Sherry L. Smith

 

Beginning in the early 1960s a remarkable confluence of Indians and hippies commenced. Hippies, primarily Anglo youth, were among the first non-Indians of the post World War II generation to seek contact with Native Americans. They saw Indians as genuine holdouts against conformity, inherently spiritual, ecological, tribal, communal – in short, the original "long hairs." Searching for authenticity while trying to achieve social and political justice for minorities, progressives of various backgrounds were also drawn to Indians and their political struggles regarding recognition of treaty rights, sovereignty, self determination, and protection of reservations of cultural homelands.Indians understood they could not achieve political change without help. Non-Indians had to be educated and enlisted. And they found among this hodge-podge of dissatisfied Americans willing recruits to their campaigns. Based on Smith’s book, Hippies, Indians and the Fight for Red Power (Oxford University Press, 2012) this talk examines how these interactions and their political consequences played out in northern New Mexico. Taos became a particularly potent magnet for counterculture communitarians. The presence of Taos Pueblo and the opportunity to interact with actual Indian people proved to be one of the area’s greatest attractions. It is a story of complicated, sometimes funny, and unexpected consequences.

This poster from the San Francisco Be-In at Golden Gate Park, 1967, signaled the counterculture interest in Indians; an interest that was sometimes silly and ephemeral and sometimes politically consequential.