Journal for the Study of Radicalism

The cover image for Sherry L. Smith's recent book, Hippies, Indians, & the Fight for Red Power, a close-up of an Indian man on horseback, wearing a fringed jacket and holding a guitar, aptly conveys the core issues at stake for hippies and Indians during the Civil Rights era. Set largely in the western parts of the United States, Smith examines specific instances of a counterculture fascination with Indianness during the 1960s and 1970s and how Native people resisted and accepted support from non-Indians in building a Red Power movement. Smith succeeds in uncovering much of the story behind the iconography illustrated by her cover image, which is from a 1967 poster advertising a Be-In at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. This social history considers different coalitions between Native people and white non-Indians, black nationalists, and Mexican American activists. Smith recognizes the marked progress of this era regarding the profile of Native issues across the United States in terms of non-Indian support for treaty rights, sovereignty, and cultural preservation.

In her chapter on "The California Scene," Smith acknowledges the ways "counterculture types" sought to use Indian-ness in their underground newspapers, Be-Ins, and other media and events because they believed Native Americans represented original resistance to American conformity and oppression. Smith successfully traces moments of cooperation among what she calls "unlikely partners" (215) by focusing on critical flashpoints. By bringing Indians and hippies together, Smith covers an under-acknowledged aspect of Native people's struggle for justice and the ignorant manner of counterculture hipsters. Smith is careful to recognize and criticize "white" cultural assumptions as legacies of colonialism while suggesting that however ephemeral the coalitions between Indians and non-Indians were during this period, they were nonetheless significant in leading to political reforms that strengthened Indian sovereignty.

Smith's methodology is impressively wide-ranging. Given the flashpoint approach, beginning with the early 1960s Fish-Ins of Washington State and [End Page 138] ending with the AIM occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, Smith must take into account a range of historical sources. Her evidence stems from underground and mainstream newspapers, first-hand accounts through interviews, literary and historical sources, archival documents, and periodicals ranging from Playboy to Stewart Brand's The Whole Earth Catalog. In addition, to capture "the temper and turmoil of the times" (17), Smith reads memoirs of movie stars, other celebrities, and the personal papers of government officials, including President Richard Nixon. Bringing all this material together in cogently written chapters, Smith offers this book as part of an ongoing conversation about partnerships in social and political change.

Smith's history seeks to answer the questions of how, why, and where Indians and non-Indians came together, joined forces, and created change. And she offers nuanced responses to such a far-reaching query. Although not exactly a new story regarding the long history of Native people who have sought outside political support for policy transformation, Smith's work is an important contribution to histories of 1960s social movements and an increasing number of works in Native American studies pertaining to issues of authenticity, representations, and performances of Indian-ness and by Indian people. She acknowledges but does not draw a strong through-line to earlier periods, such as the collaborative work of Native intellectuals during the progressive era who found many white allies interested in education and citizenship rights for Native people and who embraced Native cultural production as an antidote to the corrupting forces of modernity.

Still, Smith's work fits well within a growing body of scholarship pertaining to performativity and authenticity. Smith argues, "Hippies 'discovered' Indians and found them attractive because they presumably offered an actual, living base for an alternative American identity" (7). Such an assertion clearly builds on Philip J. Deloria's Playing Indian (1999) and Paige Raibmon's Authentic Indians Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast (2005). Smith complicates how hippies...