American Indian Movement

AIM logo

The American Indian Movement (AIM), is a Native American activist organization in the United States that burst on the international scene with its seizure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972 and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. AIM was cofounded by Dennis Banks, Herb Powless, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton Banai, and many others in 1968. Russell Means was also one of the early leaders of AIM.

In the decades since AIM's founding, the group has led protests advocating Indigenous American interests, inspired cultural renewal, monitored police activities and coordinated employment programs in cities and in rural reservation communities across the United States. AIM has often supported other indigenous interests outside the United States, as well.

AIM today

AIM's original mission included protecting indigenous people from police abuse, using CB radios and police scanners to get to the scenes of alleged crimes involving indigenous people before or as police arrived, for the purpose of documenting or preventing police brutality. AIM Patrols still work the streets of Minneapolis.

AIM has been active in opposing the use of indigenous caricatures as mascots for sports teams, such as the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Redskins, organizing protests at World Series and Super Bowl games involving those teams.

Founders of AIM, according to Peter Matthiessen's book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, include Dennis Banks; Clyde Bellecourt, who directs the Peace Maker Center in Minneapolis and administers U.S. Department of Labor job-development services; Eddie Benton-Benai, author and school administrator for the Red School House in Minneapolis and at Lac Courte Oreilles, Wisconsin; and Russell Means, who has worked as an actor and remains politically active, running for Governor of New Mexico and for president of the Oglala Sioux nation in 2002. Another well-known AIM member is Leonard Peltier, who is currently serving a prison term for the murder of two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. In 2004 AIM held protests against the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, and even threatened to blow up the keel boat of the nationally recognized re-enactment group.

Other activities

During the Sandinista/Indian conflict in Nicaragua of the mid-1980s, Russell Means sided with Miskito Indians opposing that country's Sandinista government due to allegations that the Sandinistas imposed forced relocations on up to 8,500 Miskito. Predictably, this stance damaged some of AIM's support from many Anglo-dominated leftwing organizations in the U.S., who opposed Contra activities and supported the Sandinista movement. Contra activities included insurgent recruitment among Nicaraguan Indian groups including some Miskitos. Means' position recognized the difference between opposition to the Sandinista government by the Miskito, Sumo, and Rama on one hand, and the Reagan administration's support of the Contras, who were dedicated to the overthrow of the Sandinista regime. [1]

More recently, Banks and the Bellecourts have rallied in support of John Graham and Arlo Looking Cloud, who were indicted in 2003 for the 1976 murder of Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash. Means and other AIM affiliates believe that those who ordered Aquash's murder, even if they are AIM leaders, should be held accountable. Means argues that Looking Cloud's conviction has made Looking Cloud a scapegoat for those who actually ordered Aquash's murder. Each of the current AIM factions accuses the other of complicity in Aquash's murder.[2]

Many AIM chapters remain committed to confronting the government and corporate forces that seek to marginalize indigenous peoples.[3] Some of these activities included challenging the ideological foundations of anti-indigenous policies, which they believe are exemplified in national holidays such as Columbus Day[4] and Thanksgiving. AIM argues that Thanksgiving should be a National Day of Mourning, and protests the continuing theft of indigenous peoples' territories and natural resources.[5][6][7]

Splinter groups

In 1993 the American Indian Movement split into two factions, each claiming that they were the authentic inheritors of the AIM tradition and that the other were frauds. The majority group, associated with the Bellecourts, is known as the AIM-Grand Governing Council, while the minority faction, led by Ward Churchill, was named AIM-International Confederation of Autonomous Chapters.

The split was formalized when the latter group issued its "Edgewood Declaration" citing organizational grievances and authoritarian leadership by the Bellecourts. However, ideological differences seem to have simmered for a long time, with the Grand Governing council taking a more spiritual and indigenous approach to activism, while autonomous AIM tended more toward third world national liberation and Marxism.

The Pine Ridge incidents

In 1973, AIM activists barricaded themselves in the hamlet of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. They were alleged to have taken eleven hostages, which led to a seventy-one-day standoff with federal agents. In the ensuing trials most accused AIM members were acquitted.

The 1973 stand-off centered around a federal settlement of Pine Ridge's claim to the gold-rich Black Hills of South Dakota, as well as allegations of federal and tribal police brutality on the Pine Ridge Reservation and allegations of brutality by a tribal group affiliated with the tribe's government Guardians Of the Oglala Nation (GOONS).

On June 26, 1975, a gun battle between AIM members and FBI agents resulted in the shooting deaths of Joseph Stuntz and two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. Leonard Peltier was eventually convicted of the agents' deaths. Many AIM activists claim that the AIM members who shot at the FBI agents were engaged in self-defense, and thus the killing was not a murder. Indeed, two of Peltier's co-defendants in the agents' murder were acquitted on grounds of self-defense in a separate trial. Peltier's critics, on the other hand, point out that one of the agents was shot and killed at close range after being wounded, with his hands up. This killing and the subsequent conviction of Peltier have been major bones of contention between activists and FBI agents.

US Court of Appeals Judge Gerald Heaney concluded that "Native Americans" were partially culpable for the 1975 firefight in which Stuntz, Coler and Williams died, but that the federal government had "overreacted" during and after the 1973 Wounded Knee stand-off. Heaney said that overreaction created a climate of terror that led to the fatal shoot-out.

As of 2004, the Sioux nations have yet to accept a settlement they were offered in compensation for the Black Hills. Since 1973, several AIM-affiliated groups have set up camp at the Black Hills to resist what they see as an arbitrary settlement.

AIM maintained that Wounded Knee residents had invited their assistance in 1973 to defend their homes against official and vigilante attacks, but that the FBI then surrounded them, effectively holding the AIM members hostage. Many Wounded Knee residents dispute this, and say that the AIM occupation led to the destruction of their community and homes. Several trials of AIM members resulted from the confrontation, which resulted in some court-room brawls with U.S. Marshals, but few AIM members were convicted for their roles in the standoff.

Attorney Larry Levanthal, who served as counsel for AIM said, "The courts found that there was illegal use of the military, illegal wiretap, false testimony, bribing of witnesses, covering up of crimes, subornation of perjury, deception of the counsel and deception of the courts."

AIM has been the subject of much controversy, some of it centering around the 1977 trial of Leonard Peltier, the AIM member convicted of the 1975 Pine Ridge murders of two FBI agents. Some activists doubt that he was responsible for these murders, and Amnesty International, among dozens of others throughout the world, has called for his release.[8]] Other activists say the murders occurred in a war-like environment, and that Peltier's role in the killings should be reviewed in that context. [9][10]

Another famous AIM member was Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, for whose 1976 murder two other 1970s AIM affiliates, John Graham and Arlo Looking Cloud, were indicted in 2003. Looking Cloud was eventually convicted. Graham's trial is still awaiting his extradition from Canada. In the decades before the indictments, some activists alleged that the FBI played a part or covered up her murder. Folk singer Larry Long detailed the anti-FBI allegations in a song titled Anna Mae (rereleased on Run For Freedom/Sweet Thunder, Flying Fish, 1997). Singer-songwriter Buffy Saint-Marie wrote Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, referencing both Peltier and Pictou-Aquash. The song was recorded by the Indigo Girls for the 1200 Curfews album.

AIM take-overs

At a time when peaceful sit-ins were a common protest tactic, AIM takeovers in its early days were notably forceful. Some appeared to be spontaneous outcomes of protest gatherings and sometimes included armed seizure of public facilities. AIM takeovers and occupations include:

Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, 1969 *Note: Although commonly associated with the American Indian Movement, the Alcatraz occupation pre-dates the organization, and should instead be understood as a catalyst for the American Indian Movement.
Abandoned property at the Naval Air Station near Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1970
Winter Dam, Lac Courte Oreilles, Wisconsin, (AIM assist) July, 1971
Bureau of Indian Affairs Headquarters, Washington D.C. November, 1972 (sacked building, 24 arrested)
Custer County Courthouse, 1973 (routed after riot)
Pine Ridge Reservation, 1973 (71 days, at least two dead)

AIM was not the organizing faction behind the occupation of Alcatraz. Nor did the occupation pre-date AIM. AIM was created in the summer of 1968. The 19-month occupation did not occur until November 1969. There was a separate "occupation" that lasted a few hours in 1964, but that was entirely separate event.

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