July 1-5, 2025
Book Launch and Tour w/ John Redhouse
Bordertown Clashes, Resource Wars, and Contested Territories: The Four Corners in the Turbulent 1970s
Red Media Press and Common Notions announce Red Media’s second co-publication:
Bordertown Clashes, Resource Wars, Contested Territories: The Four Corners in the Turbulent 1970s by John Redhouse.
A one-of-a-kind lyrical and fast-paced memoir of the frontlines and trenches of Native liberation in the Four Corners and Southwest during 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.
“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
Book Launch & Tour:
Join Red Media with author John Redhouse in person or online:
- July 1, 2025 – Pyramid Lake, NV
- Book talk and livestream at the Pyramid Lake Tribe Museum
- July 3, 2025 – Albuquerque, NM
- Book talk and livestream at Books on the Bosque bookstore
- July 4, 2025 – Farmington, NM
- Book talk and livestream at Inspired Moments Event Center
- July 5, 2025 – Gallup, NM
- Book sale and author meet and greet at the Gallup Flea Market
The Red Nation Podcast is proud to provide live-streaming for the book launch tour.
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