Special Interest Groups

• WHAT IS ITS MISSION?
• HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?
• PRIMARY FUNCTIONS
• PROGRAMS
• BUDGET INFORMATION
• HISTORY
• BIOGRAPHY: Dennis J. Banks
• CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES
• SUCCESSES AND FAILURES
• FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• GROUP RESOURCES
• GROUP PUBLICATIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

ESTABLISHED: July 1968
EMPLOYEES: Undetermined
MEMBERS: 5,000
PAC: None

Contact Information:
E-MAIL: http://www.dickshovel.com/AIMIntro.html

WHAT IS ITS MISSION?

The American Indian Movement (AIM) seeks, in broadest terms, to further the political, economic, social, and cultural well-being of American Indians throughout the United States, and to raise public awareness of American Indian issues among both Indians and non-Indians. Throughout the organization's history, AIM has concerned itself with a wide variety of issues in pursuit of its mission. Many of its efforts have centered around promoting American Indian sovereignty and self-determination. These concepts involve the establishment of truly autonomous tribal self-government and greater control of land, economic resources, and educational institutions within Indian communities. AIM also works to better social conditions, both on reservations and in urban areas.

HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?

Since 1993, understanding AIM's structure has posed quite a challenge. In that year, a dispute grew between two major internal factions, and the situation has remained tangled. One faction views AIM as a centralized organization, with local chapters under the control of national headquarters; the other considers AIM to be a confederation of autonomous local chapters. Each side of this internal conflict sees itself as the authentic manifestation of AIM and emphatically denies the legitimacy of the other.

The first faction, calling itself "National AIM," has headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One leader of this group is Dennis Banks, who acts as National Field Director and operates out of Kentucky. Other leaders include Vernon Bellecourt, who heads the Minneapolis office, Vernon's brother Clyde, Carol Standing Elk, and William Means. Banks and Clyde Bellecourt, Ojibwe men from Minnesota reservations and veterans of the Minnesota prison system by their early twenties, helped found AIM in Minneapolis in 1968. Vernon Bellecourt and Means joined the organization later in its history and, like Banks, have remained prominent leaders. Standing Elk became the western regional director of National AIM in the 1990s.

The other faction calls itself the "International Confederation of Autonomous Chapters." It includes over 20 chapters—some regional, some based in individual cities—in all areas of the United States and Canada. The spokespeople of these chapters, such as Ward Churchill of the Colorado chapter, Bobby Castillo of San Francisco, and long-time AIM activist Russell Means, deny the existence of a national headquarters or any centralized decision-making body.

After Russel Means, an Oglala Lakota, joined AIM in 1969, he became one of the organization's best-known and most controversial leaders. He now stands on the opposite side of the AIM divide from his brother, William. Ward Churchill is a prolific writer on American Indian sovereignty, lands, treaties, and environmental concerns, and serves as the director of the American Indian Studies program at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Committees and Affiliates

Within local AIM chapters—whether they associate themselves with National AIM or consider themselves autonomous—there often exist councils or committees that focus on certain segments of the community they serve. The Arizona chapter, for instance, includes both a Youth Council and an Elders Council.

Over the years, AIM has forged a number of alliances in order to better pursue its various objectives. Today some members of the organization retain close ties to the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), founded by AIM members in 1974, which acts as a consultant to the United Nations on indigenous issues worldwide. On a local level, grassroots groups such as the Lakota Student Alliance affiliate themselves with AIM chapters as they work to increase public awareness of native issues. AIM representatives have also worked with a great number of tribal entities and reservation communities. Some chapters encourage the formation of local support groups in order to facilitate canvassing or education campaigns.

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

Given the broad scope of AIM's concerns, and the fractured nature of its structure, its activities have ranged widely. Various factions, chapters, and individuals have employed many types of action ranging from confrontational, physical protests to scholarly publication, from international lobbying to the establishment of local alternative institutions.

Reestablishing Sovereignty

Part of AIM's mission includes the reestablishment of sovereignty and self-determination among Indian people. A central goal is to reinstate and protect treaty rights. Between 1790 and 1870, the U.S. government signed over 350 treaties with American Indian tribes, procuring land and natural resources and paving the way for westward expansion, settlement, and development. In exchange, the treaties promised Indian people various types of compensation, including money, food rations and material goods, reservations safe from further encroachment, and rights to hunt, fish, and gather on homelands relinquished under the agreements. Government representatives, however, sometimes established the treaties by dishonest means. Additionally, the United States government has failed to honor many of these agreements.

Many Indian activists focus on treaties as a means of recovering land and reclaiming resources lost to non-Indian development and environmental destruction. They push to dissolve invalid treaties and demand the rights guaranteed under valid ones. They point out that the treaty-making government considered the Indian tribes sovereign nations and this supports American Indian self-determination. AIM has also pushed for Indian control of political, economic, and educational institutions on reservations.

Reclaiming Culture

Indian-controlled education also helps AIM's goal to strengthen and reclaim American Indian cultural identity. Within Indian communities, AIM speaks out against apathy and defeatism, encourages sobriety, and promotes a return to traditional spirituality. These efforts provide countermeasures against the social ills that plague the American Indian population, which experiences the highest rates of poverty, malnutrition, infant mortality, and teen suicide of any group in the country, as well as disproportionately high rates of alcoholism and unemployment.

AIM's leaders devote energy to changing attitudes in the wider non-Indian society through public speaking engagements as well as protests against stereotypical, racist representations and symbols. For example, some AIM chapters regularly protest annual Columbus Day parades. To many Indian people, Columbus' arrival in the Americas does not represent the beginning of discovery, settlement, and success. Instead, they believe it marks the first step toward centuries of oppression, destruction, and displacement for hundreds of Indian tribes. AIM protesters therefore see Columbus Day as an occasion for sorrow, rather than celebration.

PROGRAMS

AIM's specific programs vary among regions and individuals. Some have a national scope; leaders of National AIM organized national conferences throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Other programs operate independently of official AIM sponsorship and focus on local issues, such as the American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center in Minneapolis. Founded in 1979 by Clyde Bellecourt—one of AIM's founders and a member of National AIM—this organization provides job training for Minneapolis-St. Paul's Indian population.

One of AIM's most unique educational projects has proven to be one of its most enduring. In 1972, some of AIM's founders helped establish the Heart of the Earth survival school in Minneapolis. The school took in Indian students who had left mainstream schools, whether by dropping out or by suspension. Eventually it became an alternative to mainstream education, one that sought to give Indian children pride in their culture and to teach neglected aspects of American Indian history. The Heart of the Earth school still operates under a board of directors composed of Indian community members and parents, and its culture-based approach to education has provided an example for other programs elsewhere in the country.

BUDGET INFORMATION

Not made available.

HISTORY

AIM began in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the summer of 1968 under the leadership of several individuals, including George Mitchell, Harold Goodsky, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton Banai, Dennis Banks, and Pat Ballanger. Bellecourt and Benton met while serving time in Stillwater prison, where they began an Indian cultural-awareness program. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, AIM joined other organizations of politically and socially disadvantaged groups—including African Americans, Mexican Americans, women, gays, and lesbians—in asserting their rights and speaking out against discrimination and inequality.

BIOGRAPHY: Dennis J. Banks

Activist; Educator; and Author (b. 1932) American Indian Movement (AIM) cofounder Dennis Banks is an American Indian leader, teacher, lecturer, activist, and author. He was born in 1932 on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. Banks was the principal leader of AIM when worldwide media focused on the group in 1973 during a 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation. Said Banks of the protest that turned into a forced occupation, "The decision to take Wounded Knee came when Ellen Moves Camp pointed at us and said, 'What are you men going to do about it?' If the women hadn't done that, we'd still be meeting." Convicted of riot and assault charges stemming from a protest that pre-dated the Wounded Knee event, Banks refused his sentence and fled underground. When then California Governor Jerry Brown offered him amnesty, Banks relocated and began to attend the University of California at Davis. He also taught classes at Deganawidah-Quetzecoatl University (an all-Indian controlled institution) and became their first American Indian university chancellor. In 1985 Banks finally surrendered to South Dakota authorities and served 18 months in prison. Today Banks lectures worldwide and has collaborated and worked on several musical releases and films. In 1994 Banks coauthored, with Duane Champagne, Native America: Portrait of the Peoples. Banks's legacy will best be served by his promotion of the Sacred Run. In 1978 Banks began the annual multicultural, international event as a means of spreading the awareness of the sacredness of all Life and of humankind's relationship to the planet, Mother Earth.

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Although AIM began from a wave of general activism, the movement's development also stemmed from factors specific to the American Indian experience. In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. government launched a new federal Indian policy of termination and relocation. Under termination, the government targeted tribes it deemed ready for assimilation into mainstream society, and rescinded their federally recognized status. This nullified protection of their reservations and cut them off from government funding and social services. Relocation encouraged Indian people to leave their reservations and tribal communities for urban centers, giving them money to move to a number of designated cities and promising assistance with employment and housing upon their arrival. Although the government intended relocation to transform Indian people from economically dependent reservation communities into assimilated urban dwellers, the policy proved ill-conceived and poorly administered. It left in its wake an underemployed, culturally alienated urban Indian population with insufficient social services.

In response to relocation, AIM began to work on improving urban social conditions for Minneapolis-St. Paul's American Indian population. It created the Indian Patrol, a citizen's patrol formed in response to police mistreatment of Indians in the East Franklin neighborhood of Minneapolis. In addition to the patrol, early AIM activities included the establishment of a legal rights center, a reform program for juvenile offenders, and a survival school for Indian youth.

The Movement Grows

As AIM grew in strength and scope, and as American Indians in other parts of the country began to organize, the group's Minneapolis-based leaders became increasingly involved in broader national issues. They also began to articulate a more philosophical ideology. Members attended meetings of the National Council of Churches in 1969 and the National Conference of Welfare Workers in 1970, trying to bring attention to Indian people's unequal social and political status and to raise money for AIM.

The movement also turned increasingly to high-profile protest, hoping to raise public awareness of Indian issues through symbolism and confrontational rhetoric. Leaders spoke out against racist images and stereotypical representations in popular culture; for instance, they encouraged national demonstrations against the depiction of American Indians in the film A Man Called Horse in 1970. AIM also used public protest to raise awareness of Indian land claims and treaty rights, and to challenge the standard version of American history with a more Indian-centered story of colonization, displacement, and government deception. In this vein, AIM staged protests at Mt. Rushmore in 1970 and 1971, on the Mayflower II at Plymouth Rock on Thanksgiving, 1970, and in an abandoned building at Fort Snelling in St. Paul for a week in 1971.

During this time, AIM also expanded its organizational network. It recruited charismatic spokespeople such as Russell Means, then director of the Cleveland American Indian center, Carter Camp, and John Trudell. By 1971, AIM had chapters in Minnesota, Ohio, and Kansas. At a conference in the spring of 1971, it elected Means as its first national coordinator.

While AIM increased its political activities and formulated its stance on sovereignty and treaty issues, several of its members displayed a growing interest in traditional culture and spirituality. The AIM leaders began publicly to emphasize the need for American Indians to reconnect with their reservations, their spiritual roots, and the traditions and values of their elders and ancestors. In 1972 Oglala Lakota medicine man Leonard Crow Dog became a spiritual advisor to AIM.

AIM vs. the U.S. Goverment

Beginning in 1972, AIM entered a period of high national media exposure and conflict with the government, particularly the FBI. In October, AIM and other Native American organizations began the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan from the West Coast to Washington, D.C., stopping at reservations along the way. The caravan of several hundred Indians arrived in Washington in November, just before the presidential election, intending to stage nonviolent demonstrations and to present the government with its Twenty Points of demands. The document focused on the honoring of existing treaties, the reestablishment of a treaty relationship between the government and sovereign Indian nations, and a reorganization of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). When participants discovered that organizers had not made lodging arrangements as promised, they decided to go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. There Interior Department officials worked to find them lodging, while local riot police monitored the situation from nearby.

Unfortunately, this tense but peaceful situation eventually turned violent. As the Indians waited in the BIA lobby, a government miscommunication caused police to burst into the building and demand that the Indians leave. A fight broke out, and the angry Indians pushed the police out of the building and then barricaded themselves inside. They remained there while negotiating with federal officials, and vandalized much of the bureau's interior. Finally, as the protesters grew weary, the government agreed to review the Twenty Points and offered them a monetary settlement, thus ending the six-day occupation. Eventually the Nixon administration virtually dismissed the Twenty Points, which fueled AIM resentment and recalcitrance in later encounters.

After the BIA incident in Washington, AIM's efforts gravitated toward South Dakota, where the organization was to have its widest national impact. Early in 1973, AIM arrived in Custer, South Dakota, to protest the murder of Wesley Bad Heart Bull, an Indian man, by a white resident. The protest resulted in a riot and a violent confrontation with police. Although Indians in the region had long complained of racial violence and unequal legal protection, it was AIM's growing notoriety that brought widespread public attention to this case. In addition, AIM's efforts fostered a sense of solidarity among Indian people and gave them a determination to stand up for themselves.

In February, AIM became even more involved in South Dakota conflicts. Oglala Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation near Custer, frustrated with Tribal Chairman Richard Wilson's alleged corrupt administration, asked AIM for help. Wilson supposedly manipulated elections and used physical intimidation to remain in power. On February 27, in protest of Wilson's tactics and what they saw as his collusion with corrupt federal officials in the BIA, AIM leaders and members of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization took control of Wounded Knee, a village on the Pine Ridge Reservation and the site of the infamous 1890 massacre of over 300 Lakota men, women and children by government troops. The occupation, which received national media attention lasted 71 days, and inspired a military siege by the army, the FBI, the BIA, and state and local police. It also garnered a good deal of public sympathy for the protesters.

After the occupation ended, a period of accelerated militant confrontation ensued on Pine Ridge between AIM members and supporters and Wilson's police force, accompanied by the constant presence of the FBI. Throughout the mid-1970s the government made a proliferation of arrests and dozens of violent deaths occurred, including over 60 AIM supporters and two FBI agents.

Beyond Wounded Knee

Several AIM leaders became embroiled in lengthy court trials for their participation at Wounded Knee and for alleged implication in the two FBI agents' deaths. Internal solidarity weakened, as both rumored and exposed FBI informants fostered suspicions and accelerated already existing rivalries. By 1979 AIM had dissolved the position of national chair. During the 1980s, several AIM-affiliated representatives became active internationally in the global struggle for indigenous peoples' rights, and others kept some of AIM's initiatives alive through local chapters, but the movement as a nationally organized whole had lost much of its effectiveness.

In the 1990s, factionalism arose between those who tried to resurrect a national headquarters—calling themselves National AIM—and those who prefer local autonomy, and who have organized into the Confederation of Autonomous Chapters. The members of the confederation feel that a centralized bureaucracy compromises the kind of grassroots activism they see as the heart of the movement and furthers only individual political interests. Churchill told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1994 that the Banks/Bellecourt faction "considers AIM to be a corporation—a career—but we consider it to be a national liberation movement." The confederation also condemns Clyde for his 1986 conviction on drug-dealing charges as setting a poor example.

National AIM, on the other hand, challenges Churchill's claims of American Indian heritage, denies him the right to speak for Indian people, and refuses to recognize the Confederation of Autonomous Chapters. Vernon Bellecourt has even gone so far as to accuse Churchill (as well as Russell Means, Bobby Castillo, and others) of working as FBI agents to undermine AIM. These internal conflicts have prompted some to say that AIM no longer exists at all. Others insist that as long as a spirit of stubborn resistance and cultural pride remains strong in Indian communities, AIM too remains alive.

Throughout its history, AIM's tactics and its legacy of militant rhetoric and violent confrontation have sparked controversy in wider American Indian circles. AIM has clashed with more conservative Indian organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). The NCAI, a political lobbying group, has dismissed AIM's radical style as an ineffective means of political and social change, while AIM has criticized the NCAI for working within the mainstream political system. Gerald Vizenor, a well-respected Indian scholar and long an outspoken critic of AIM, has also denounced AIM leaders for their radicalism. Vizenor accuses AIM's most prominent leaders of putting on the trappings of spiritualism and traditional culture only to court white supporters, and challenges their right to speak for reservation issues from an urban context.

CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES

Despite recent internal squabbling, AIM leaders continue to function as activists for Indian rights. Whether representing National AIM or an autonomous chapter, or acting independently, they address a variety of political issues affecting American Indian people. AIM members promote tribal recovery of land and control over resources and join other environmental activists in condemning overdevelopment of land and industrial pollution. Some of them actively protest the imprisonment of AIM activist Leonard Peltier for the death of two FBI agents. They see him as a political prisoner and lobby for his release. Other AIM representatives work to combat racist attitudes among non-Indians and remove stereotypical representations of Indian people in American culture.

While fighting to replace negative perceptions of American Indians, AIM also works to promote a more realistic understanding of Indian people and cultures. This includes an effort to inject an Indian perspective into the telling of American history. AIM activists say that the story of the United States's founding includes the dispossession of indigenous cultures. To promote that message, AIM activists often turn to national historical symbols as potent sites of protest.

Case Study: Little Bighorn National Monument

One of the United States's most powerful historical symbols, "Custer's Last Stand," is kept alive at Little Bighorn National Monument in Crow Agency, Montana. The battlefield, a popular tourist site, is also a place where AIM has worked to change historical representation of American Indians. Since its creation, the site has marked the 1876 defeat of George Custer's Seventh Cavalry, by Crazy Horse and his Cheyenne and Oglala Sioux warriors, with a 12-foot granite obelisk honoring Custer's men and their Crow scouts. In 1988, though, AIM activists erected their own makeshift memorial, a rough steel plaque dedicated to the Cheyenne and Sioux who fought Custer and died while protecting their homelands, families, and way of life from further white encroachment.

Although the park service removed the plaque within weeks, AIM's action caused the park superintendent to push his superiors to complete plans for an official monument to the Indian warriors. Within two years, Congress passed a bill to that effect, and finally, in the fall of 1997, an Indian memorial received approval. In a 1996 article in the Bismarck Tribune, Little Bighorn Park Superintendent Gerard Baker commented that the site ". . . needs balance. What happened here means so many things to so many people, the best way to understand the battle is to let all the stories be told." The addition of the new memorial will help realize AIM's vision of a more complex and complete understanding of Indian-white conflicts.

SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

As evidenced at Little Bighorn National Monument, although AIM frequently inspires controversy the movement has proved successful over the years at raising public awareness of American Indian issues and inserting at least one version of an Indian perspective into mainstream American life. AIM has not proved successful in all of its endeavors. Leonard Peltier's imprisonment offers a case in point. Despite symbolic marches, appeals to the president of the United States, petitions, and international lobbying efforts, the former AIM activist remains in prison. Internal conflicts have surfaced here as well, as members of National and Autonomous AIM disagree over who should head efforts to free Peltier.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

In the future, AIM's most formidable challenge involves repairing the schisms within its ranks. As long as various factions expend energy fighting each other instead of working toward common goals, the movement's effectiveness remains curtailed. Until its leaders find some way to overcome internal factionalism, AIM most likely will continue to pursue similar goals from apparently opposing fronts in its campaign for American Indian sovereignty, self-determination, equal opportunity, and cultural viability.

GROUP RESOURCES

Various AIM chapters offer a number of resources, including statistics and other research, archives, and educational and social services. Following are ways to access some of these resources:

• AIM web site: The site, maintained by Jordan S. Dill, includes the perspectives of both major AIM factions and offers links to many related sites. Access the site at http://www.dickshovel.com/AIMIntro.html.
• Office of National Field Director of National AIM: Contact Dennis Banks at P.O. Box 315, Newport, KY, 41071; phone: (606) 431-2346; fax: (606) 581-9458.
• American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Community Job Training Center: Contact Vernon Bellecourt at 1915 Chicago Ave., Minneapolis, MN, 55404; phone: (612) 879-8113
• AIM Arizona: Call (602) 668-8926
• Autonomous AIM chapter, Cleveland: 2012 W. 25th St., Rm. 515, Cleveland, OH, 44113; phone: (216) 641-8684; E-mail: acjazz@iserv.net.
• Autonomous AIM chapter, Michigan: 1336 Commonwealth, Ypsilanti, MI, 48198; E-mail: bryanhalf@aol.com.

GROUP PUBLICATIONS

AIM publishes one periodical, Survival News, on a quarterly basis.