The Brief, Brave Life of Larry Casuse
David Correia’s new book brings to life the Red Power movement of the early 1970s and the Navajo struggle for self-determination against a society that ruthlessly exploited them.
In today’s struggles against oil pipelines and other environmental catastrophes, Native people are at the forefront of humanity’s existential fight against climate change. This leadership hasn’t come out of nowhere but is the product of decades of radical Indigenous struggle dating back to the Red Power era of the ’60s and ’70s. Some of this history is well known but far too much is hidden. David Correia, an abolitionist organizer and professor at the University of New Mexico, is helping to uncover some of this legacy with An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents over Three Centuries.
Correia’s book is in part the story of Larry Casuse, a Navajo student activist killed in 1973 by police in Gallup, New Mexico after he had taken the town mayor hostage in a desperate attempt to close down a deadly bar. But it’s also a multigenerational saga of Larry’s family, a history of New Mexico, an analysis of Native exploitation in “bordertowns” like Gallup and a moving tribute to the spirit of a remarkable young man who has inspired some of today’s leading forces in the movement for winning back Native land and a sustainable…
