American Indian Movement
The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American advocacy group in the United States, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with an agenda that focuses on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty. The founders included Dennis Banks, George Mitchell, Herb Powless, Clyde Bellecourt, Harold Goodsky, Eddie Benton-Banai, and a number of others in the Minneapolis Native American community. Russell Means, born Oglala Lakota, was an early leader in 1970s protests. The organization was formed to address various issues concerning the Native American urban community in Minneapolis, including poverty, housing, treaty issues, and police harassment. From its beginnings in Minnesota, AIM soon attracted members from across the United States and Canada. It participated in the Rainbow Coalition organized by the civil rights activist Fred Hampton. Charles Deegan Sr. was involved with the AIM Patrol. In October 1972, AIM gathered members from across the country to a protest in Washington, D.C. known as the "Trail of Broken Treaties". AIM gained national attention when it seized the Bureau of Indian Affairs national headquarters and presented a 20-point list of demands to the federal government. In 1973, it led a 71-day armed standoff with federal forces at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Authorities charged Dennis Banks and Russell Means and put them on trial for their actions at Wounded Knee, while other AIM members were arrested and released. Following an eight-month trial in 1974, a federal judge dismissed charges against Means and Banks. 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 indigenous interests outside the United States as well. At the political level, AIM activists sought to bring attention to American Indian issues through a series of public protests, beginning with their participation in the nineteen-month occupation of Alcatraz that began in 1969. AIM activists protested at Mount Rushmore on 4 July 1971; at the Mayflower replica at Plymouth, Massachusetts, on Thanksgiving Day in 1971; and in Gordon, Nebraska, in February 1972, in response to the murder of Raymond Yellow Thunder. AIM members occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C., in November 1972 and initiated the nationwide Longest Walk in 1978, ending in Washington, D.C. Local chapters took over buildings in Wisconsin, California, and other states. By the late 1970’s, AIM no longer had the nation’s attention. AIM split into two groups the put Vernon and Clyde Bellecout on one side and Russell Means and his supporters on the other. Nevertheless, in the early twenty-first century it remained as one of the longest lived national organizations.
By Elon Pendleton
By Elon Pendleton