A Journey to Freedom

October 8, 2018
Blansett, a historian whose heritage includes multiple Indian nations, retraces the steps of the 1960s–1970s Red Power movement—which sought increased native control over internal affairs, the return of native land, and justice for the cultural and economic damage done by U.S. and Canadian government policies—through this well-researched biography of Mohawk ironworker and nontraditional college student Richard Oakes. Born in New York, Oakes advocated for Indian studies programs and helped create Indians of All Tribes, an intertribal organization that participated in a 19-month occupation of the abandoned prison island of Alcatraz beginning in 1969. The occupiers, seeking not only to bring attention to native grievances but to establish a cultural center, held powwows, ran a school, and staffed a medical clinic. Photographs document Oakes’s personal life and activist work, demonstrating his positive influence on other protests until his murder by a white man at age 30. Blansett clearly admires Oakes’s activism, but that doesn’t preclude a frank discussion of Oakes’s legal troubles as a teenager—which resulted in his work as a community organizer for the San Francisco police—and his abandonment of his first wife and son. This scholarly yet reader-friendly text will enlighten readers about an often-overlooked part of a continuing civil rights struggle.

September 1, 2018

Most books about the Red Power movement, including Clyde H. Bellecourt and Jon Lurie's The Thunder Before the Storm, focus on the influence of organizations such as the American Indian Movement (AIM) and/or National Congress of American Indians in envisioning and creating the pan-Indian movement. Blansett (history, Native American studies, Univ. of Nebraska at Omaha) challenges that narrative in this biography of Richard Oakes (1942-72), a Akwesasne Mohawk whose activism and leadership was pivotal at the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. Oakes's role diminished as other agendas emerged, leading to his abandonment of the protest. Further demonstrations followed, but Oakes was unable to regain his former standing. According to Blansett, Oakes saw pan-Indianism as a vehicle to address issues that were pertinent to individual Native nations, putting him at odds with the goals of AIM and its allies. After Oakes's assassination in 1972, his former allies realized his import and utilized his martyrdom to help launch the Trail of Broken Treaties March on Washington, DC. VERDICT Highly recommended for those interested in American Indian studies or civil rights. This work should be read alongside Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior's Like a Hurricane.--John R. Burch, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.