The Actors in This Movement Part 2

Red Power United

Flag of Red Power United. Courtesy of CFNE

Red Power United is a Native rights group that focuses in urban areas. They are a direct action group and they even have direct action training available. Their goal is "to bring about social, political, economic, and environmental change when needed in Urban communities"(http://www.redpowerunited.com/).

Video courtesy of Red Power United

For a view of their protests you can watch the video above. In a later blog, I will be talking about their costuming or what they are wearing.

Mohawk Warriors

Below is a video that shows some of the actions and protests of the group known as the Mohawk Warriors. They used the same flag red flag and appear to possibly the originations of that flag. They practiced civil disobedience as oppose to anarkism(Young-Leslie).The video is extremely biased as it is a tribute but I chose it because the bias is very blatant and hard to ignore so please keep in mind that it is a tribute.

video courtesy of Iroqua

At about 1:50 in video, I believe you see video footage similar to this extremely famous picture:

Courtesy of cpcml

The Mohawk Warriors are most famous for the Oka Crisis. In 1990, the Mohawk Warriors set up an armed blockade at Kanehsatake. After the death of one police officer, 2000 police were sent in whom were later replaced with the military(http://warriorpublications.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/oka-crisis-1990/). The stand-off lasted a total of 77 days, during which acts of sabotage and violence were carried out.
I will not be doing an entire blog on the costuming of the Mohawk Warriors but I would like to draw attention to their militant style and aggressive nature. This is a group that does not do passive protests however many groups such as the Red Power United use the same or similar flag so this group had to have had an impact on the movement somehow.

Aboriginal Rights Coalition Of BC(ARC)
This group is not as famous as the Mohawk Warriors but it had the first example of anarchism that I had seen in this movement. Anarchism is where you do not acknowledge the government, you do not protest, you act as though the change you want has already happened. In this case, ARC is spoiling their ballots so they are not playing a part in the choosing of the government but they are still putting across the point that they are there(http://arcbc.tripod.com/flyer.pdf).

A really good website for the basic outline of the Native Right Movement: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/aboriginals/native-rights-movement.html

A website with links for Anti-Native Rights Groups(keep in mind the bias here please):
http://sisis.nativeweb.org/links/anti.html

Work Cited:
Aboriginal Rights Coalition of BC. Electronic source. http://arcbc.tripod.com/flyer.pdf
Mohawk Warrior Publication. Electronic source. http://warriorpublications.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/oka-crisis-1990/
Red Power United. Electronic source. http://www.redpowerunited.com/)
Dr. Young-Leslie, Heather. Lecture slides. Feb. 6th. "Social Actors".