Rolling Thunder Speaks Out on Native American Activism (1968)
Rolling Thunder Speaks Out on Native Activism
By Marvin Garson
They’ve pushed the Indian far enough, says Rolling Thunder. We’re not going to pay any more taxes, and we’re not going to give up any more land. Rolling Thunder is a Shoshone Indian from Carlin, Nevada. He is a lawyer and a warrior. He gives the impression of meaning what he says.
Two months ago, just before the hunting season opened, a Shoshone named Stanley Smart was arrested for killing a deer. He needed the meat for his family – a wife and nine children.
The Indians decided to retaliate against the white head hunters – sporting men who hunt deer for the prestige of big antlers and often leave the carcasses behind to rot on garbage dumps. On October 15 a group of armed Shoshone, some wearing war paint and feathers, surprised a drunken party of white hunters camped on the Ruby Valley Indian Reservation and gave them 15 minutes to leave. One of them was a deputy sheriff, and showed the Indians his badge. That’s no good here, Rolling Thunder told him. The white men were gone in fifteen minutes. Headhunters kept clear of the Ruby Valley Reservation for the rest of the hunting season.
The Shoshone earn a sparse living as ranch hands and mine laborers in the dry lands of the West – Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and the Mojave Desert of Southern California. How many Shoshone are there? We don’t want to be counted. Last time they sent around a census-taker, we locked him up.
Stanley Smart did break Nevada laws by killing a deer for his family to eat. But Rolling Thunder does not see why the Shoshone ought to get hunting licenses and follow Nevada game laws. It would be like us getting licenses from the Chinamen or the Russians. The white men have got things backward: they think WE’RE in THEIR country.
He hastened to avoid giving the wrong impression: We’re not racists. We believe there’s room here for everyone. But the white men have to realize that there must be room for the native people too. We’re not greedy. We didn’t wipe out the buffalo. When we shoot deer it’s to feed our families, not to show off the head and throwaway the meat.
A white caught would have been cited like a speeder. But Stanley Smart was brought to Winnemucca and thrown in jail. The next day Rolling Thunder represented him before the judge.
I said if they were going to take deer meat away from this man’s family, then they’d better give them some other kind of food, because all they had was three cans of milk for the baby. The judge said, ‘Well, you can go on welfare, can’t you?’ I said why doesn’t he call the welfare people and see. He didn’t want to do that.
I called the welfare man and he said the paperwork would take 6-8 weeks. So I told him there would be a lot of Indians coming into Winnemucca to wait there until this man’s family got food. Suddenly then he remembered that there was an emergency fund he could dip into to get groceries, and he did it.
Rolling Thunder speaks excellent English and knows his way around bureaucracies. He is one of those instructed to travel among the white men and report back to his people on what is transpiring behind the buckskin curtain. He sees encouraging signs.
I saw the young people with long hair and the Great Spirit told me they will have no greed. We have waited a long time to find white men without greed. But we knew there would come a time when we could get together as brothers.
San Francisco Express Times, 11/13/68
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