National Indian Youth Council Photograph Collection

The National Indian Youth Council, Inc. (NIYC) is the nation's second oldest American Indian organization. NIYC was founded in 1961 in Gallup, New Mexico. There are thousands of members nationwide. As an American Indian rights organization, NIYC works not only in this country but also throughout the Western Hemisphere to preserve and establish the rights of American Indian and indigenous people. NIYC is American Indian conceived, American Indian controlled, and American Indian operated. Their goal is the survival of American Indian people. In the 1960s, NIYC was an American Indian civil rights organization, spearheading the movement for the preservation of treaty rights to include fishing rights in the northwest. In 1968, NIYC was the American Indian coordinator for the Poor People's Campaign.

In the 1970s, NIYC was chiefly an American Indian environmental organization filing massive lawsuits for American Indian communities that did not want coal strip mining and uranium mining and milling on their land. NIYC achieved international recognition for halting the $6 billion coal gasification plants on the Navajo reservation. In the 1980s, NIYC focused on American Indian political participation projects, American Indian religious freedom issues, and job placement and training. NIYC is still concerned with these matters, but their activities today reflect a changing world. Their current focus is primarily on urban Indians and employment.

Herbert Blatchford, Sr., Navajo, was the first executive director of the National Indian Youth Council from 1961 to 1963. He continued his involvement in NIYC causes and goals in the 1960s and 1970s. Melvin Thom, Walker River Paiute, and Clyde Warrior, Ponca, were two of the founding members of NIYC. Melvin Thom served as the first President of NIYC in 1961. Thom was one of the leaders of the Indian group at the Poor People's Campaign in 1968. Clyde Warrior, one of the founding members, also served as President of NIYC in the middle 1960s. Warrior was viewed as one of the most dynamic young Indian leaders of the 1960s. Gerald Wilkinson, Cherokee Catawba, served as executive director of NIYC from 1969 until 1989. He directed many of the activities NIYC is known for including Indian voter registration drives, fights for indigenous peoples in Nicaragua, and litigation cases protecting treaty rights. Shirley Hill Witt was also one of the founding members of NIYC in 1961. She has participated in many of NIYC's activities and currently serves as a board member.