The movement, however, had begun to splinter. Nichols, citing government misconduct, dismissed all charges. After a nine-month trial, AIM declared victory when Judge Fred J. In 1974, Banks and Means were tried for conspiracy and assault at the federal courthouse in St. Before, during, and after Wounded Knee, AIM members participated in Sun Dances, sweat lodges, and other long-hidden ceremonies, helping to coax them from the shadows. History may view AIM as a militant group, but AIM saw itself as a spiritual movement. Among these were Pat Bellanger, an original AIM member whose nearly fifty years of service to the movement earned her the nickname “Grandma AIM” Sarah Bad Heart Bull, who was beaten and jailed in Custer, South Dakota, while protesting her son’s murder and Anna Mae Aquash, a member of the Mi’kmaq First Nation who left her family in Canada during Wounded Knee, where she took up arms and fought alongside the men. While three men-Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, and Russell Means-are generally acknowledged as leaders of AIM, many Native women also made extraordinary, often anonymous, sacrifices for the movement. Major news organizations remained onsite throughout the conflict, reporting headlines across the world. Two Native people, Buddy Lamont and Frank Clearwater, were killed. They demanded hearings on their treaty and investigation of the BIA. Surrounded by hundreds of federal agents with military weaponry, the Natives battled government forces for seventy-one days. In response, AIM joined the traditional Lakotas in occupying the village of Wounded Knee. The traditional Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Reservation were being terrorized by white vigilantes and supporters of tribal president Dick Wilson. In 1973, AIM received a request from Gladys Bissonette of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization. The action made AIM a target of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s covert operation meant to disrupt domestic political organizations.
After nearly a week, the Nixon administration agreed to consider their demands and pay for them to return home. Upon arrival, AIM members occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs Building.
The purpose of the walk-which began on the West Coast and ended in Washington, DC-was to demand that the government fulfill its treaty commitments. Later that year, AIM widened its focus to the national stage, joining the Trail of Broken Treaties. In 1972, AIM founded the Heart of the Earth Survival School.
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AIM also helped establish the Legal Rights Center, which provided free representation to the poor, and the Indian Health Board, which provided Native-centric medical care. To aid victims of police abuse, they formed the AIM Patrol. Their spiritual ceremonies, outlawed since 1884, were still illegal.ĪIM’s initial actions were meant to bolster Minneapolis’s Native population. Many of the thousands who migrated, however, found only low-wage labor, substandard housing, discrimination, violence, and despair. A decade earlier, the federal government had passed the Indian Relocation Act, which promised good jobs and housing for Natives who moved from reservations into cities. Through a long campaign of “confrontation politics,” AIM is often credited with restoring hope to Native peoples.ĪIM’s rise occurred during a time of extreme hardship for Native Americans in the Twin Cities.
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It grew into an international movement whose goals included the full restoration of tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. The American Indian Movement (AIM), founded by grassroots activists in Minneapolis in 1968, first sought to improve conditions for recently urbanized Native Americans.