"The Red Power movement had been going since 1492" w/ John Redhouse and Carol Wright
The Red Nation Podcast
The Red Nation
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 July 2025
⏱️ 115 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Red Media Press and Common Notions are proud to announce our second co-publication!
Bordertown Clashes, Resource Wars, Contested Territories: The Four Corners in the Turbulent 1970s by legendary warrior John Redhouse is a one-of-a-kind lyrical and fast-paced memoir of the frontlines and trenches of Native liberation in the Four Corners and Southwest in the 1970s.
This episode is a recording of the first in a series of events celebrating the publication of the book. John and his wife Carol spoke with Red Power Host Melanie Yazzie about their lives and work. We will be publishing more episodes of these events in the coming weeks!
Watch the video edition on The Red Nation Podcast YouTube channel
"From the late summer of 1972 to the late summer of 1974, John Redhouse and many other Navajo and Indian rights activists threw all they had into mass movement organizing and direct action. And they were pretty good at it too in terms of effectiveness and impact.
Written in the first-person and above all, with a collective spirit of generosity and witness, John Redhouse describes the hot temper of the times in the racist and exploitative border towns in the Four Corners area of the Southwest region.
As John Redhouse says, "Without the People, you have nothing. But back then, we had a lot of people WITH us." Yes, the Power of the People, the collective human spirit of the emerging local and regional Indian civil movement, thousands of us marching in the streets of Gallup and Farmington in northwestern New Mexico with our demands. A bold citizen's arrest at city hall, a downtown street riot, burning images of enemy leaders in effigy. And more marches, demonstrations, and direct actions.
Above all, though, there was that Spirit—that unbroken, unconquerable spirit—that moved us, that drove us, that led us. And that was just in the border towns. In that turbulent decade, there was also the rapidly rising and spreading with-the-people, on-the-land resistance struggles in the coal, uranium, and oil and gas fields, and in disputed territories in the San Juan and Black Mesa basins that were targeted for ethnic cleansing and mineral extraction.
Bordertown Clashes, Resource Wars, Contested Territories: The Four Corners in the Turbulent 1970s brings readers to the enduring issues of the day, traced over half a century ago, where John Redhouse and many more were in the middle of a revolution that unfolds to this day."
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm All right. |
| 0:23.6 | All right. Good morning, everyone. It might not be morning where you're listening to this. Yate. Yate Bina. My name is Melanie Yazi. Co-founder of Red Media, helped to establish the press that's launching this historic book that's launching today on July 1st of 2025. |
| 0:56.0 | This is truly an important and historic moment. |
| 0:59.0 | Yeah, for Red Media, but I think for the Native Liberation struggle |
| 1:03.0 | and the Native liberation movement, |
| 1:05.0 | we're incredibly honored to be joined by John Redhouse and Carol Wright, |
| 1:09.0 | publishing this book you see back here, Bordertown |
| 1:12.1 | Clashes, Resource Wars, Contested Territories, The Four Corners in the Turbulent 1970s is the book that we're |
| 1:18.4 | launching today. The reason why I say that this book is historic and incredibly momentous and |
| 1:23.4 | important, you know, as John himself has said to me in several interviews that I've done with him, |
| 1:29.6 | you know, this is the very first book of its kind that's ever been published by a native |
| 1:34.1 | revolutionary, you know, a native intellectual who was part of red power in the 1970s. The book covers |
| 1:41.4 | that decade of the 1970s when John was really at the height of his activism as a young Denei man and a young Denei freedom fighter. |
| 1:50.0 | And, you know, as he says, you know, red power often when we think about red power in that particular decade, that important decade of struggle, we think about the American Indian movement, right? |
| 2:02.0 | We think about these very important red power organizations, but something that a lot of people |
| 2:06.4 | don't know is actually red power started in the southwest where we're from. |
| 2:10.5 | I'm a citizen of the Navajo Nation. |
| 2:12.4 | You know, John himself is Navajo, Denea, you know, grandfather, you know, our grandfather in the movement. |
| 2:19.6 | And so this is the first book of its kind from somebody who was very instrumental in that struggle for red power, |
| 2:26.0 | the origins of red power in the southwest to be written about that region. |
| 2:30.1 | And the important victories, right, and the important struggles that our relatives were engaged |
| 2:35.4 | at that time in this region that have often been overlooked, actually, in the histories that |
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