Anicinabe Park, the Native Peoples Caravan, and the Global Imagination of Aboriginal Anti-Colonialism in Canada, 1965–75

The summer and fall of 1974 witnessed numerous First Nations rebellions in Canada. The armed occupation of Anicinabe Park in the small town of Kenora, Ontario and the Native People’s Caravan which ended with a bloody confrontation on the steps of Canada’s Parliament building, were two of the most significant. Upon hearing of the Anicinabe Park occupation, one reporter declared that these were “young Indians” who were “fed up enough to trade in their copies of Robert’s Rules of Order for a volume of Frantz Fanon.” My paper will try to make sense of these moments by embedding First Nations radical politics (Red Power) within an international framework. I will explore Red Power’s engagement with American Indian Red Power, international Black Power, indigenous movements in Latin America, and liberation theology. Yet I also argue that while embedded in global decolonization during the 1960s and 1970s, Red Power in Canada also situated their efforts firmly within local struggles for justice. Alongside Fanon stood demands for clean drinking water on First Nations reservations, a return of cultural traditions, and economic and political sovereignty for the many First Nations that lived within the borders of Canada.