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| Photo The Red Nation 2016 |
Article by Brenda Norrell, Censored News, June 20, 2025
John Redhouse's new book documents the horrific tragedies, and racism in the bordertown of Farmington, and it gives a detailed history of the resistance movement in the 1970s.During the march against the Gallup Ceremonial, John writes, "NIYC Executive Director Gerald Wilkinson (Cherokee) spoke for all when he said, “We were not meant to be tourist attractions for the master race.”
It is rare history, seldom written or told, as in the days following the murder of Larry Casuse in Gallup. John writes, "On the other side, there were some poorly disguised agent provocateurs—posing as instant Indian revolutionaries—who tried to recruit us to 'avenge' the death of Larry Casuse. Although it had a certain appeal, we had never seen any of them before and we didn’t trust them. It was obviously a COINTELPRO styled setup and we weren’t going to play into their hands."
And John shares the rich history of the KIVA Club at UNM in Albuquerque. "On a nomination from Zuni Pueblo-Navajo student activist Marley Shebala, I got elected to the Kiva Club Council (also known as Kiva Klub Kouncil or KKK) and began using the Native American Studies Center and its significant resources as a base for continuing my activist work."
Alongside John were so many who have passed to the Spirit World, like the soft-spoken Larry Emerson of Shiprock.
The Red Nation is launching a tour for the book in July.
Red Media is excited to announce our newest publication, Bordertown Clashes, Resource Wars, and Contested Territories: The Four Corners in the Turbulent 1970s by John Redhouse. The book hits the shelves on July 1, 2025.
“With extraordinary detail, precision, and humor, Redhouse testifies to the will and spirit of a movement at a pivotal time when there was no ‘I can’t,’ only ‘we must.’ Bordertown Clashes offers a roadmap for contemporary Red Power activists who must confront the present tense of struggle with the fortitude and versatility of their predecessors.”
– The Red Nation
July 1-5, 2025
Book Launch and Tour with author John Redhouse:
Join Red Media with author John Redhouse in person or online
July 1, 2025 – Pyramid Lake, Nevada Book talk and livestream at the Pyramid Lake Tribe Museum
July 3, 2025 – Albuquerque, New Mexico Book talk and livestream at Books on the Bosque bookstore July 4, 2025 – Farmington, New Mexico Book talk and livestream at Inspired Moments Event Center
July 5, 2025 – Gallup, New Mexico Book sale and author meet & greet at the Gallup Flea Market
The Red Nation Podcast is proud to provide live-streaming for the book launch tour.
Find links to the book, livestream, and event pages on the Red Media website: https://www.redmedia.press/events/
Pre-order, ships in July
From the publisher
Bordertown Clashes, Resource Wars, Contested Territories: the Four Corners in the turbulent 1970s
FORTHCOMING, SHIPS JULY 2025
John Redhouse
Bordertown Clashes, Resource Wars, Contested Territories: the Four Corners in the turbulent 1970s
FORTHCOMING, SHIPS JULY 2025
John Redhouse
Foreword by Jennifer Denetdale, Introduction by Melanie K. Yazzie
Copublished with Red Media
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.
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 citizens 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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