By Lily Vargo
Spring 2025
Throughout much of World War II, many non-white American citizens were buoyed by the idea that the war would result in a “double victory;” a defeat of facism abroad and the elimination of racism at home (Burns 2007). Though the slogan was created by the NAACP to advocate for Black Americans’ rights, other groups, including Indigenous Americans, also saw the war as a turning point in American society during which they could gain greater levels of equality (Burns 2007). However, postwar America was not much different for many racial groups who had hoped for a more equal future after the defeat of the Axis powers. Many people continued to face various forms of racial discrimination, challenging the idea that the United States’ commitment to defeating facism abroad would result in a change in the discriminatory social structures within its own society (Calloway 2024).
Indigenous people were no different. Despite their high levels of participation in the war and the international trend of independence from colonist powers, Indigenous people were welcomed back to America with the beginning of the “termination era” (Shreve 2011). During this time in American history, the United States government started to attempt to dissolve formally organized tribal governments to maximize Indigenous peoples’ assimilation into white American society (Calloway 2024). While this was a different approach to Indigenous relations than the United States government’s previous stance on Indigenous rights, which focused on exterminating Indigenous peoples altogether, termination policies still infringed on Indigenous sovereignty and rights, leading to a new wave of Indigenous activism (Calloway 2024).
One place that this new activism manifested particularly strongly was on college campuses across the country. Immediately following World War II, Indigenous students started creating American Indian clubs at their colleges. These clubs initially served as a way for Indigenous students to explore their cultures and shared histories during a time when embracing Indigenous heritage was frowned upon by the American government (Cobb 2015). Over time, however, several of these clubs expanded the breadth of their work into activism (Cobb 2015).
In 1957, several Indian clubs came together to form the Southwest Regional Indian Youth Council (SRIYC) (Cobb 2015). The SRIYC held annual conferences that served as a place for Indigenous youth from varying backgrounds to come together and discuss Indigenous issues (Shreve 2011). Due to the diversity of students that attended the conferences and the range of opinions that they brought with them, the organization was not focused on articulating a singular opinion on any given topic or engaging the students in activist work (Shreve 2011).
The SRIYC was involved in the creation of the Workshop on American Indian Affairs, a series of six-week summer workshops that focused on teaching Indigenous students about Indigenous histories and politics (McKenzie-Jones 2014). The workshops heavily emphasized the idea of “action anthropology,” the concept of studying a community while simultaneously helping create a more positive future for it (McKenzie-Jones 2014). In this case, this meant not only learning about Indigenous histories, but thinking about how they might inform the future for Indigenous people (McKenzie-Jones 2014).
One critical turning point for Indigenous student resistance was the 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference. This event was an anthropology conference put on by the University of Chicago with the goal of coming to a consensus on various hot-button issues related to Indigenous life at that time, including tribal sovereignty and tribal-federal government relations (American Indian Chicago Conference 1961). Members of the SRIYC attended this event, as did many older Indigenous people who wanted to make their voices heard (McKenzie-Jones 2014). Despite the conference’s goal of creating a shared vision for the future of Indigenous people, a rift formed between members of the SRIYC and some of the older adults who were in attendance, who had more conservative stances on the issues being discussed (McKenzie-Jones 2014). The youth were seen as too radical by the older generation, while the youth saw the older peoples’ way of discussing Indigenous issues outdated and unproductive (McKenzie-Jones 2014).
The youth were especially disappointed by the fact that the more conservative attendees of the conference argued in favor of the federal government’s termination policies (McKenzie-Jones 2014). As such, the youth decided to voice their dissent. One notable moment from the conference that highlighted this tension was Clyde Warrior’s “We Are Not Free” speech. In this speech, Warrior, who was a member of the SRIYC, spoke about the fact that termination policies were a lose-lose situation for Indigenous people; if they cooperated with the termination of tribal governments, they lost their autonomy, and if they did not, they were accused of not wanting their societies to “develop” (Warrior 1961).
Because of this disaccord, some Indigenous youth saw the need to form a new, more progressive Indigenous student activism organization. The result of this idea was the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), which was formed in New Mexico following the Chicago conference. Like the Workshop on American Indian Affairs, the NIYC initially focused on resistance through mostly academic, conceptual means, such as attending conferences and speaking at academic institutions (Cobb 2015). Over time, however, this group started to focus more on more tangible forms of protest rather than purely intellectual resistance. Notably, they organized “fish-ins” in the Pacific Northwest when Indigenous fishing rights were under attack and picketed the White House during the Trail of Broken Treaties protest in 1972 (Cobb 2015).
Indigenous student activism after World War II was far from monolithic, but each approach to resistance on college campuses served a distinct purpose. Organizations like the SRIYC allowed for Indigenous students to express their opinions on politics without judgement, whereas organizations like the NIYC created opportunities for students to participate in protests that directly pushed back against federal Indigenous policy.
Works Cited
American Indian Chicago Conference. “This is Not Special Pleading.” In Say We Are Nations, edited by Cobb, Daniel M, 120-124. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Burns, Ken. “The War: Latino & Native Americans.” Public Broadcasting Service, 2007. https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-war/latino-native-americans.
Calloway, Colin G. “From the Great Crash to Wounded Knee: 1929-1974.” In First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of Native American History: Seventh Edition, 442-506. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2024.
Cobb, Daniel M., “Demanding Civil Rights of a Different Order, 1954-1968.” In Say We Are Nations: Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887, 97-100. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
McKenzie-Jones, Paul. “Evolving Voices of Dissent: The Workshops on American Indian Affairs, 1956-1972.” American Indian Quarterly. no. 2 (2014): 207-236.
Shreve, Bradley G., Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and The Origins of Native Activism. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011.
Warrior, Clyde. “We Are Not Free.” Speech, February 2, 1967, United States Embassy.
