This Instagram archive account puts Indigenous punk rock in the spotlight
CBC
Kristy Martinez has loved punk music since she was in high school 20 years ago. Then, the fashion and the rebellious ideology felt like "armour," she says.
But when Martinez — an Azusa, Calif., resident who is of Chicana and Yaqui descent — realized that Indigenous people have been making punk music since around when the scene emerged in the mid 1970s, it opened a world she didn't know existed.
Martinez was watching a punk music documentary when she noticed a flyer advertising a show by the band Los Crudos near Flagstaff, Ariz., in one of the shots. The poster, which depicted a simple, black and white sketch of a cartoon punk rocker with long hair, was for a "rez show" 30 miles outside of the town on the Navajo nation. Martinez remembers pausing the documentary in awe, trying to get a closer look at the poster — and the Indigenous art that it depicted.
"It just was like … 'Where are these shows? Why doesn't [mainstream] punk talk about these?'" said Martinez. She remembers feeling a mix of joy at discovering the cultural connection, and anger that this part of the music's history was so hidden.
That discovery inspired Martinez to focus her ongoing PhD research at UCLA on the lost history of Indigenous involvement in punk rock.
She shares her research on Instagram, as well, so that the history she worked so hard to uncover doesn't get forgotten again: The Indigenous Punks Archive account features headbanging aunties, backyard rez shows and lots of mohawks. Martinez says she hopes to uplift Indigenous artists in the genre and remind hard rock listeners that Indigenous people and ideas have always been part of punk.
Martinez and her co-administrator, Cass Gregg, post news clippings, band posters, concert videos, merch and more from Indigenous groups past and present — both that they've found through research and through submissions from their community of followers.
Martinez didn't expect many people to pay attention to the archive, but it's now amassed almost 5,000 followers, many of whom have expressed amazement at what they learn about Indigenous punk rockers.
"You just see [new followers] going like, 'Wow, I love this. I can't believe all this stuff,'" Gregg told Unreserved host Rosanna Deerchild. Gregg says helping punk fans learn something new is the best part about working with the archive.
Indigenous ideals have always been part of punk — both brought in by Indigenous punk rockers themselves, and adopted by non-Indigenous musicians, according to Gregg and Martinez.
The subgenre of anarcho-punk specifically included themes like animal welfare, environmental sustainability and political causes that Martinez says were inspired directly by Indigenous culture.
Martinez says the band Flux of Pink Indians is a prime example — they gave themselves that title because they said they "felt strongly about the Indians over in America, and the way they were being treated."
Derek Birkett, a founder of the band who isn't Indigenous himself, has also said that Indigenous philosophies of care were greatly influential to the anarchist punk movement, and invoked Indigenous people in his record label, One Little Indian Records. (Birkett changed the name to One Little Independent Records in 2020 after a fan letter made him realize the name and logo both "contribute to racism.")
And arguably the ultimate symbol of punk culture, the mohawk, is an Indigenous hairstyle. It's also named after the Mohawk nation, though the Pawnee people actually wore a mohawk-type hairstyle more frequently.
