other remarkable Native American intellectuals, such as Robert Thomas and D'Arcy McNickle—as well as such non-Indian anthropologists as Sol Tax and Nancy Lurie—on the growing movement.

Cobb makes valuable contributions to the scholarly literature in three areas: first, describing the important role of the National Indian Youth Council in the 1960s; second, analyzing how certain key individuals—Indian and non-Indian alike—helped to ensure that programs for Native Americans were included under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964; and third, documenting Native American participation in the Poor Peoples' Campaign in 1968. He points to certain key moments in the awakening of the movement: the appointment of Jim Wilson (Lakota) to head the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity Indian Division; the Scottsdale National Conference of the National Congress of American Indians in 1965, where Sargent Shriver established a network of Indian advisors that included the youthful Deloria, as well as such powerful tribal chairmen as Wendell Chino (Mescalero Apache) and Roger Jourdain (Red Lake Ojibwe); and President Lyndon B. Johnson's speech entitled "The Forgotten Americans," delivered on March 6, 1968.

Cobb makes use of the Doris Duke Oral History Collections at the University of Oklahoma and University of Utah, and he personally conducted fifteen interviews with Native American participants (among them, Deloria, just before his death, and Dorothy Davids, a Stockbridge historian), as well as others with a few non-Indian policymakers and anthropologists. His sample appears to be limited to Native Americans west of the Mississippi and their causes, leaving more than 20 percent of the Native American population outside his scope.

Cobb has drawn much of his findings from excellent collections: the National Congress of American Indians (National Museum of the American Indian), the American Association on American Indians, the American Civil Liberties Union (Princeton), the American Chicago Conference (National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian), the Newberry Library, The Stewart Udall Papers (University of Arizona), and the William Zimmerman Papers (University of New Mexico). Although Cobb cites the Nixon Library in his bibliography, he did not examine key materials in four other presidential libraries—the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Libraries. By not visiting the Truman Library, Cobb missed looking at the papers of Philleo Nash, President Kennedy...