![]() ![]() The Navajo Inn was the most profitable liquor store and bar in the entire state. There was never a winter that didn’t end with at least a dozen deaths, finding people in arroyos, frozen. More people died in front of the Navajo Inn than any other place in the state of New Mexico. So people were getting hit by cars, and white teenagers were engaging in “Indian rolling” - violence against inebriated Native men and women - sometimes murdering them. People didn’t want to drive because they would get arrested - the Gallup police arrested more people than anywhere else per capita in the U.S. It was in the middle of nowhere along a dark highway. So most Native people would drink in alleys, or they would go to places like Navajo Inn, which was a horrifying place. The only way to drink was to go into the bordertown, but the only places they were welcome were the Indian bars, where they’d be beaten or robbed. ![]() There’s a complicated history to that, but what ends up happening is criminalization. It was illegal to possess or drink alcohol on most Native reservations. It wasn’t about protecting Native people from alcohol, but protecting Native people from the owners of the bars and from the cops. The Navajo Inn became a symbol of everything that was ruthless and anti-Indian about Gallup. Why was this a crucial issue?ĭavid Correia: This was about more than just a bar. The Indypendent: Larry died trying to close down a bar called the Navajo Inn, which might seem odd for people unfamiliar with bordertowns. Correia spoke with The Indypendent about the importance of the Larry Casuse story. 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 human economy. 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.Ĭorreia’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. Some of this history is well known but far too much is hidden. 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. 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. ![]()
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