“We Are Not Free”: The Meaning of in American Indian Resistance to President Johnson's War on Poverty

摘要

This essay examines how the ideograph was crafted through dialecticalrnstruggles between Euro-Americans and American Indians over federal Indian policyrnbetween 1964 and 1968. For policymakers, was historically sutured to thernbelief that assimilation was the only pathway to American Indian liberation. I explorernthe American Indian youth movement’s response to President Johnson’s War on Povertyrnto demonstrate how activists rhetorically realigned in Indian policy withrnthe Great Society’s rhetoric of ‘‘community empowerment.’’ I illustrate how AmericanrnIndians orchestrated counterhegemonic resistance by reframing the ‘‘Great Society’’rnas an argument for a ‘‘Greater Indian American.’’ This analysis evinces the rhetoricalrnsignificance of ideographic transformation in affecting policy change.