Sending a Sailor to War: The Ponca Singers, California Hobbyists, Vietnam, and the Rejection of the Counterculture Myth of the New Age Indian

In the 1960s two movements ran side-by-side, the anti-war student protests and the Counter-Culture. Both movements appropriated an imagined peaceful American Indian as unofficial emblems of their cause. In contrast to this, many American Indians fought in Vietnam while others blessed the soldiers who volunteered or were drafted. The Ponca Singers were one such group. The difference about the ceremony described within the article, is that it was conducted to bless a white sailor, who they claimed as one of their own, who went to war, rather than a Native American. In the era of the two aforementioned movements, this ceremony stood in stark contrast to the appropriation that surrounded them.