What is it about?
Neo-Indianism, the phenomenon of people identifying as Native American lacking the ancestry and historical affiliation that identity presumes, has been gaining greater attention from tribes, activists, and scholars in recent decades. Most observers place its roots in the countercultural trends of the 1960s, but earlier examples helped shape that later explosion of neo-Indianism. One of the most influential of those early neo-Indians was Craig Carpenter, whose early life and influence I explore in this article. His activism and that of other neo-Indians within the League of North American Indians helped create an influential new “traditional Indian” that became one of the lures of neo-Indian identity. Their “traditional Indian” merged teachings of the Hopi Traditionalist political faction with western romanticism and metaphysics. Both neo-Indians and Native Americans embraced ideas and images created by Carpenter and LONAI without realizing their source.
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Why is it important?
Carpenter's influence was exceptional, spanning communities, nations, and continents. He was one of the most important interpreters of the Hopi Traditionalist movement, helping to popularize widespread misunderstandings of Hopi culture and religion through his infusion of elements from western metaphysics. There are other accurate publications on Carpenter himself.
Perspectives
This publication addresses a linkage between the early popularization of the Hopi Traditionalists by the famous Christian anarchist, Ammon Hennacy, and the later embrace of the Hopi Traditionalists by the hippies of Los Angeles and the Bay Area. There is a trajectory here that leads to the creation of specific neo-Indian communities in the 1970s.
Brian Haley
State University of New York College at Oneonta
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Craig Carpenter and the Neo-Indians of LONAI, The American Indian Quarterly, January 2018, Project Muse,
DOI: 10.5250/amerindiquar.42.2.0215.
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