Wednesday, March 1, 2023 – Larry Casuse: taking an ill-fated stand

Larry Casuse was shot to death by Gallup, NM police in 1973 as he carried out a desperate, radical act to try and help his people. Casuse was still a teenager, trying to call attention to unscrupulous business practices at a bar that was the epicenter of a disproportionate number of Native American deaths. His frustration boiled over when the bar’s owner—the city’s mayor—kept getting rewarded instead of punished by elected leaders. Today on Native America Calling, we learn about this forgotten story from a complicated era with John Redhouse (Diné and Ute), longtime Native American activist; David Correia, associate professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and the author of Enemy Such As This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents over Three Centuries; investigative journalist Marley Shebala (Diné and Zuni); and Lenny Foster (Diné), spiritual advisor for Leonard Peltier and retired program supervisor for the Navajo Nation Corrections Project.