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‘Red Power’ at 50: Book, exhibition recall American Indian leader’s transformative life
LAWRENCE – Kent Blansett has won rave reviews for his book, “A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement.” The paperback comes out Sept. 8. It’s been optioned for a movie. And an exhibition based on the University of Kansas professor’s research is up right now on the former prison island in San Francisco Bay, marking the 50th anniversary of the monthslong occupation led by Oakes’ organization Indians of All Tribes.
Panelists will discuss women’s civic leadership at virtual event
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas series dedicated to increasing the number of women’s voices in civic spaces across the state will begin fall programming this week with a virtual panel discussion that will include DeAngela Burns-Wallace, the Kansas secretary of administration. The Appointments Project & Ready to Run Kansas Women’s Leadership Series will host “Raising Our Voices: Why We Need Women’s Civic Leadership Now More Than Ever” from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, on Zoom. Participants are asked to register for the free program.
University Career Center hosting virtual Part-Time Job Fair
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas students looking to supplement their income for the fall semester can search for available jobs and schedule appointments with potential employers at an event this week hosted by the University Career Center. The career center will host its annual Part-Time Job Fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27, to match students with employers who are hiring for onsite and remote positions.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman
‘Red Power’ at 50: Book, exhibition recall American Indian leader’s transformative life
LAWRENCE – Kent Blansett has won rave reviews for his book, “A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement” (Yale University Press, 2018). The paperback comes out Sept. 8. It’s been optioned for a movie. An exhibition based on his research is up right now on the former prison island in San Francisco Bay, marking the 50th anniversary of the monthslong occupation led by Oakes’ organization Indians of All Tribes.
But the University of Kansas’ new Langston Hughes Professor of Indigenous Studies and of History hopes for one further outcome from his book’s publication: justice for Oakes in the form of a new trial for the man who killed him.
“I think my role as a historian and as a storyteller was to leave open the questions, to tell the story in the hopes that more readers seek justice for Richard Oakes’ life, as well as to seek prosecution, because new evidence is always coming out in the case of Oakes’ untimely death,” Blansett said.
Blansett deliberately uses the word “assassination” to describe the shooting death because Oakes was acting in a political capacity at the time, as a Red Power movement leader. After Alcatraz, Oakes continued to lead activist efforts to secure Indigenous land reclamation and greater rights throughout northern California.
And yet, despite Oakes’ death, despite the occupation’s dramatic end after 19 months, Blansett said that the self-determination movement Oakes led was a success.
“Richard’s main line was that Alcatraz is not an island, it’s an idea,” Blansett said.
“The Native occupation of Alcatraz … fueled hundreds of similar occupations throughout Indian Country and became a catalyst for the Red Power Movement,” Blansett writes in the book. He states that the movement convinced then-President Richard Nixon, who had already been planning legislation to advance Native self-determination, to promote and sign 26 laws that effectively ended the decades-old policy known as “termination” – as in the legislative termination of federal recognition of American Indian reservations.
And the effects of the movement continue to reverberate around the globe, Blansett said.
“Indigenous rights are taken for granted today. Most Americans don’t know that we didn’t possess religious freedom until 1978,” Blansett said, referring to the passage that year of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. “I always have to remind my students that we didn’t have religious freedom as Native peoples in this country until 1978.”
“A Journey to Freedom” traces Richard Oakes’ life from his birth on the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation on the border between New York and Canada, to his stint as a New York City ironworker and finally details his abbreviated yet consequential career as an activist on behalf of Native peoples.
Using aggressive but non-violent techniques, Oakes was the lead organizer of the Alcatraz occupation that lasted from November 1969 to June 1971 and generated worldwide media coverage for Indigenous rights. Celebrities like actors Jane Fonda and Candice Bergen visited and supported the occupiers.
The Indians of All Tribes based their occupation of the abandoned prison island on treaties that stated that abandoned federal property should revert to its original, Native owners.
But when his young daughter was killed in a mysterious fall during the early days of the occupation, Oakes and his remaining family members moved off Alcatraz Island to further Indigenous causes and places.
It was the ongoing conflict between the Pit River Tribe and Pacific Gas & Electric and other Indigenous land-reclamation issues that brought Oakes to Sonoma, California, where he was shot to death in 1972 at age 30.
And while Oakes’ shooter, Michael Oliver Morgan, was acquitted at trial, Blansett holds out hope that justice might still be done.
Blansett traveled to Alcatraz in November for the opening of a new exhibition he curated there, based on his research and the trove of materials related to the occupation he has collected over the years. In the spring of this year, the National Park Service indefinitely closed Alcatraz Island to visitors because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The exhibition is scheduled to continue online (and could potentially reopen in person) throughout the 50th-anniversary period, through June 2021.
Blansett is pleased with the renewed attention Oakes’ story is getting.
As he puts it in the book, “The life of Oakes highlights the historical connection between Red Power and Native Nationalism, a connection that forever altered the modern Indigenous experience. … Oakes’ life story provides a window through which the historian can explore the peoples, organizations, institutions, nations, places and spaces that define Intertribalism.”
Blansett writes that intertribalism – organizing various Native peoples under one umbrella to press their cause – is one of Oakes’ greatest legacies.
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Contact: Emily Vietti, Institute for Leadership Studies, [email protected]
Panelists will discuss women’s civic leadership at virtual event
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas series dedicated to increasing the number of women’s voices in civic spaces across the state will begin fall programming this week with a virtual panel discussion that will include DeAngela Burns-Wallace, the Kansas secretary of administration.
The Appointments Project & Ready to Run Kansas Women’s Leadership Series, a collaboration between the KU Institute for Leadership Studies and the Women’s Foundation, will host “Raising Our Voices: Why We Need Women’s Civic Leadership Now More Than Ever” from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, on Zoom, Participants are asked to register for the free program.
This discussion will showcase the reflections and ideas of four women, including Burns-Wallace, former KU vice provost for undergraduate studies before she accepted her new role for the state of Kansas. The other panelists are Kenya Cox, executive director of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission, and Junetta Everett, vice president of professional relations at Delta Dental of Kansas. The final panel member is moderator Donna Wright, principal of Kansas Business Services LLC and series advisory board member.
The panelists will emphasize the importance of women’s voices in specifically addressing critical issues such as COVID-19, anti-racism and incivility to make Kansas and the world more equitable and just for everyone.
“2020 is a critical moment. The necessity of having the voices of women and people of color and people from other underrepresented groups in every space where decisions are made is clear,” said Mary Banwart, director of the KU Institute for Leadership Studies. “Despite being underrepresented at every level of government, research shows us that women bring important and different perspectives to decision making on issues that affect everyone, such as health care and child care and the economy. Countries with women leaders seem to be doing better in their responses to COVID-19, and yet women are still not being invited or recruited at the same rates as men. These programs are working to change that.”
The Appointments Project & Ready to Run Kansas Women’s Leadership Series has been built on a shared belief that increasing the number of women’s voices in civic spaces throughout Kansas – including in politics and on civic boards and commissions – promotes equity, opportunity and economic strength in Kansas. The goal is to elevate women’s leadership across Kansas by equipping women with the leadership skills, confidence and knowledge to run for political office and sit on civic boards and commissions.
“Civic boards and commissions should reflect the communities they serve, and we are proud to partner with KU on the Ready to Run Leadership Series to increase the number of women, including women of color, who are at the decision-making table of their communities,” said Wendy Doyle, Women’s Foundation president and CEO. “We look forward to listening and gleaning insights from these distinguished leaders about how women can – and will – shape policies and our changing world.”
The series launched in May 2020 with a three-part webinar program (recordings available online) and will end the fall/winter season with a daylong political/civic engagement training program in December.
Sign up for more information at womenlead.ku.edu/register.
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Don’t miss new episodes of “When Experts Attack!,”
a KU News Service podcast hosted by Kansas Public Radio.
https://kansaspublicradio.org/when-experts-attack
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Contact: Millinda Fowles, Career & Experiential Learning, [email protected], @kucareer
University Career Center hosting virtual Part-Time Job Fair
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas students looking to supplement their income for the fall semester can search for available jobs and schedule appointments with potential employers at an event this week hosted by the University Career Center.
The University Career Center will host its annual Part-Time Job Fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27, to match students with employers who are hiring for on-campus, off-campus and remote positions.
“Our data indicate over 90% of KU students work at least part-time while enrolled at the university. Spring and summer employment looked much different for many of our students this year,” said David Gaston, assistant vice provost for academic success. “The Part-Time Job Fair is a way to explore opportunities that will allow them to earn additional income, gain knowledge and build professional skills in this new and evolving labor market.”
This year’s event will be held virtually using the Career Fair Plus event platform. Students should visit the Part-Time Job Fair website to see a list of attending employers and learn how to download Career Fair Plus. Once students set up their profiles in Career Fair Plus, they can begin scheduling 10-minute virtual appointments with employers.
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